How to Create a Full Body Strength Workout
Give someone a workout and they will lift for a day. Show someone how to create a workout and they will lift for a lifetime.
Welcome to The Spotter!
I am Nolan Vannata. This newsletter is a part of my mission to make health, fitness, and nutrition content that is evidence-based, digestible, practical, and accessible.
The components of a full body strength workout
In this article, I am going to lay out how I design a strength workout. I will provide insight into my thought process, priorities, and also give some examples. There are several “must-haves” for this to be a high-quality session:
A proper warm up.
The loads must be relatively heavy (this is a strength workout after all).
How heavy? That depends on your fitness level. Here is a short checklist of how you can make sure the load is heavy enough:
You did 10 or less reps (with very few exceptions)
You are capable of only doing a few more reps if you had to
It isn’t so heavy that you compromise your form
Most of the workout will be focused on training movements, not muscles.
Read this article in its entirety and you will understand four things:
How to create a warmup
The concept of training movements and exercise selection
Exercise order
Organizing a workout
Creating a proper warmup
Again, I covered this in a previous article, so this will be brief. I create warmups using the RAMP protocol.
R: Raise
Get heart rate, respiratory rate, and body temperature up.
AM: Activate and Mobilize
Use the muscles that will be trained during the workout and use them to a full range of motion.
P: Potentiate
Gradually increase the intensity close to what will be experienced during the workout. For example: If you are doing heavy squats during the workout, you could “potentiate” by doing explosive squats or squat jumps in your warmup.
Below is an example warmup.
Raise
30 seconds of jumping jacks
30 seconds easy run in place
30 seconds FAST high knees
30 seconds easy run in place
Activate and Mobilize
10 x back slaps
Hands out wide in a “T” shape, swing your arms and give yourself a quick hug.
10 x squats as low as possible
5 x arm circles, small, medium, and large, both directions
10 x good morning stretches
Similar to Romanian deadlifts but without weights.
10 x “lazy” rotations
Hands out in a “T”, rotating side-to-side and turning your body.
Potentiate
5 high jumps or explosive squats
(Optional) 3-5 reps of a moderately-heavy weight before the main sets of each exercise
I like this warmup because it is simple, effective, and does not require equipment.
Train movements, not muscles
I believe the primary focus of a strength workout should be focused on training movements, not muscles. With that being said, I still find value in isolating certain muscles at the end of a workout. While most research suggests that there is little difference in strength and muscle size outcomes comparing multi-joint and single-joint exercises, I have a rationale for prioritizing movements over muscles.
During your activities of daily living, you move… a lot. You deadlift your grocery bags, overhead press boxes onto a high shelf, squat down in your garden, and do push-ups and planks while playing with your child or grandchild on the ground. You push, pull, squat, carry, hinge, rotate, bend, and extend your way through life. You will do these movements safer and with more ease if you train for them.
Here are descriptions and example exercises for these foundational movements:
Squat
The obvious choice for this would be a squat, but there are other squat-like movements. You can also do reverse lunges, lateral lunges, leg press, hack squat, split squats, box step downs, and much more. There are many reasons to pick one over the other, but they will all serve a similar purpose. All squat-like movements will primarily train the quads and glutes since they all involve knee and hip extension.
Hinge
A hinge exercise specifically refers to a hip hinge. This will primarily target the glutes, lower back, and hamstrings. Examples of hip hinges are deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts, glute bridges, and back extensions.
Vertical push
This means to push vertically relative to your body, so this will include any sort of overhead press. This will mostly target your shoulders and triceps.
Horizontal push
This means to push horizontally relative to your body. Think of a bench press; the weight is technically moving vertically while you’re lying flat. Horizontal push movements target the chest, shoulders, and triceps. In addition to bench press, this includes exercises like the chest press and push-up.
Vertical pull
Vertical pulls, like vertical pushes, involve movements where you pull in line with your body. The primary muscles used are the biceps, back of the shoulders, mid back, and lats. Examples are lat-pull downs and pull-ups.
Horizontal pull
The primary muscles used during a horizontal pull are very similar to a vertical pull, but you will target the muscles to different degrees. A good example of a horizontal pull is a row, of which there are many variations.
Rotation
As mentioned in my article on core exercises, rotation movements refer to exercises that involve rotating your ribs relative to your hips (rotating your spine). This targets your abs and lower back. Example exercises are trunk twists and side-medicine ball throws. Any “swinging” motion will do!
Anti-extension
This will target your abdominals. Anti-extension refers to “preventing spinal extension”. A plank is the most well know example of an anti-extension movement.
If you need more examples for any of these movements, search for them. For example, google search, “hip hinge exercises”, and you will get a ton of example exercises.
If I were to make a full body workout for myself right now, here is what I would pick:
Squat: Back squat
Hinge: Glute bridge
Vertical push: Seated overhead press
Horizontal push: Barbell chest press
Vertical pull: Pull-up
Horizontal pull: 3-point row
Rotation: Cable trunk twist
Anti-extension: Ab wheel rollout
My exercise selection is determined by my specific goals and personal preferences.
Exercise order
The order of your exercises matters if you want to perform each to the highest quality possible. Here is a general guideline you should follow:
Speed and power movements go first. Unless you are an athlete, you likely aren’t even doing speed and power exercises (plyometrics, sprints, and Olympic lifts).
Heavy, multi-joint strength exercises go after that.
Core and single-joint exercises go at the end. The end of a workout is a great time to do some abs, arms, or conditioning work.
If exercises are in a “tie” based on these guidelines, order them by how much you prioritize them. Do the exercises that are more important to you and your goals first.
Is your workout ruined if you stray from this? Not at all! Exercise order is determined by the priorities and demands of the exercise. You also have to be mindful and think, “If I do this exercise now, how much will it impact the exercises I do later?”. For example, doing chest flies and tricep extensions before you bench press will compromise the quality of your bench press. If bench press is a high priority exercise, this wouldn’t be a great idea.
Let’s organize all of this!
We need to clean this up so we can comfortably read this while exercising. I’ll show you step by step how I would write things down onto the example template.
I wrote down the exercises in the order that makes the most sense to me, my current goals, and my preferences. This is not THE best order. It is MY best order. If you want to go really heavy and push it on your glute bridges and rows and those align more with your goals, then it would make more sense for you to put those first.
Next, choose how many sets and reps you want to do for each movement. Here’s why I chose the specific sets and reps you’ll see in the chart below:
Squat, bench, and pull-up are of more importance to me and my goals compared to the other exercises. That’s why they have four heavy sets instead of two or three like the others.
Pull-ups are a bodyweight exercise. If it’s too easy, I will use a weight belt to add more to my bodyweight. If it’s too hard, I would use the assisted pull-up machine at the gym to make it easier.
I won’t go as heavy during the glute bridge or seated overhead press because my glutes are weak, and I get shoulder pain while overhead pressing heavier weights. So, for those 2 exercises, it makes sense for me to go lighter on the weights and do more reps.
Heavy strength training requires core activation for almost every exercise. So, when it comes to specific core exercises (trunk twists and rollouts), I feel like I only need two sets of each.
From there, I would write in the weights used and reps completed. I know that if I write “6 reps”, I might end up doing between five and seven. Although, if I end up only completing four reps, I will likely decrease the weight for the next set, just as I would increase the weight if I completed eight or more reps.
This should be enough to get started!
Being able to create your own workouts and actually know why you are doing certain things is one of the best skills to have for improving your fitness. If you normally pay for pre-built “one size fits all” exercise programs, I advise that you do one of two things:
Learn how to create your own workouts. You will save money and probably see better results because the workouts are individualized to you.
Go all in and work with a trainer or coach who can create and customize workouts for you.
If you have ANY questions about this, don’t hesitate to reach out to me or leave a comment on this post.
This is so helpful! Thank you!!!