Full Body Exercises
Full Body Exercises are great for a quick fire warm up, intense workout or complete finisher. These exercises don’t necessarily target every single muscle in your body, but they cover a lot and will target both your upper body and your lower body at the same time. These types of exercises are a really good way to work multiple muscle groups at once. And in a lot of cases they will help you move a lot of weight, master your coordination skills and/or improve your overall explosive power. Every single one of these exercises will help you become stronger and more able in the gym and in your everyday life.
The purpose of the exercises on this page is not to be an exhaustive list of all Full Body Exercises, it is simply here to offer you some suggestions that you may not have considered in your workout plans already.
Use these exercises as an “add on” to your existing plan, or combine them with some exercises from our other muscle group categories to make yourself a full plan.
Full Body Exercises Benefits
The Benefits of Full Body Exercises
Full Body exercises are an efficient addition to your workouts, offering numerous benefits for people of all fitness levels. These exercises target multiple muscle groups simultaneously, making them a time-saving solution for those in a hurry.
One of the primary advantages of full-body exercises is their ability to help you with functional fitness. These movements often mimic real-life activities, improving balance, coordination, and flexibility. As a result, they will help you perform daily tasks more easily.
From a metabolic perspective, Full Body exercises tend to offer a higher calorie expenditure, both during and after exercise. This makes these types of exercises ideal for weight management or fat loss.
Full Body exercises are also versatile and can be tailored to suit various fitness levels and goals, whether you’re building strength, improving endurance, coordination or enhancing your cardiovascular health. Combining resistance training with aerobic elements in a single exercise can improve both strength and stamina while saving you time.
Incorporating full-body exercises into your fitness regimen is an excellent way to achieve a stronger, more resilient body overall, while optimising time and effort. Whether at home or in the gym, they offer a powerful and adaptable solution to improve your overall health and fitness.
What Muscles Make Up Your Full Body?
Well, there are over 600 muscles in the human body so we won’t list them all. Below are the major muscle groups summarised for the purpose of understanding the muscle groups you work when you lift:
Upper Body
Chest (Pectoral Muscles)
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Pectoralis Major
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Pectoralis Minor
Back
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Latissimus Dorsi (Lats)
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Trapezius (Traps)
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Rhomboids
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Erector Spinae
Shoulders (Deltoids)
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Anterior Deltoid (front)
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Lateral Deltoid (side)
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Posterior Deltoid (rear)
Arms
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Biceps Brachii
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Triceps Brachii
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Brachialis
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Forearm Muscles (Flexors and Extensors)
Core & Abdominals
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Rectus Abdominis
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Transverse Abdominis
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External Obliques
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Internal Obliques
Lower Back
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Erector Spinae
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Quadratus Lumborum
Lower Body
Glutes (Buttocks)
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Gluteus Maximus
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Gluteus Medius
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Gluteus Minimus
Thighs
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Quadriceps (Front of the thigh)
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Hamstrings (Back of the thigh)
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Adductors (Inner Thigh)
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Abductors (Outer Thigh)
Calves
Why Do Full Body Exercises?
Full Body Exercises are some of the most efficient exercises you will do in terms of overall caloric burn. While we don’t recommend them for building individual muscle groups, we do strongly suggest that you include some of these Full Body Exercises in your plan somewhere.
Seasoned lifters tend to perform these types of exercises as warm ups or finishers.
Besides being efficient and burning a ton of calories, Full Body Exercises are also great for improving your functional fitness, working muscles you may be neglecting in your core workout.
Tip! If you experience DOMS in any particular muscle group after any of these full body exercises, it’s a signal that you’re neglecting that muscle group in your core workouts. Think about how you can change that.
Full Body Exercises are also great for beginners and advanced lifters alike, they generally require very little equipment and they offer a really good workout for your cardiovascular system too.
By including these types of exercises in your plan, you’ll be doing your overall health and fitness a world of good.
How Often Should I Do Full Body Exercises?
This really depends on your personal goals, but generally speaking you should avoid doing Full Body workouts day after day. The reason for this is because you will need to allow your muscles sufficient time to recover between workouts.
For maximum performance you should add Full Body Exercises to your overall workout plan as a warm up or finisher as mentioned above.
Ultimately you should aim to split muscle groups when you workout, for example you may consider an upper/lower body split, or you can split your workouts in one of the ways we have outlined in this article: Workout Splits For Women.
Then select a couple of Full Body Exercises to tag to your overall plan for that day.
What Equipment Is Best For Full Body Exercises?
There is a lot to be said for bodyweight alone when it comes to Full Body Exercises and as you will see when you explore the exercises in these categories, most only require one piece of relatively easily accessible equipment.
For example there is a lot that can be done with a single kettlebell, or a single medicine ball or an abandoned tyre you find laying on the side of the road.
The good news is, you don’t need a lot of fixed gym equipment to do these types of exercises and most can be done from home.
What Are The Most Effective Full Body Exercises?
The most effective exercises for anyone are the ones they’re actually going to show up and do. We all have our personal favourites, but when all is said and done, they all work when you work.
So it’s on you to choose what you want to add to your routines. We strongly recommend that you add some Full Body Exercises as they will benefit your overall physical health and functional strength.
Keep in mind that this is not an exhaustive list of Full Body Exercises, we will continue to update the exercises available in our database, but for now this is what we have published on this website.
How Can I Use These Full Body Exercises To My Advantage?
An Added Boost to Your Existing Plan
As with all exercises in our database, you are encouraged to use them to enhance your existing workout, by picking out exercises you want to add to your current routine.
Build Complete Workouts
You may also make yourself a full weekly workout rotation with these exercises, but that will require some critical thinking on your part. We can give you the exercises, there is a lot of information on each individual exercise page for you to work with. But it’s up to you to take that information and use it to build the best workout plans for you. With experience this will get easier.
Building a Workout Basics
When you create a workout plan for yourself, you should start with a general plan of which muscle groups you will train on each day. If you are a beginner, keep it simple with an upper/lower body split. Intermediate and advanced lifters will move to rotate muscle groups or other methods such as push, pull, legs.
Once you know how you will train on each day, choose a key compound exercise to start with. For the sake of simplicity, let’s say you’re planning a lower body or leg workout plan. The most obvious exercise to start with is a Squat, if you don’t want to squat, you can start with a Deadlift or a Lunge. A good weightlifting workout plan always starts with a compound barbell exercise, you should work your way down through freeweight, cable and machine exercises, finishing up on bodyweight exercises all focused on the target muscle group.
Progress
Always make sure that you push yourself out of your comfort zone, as soon as you feel like you are breezing through your workout with ease, it’s time to switch things up. There are 3 things you can do in this instance:
Lift more
Change your rep/set method
Change your plan
Essentially, you should do all 3, but one thing at a time. The most sustainable results come from incremental changes over time.
Consistency
The results we want from weightlifting don’t happen overnight and they don’t happen with one single exercise, workout or strategy. You need to keep showing up and evolving. When you train consistently you get results. There are no shortcuts.
Looking for a complete weekly workout rotation?
You should check out our Members Zone portal, we have free plans available to get you started and unlimited workout possibilities as you progress.
If you’d like to explore what types of workout plans we have available for our members, you can learn more here.
More Full Body Exercises coming soon...
Just so you know, this list of Full Body Exercises is a work in progress and is by no means extensive. We will continue to grow this entire database for you over time, so be sure to check back for updates. Alternatively, you can join our mailing list below and you'll be the first to know about all new content we produce.