What is a Full Body Compound Workout?
A full-body compound workout is just as the name implies: Performing compound movements for the whole body during a workout.
Just like how you may complete an assignment from start to finish in one go, a full-body compound workout works out your entire body in one sitting.
An average full-body compound workout may include RDLs, bench press, deadlifts (or squats), pull-ups (or barbell rows), and overhead press. This combination of exercises stimulates the largest muscle groups of your body, which are the quads, glutes, hamstrings, shoulders, lats, and chest, and also stimulates smaller supportive muscles and indirectly targets muscles such as your biceps, triceps, traps, and upper back muscles.
This form of workout will likely take the same amount of time as a day from a regular split would (45 minutes to 2 hours roughly), but the advantage lies in the fact that you work out the entire body in one sitting.
Also, because a full-body compound workout works the entire body, you only need to be in the gym 2-3 days a week. The workouts will be very taxing on your body, so you will need at least a couple of days to rest and recover before going at it again.
Which Exercises Should I Do?
To help you pick an effective and enjoyable workout, we have researched the best compound movements for each part of the body. To maximize your results, it is recommended that you pick one exercise from each group to truly workout the entire body.
Back Exercises:
- Pull-ups
- Barbell rows
- Face pulls
- Lat Pulldown
- Kettlebell Swings
- Good Mornings
Leg Exercises:
- Squats
- Deadlifts
- Romanian Deadlifts (RDLs)
- Bulgarian Split-Squats
- Goblet Squats
- Front Squats
Chest Exercises:
- Barbell Bench Press
- Push-ups
- Dips
- Dumbbell Pullover
- Incline Chest Press
- Decline Cable Press
Shoulder Exercises:
- Military Press (Barbell Overhead Press)
- Front Raises
- Lateral Raises
- Pike Push-ups
- Seated Dumbbell Overhead Press
- Arnold Press
We recommend picking 1-2 exercises from each group to adequately target and work out your entire body. With a full-body compound split, it is effective to switch up your exercises to avoid adaptation since you will only be doing 1-2 exercises per major muscle group.
For instance, switch out weighted push-ups for a barbell bench press as your primary chest builder, and maybe change from dumbbell overhead presses to front raises as your anterior shoulder exercise from workout to workout.
The Core is another essential group to target. Because exercises for the core are not compound lifts, however, we did not include these in our list. You can find more information on working out the core here:
Squats and RDLs should be your go-to exercises for your legs, but it doesn’t hurt to switch to a goblet squat or front squat to help in quad development every now and then. Because the RDLs are the only leg exercise that builds the hamstrings, we advise you not to switch it out for another squat variant unless you are doing kettlebell swings or good mornings! Deadlifts also somewhat work the hamstrings, but the primary builder of this necessary leg muscle is the RDL. Shoot to do this exercise at least every other workout.
The Cons
Harder to Target Specific Muscles
It is true that you will build good overall muscle with a full-body compound split, but the downside of sacrificing time and only doing compound exercises is that you will not build muscle evenly and you will have weaknesses that you cannot address without switching your split.
For example, if you only do squats and RDLs for legs and only choose the bench press for your chest, you will miss out on gains for your calves, upper and lower chest and will likely not maximize the amount of stimulus your quads, middle chest, hamstrings, and glutes can receive.
Another downside is the inability to progressively overload your muscles efficiently. While you can progressively overload your compound lifts effectively, you cannot progressively overload specific muscles as well. Your squat may target your glutes more than your quads, so increasing weight for the squat will impact your glutes more than your quads.
More Prone to Injury
When you only do compound lifts, you are more prone to injure yourself. This is because you are not using machines and are mainly using barbells or dumbbells to perform all of your exercises. Compound lifts require a lot of stability and unlike fixed exercises do not place your body in a fixed movement, resulting in the risk of falling out of alignment.
Imagine you fail a bench press. There is so much that could go wrong – it could even lead to serious injury or death! Personally, I sprained my wrist bench pressing and am still feeling the effects to this day, but I have never injured myself doing exercises that only target one or two muscles and are fixed movements.
Harder to Push to Absolute Failure
Because of the increased risk of injury stated before and the use of numerous different muscles (including stability muscles) your ability to push to absolute failure is very difficult to achieve. As a result, you will likely not achieve the maximum results you hope for. This is why we recommend this split to beginners or people that are very busy.
When you do go to absolute failure, you need a spotter to catch the weight or help you finish the movement. As a result, it is also less efficient even if you are going to complete failure because now you constantly need someone to look over you and make sure you don’t get injured.
The Pros
More Time-Efficient
The total amount of time that you spend in the gym will be greatly reduced as a result of switching to a full-body compound workout routine. You can also maximize your productivity during your workouts by making a weekly or bi-weekly routine so you know exactly what you will do each day you go to the gym.
More Muscle Activation Per Exercise
The main advantage of doing compound exercises is that they all activate a variety of muscles. This causes you to become more efficient overall because you can provide more stimulus with fewer total exercises. When implemented for the entire body, compound exercises can be a great alternative to isolated exercises.
Good For Beginners
If you are new to the gym, you do not have a lot of muscle to begin with. Because of this, any exercise will build the foundation of your muscular physique. As a result, it is not required to be on a split like Push-Pull-Legs or the Arnold Split (which typically require 6 days of commitment per week) because you will build a comparable amount of muscle doing a full-body compound workout 3 days a week.
Eventually, you will have to move on to a more busy and specific split to continue to see results, but as a beginner, you will build muscle regardless of what split you choose. Also, doing a full-body compound split will allow you to build consistency because it does not demand 6 days a week. Going 3 days a week is a lot easier and less time committing, so it will allow you to evaluate if the gym is right for you (I hope it is!).
To help you pick an effective and enjoyable workout, we have researched the best compound movements for each part of the body. To maximize your results, it is recommended that you pick one exercise from each group to truly workout the entire body.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we recommend you give the full-body compound workout a chance because it can be very effective for those that still want to make muscle but maybe don’t want to put in as much time and effort to maximize their potential.
The pros of this split are that it is time-efficient because you only need to be in the gym 3 days a week, it enables more muscle use per exercise, and it is good for consistency because of the limited number of workouts you have to do to get results.
The cons of this split are that you risk injury by not being in a fixed movement and by requiring stability, you cannot push to absolute failure without a spotter, and it is harder to target specific muscles most effectively.
The full-body compound workout is very effective for people that are on a time crunch or those that are beginning to work out in the gym. It will still provide results and it is all dependent on how much you care about specific muscular strength/size. If you are someone that goes to the gym recreationally, we highly recommend this split to you.
