If you want a simple but highly effective 3-day full-body workout designed for muscle hypertrophy, one that doesn’t involve doing weird exercises you’ve never heard of, counting rep tempos, or spending hours in the gym, this page will show you how it’s done.
Before you continue, I do want to point out a few things.
First, building muscle is hard work. It takes ferocious consistency, discipline and sustained effort over a period of several years.
While you can make significant changes to your physique in a matter of months, it will take a lot longer before you get anywhere near the upper limit of muscle mass you’re capable of adding to your frame.
Even if you’re following the greatest muscle-building workout routine ever devised in all of human history, adding muscle to your frame takes persistence, hard work and patience.
Second, I can’t make any promises about how fast you’ll build muscle, because I don’t know you. I don’t know how long you’ve been training, what your genetics are like, or how close you are to your maximum muscular potential.
All of these things can have a big impact on the speed at which muscle is built.
Third, this is a 3-day full-body workout designed to stimulate muscle hypertrophy. It’s not meant to help you prepare for a Spartan race, give you the conditioning of a UFC fighter, or turn you into a serious contender for the title of World’s Strongest Man.
Don’t try to improve multiple physical qualities at the same time. To make progress as fast as your genetics will allow, you’ll need to focus on one major goal to the exclusion of everything else.
Finally, if you want to drop some fat, there’s no reason why you can’t combine this training program with a diet geared towards fat loss.
It is possible, for some people at least, to gain muscle while they lose fat. However, you won’t gain muscle as fast as you would have done had your diet been set up for the sole purpose of building muscle.
The 3-Day Full-Body Workout
With all that out of the way, here’s what the training program looks like. I’ll talk more about why it’s set up the way it is in just a moment.
Full Body Workout 1
Bench Press 3 sets x 5-8 reps
Lat Pulldown 3 sets x 10-15 reps
Squat 3 sets x 5-8 reps
Leg Curl 3 sets x 10-15 reps
Dumbbell Shoulder Press 2 sets x 5-8 reps
Incline Curl 2 sets x 10-15 reps
Triceps Pressdown 2 sets x 10-15 reps
Full Body Workout 2
Incline Dumbbell Press 3 sets x 10-15 reps
Seated Cable Row 3 sets x 15-20 reps
Leg Press 3 sets x 10-15 reps
Romanian Deadlift 3 sets x 10-15 reps
Lateral Raise 2 sets x 15-20 reps
Dumbbell Hammer Curl 2 sets x 10-15 reps
Overhead Triceps Extension 2 sets x 10-15 reps
Full Body Workout 3
Cable Crossover 3 sets x 15-20 reps
Dumbbell Row 3 sets x 5-8 reps
Leg Extension 3 sets x 15-20 reps
Leg Curl 3 sets x 15-20 reps
Bent Over Lateral Raise 2 sets x 10-15 reps
Preacher Curl 2 sets x 10-15 reps
Lying Triceps Extension 2 sets x 10-15 reps
The number of sets listed are the actual work sets only, and don’t include warm-up sets. It’s always a good idea, especially if you’re using heavy weights, to do several progressively heavier warm-up sets. This will prepare the joints, the muscles and the nervous system that controls those muscles for the heavy work to come.
In most cases, somewhere between 1-3 warm-up sets will do the job. However, the exact number of warm-up sets you do will vary depending on the temperature of the gym you’re training in, how your joints feel, the amount of weight you’re lifting, the exercise itself, and where that exercise is placed in the workout.
There have been times when I’ve been training in a cold gym, it’s early in the morning and my joints are feeling a bit stiff, where I’ve ended up doing 7-8 warm-up sets before getting into the heavy stuff.
The 3-Day Full-Body Workout: Training Frequency
This is the default version of the 3-day full-body workout. You train on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, then take the weekend off.
Monday: Full Body Workout 1
Tuesday: Off
Wednesday: Full Body Workout 2
Thursday: Off
Friday: Full Body Workout 3
Saturday: Off
Sunday: Off
However, the days of the week that you train aren’t set in stone. If you can’t make it to the gym on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, you could always train on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
And if you miss a workout, you can just push things back a day. For example, let’s say that you miss your Wednesday workout. Here’s how your week might look:
Monday: Full Body Workout 1
Tuesday: Off
Wednesday: Off
Thursday: Full Body Workout 2
Friday: Off
Saturday: Full Body Workout 3
Sunday: Off
In an ideal world, you’ll have a day of rest between each workout. That is, if you train on Monday, you’ll have Tuesday off, then train again on Wednesday.
But let’s say that you miss your Wednesday workout, and training at the weekend isn’t an option. In this case, training on consecutive days is not a problem.
In fact, training the same muscle groups on consecutive days has been shown to have a similar effect on muscle hypertrophy compared to taking a day of rest between workouts [1]. Here’s how it might look:
Monday: Full Body Workout 1
Tuesday: Off
Wednesday: Off
Thursday: Full Body Workout 2
Friday: Full Body Workout 3
Saturday: Off
Sunday: Off
The 3-Day Full-Body Workout: Key Points
1. No matter how your training week is set up, it’s important to train hard and focus on improving your workout performance over time.
Do the same exercises, for the same number of sets and reps, while lifting the same amount of weight, for the next five years. Nothing much is going to happen.
That’s because the training you’re doing is a challenge your body has already adapted to. As a result, no new muscle will be gained.
I’m not saying you’ll make progress in every single workout. To do so indefinitely would be impossible, and there’ll be times when you end up lifting the same amount of weight, for the same number of sets and reps you did before.
However, your focus should always be on pushing yourself to increase the amount of work your muscles are doing, whether that’s lifting heavier weights, doing more reps with the same weight, or doing more sets.
You need to give your muscles a reason to get bigger, or you’ll remain stuck at the same size you are right now.
So make sure to keep a training diary, write down your numbers, and always try to beat your previous workout in some way.
2. Take 2-3 minutes of rest between each set. If in doubt, err on the side of giving yourself too much rest rather than not enough.
As a rule, I’d suggest resting for longer between sets of multi-joint exercises that work a large amount of muscle mass, such as squats, rows, deadlifts, leg presses and so on. You won’t need as much rest between single-joint exercises, such as dumbbell curls, lateral raises and pressdowns.
3. Don’t try to save time by cutting your rest periods short and racing from one exercise to the next. This isn’t so-called metabolic resistance training. The hypertrophy stimulus generated by a given workout will be that much greater if you get a decent amount of rest between each set before tackling the next one.
A better way to save time is to use paired sets, which involve exercises that target opposing muscle groups performed back-to-back.
Example:
Bench Press
Rest for 45-60 seconds
Lat Pulldown
Rest for 45-60 seconds
Bench Press
Rest for 45-60 seconds
Lat Pulldown
Bench Press
Rest for 45-60 seconds
Lat Pulldown
This way, you’re making better use of your inter-set rest periods by doing another exercise.
As well as saving time, paired sets may even make you stronger. In one study, a group of trained men was able to do significantly more reps on the leg extension when they did the leg curl beforehand [2].
In fact, the men were able to crank out, on average, three additional reps on the leg extension machine when they did leg curls immediately, 30 seconds or 60 seconds earlier.
4. If you’re pushed for time, just do the first 4-5 exercises in each workout. Your shoulders, biceps and triceps will get some stimulation from the other exercises.
5. While the exercises listed work well, there’s no reason why you can’t replace them with something else that does a similar job. Don’t have access to a leg press machine? Do Bulgarian split squats or reverse lunges instead. Prefer pull-ups to pulldowns? Then do pull-ups. You can also throw in some ab and calf work at the end of each workout.
The 3-Day Full-Body Workout: The Science
Let me talk a bit more about the science behind full body workouts, and explain why the program is set up the way it is.
First up, we have training frequency, which refers to the number of times you train a muscle group each week.
Training each muscle once a week can and will make that muscle bigger. However, for most people at least, it’s probably the least effective way to train. In most cases, working a muscle group 2-3 times per week will produce a faster rate of hypertrophy than training it once a week.
You also vary your reps from workout to workout. While this isn’t essential, it has been shown (in some studies at least) to have a small but beneficial effect on muscle growth [3].
That is, alternating between low, medium and high reps will build muscle faster than sticking to the same number of reps all the time.
Doing some of your training with higher reps and lighter weights is also a good way to give your joints a break from the constant pounding they get if you’re always lifting heavy.
The program also involves different exercises for each muscle group, which has a number of benefits.
The first is a reduction in the risk of “repetitive stress” injuries. Doing the same exercises week after week, especially if you’re pushing heavy weights, can take a big toll on your joints.
Second, maximizing the development of a given muscle group requires the use of several exercises, and not just one.
The quadriceps, for example, is made up of four different muscles. And if all you’re doing for your legs are squats, those muscles won’t all grow to the same extent.
In one study, a training program that included several exercises for the quads – the leg press, squat and lunge – led to muscle hypertrophy in all heads of the quadriceps, while a squat-only program did not [4].
While the squat leads to high levels of muscle activation in vastus lateralis and vastus medialis, the leg extension preferentially recruits rectus femoris – the large muscle that runs down the middle of the front of your thigh [5, 6, 7].
While the potential shape and size of each muscle is determined by the genetic blueprint you were handed at birth, you can make the most of that potential by using different exercises to emphasize different regions of a muscle group.
Final Thoughts
If you’re looking for a highly effective 3-day full-body workout that you can use to gain muscle (or even just retain muscle while you drop fat), this one ticks all the right boxes.
It works your muscles often enough to make them grow. It can be used by beginner, intermediate or advanced trainees alike. It’s also flexible, and can be set up in various different ways depending on which days of the week you’re able to train.
SEE ALSO: THE MUSCLE BUILDING CHEAT SHEET
If you're fed up spending hours in the gym with nothing to show for it, then check out The Muscle Building Cheat Sheet.
It's a "cut the waffle and just tell me what to do” PDF that tells you exactly how to go about building muscle. To get a copy of the cheat sheet sent to you, please click or tap here to enter your email address.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christian Finn is the nation’s leading authority on science-based, joint-friendly ways to build muscle. A former "trainer to the trainers," he holds a masters degree in exercise science, and has been featured in or contributed to major media on two continents, including the BBC and Sunday Times in the U.K. and Men’s Health and Men’s Fitness in the U.S.