Hypertrophy Training: A Simple 3-Day Full-Body Workout Routine

If you want a simple but highly effective 3-day full-body workout routine 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 long it’s going to take to 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 routine 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 Routine

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

NOTE: Currently in lockdown? Want a complete training program you can use to get the results you want without a gym? If so, take a look at the Home Workout Guide. You’ll find a big list of home-friendly exercises for every muscle group, links to video demonstrations of each exercise, as well as different workouts for beginners, intermediate and advanced trainees alike. Click here to find out more.

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 Routine: Weekly Schedule

This is the default version of the 3-day full-body workout routine. 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 Routine: 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 Routine: The Science

Let me talk a bit more about the science behind full body workout routines, 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.

Alternative 3-Day Workout Splits

Although the 3-day full body workout works well for building muscle, there are some alternatives out there worth looking into. First up, we have the 3-day upper/lower split.

The 3-Day Upper/Lower Split

With an upper/lower split, you work the muscles in your lower body and upper body in separate training sessions.

An upper body workout will normally hit your chest, back, shoulders, biceps and triceps, while the lower body workout centers on your quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes and calves.

Let’s say you want to focus on gaining size in your upper body. In this case, you can do two upper body workouts and one for your lower body over the course of the week.

Monday: Upper Body
Tuesday: Off
Wednesday: Lower Body
Thursday: Off
Friday: Upper Body
Saturday: Off
Sunday: Off

This way, the muscles in your chest, back, shoulders and arms are trained twice a week, while the legs are only trained once. This means you can hit the upper body muscles with more volume, which should translate into a faster rate of growth.

If you do want to give your legs an equal amount of work, you can still use an upper/lower split. All you do is switch the order of the workouts the following week, so you start off with a lower body workout.

WEEK 1
Monday: Upper Body
Tuesday: Off
Wednesday: Lower Body
Thursday: Off
Friday: Upper Body
Saturday: Off
Sunday: Off

WEEK 2
Monday: Lower Body
Tuesday: Off
Wednesday: Upper Body
Thursday: Off
Friday: Lower Body
Saturday: Off
Sunday: Off

In week three, the upper body workout ends up back on Monday, and you start the cycle all over again. This way, each muscle group is trained three times over a two-week period.

The Upper/Lower/Full Split

The 3 day upper/lower/full split merges an upper/lower split with a full-body workout. You hit the upper body on Monday and the lower body on Wednesday. Then, you train your whole body on Friday. Each muscle group is trained twice a week.

Monday: Upper Body
Tuesday: Off
Wednesday: Lower Body
Thursday: Off
Friday: Full Body
Saturday: Off
Sunday: Off

The 3-Day Push/Pull Split

If you don’t like the idea of days where you train only your legs and nothing else, you can use a push/pull split.

The push workout is focused on the pushing movements for the upper body, which involve the chest, shoulders and triceps. The pull workout is based around pulling movements for the upper body, which involve the back and biceps.

Rather than devote an entire training session to your lower body, you also do a little bit of leg work every time you train. That is, the push day workouts involve exercises that focus on your quads, while the pull day workouts include some work for your hamstrings.

Here’s what it looks like:

WEEK 1
Monday: Push
Tuesday: Off
Wednesday: Pull
Thursday: Off
Friday: Push
Saturday: Off
Sunday: Off

WEEK 2
Monday: Pull
Tuesday: Off
Wednesday: Push
Thursday: Off
Friday: Pull
Saturday: Off
Sunday: Off

In the third week, the upper body workout ends up back on Monday, and you repeat the cycle.

As with the upper/lower split, you can also throw in a full-body workout on the Friday, and turn the push/pull split into a push/pull/full routine.

Monday: Push
Tuesday: Off
Wednesday: Pull
Thursday: Off
Friday: Full Body
Saturday: Off
Sunday: Off

3 Day Workout Split: Popular Questions

Before I wrap this up, let’s take a look at some of the most popular questions about 3-day splits and full body workouts.

Are Full Body Workouts Only for Beginners? 

Some say that full body workouts are really only effective for beginners. Once you’ve graduated from the novice stages of training, you’re better off with a split routine, where you work different muscle groups on different days of the week.

However, full body workouts can be a surprisingly effective way to gain muscle, even if you’re no longer a beginner.

Probably the most relevant study on the subject compared training a muscle once a week with a full body workout performed five times a week, Monday to Friday [8].

On average, the men taking part in the study had been training for over six years, could bench press a maximum of 130% of their own bodyweight and squat with around 165% of their own bodyweight.

While they weren’t advanced strength athletes, they certainly weren’t untrained novices.

Subjects in the once-a-week group did two exercises in each workout, performing 5-10 sets per exercise. Those doing the full body workouts did a total of 11 exercises, and 1-2 sets per exercise.

This meant that both groups did the same number of sets for each muscle group, but it was spread out differently across the week.

The result?

After two months, there were no significant differences in terms of strength or size gains between the two groups – 10-15 sets distributed over the course of five days increased muscle mass and strength similarly to the same number of sets performed once a week.

What’s more, if you look at how people trained before drug use was as widespread as it is today, full body workouts were extremely popular with the top bodybuilders of the time.

“Some of the younger bodybuilders were into split routines and all kinds of crazy sets, reps, and novelty routines,” says Ben Sorenson, the manager of Vic Tanny’s Gym in the late 1940’s, which back then was the largest bodybuilding facility in the world.

“But with the best guys — Steve Reeves (1947 Mr. America), Eric Pedersen (1947 Mr. California), George Eiferman (1948 Mr. America), and John Farbotnik (1950 Mr. America) — their serious, get-big-and-strong training was done with whole-body routines, three times per week.”

In short, there’s no reason to ditch full body workouts and move to a split routine just because you’ve got a few years of serious training behind you. 

As long as your training program is set up properly, intermediate and advanced trainees can still make good progress with the use of full body workouts.

Can You Do a Full Body Workout Every Day?

To a lot of people, the idea of doing a full body workout every day sounds completely outrageous. 

The standard advice is to take at least one complete day of rest between training sessions that work the same muscle groups. Training a muscle group seven days a week doesn’t give you enough recovery time, and is just going to wreck your joints, beat up the CNS and make your muscles shrink.

However, while I don’t think you should be doing a full body workout every day, there is some research to show that training the same muscles 4-6 days a week is not as crazy as was once believed.

A few years back, researchers from the University of South Florida compared two programs that involved training the same muscles either three or six days per week [9].

Subjects taking part in the study were young men in their early twenties, who’d been lifting weights for at least six months.

In order to be eligible for the study, they had to be able to squat at least 125% of their bodyweight, bench press 100% of their bodyweight, and deadlift 150% of their bodyweight.

The men were split into two groups, and did the squat and bench press either three or six days per week. The deadlift was done once a week in the 3-day group, and twice a week in the 6-day group. The number of weekly sets performed by both groups was identical, but was spread out differently.

At the end of the study, there was no statistically significant difference in strength or size gains between the two groups. Men in both the 3-day and 6-day groups gained roughly the same amount of muscle.

To sum up, there’s nothing inherently wrong with performing a full body workout 4-6 times a week.

Do I think it’s the best approach for everyone? No.

The optimal amount of time between workouts is highly individual, and will vary from person to person, depending on the type of training you’re doing, how long you’ve been lifting weights, the type of exercises you’re doing, what background sources of stress you have going on in your life, how well your diet is set up, and so on.

Given the choice, I’d still prefer to insert at least one day of rest between workouts for the same muscle group.

If you’re just starting out, you’re better off with something like the full-body workout outlined above, or an upper/lower split, where each muscle group is trained twice a week. 

A high-frequency full body workout is best reserved for someone with several years of lifting behind them. And even then, you’ll need to be careful not to push things too hard, too fast.

You can’t just take a typical 5×5 workout, where you’re doing multiple heavy sets of bench presses, squats and deadlifts, and try to do it every day. That’s not going to work

A full body workout performed 4-5 times a week would need to be set up specifically for that purpose, with the volume and intensity of each training session adjusted to take into account the increase in training frequency.

How Long Should a Full Body Workout Be?

There are no hard and fast rules about how long a full body workout should last. But for most people, it’s going to take somewhere between 45 and 90 minutes to deliver a sufficient growth stimulus to all the major muscles in your body.

Can you get an effective full body workout done and dusted in less than 45 minutes? Yes. 

Is it a problem if your workout happens to last longer than 90 minutes? No. 

It’s not like you reach some kind of catabolic tipping point as soon as your workout hits the 90-minute mark. Training sessions geared towards maximizing strength, for example, can last a long time simply because of the extended periods of rest between sets.

But in most cases, a full body workout lasting 45 to 90 minutes is plenty. That’s more than enough to get the job done. 

Are Two Full Body Workouts a Week Enough?

If you only have the time (or the inclination) to train twice a week, you can build muscle and get stronger with just two full body workouts each week.

However, there are some downsides to consider.

If you’re someone who needs a relatively large number of sets to stimulate growth, trying to compress all that work into just two workouts means that each training session can drag on.

You end up running out of steam, and the muscles being trained at the end of the workout tend to grow more slowly than they otherwise would do. If you’re trying to maximize muscle growth across your whole body, I think you’re better off with 3-5 training days each week.

But for everyone else, a full body workout performed twice a week is a surprisingly effective way to gain size, just as long as you’re prepared to work hard and push yourself.

Do Full Body Workouts Burn Fat?

Multi-joint exercises like the squat, lat pulldown and deadlift involve lifting relatively heavy weights, and require a lot of work from the large muscle groups in your legs, hips and back. 

As a result, a full body workout will typically burn more calories than a workout involving a smaller amount of muscle mass. And just like any workout, a full body workout will lead to some amount of fat being burned.

But if you’re wondering whether this or that type of workout burns more fat, you’re focusing on the wrong thing.

When it comes to getting lean, the food you eat (or, more importantly, that you don’t eat) is a lot more important than what you do in the gym. Think of your diet as a way to get rid of the fat, and your training sessions as a way to gain, or even just retain, muscle.

Although fat will be burned as a side effect of doing the work necessary to send the “size and strength” stimulus to your muscles, it’s not the end goal in itself.

Can Full Body Workouts Get You Ripped?

That depends on how you define being ripped. If you want to step on stage in a physique contest, chances are you’re going to need more than 3 days a week of training to get the job done.

But if all you want is a bit more muscle here or a little less fat there, working out 3 days a week should be enough, just as long as you combine that training with the right diet. As I mentioned earlier, it’s your diet that does most of the heavy lifting as far as losing fat is concerned.

Exercise can make you fitter, healthier, happier, stronger and more muscular. But, if you don’t get your diet right, it’s not going to make you any leaner.

HIIT… sprint interval training… steady-state cardio… strength training… metabolic resistance training… all can be useful at different times, and for different people.

But they’re not going to help you lose fat if your diet isn’t set up properly.

Can I Do a 3 Day Workout Split at Home?

If you have access to the right equipment, there’s nothing to stop you doing a 3 day workout split at home.

Back when I started out lifting weights, I had a bench, a barbell, a pull-up bar and a couple of adjustable dumbbells tucked away in the corner of my living room. That was it. I didn’t even have a squat rack.

But I made a lot of progress in those early years, simply because I showed up, worked hard, and made the best of what I had.

You can get a solid workout in with your own bodyweight and some dumbbells, or even just a few bits and bobs you have lying around the house, which is something I show you how to do here: How to Build Muscle at Home

However, if training at home is going to be a regular thing, a bench, pull-up bar, and some gymnastic rings (or a suspension trainer) will come in very handy. 

Training in a garage or spare room still requires self-discipline (in some ways, I used to find it harder to train at home, because of all the distractions).

But if you’re short on time, there isn’t a gym for miles around, or you just like the idea of having your own “Fortress of Solitude” where you can train in peace and quiet, training at home will do the job just fine.

What Should I Do on Rest Days?

Avoid doing anything that’s going to interfere with your recovery from the last workout, or impair your ability to do the next one. I know that’s a really vague answer, but without knowing a lot more about you and the sort of shape you’re in at the moment, it’s hard to say for sure. 

When they ask this type of question, most people are usually wondering if they can do some cardio on their rest days, and if so, how much and what type. That’s a subject I cover in this article on cardio and muscle growth.

If you want to gain muscle, there’s no need to do any cardio at all. But if you do want to do some for health reasons, or just to keep your cardiovascular fitness ticking along, I’d suggest doing cardio on your rest days. That is, if you’re lifting weights on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, you could do cardio on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

I’d also recommend mainly low-impact cardio, such as cycling, swimming, rowing or even incline treadmill walking, rather than running, which has the potential to interfere with your gains if you’re not careful.

Final Thoughts

If you’re looking for a highly effective 3-day full-body workout routine 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.