The Best 3 Day Full Body Workout For Muscle Growth (Full Workout Included)

The best 3 day full body workout for muscle growth (full workout included)

When I decided to put this full-body workout together, I wanted to design it to help us natural guys build a more superhero look.

There are some challenges when trying to do this with only 3 workouts per week. Each training session needs to emphasize either our pushing, pulling or leg muscles. While still hitting all major muscle groups in every workout.

Finally, based on current research, we need to be doing at least ten sets per muscle group in a week to get maximum growth.

To top this challenge off, I wanted these workouts to only be an hour long. In reality, they turned out to be closer to an hour and ten minutes once you add in your warm-up sets.

For Monday, I break away from the international chest day rules and start with legs. I typically do suitcase squats, but you could do a back squat if you have access to a rack. Every workout, will start with a different major muscle group to give it priority by training it when we’re freshest.

Next up is back. I’m doing a wide cable row. This exercise really works the lats. I’ve been doing a lot more of this type of movement in my workouts, where you start with your arm out and away from your body, then pull your elbow tight to your side.

A single cable side lat pulldown works as an alternate here. I demonstrated that exercise last week in full detail in my Resistance band back video.

It's leg day, so we're not going to neglect our hamstrings. With hamstring curls, something I’m doing to take pressure off my low back is to engage my abs by keeping my pelvis rotated forward it also stops me from looking like I'm trying to hump the floor when doing this exercise.

For upper chest and anterior delts, I chose reverse grip bench press. This is an excellent alternate to an incline press, and it’s more shoulder-friendly. I’ve been doing a band variation of this exercise in my workouts this summer.

I’m adding extra shoulder work in to give us that superhero width. Here I’m doing a full range of motion lateral raise. Once we bring the dumbbells above parallel, it hits our upper traps—another essential superhero muscle.

I’m not going to explain all the exercises in this workout as most are common movements or ones I’ve talked about in past videos. I’m just going to hit the highlights. You’ll see all the exercises when you screen shot each day.

We superset biceps and triceps for 2 sets. This might not seem like much, but we use our arms during our back and chest exercises, so a percentage of those sets count toward arms. And to get the most out of a full-body workout, the focus needs to be on compound movements.

I finish off each workout with a different ab exercise.

Wednesday’s workout starts with chest-supported dumbbell rows. I chose these over one-arm rows to pick up the pace of training by working both sides of the back at the same time while still taking some of the load off our lower back.

Moving on to legs, I went with reverse lunges. They did an EMG study comparing reverse lunges to both walking lunges and a front lunge. Finding the reverse lunge had more quad and glute activation than the other two options.

To develop our chest, I’m going with the high to low chest press. This can be done with cables or bands. It’s been a staple of my workouts for a while now and gives you a crazy chest pump.

For hamstrings, we’re doing Romanian deadlifts.

They did an EMG study that compared the Arnold press to a traditional dumbbell shoulder press and found that the Arnold press had more activation in the lateral delt than a traditional shoulder press. It’s still primarily a front delt exercise, but for that superhero width, we want to do as much side delt work as possible.

For our arm superset, we have reverse grip curls to help improve our grip strength and build the Brachioradialis, which will add size to our forearms. I’m pairing this with Triceps extensions.

Our final day is Friday, and we’re starting it off with dumbbell bench press a staple for overall chest development.

Chin-ups are a great back and biceps builder. They tend to be easier than pull-ups for those who are just starting out. Shoot for 10 to 15 reps. If you can do more than 15 on all 3 sets, it’s time to add some weight.

Front squats take some stress off our lower back and load our quads more than a traditional squat.

Elbow out rows wor hit all our upper back muscles.
Pull-throughs are a great glute and hamstring builder.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322132613_Comparison_among_the_EMG_Activity_of_the_Anterior_Deltoid_and_Medial_Deltoid_During_Two_Variations_of_Dumbbell_Shoulder_Press_Exercise

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167945712000917

http://www.ageingmuscle.be/sites/ageingmuscle.be/files/Dose%20response%20relationship%20between%20weekly%20resistance%20training%20volume%20and%20increases.pdf

https://ojs.ub.uni-konstanz.de/cpa/article/view/6941/6236