How to Plan a Full Body Workout [Podcast]

Welcome to the Kokoro Health and Fitness podcast, where we cover topics about the mind, body, and spirit to help you become a happier, healthier, and ultimately the best version of yourself. I’m your host, Joe Miller, owner of Kokoro Health and Fitness, a small group, and personal training studio located right here in Atlantic Beach, Florida. Today’s topic is about how to plan your full-body workout.

I will discuss different variables you should consider when planning a full-body workout, where you can do these workouts, when you should perform full-body workouts, and how often you should perform them. And lastly, I’ll explain the kokoro method for developing a full-body workout so you can use them at home to create fun, interesting, and effective workouts.

* Quick disclaimer before we get started. This channel is for informational purposes only. Our goal is to help create a stronger, healthier, happier community of mentally, physically, and spiritually fit individuals by providing information for discussion that has helped us and our clients both personally and professionally. If you are in need of immediate help at this time, we recommend that you seek a medical professional and not rely on advice from some random dude on the Internet.

Let’s move on to the first topic.

What Variables Should You Consider When Planning Your Full-Body Workout?

1. Time

The first one is time. When can you exercise and how much can you commit to it? Those two are very important things that you need to figure out. You need to plan it into your schedule so you can be consistent. So these workouts become effective and then you reach your goals.

Remember, the workout also includes a warm-up and a recovery period. So roughly 10 minutes to do a warm-up, and roughly 10 minutes to cool down. If you plan an hour out of your day, that gives you 40 minutes, which is more than enough for a full-body workout.

The goal here with a full-body workout is to keep your intensity up. If you want to reduce your time, you can work out for a long time or you can work out very intensely for a short time.

2. Equipment

The second thing to consider is your equipment. What do you have? Dumbbells, kettlebells, bands, heavy backpacks, etc.? Or do you just have your body weight? Any of those will suffice. You can do a full-body workout with just about any piece of equipment.

With that being said, what equipment do you want to use? If you’re using equipment that you don’t really like and it’s not fun for you, try something else. There is a plethora of equipment that you can choose from that will give you effective, full-body workouts.

3. Goals

And the third thing to consider is your goals. What do you want to get out of the training? That is a very important thing to consider because there are different training methods to achieve different goals. Now, if general health and fitness are your concern then a full-body workout in a circuit fashion would be a great way to go.

Where Can You Do Full-Body Workouts?

Now that we covered what variables you should consider, let’s move on to where you can do these workouts.

The best part about it is since you only need your body weight to do this, you can workout anywhere but some other alternative places might be: 

A Park

Some parks have walking paths that have workout stations on them. Those are really fun, especially if you want to do a run-walk sort of workout.

CrossFit Gym

Some CrossFit gyms have open floor hours, so you can go in and utilize their plethora of equipment when they’re not training in class.

Box Gyms

And then even Planet Fitness, they have 360 areas, which is a functional fitness training area. It’s just nice when you’re in a normal gym where it’s all equipment and benches and things, you’re kind of a pain in the ass if you’re using a bunch of different equipment… But the 360 area in Planet Fitness is perfect for that.

Apps and Meetups

Then outside those physical areas, you can take to the Internet. Meetup.com, there might be somebody setting up a group workout session from a local gym. There might be local events. Like we did a beach workout the other day where we did a free workout on the beach and then followed by a yoga session. That was really fun. Another thing you consider is the GoRuck Sandlot app, which is really fun if you like to get outdoors and do your workouts with kettlebells and sandbags. They’re simple workouts, but they’re very effective and they’re very fun because it’s a nice community-based activity.

When And How Often To Perform Your Full Body Workouts

Now we’re going to move on to when and how often to perform your full-body workouts.

Here at Kokoro, We recommend 3 days per week: Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, 48 to 72 hours in between a full body workout is the appropriate amount of recovery time so you can get the most benefit out of each workout. Daily training is not recommended. It doesn’t really allow you enough time for your muscles, joints, ligaments, and nervous system to completely recover between workouts.

That’s if you’re training. If you are doing a small circuit, say pushups, pull-up squats, and you do 50 reps of each, you can do that every day, and that’s not going to be very damaging. But if you’re really challenging your body, then you need to allow time to recover. That’s pretty much it on when and how often, it’s very, very simple.

It’s not rocket science but you just need to be aware that there are a million ways to do it. These are just recommendations.

Lastly, we’re going to move on to the Kokoro method for developing a full-body training plan.

The Kokoro Method For Developing A Full-Body Workout

Kokoro Metod is based around five principles strength, stamina, balance, coordination, and cardiovascular health. We utilize a three-day training split, which would either be Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday.

Those are the recommended guidelines. Of course, you can have up to 72 hours in between your full-body workout.

Throughout the entire week, it is very important to consider working out in the three planes of motion, the frontal sagittal and the transverse plane. In layman’s terms, front to back, side to side and twisting.

How To Design Your Full-Body Training Session

Now let’s move on to how to design your training session. The first thing I want to start off is with a warm-up, approximately 10 minutes. I like to start my clients with a full-body foam roll and dynamic movements. The foam rolls great because it aids in blood flow can alleviate a little bit of soreness and can increase your range of motion. Then we move on to dynamic movements which prepare the joints and the muscles that are about to be worked, which is all of them… because it’s full-body. So it’s very important to make sure you prime your body up before you start going hard.

Now the warm-up is over moving on to the circuit. I keep it very simple. There is a form of upper body pushing, upper body pulling, lower body pushing, lower body pulling a core movement, and some form of conditioning. Some would say that the full-body workout itself is a form of conditioning, and they’re right. Most full-body circuits are aerobic training. That doesn’t mean that you can’t push hard and train for strength as well.

Now that you understand what to do, how many times do you do it? I recommend 3 to 5 rounds. So you’re going to perform all your exercises in a row and you’re going to take a 90-second to 120-second rest, and then you’re gonna perform it again and you’re going to repeat that 3 to 5 times.

The average round is 3 to 5 minutes. So if you do a three-minute round with the two-minute rest, it’s 5 minutes per round, five rounds = 25 minutes. So you have a ten-minute warm-up, 25 minutes of work, and another 10 minutes of cool-down. 45 minutes, boom. You’re done.

Now that you understand the basic method of how to develop your workout, I’m going to go through a quick sample.

If you have a kettlebell. Check out these videos.

First thing, you’re 10-minute foam roll and dynamic stretch. Start foam rolling with the tibialis anterior, quadriceps, hip flexors, glutes, hamstrings, upper back, and lats. After you foam-rolled all of those, you’re going to move on to some dynamic stretches. In this case, you could do high knees with a twist, some arm circles, some windmills, and standing hip CARS, which a hip CAR is just a controlled, articulated rotation.

Now let’s move on to the circuit. The sample I’m going to give you is with dumbbells, because most people are familiar with those.

1. Floor press with the dumbbell
2. Bent-over row
3. Dumbbell swing
4. Dumbbell thruster
5. Russian twists
6. Ski hops

You would then take 90 seconds to 120 seconds rest.

So now what do we do? We did an upper body pushing the upper body, pulling a lower body, pushing a lower body pulling, we did a core movement, and a conditioning movement. So six exercises, roughly 3 minutes, maybe 5 minutes, depending on your current capacity for exercise. Then you can repeat that 3 to 5 times.

Once that’s complete, what you’re going to want to do is take some recovery breaths. Let that heart rate come down for a few minutes and then you’re going to foam roll again: your tibialis anterior, quadriceps, hip flexors, glutes, hamstrings, upper back, and lats. Then some static stretches to perform after the foam rolling would be a 90-degree door stretch, an overhead triceps stretch using the wall for support, a standing quadriceps stretch, a calf stretch, and then a seated glute stretch.

That’s it for your sample full-body workout. It doesn’t have to be very complex. You can do things simpler than that. There are a million ways to do it; this is just one example. I hope you find a lot of value in this.

Conclusion

Let’s go into the summary. We talked about what variables to consider your time, your equipment, and your goals. Where you can perform these workouts, pretty much anywhere. When and how often you should perform them, 48 to 72 hour rest in between training days. Lastly, we covered the Kokoro Method which is covering strength, stamina, balance, coordination, and cardiovascular health. Do that by moving through the three planes of motion, the frontal sagittal and the transverse plane. You start off with a 10-minute foam roll and dynamic stretch, roughly 20 to 30 minutes of work, and another 10-minute cooldown.

If you have any questions, please leave us a comment. I love answering them. You can also reach out on our Instagram @KokoroHealthandFitness. Thank you for joining me in the discussion about how to plan a full-body workout. If you found value in this information presented, please give us a like, subscribe, and share this with a friend who may benefit as well.

If you’re a local to the Atlantic Beach, Florida area and you would like to make positive changes to your health and fitness, you can check out our app Kokoro Health Fitness on Google Play and Apple Store or check out our website kokorohealthandfitness.com so you can sign up for your seven-day trial and experience fun, dynamic, full body circuit training in a small group setting. If one on one is more your speed, we’ve got you covered with private personal training sessions as well. We hope you all have a great day and remember happiness is a state of mind.

Today’s topic is about how to plan a Full Body Workout. I will discuss what variables to consider when planning your full-body workout. Where you can perform full-body workouts. When you should perform full body workouts. How often you should perform full-body workouts. And Lastly, I will explain the Kokoro Method for developing a full-body workout plan and how you can use it to keep your workouts fun, different, and effective. 

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This channel is for informational purposes only. Our goal is to help create a stronger, healthier, happier community of mentally, physically, and spiritually fit individuals by providing information for discussion that has helped us, and many clients, both personally and professionally. If you are in need of help at this time we recommend that you seek a medical professional and not just rely on advice from some random people on the internet.