Ive been planning on doing a Full body routine every single day. Im currently squatting 4 times a week and benching atleast 3 x a week and wanted to experiment a bit. So is it a good idea? Has anyone else tried something similar? What were your results?
I’m not a powerlifter, but I do full body workouts MWF and have had pretty decent strength gains with the approach. I have been running the same program for 9 months, with no notable weight training prior to this program. Beginning poundage are probably less than what I was physically capable of, as I did not measure it properly to start and it took a while for me to get a feel for my strength, not to mention learning the movements.
Here is my approximate “work set” progression for the last 9 months.
Bench - 155x5 → 245x5, tested 1RM of 275
Deadlift - 275x5 → , 405x6, tested 1RM of 515
Squat - 185x5 → 315x5, tested 1RM of 365
At age 34 I don’t think I could handle much more than 3 days per week with a rest day between each workout. I’m sure other can, and have, done that.
I am a big fan of fullbody workouts, but they are also the only kind of workouts I’ve ever tried. I am not sure I would have had more, less or equivalent strength gains by increasing the frequency to what you are thinking about trying. I feel like the rest days are very important for fullbody training, but I am also a relative beginner, so my experience is limited.
I’m very curious to hear others’ thoughts on this.
After a run of SS and some 531, I tried out Dan john’s even easier strength (googleable); 5 days a week, full body. Worked well, especially for my oh press (had a shoulder impingement, hence no bench hence new program). More than gains though, I learnt quite a bit about what works for me by doing it so i’d easily rwccomend it.
By full body are you referring to muscle groups? Most powerlifters don’t lift for specific muscle groups but rather specific lifts (squat, bench and deadlift) and train muscle groups as needed to help bring up the weaknesses they have in those lifts. The squat, bench and deadlift are all full body movements.
So if you work one of them everyday it would be a full body workout. This would be very practical especially for a beginner lifter as they would benefit from a large amount of volume just to get their form solidified.
If you were referring to bulgarian style training that has a few more factors that need to be considered. How quickly do you recover? How is your form? What are your max lifts? How much do you weigh? Are you natural or using “supplements”? What is your diet like? There may be several other things to take into consideration before starting a bulgarian style training method but these should give people a general idea of whether or not you should be using this type of training.
I do a full body work 6x a week.
It is not optimal for strength. Your body never really gets to rest long enough in between sessions if you start trying to lift weights closer to your max, and so strength will either suffer or not develop as well as if you did a normal 3 day split/anything else.
But it is a terrific way of getting time in for practicing the lifts and getting better at them. That + my belief that we should be moving heavy weights daily are the main reasons I do this.
It is also good for basic bodybuilding if you plan things out well. Just check out any of the programs Chad Waterbury has.
THis is how I train for powerlifting, following Bulgarian method; every day is a squat/bench/deadlift ramp to a max (not a “do or die trying” effort, rather the maximum weight I can lift for a technically sound 1RM).
There’s a thread on this very sub-forum about Bulgarian method for powerlifting.
EDIT: result are good so far. Yes, you are always tired and feeling you’re not at your best, but a quick deload/tapering (a week with moderately less volume than usual) leads to big PRs.