Building muscle doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t always need to divide your body into parts and spend hours in the gym for each one.
In fact, recent research has shown that regularly training your full body can lead to muscle gains (hypertrophy) that are as good as, or even better than, those achieved with a traditional body-part split routine.
You just a need a good full-body workout.
Our ‘Full-Body Five’ workout packs a punch, delivering a muscle-building stimulus to your chest, back, shoulders, quads, hamstring and arms, sending them a clear signal: ‘It’s time to grow.’
If you’re ever in doubt in the gym, this is your go-to total-body training workout. Work your way through the following circuit as many times as possible in 30 minutes, resting only as necessary to keep your form sharp, and to ensure you can still get into the prescribed rep range. Make a note of the weights you use, as well as the total amount of reps you achieve for each movement. Every time you repeat the workout, try to beat your reps. Once you can add 20% to your original ‘score’, add more weight to your next session.
1. Dumbbell Bench Press x 6-10
Lay flat on a bench, your knees bent, pushing your feet into the floor. Press a pair of dumbbells into the air, locking out your elbows (A). Lower the bells slowly until they touch your chest (B), keeping your elbows at 45-degree angle, pause here before explosively pressing back up. Repeat.
2. Dumbbell Front Squats x 10-15
Clean the heaviest set of dumbbells you can muster onto the front of your shoulders (A). From here, drop into a front squat until your thighs pass parallel to the ground (B) before driving back up. Your grip and upper back may be tiring but keep upright, keeping your core tight throughout is crucial.
3. Dumbbell Ben-Over Row x 8-12
Hold your dumbbells at your sides and hinge at the hips until your chest is parallel to the floor, weights hanging at your shins (A). Maintaining a flat back, row both dumbbells towards your hips (B), squeeze your shoulder blades together and lower under control to the start before repeating.
4. Dumbbell Deadlift x 10-15
With your heavier dumbbells on the floor just outside your feet, hinge down and grip them with a flat back and neutral spine (A). Engage your lats and stand upright, ‘pushing the ground away’ with your feet, squeezing your glutes at the top (B). Your arms should be hanging straight throughout this movement, think of them as hooks.
5. Pike Push-Up x AMRAP (as many reps as possible)
Assume a strong press-up position with your hands shoulder-width apart. Walk your hands backwards towards your feet until your hips are almost above your shoulders (A). Lower slowly towards the ground by bending at the elbow (B). Pause as your nose makes contact before explosively pushing back up. Keep going until you can’t squeeze out another rep, rest, and start the next round of your circuit.
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With almost 18 years in the health and fitness space as a personal trainer, nutritionist, breath coach and writer, Andrew has spent nearly half of his life exploring how to help people improve their bodies and minds. Â Â Â
As our fitness editor he prides himself on keeping Men’s Health at the forefront of reliable, relatable and credible fitness information, whether that’s through writing and testing thousands of workouts each year, taking deep dives into the science behind muscle building and fat loss or exploring the psychology of performance and recovery.  Â
Whilst constantly updating his knowledge base with seminars and courses, Andrew is a lover of the practical as much as the theory and regularly puts his training to the test tackling everything from Crossfit and strongman competitions, to ultra marathons, to multiple 24 hour workout stints and (extremely unofficial) world record attempts. Â Â
 You can find Andrew on Instagram at @theandrew.tracey, or simply hold up a sign for ‘free pizza’ and wait for him to appear.
