Full Body Workout Plans: 3 Days a Week
A full-body workout plan trains the upper and lower body in every session, usually three times a week. Instead of one sample routine, this guide counts what the full-body programs in the depot.fitness library prescribe: what goes into a session, how sessions differ, how they progress, and which one fits your equipment.
28 programs, nearly all three days
A program counts here if every training day has at least one exercise that mainly works the upper body and one that mainly works the lower body. The name does not decide it. Resistance Band Full Body gives the legs a day of their own, so it is out. So are nine conditioning, kettlebell and Olympic-lifting programs that, on at least one day, mix the two only inside burpees, thrusters, get-ups, a jerk drill or a timed circuit.
By that rule, 28 of the 101 programs are full body.
- Days: 26 run three days a week and two run four. That makes full body the usual three-day program: 26 of the library's 42 three-day programs, against 2 of the 40 four-day programs.
- Level: 18 beginner, 8 intermediate and 2 advanced. That is 18 of the library's 30 beginner programs.
- Length: 4 to 12 weeks. Twelve is the most common, at 12 programs.
If three days is what you can keep every week, full body is the best use of them: every session trains the whole body, and a missed one still leaves two. With four days, upper/lower gives each half of the body two sessions and more room for accessories. At six, the library's programs are mostly push/pull/legs, a muscle-building split. How many days a week to train covers choosing the number, and upper/lower vs push pull legs the four- and six-day options.
What a full-body session contains
The 28 programs hold 86 training sessions. The median one has 5 exercises and 15 working sets, about the same as the median session across the library (5 and 16). A full-body session is not longer than a split session; it spreads about the same work across the whole body.
In those 86 sessions:
- A squat, lunge, step-up, leg press, hinge or glute bridge: all 86. 78 open with a lower-body lift: 51 with a squat, and 18 with a deadlift, Romanian deadlift, kettlebell swing or glute bridge.
- A press, push-up or dip: 82. Three more press only inside a thruster or a squat-to-press.
- A pull (a row, pull-up, pulldown or similar): 65.
- Direct core work: 36.
Pulling is what gets left out. 12 of the 21 sessions without one have a deadlift, Romanian deadlift or power clean instead. Of the 28, only Starting Strength Linear has no row, pull-up or pulldown anywhere in its week. Across a week, all 28 include a squat, lunge or step-up and a chest press or push-up, and 27 press overhead, counting pike push-ups and thrusters. 24 include a deadlift, Romanian deadlift, swing or hip-hinge drill; the other four use glute bridges. Only 14 include a pull-up, chin-up or pulldown.
The weeks are small, too: a median of 45 working sets, from 25 to 60, against 58 for the library as a whole.
Two workouts, or three
Nine programs run an A, B, A week: day 3 opens with the same two lifts as day 1.
- In the library's Classic 5×5 Strength, StrongLifts 5×5 Refined and Ice Cream Fitness 5×5, day 3 is an exact copy of day 1.
- Full Body Starter, Greyskull LP, Starting Strength Linear and Strength 5x5 Linear Progression keep the main lifts and change an accessory or the last lift.
- Madcow 5×5 and Texas Method keep the opening lifts and change the sets and load. Madcow has a heavy Monday, a light Wednesday and a Friday PR day. Texas Method has a volume day, a recovery day and an intensity day, and swaps the deadlift for power cleans on the last.
In seven of the nine, the back squat is in every session.
17 programs run three different sessions: A, B and C. In 15, the three open with three different exercises, and in 13 at least one session leads its leg work with a hinge or a glute bridge rather than a squat. Full Body 3x/Week Total Body is typical: back squat and bench press on day 1, deadlift and lat pulldowns on day 3, front squat and push-ups on day 5.
The two four-day programs rotate four sessions. GZCLP Advanced pairs a heavy lift (5 sets of 3) with a lighter one (3 sets of 10) each day and swaps their roles through the week. Full Body Hypertrophy 4-Day changes the exercise variations from day to day.
Two workouts on repeat give the main lifts more practice. Three different sessions cover more exercises: a median of 15 a week, against 6.
Reps, rest and progression
Full-body programs carry much of the library's heavy work. 22% of their 399 exercise prescriptions are sets of five reps or fewer, twice the library-wide share of 11%. That is 88 of the library's 203 low-rep prescriptions, 43% of them, from programs that hold 22% of all prescriptions.
In half the sessions, the first exercise rests 2½ minutes or longer. Everything after it rests a median of 60 seconds, and seven in ten of those rests are 60 to 90 seconds. Sets of five or fewer rest a median of 3 minutes. Circuits in three programs rest 15 to 30 seconds.
All 28 have a progression note, and where there is a fixed pace, it follows level:
| How it progresses | Programs | Level |
|---|
| Every session (eight by adding weight) | 10 | All beginner |
| Weekly | 4 | All intermediate |
| In rep waves or rep-scheme stages | 2 | 1 intermediate, 1 advanced |
| Reps to the top of a range, then weight | 3 | 2 beginner, 1 intermediate |
| Several levers: weight, reps, sets, rest, rounds or harder variations | 7 | 4 beginner, 2 intermediate, 1 advanced |
| No fixed step or schedule | 2 | 2 beginner |
All eight programs in the library that add weight every session are full-body beginner programs, Classic 5×5 Strength and Full Body Starter among them. That is the beginner pattern: progress session to session while it lasts. When it stops, the next step is weekly, and all four full-body programs that add weight on a weekly schedule are intermediate. Madcow 5×5 uses Classic 5×5's barbell lifts and adds 2.5 lb a week to the upper-body ones and 5 lb to the lower-body ones. Progressive overload covers both speeds.
Which one to run
Pick by equipment, then level.
| Your setup | Beginner | Intermediate or advanced |
|---|
| Barbell and rack | Classic 5×5 Strength, StrongLifts 5×5 Refined | Madcow 5×5, Texas Method |
| Full gym | Full Body Starter, Bodybuilding Beginner Full Body | Full Body 3x/Week Total Body, Full Body Strength & Volume |
| Dumbbells | Dumbbell Only 3-Day | Full Body Dumbbell Only |
| Bodyweight | Bodyweight Beginner Strength, Home Workout Beginner Full Body | no full-body option |
| Four days, gym | no full-body option | Full Body Hypertrophy 4-Day, GZCLP Advanced |
- Barbell, beginner: Classic 5×5 runs three exercises a session, 41 sets a week. Ice Cream Fitness 5×5 adds curls, triceps extensions, shrugs and hyperextensions, for 58.
- Gym, beginner: Full Body Starter is built on barbell squats, bench presses, rows, deadlifts and overhead presses, then adds dumbbell, pull-up and core work. Bodybuilding Beginner Full Body is the muscle-gain pick: every rep range in it starts at 10 or higher.
- Dumbbells: Dumbbell Only 3-Day adds reps each week and moves up a dumbbell when the reps get easy.
FAQ
Is a 3-day full body workout enough to build muscle?
For most people, yes, especially early on. 16 of the 28 programs are tagged for muscle gain. A three-day week holds less work than most splits, so the work has to get harder over time, by the program's own rule.
Can I do full body workouts on consecutive days?
The programs that set a schedule avoid it: 13 of the 28 put a rest day between every session, and Madcow 5×5 and Texas Method train Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Four sessions in seven days always put two back to back, and both four-day programs make those sessions differ: Full Body Hypertrophy 4-Day rotates exercise variations, and GZCLP Advanced changes which lift is heavy.
Should every full-body workout be the same?
No. Nine programs repeat day 1's opening lifts on day 3, three of them exactly, and 17 run three different sessions. Either works if the main lifts come back often enough to progress.
Start one
Every program lists each session's exercises, sets, reps and rest. Two of the five free programs are full body: Full Body Starter (gym, three days, eight weeks) and Classic 5×5 Strength (barbell and rack, three days, 12 weeks). Run day 1 of Full Body Starter or day 1 of Classic 5×5 without an account. Day 1 of the other 26 runs without one too. See all five free programs.