4 Reasons Why I Switched to Full Body Workouts

00:00Real quick, the only ask I could ever have of you guys is to help spread the word so we can help more women lose body fat, build muscle, reach their goals, and feel insanely confident. And the only way we can do that is if you rate, review, and share this podcast. So the single thing I ask for you to do is if you could leave a review. It will take you 10 seconds, and it will mean the absolute world to me and may change the world of someone else. But even if I lowered my weight, still somehow I was taking way too long to recover.

00:31And I'm talking like three, four days max of trying to recover from a leg day. And I was like, dude, I have to find something different. What is going on, my friends? Welcome to The WarriorBabe Show with Nikkie Stott, co-founder of WarriorBabe. And on this podcast, we talk about mindset, methodologies, tactics that will be lose body fat, build muscle, be strong, and feel insanely confident.

01:02I am your host, Nikkie Stott. And welcome to episode number 64, where I am going to answer a common question I get all of the time. Matter of fact, back a month ago almost, you guys, May 3rd, I jumped on my story on Instagram. I put up a question box of what you guys wanted to hear on the podcast in regards to your questions. Give me questions that are worthy of long answers.

01:32And this one that I'm going to dive in today was one of the most common asked questions in this box. And like I said, something that I get all of the time. And that is jumping into, Nikkie, what is your workout split? And what does like your training look like? So how many days a week do I work out? And what do my workouts look like the four or five times that I go to the gym? So I'm actually really excited to bring this podcast to you guys.

02:04Because if you've been following me for a long time, you know that I come from the bodybuilding world. You know that I've done like the bro split, the one muscle group per day ordeal for a very long time. But there is something that has changed in the last year. That's what I'm going to talk about today that has to do with my training. Now, I specifically sought out this type of training in regards to helping with the fourth kind of like reason why I do these workouts.

02:36Like fourth like strategy or fourth tip that I'm going to talk about today. So you guys want to make sure that you guys stay all the way until the end of this podcast. Because that fourth one is really the reason why I adopted this methodology and this workout tactic. So first of all, first and foremost, so like I said, you guys know that I've done bro splits. And our warrior babe community has done bro splits too as well. And this is actually just newly introduced this type of training I'm going to talk about today to our warrior babe community last week.

03:08And something that we are going to continue to evolve on in the next coming next few months. Now, before I jump into like the four strategies of why I do this type of training and what the training is. I first want you guys to know that the overall arching concept of this workout still heavily falls with progressive overload. And making sure that you are progressively overloading through blocks of time with the way you do your sets, your reps, your RPEs.

03:44Mixing up the type of, you know, advanced way of doing an exercise, drop sets, tempo, all of that stuff. If I stand, the things I've talked about on previous podcasts about progressive overload is still so heavily incorporated in this type of training that I've been doing for the last year. And something that I want you guys to make sure that no matter what type of training you do, that you make sure that you are progressively overloading.

04:17Okay, and if you don't know what that is, or you want to dive deeper in the progressive overload world, go look through the previous podcast. I've done a couple now, up to this point around progressive overload. And we'll dive solely deep into what that is in those podcasts are worthy of an entire podcast talking about progressive overloading, what it is, why to do it, the techniques that are involved with it, and all that stuff. So this type of training that I've been doing, I still heavily incorporate while I'm in the blocks of training, progressive overloading.

04:51Okay, so now, drum roll please, Nikki, what is the workout? Or what is a training style that I'm doing? So right now, and for the last about a year now, coming up on a year, I have been doing full body workouts. And I'm going to talk about why I choose to do these full body workouts and four specific strategies around why I do these workouts as opposed to the bro splits that I used to do.

05:21And, you know, doing like when I mean by bro splits, if you guys don't know what that is, it's like, okay, Monday is chest day. It's like national chest day. Tuesday is back. Wednesday is legs. Thursday is shoulders. And Friday is arms. Or, you know, you incorporate different splits within that. So maybe Monday is hamstring and glute day. And then Tuesday is chest and bicep day. And then, you know, there's a back day. And then you can mix and match these muscle groups together. And I want you guys to know that that has some merit.

05:53Full body training is fucking bomb. I'm sorry, bro split training is freaking bomb, man. Like you, there's nothing wrong with it. And I'm going to say why I switched to this in the fourth tactic. So guys, make sure you hear that because there's a, that's a, it's a big reason why I switched to this, to full body. But bro splits is amazing. Okay. It's, it, it, you can incorporate, you know, big muscle groups, small muscle groups. You can isolate the movements, yada, yada, all that stuff. And it's great.

06:23It's meritable. There's, there's studies around that stuff that works, you know, for, for all of the goals of building more muscle and all that jazz. I want you guys to understand that this podcast is something that I have personally switched to. And the reasons why I have, and the reasons why I will continue probably to promote this full body workout type of ordeal. And maybe like, there's nothing wrong with like switching back to like bro style. Like every once in a while, there's, there's, this is amazing thing about like you finding the love with training and learning different methodologies that you love and incorporating in there.

07:01Now, what I mean by that though, is it always for me will be strength training, period, end of story. Like I'm not going to find how to do Tabata runs or, you know, going out and doing specific miles of running. Like that is not, I want to say it's, it's not, it's just personally to me, right? Like I know that there's amazing women and coaches that do runs and love incorporating that type of training into their style. But for me, like it's all about strength training because I know how important building muscle, strengthening your bones, all of this stuff for your later years of life is.

07:36So I love finding different styles of workouts. I love powerlifting. I love doing, you know, I was on a CrossFit thing like once a week at the beginning of the year. Um, I love all things that incorporate strength training. And so this style is something that, again, I'm going to share why, which is a big reason why, but this is something that I've started incorporating in the last year or so. Um, and I've, I've, I've fought, I've really fallen in love with it. Now there's no means to like in a couple of months, maybe I'll incorporate like a block where it is back to bro splits.

08:10But majority of my training has been encompassed around full body workouts. Now there's four reasons why, and again, stay for the fourth one, because it's the big reason why I made this change. Hey, hey, just want to drop a huge appreciation to you guys listening to the show. It means a lot. I hope you guys are enjoying it and there's so much more to come with it. If you are enjoying it, hit the subscribe button. I'd appreciate that tons. And also it would help this podcast reach others who need to hear these messages too. Thanks so much, guys.

08:40Let's get back to the show. Um, the first one is, is time efficiency. So full body training sessions, they're generally more time efficient compared to bro splits. So, you know, think about like, if you've never done a bro split, you've never done a leg day. You probably don't know what I'm talking about, but I can speak to this. I know that my leg days when I've done bro splits are like an hour and a half long sometimes, or like an hour and 15 or like an hour straight of just doing straight freaking legs. And that, that's some, and I'm going to get to that in a second when I talk about point number two,

09:12but that's somewhat intense. And you can be so efficient with your workout and your time by doing full body workouts. You can accomplish a comprehensive workout in a shorter amount of time, which, you know, that is especially beneficial for any type of individual, you that are listening to this podcast that has busy schedules or a limited time for training. Okay. So that's point number one is the time efficiency of it. I can smash through getting through each of my muscle groups in 45 to 50 minutes.

09:46And that's my training session for the day. Now, the second thing I want to speak to is increased frequency and volume. This is a strategy number two of why I picked up full body workout. So a full body training session allows for higher frequency of training each muscle group throughout the week. So what I mean by this is by training the entire body, you know, four, five times a week, you provide a greater stimulus for muscle growth and strength development.

10:18What I mean by that is that this increased frequency leads to higher training volume per muscle group over the course of a week. So think about it like this. You have a leg day, dedicated bro split leg day, and you are inside the gym smashing legs for an entire hour. Your volume is going to decrease throughout the duration of that exercise because you're going or that training session because you are going to be fatigued faster.

10:50You start out with squats, you're going balls to the wall with some weight. And then when you get to like leg extensions at the end, you're probably pushing like 20 pounds because your muscles are so freaking fatigued. I'm just going to use leg day as an example because again, this is a main reason when I share point number four, why I switched to full body. So now think about it like this. When you just go in, you do one exercise. Ladies, are you feeling frustrated with body changes you're experiencing during menopause?

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11:57Take charge of your health and join our community of strong, empowered women. Visit warriorbabe.com forward slash apply today to start your transformation. That's warriorbabe.com forward slash apply. All right, let's get back to the show. Of legs, four to five days a week, you're spreading out the volume throughout those specific four to five days where you're hitting an exercise per day to legs.

12:28So therefore, in that one exercise on the one day, you're able to increase your volume frequency or increase the training volume per that muscle group. So meaning like you can go balls to the wall. You can go beast mode because it's literally just one exercise. It's three to four sets, max maybe five sets of legs in one day. And then you're spanning that volume across the four to five days.

12:58You're still hitting the same. This is the way I want you guys to think about it. You're still hitting the same volume per week. Even if you're doing bro splits as you are with full body, you're just spreading it out, which allows you to lift heavier weight. And I don't want to go into my last one right now, which I'll save it. I'm going to put a pin there, but it allows you to, I'm going to just go back to it, allows you to lift more weight. So like, let's say, for example, that you're squatting like 135 pounds for your leg day, right?

13:37With bro split. Well, then you, and let's say that you put squats in the middle of your workout. You're not going to be able to effectively lift at the weight that you can lift if you have a shit other tons of exercises to get to for a leg day. So think about now in a full body, you have one exercise to amount as much volume as you can push yourself through and challenge yourself through. Keep good form, obviously. But you're going to see that you're going to be able to increase your weight. And how, like, everybody loves that. That is a training performance goal right there that you just squashed because you're, it's hard to speak to floor without speak.

14:15It's hard to not speak to floor right now when I really want to because it'll drive my point home. But I, again, I want you, I want you guys to just fully embody this and like grasp this podcast. So I want you guys to really like, you know, understand how I'm breaking it down between the differences of the two. So instead of like, you know, going balls to the wall for one full leg day or even two because you split them up with a bro split, you're hitting legs almost every single day. But your volume and your, the ability to push yourself with some challenging weight dramatically increases.

14:50Okay. Given then the fact like, okay, at the end of a workout, you're just kaput because you just hit legs for the last hour. Okay. Okay. So that was to increased frequency and volume. So doing that, it just, it helps to contribute to greater gains and strength and hypertrophy. When you are given the ability to increase your frequency and your volume with the sessions that you were doing, the exercises that you were doing. The third point here is enhanced metabolic response.

15:21So full body training sessions have the potential to provide a more significant metabolic response compared to bro split workouts. Now, what I mean by this is by you guys engaging multiple muscle groups simultaneously during compound exercises increases overall energy expenditure with your body. So I am not very big on the calories on your watch and really attaching yourself to those numbers.

15:55But what I have noticed is that through doing full body workouts for X amount of months now. So that's why I can heavily feel like I can speak to this. Um, the amount of energy expenditure in one of those sessions has been through the freaking roof for me compared to a normal bro split workout. Think about it like this, you guys on a shoulder day, you probably burn in that many calories. It's okay though, because don't worry.

16:27Like muscle is active tissue. It's always burning calories. But think about having just that intensity, uh, with a full body workout every single day and that metabolic response and energy expenditure increasing every single time you're doing that full body workout. Now it's almost like, you know, the four to five days a week, you're consistently at that higher, uh, overall energy expenditure as opposed to like an arm day and a shoulder day where the overall energy expenditure just isn't quite there.

17:04Right. So that one, I really just want to like drill home and I hope that made sense to you. Um, because I have noticed that dramatically through, uh, the training sessions I've done with full body. It's like my energy expenditure. It's on point. I have, cause what I mean by like simultaneously during compound exercises, when you're engaging multiple muscle groups is typically, and I, I'm going to explain this because I think will help you guys to what the full body looks like. Um, day to day and our warrior wave just got introduced to this too as well. So again, like if you guys are somebody that wants to be able to just go into the gym and do the workouts, we have an app inside of our warrior wave blueprint program.

17:40Um, click or check out the information below this podcast and you guys can apply to, to see if you're a good fit for our community. But inside there, you'll get an app and the app will tell you exactly these workouts to be doing on a regular basis. But anyway, what I was saying is by you engaging multiple muscle groups simultaneously during compound exercises, think about it. Like a shoulder day is a shoulder day, but if you're doing four exercises for four to five times training sessions, four to five times a week, typically you're starting out with a compound exercise at the top.

18:11And every single day you're incorporating legs. And you guys know that legs is a, is a dominant muscle group that requires a lot of work and also outputs a lot of energy expenditure. That is just because it's a big muscle group. Same thing with back. So you're hitting those, that, that, that norm, that's, that somewhat like, uh, relatively similar energy expenditure on a daily basis, which is what I just kind of explained. So, and I'm going to, it'll make sense too, when I get to talking about daily, like what these workouts do look like, you're going to see, okay, wow.

18:49You're moving through all of the muscle groups each day and you're not just honing it into shoulders and arms and chest, which are smaller muscle groups. And they won't make you burn as much, um, or put out as much energy expenditure as opposed to like legs and back where now you're hitting legs and back four, five times a week. Okay. So I hope this is not making sense to you guys. I'm really passionate about this because it's something that I've been doing the last, you know, almost year now. And I've seen the benefits of it and these are the specific benefits that I'm speaking to.

19:20Okay. Now the main reason though, why I switched to full body workouts is because I don't know if you guys follow me and you follow me for a while. And it's like, it's hard because a story just pops up for 24 hours and it's gone. But last year, man, I was struggling with my recovery time. My recovery time from session to session was getting longer and longer and longer.

19:50And I was miserable, particularly around legs. And so when I would train legs, I would only be able to do it once a week. I couldn't even break it into the quads and hamstrings like I always have because I wasn't recovering enough in between those sessions. I would get to my next freaking leg day and I'd be still sore from the previous one. And that's not good. And it didn't matter. Like, sure, I'm a beast in the gym. But even if I lowered my weight, still somehow I was taking way too long to recover.

20:26And I'm talking like three, four days max of trying to recover from a leg day. And I was like, dude, I have to find something different. Like, it was at the point where I was like, do I need to break up with strength training? Like, what? Like, I can't do that. That's my life. I fucking love strength training. I was like, but I need to figure out how to make, you know, training work for me. And so I started dabbling into this full body world.

21:00And one of the most drastic things that full body workouts has done for me is it has improved my recovery time tenfold. Like, I am not nearly as sore as I used to be following a leg day. Like, if I only do train legs in obviously one day or I'm sorry, in one exercise per day, I can feel it the next day.

21:33But I'm not overly like, almost like, you know, having to use the freaking handicap bars when you're trying to squat in the freaking toilet. Like, some of y'all are like, damn, no, that means a good leg day. Man, this was like three to four days later. It's cool if it's like a day after, like you experience dialysis two days after. No, I was going like three to four days, man. It was not fun. So something that full body has helped me do is recover so much better. And that is because with full body, it allows more rest time in between training sessions for that muscle group.

22:10So you're hitting, you know, legs here, but it's only one exercise, three to four sets. You know, you can go beast mode, but it's one exercise until I have to wait 24 hours until I hit another exercise. But what's been wild is my ability to increase the volume like I spoke to with point number two across those four to five days with legs. And I'm not nearly as sore. I am able to lift more than I would be able to a year ago with legs. Now doing full body because of the rest time of recovery time in between these sessions.

22:44You're allowing a longer time period in between these training sessions to recover those muscle groups. So it's not like, you know, you're, you're, like I said, like you're doing a leg day and you got to wait three days or four days for recovery time to hit up another leg day again. You hit this almost every single day, but in between it's only one exercise and you're allowing more rest time in between until you go and hit it again. And so that has, that's when I was speaking to like increase in frequency and volume.

23:17That was a thing that I wanted to add in there because you're also not only increasing the ability to give yourself a challenge yourself more volume over the course of the four to five days that you're doing these training sessions. But you're also allowing yourself to have increased recovery time in between those four to five sessions for those muscle groups, which is just incredible. And to another point too as well, it's like with, you know, training chest, then back, then shoulders, then legs and arms.

23:50It's like you train chest and then you're so sore from chest day, you go into back, your chest is still used as a secondary muscle group for your back. And maybe you're not able to lift as heavy because you're so sore from chest day. Or I know for me personally, when I used to do chest and shoulders, I would do chest and maybe shoulders the next day with, you know, mix it with biceps. But I was so damn sore from chest day that my shoulder movement suffered. My shoulder exercise suffered.

24:21So again, this was a personal, this was, this was the main thing personally, why I switched to full body. And I don't want to gear anybody, any one way, bro split, full body training, all the things strength training related, find what you love the best and incorporate it, but make sure the overall arching North Star for you is progressive overload. And you are progressively overloading through those phases and those blocks and six to eight weeks and all of this stuff.

24:52But you find what you like and you find where you love bro splits. Amazing. You got good recovery time. Amazing. This was something that I personally switched for, for myself. And I know that women that are like 45, 50, 55, 60 years old, they need more recovery time, but also they need to push themselves inside the gym with volume and challenging themselves with weight. So I feel like this is just a huge, and I've been, personally, I still have five clients that I work with that I feel like will never leave me.

25:25And I love them so much. They make my life so much easier as a coach because they just do the work. But I have been putting them through these full body workouts for the last probably like six months since like the holidays. And they have been loving it. I remember when I first dropped it on them, they were like, oh my God, Nikki, I am obsessed with these workouts. These workouts are amazing. And then we just rolled it out to our warrior babe community too as well just recently last week. And so far the feedback has been very solid. So this is something that, again, personally, but I obviously am somewhat like educating you guys on this style of training.

26:05But there's nothing wrong with bro splits and powerlifting, CrossFit. It's like what works for you, okay? And there's actually a podcast I did way earlier where I broke down the different types of training, strength training, those specific like powerlifting, lifting, CrossFit, strength training, all that stuff. And like helped you understand like what the overall overarching goal is for each and what, you know, what if your ultimate goal is X, then this is what I would recommend.

26:36But I felt like, you know, so many of you guys asked me, what is your training split? What does your workout look like? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I was like, it's not as just easy as me saying I work out four to five days a week and I do full body. It's like, I love to educate, give the why, express, you know, you know, my experience with it. You guys know that I'm big on experiencing things before I share them. And so I was like, this is worthy of an entire podcast. So here it is, you guys. Now, before I hop off, I wanted to let you guys know what, you know, those workouts look like on a daily basis.

27:09So just broadly speaking, because I'm not going to get down into like, you know, I do RPE of this or I do a percentage of my max here. That's all progressive overload. There's all in other podcasts that I've shared with you guys if you just go back into old ones. But basically, like, let's just start off with what I did yesterday, right? I did chest to begin with, and then I moved into legs.

27:39So I did an exercise for chest. I'm sorry, I didn't exercise. I did chest and exercise for triceps. And then I did an exercise for legs and exercise for back and exercise for shoulders and exercise for biceps. And so, and then, but up here with chest, I'm playing around with like percentages and RPE and, you know, trying to, trying to progressive overload. So that next week I can see, okay, I did here, this here. I'm going to try and go heavier here. I play around with sets in each block.

28:10And that's more of a progressive overload technique. Like, you know, some other days, let's talk about if I'm doing squats first, and then I'll move into chest, then back, then shoulders, then biceps, and then triceps. I said that right? So let's say we start off with legs, squats, and then we go into chest. Yeah, I said that. And then back, and then shoulders, and then biceps, and then triceps. And then obviously at the end, sometimes I'm hitting up some abs, I'm hitting up some calves.

28:43But that's generally what it looks like on a daily basis. And then, you know, then I back, and then I'll do back, and then I'll do legs, chest. And this is all one day, okay? So this is what the full body looks like. So I'm moving through the muscle groups here, right? And you can see that when I spoke to enhancing your metabolic response, when you're moving from squats, then into a chest press, and then into a barbell row, that is some serious overall energy expenditure on your part.

29:16Those are compound exercises, and you're pushing your body to do it, and you're pushing the volume in those exercises too as well. So, man, I just, I love talking about this. And then there's like, you know, shoulders one day. It's like overhead barbell press, and then you move into doing some, a leg exercise, and you move into doing a chest exercise, a back exercise, a shoulder exercise, or you already did shoulders. So, a bicep exercise, a tricep exercise, that is what you're, so you're encompassing, right?

29:47Legs, back, chest, shoulders, biceps, triceps. So, yeah, that's a little bit to answer the question that I commonly get all of the time regarding how many days a week do I work out, and what does my training split look like, okay? And so, there you go, you guys, that is the answer explained in full, and why I have transitioned to doing full body splits, full body training exercises throughout the course of my week. All right, so I hope you guys found that educational, informational, and I hope you enjoyed it.

30:24So, I'll catch you guys in the next podcast. Peace out. Hey, guys, real quick, if you're interested in taking your body to the next level, lose body fat, build more muscle, feel more confident, do it alongside one of our 30-plus professional coaches. Work one-on-one with her to eliminate all of the guesswork that you may have, and all you need to do is just do the work that she tells you to do to get to those goals of yours. Now, to learn more, click the link below this podcast and apply to our VIP program right now.

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