What's a good full-body routine for 3 days a week?

Chapter 2 argued for three full-body days over a five-day split. This chapter fills that structure in: what to do, how many, how long to rest, and how to know when to make it harder.

It is deliberately one routine rather than a menu. A menu is a decision, decisions cost attention, and you are reading this because attention is the thing your job already spends.

The five patterns, and why these five#

A useful routine covers the ways a human body moves rather than the muscles a magazine lists. Push something away, pull something toward you, bend at the hip, bend at the knee, and carry something while staying upright. Between them they cover nearly everything.

For a body that sits, two of the five carry most of the weight, and it is worth knowing which before you decide what to drop on a rushed day.

The hinge is the one your chair steals#

Bret Contreras earned his PhD in sport science at Auckland University of Technology and has spent two decades studying the gluteal muscles, to the point that the nickname stuck. He invented the barbell hip thrust in 2006 for exactly this problem.

Asked why so many people have poorly functioning glutes, he names the culprits directly.

His electromyography work found hip thrusts produce considerably more glute activation than squats do, because the tension stays on the muscle through the whole movement rather than peaking at the bottom.

Why it works. Sitting holds the hip flexors short and the glutes long and idle for hours. The hinge is the only pattern in the list that directly reverses that, by asking the glutes to produce force in the position sitting neglects.

How you apply it at a desk. Glute bridges at home, hip thrusts with a bench if you have one, Romanian deadlifts once you have weight. Whatever version you use, pause for a full second at the top and squeeze. The pause is what separates a hinge that works from a rep you swung through.

Rest longer than feels productive#

Most people rest for about sixty seconds because a shorter session feels more efficient. Brad Schoenfeld tested that assumption directly, putting resistance-trained men on identical eight-week full-body programmes that differed only in rest length.

One group rested a minute between sets, the other three minutes. The three-minute group gained more strength and more muscle thickness. Same exercises, same sets, same repetitions. Only the clock changed.

Why it works. Rushing back to the next set means starting it already fatigued, so you complete fewer good repetitions at a lower quality. The total work you manage across the session drops even though the session felt harder.

How you apply it at a desk. Two to three minutes after a hard set of squats or hinges. Ninety seconds is fine for the easier patterns. If that makes the session too long, cut an exercise rather than the rest, because a shorter session done properly beats a full one done in a rush.

Use the whole range#

The last variable is how far you move. It is tempting to cut a squat short or stop a push-up halfway, particularly when a set is getting hard, and it is the quietest way to waste a session.

A meta-analysis led by Juan Pallarés at the University of Murcia pooled the studies comparing full and partial range training. Full range came out ahead for muscle growth in the lower body, and the advantage held across most measures they looked at.

The effect is not enormous, and later work suggests partial repetitions done in the stretched position can be nearly as good. The practical reading is that if you are going to cut range, cut it at the top rather than the bottom.

Why it works. Muscle appears to respond most to being loaded while long. The bottom of a squat and the stretch at the bottom of a push-up are where that happens, which is exactly the part people skip when a set gets uncomfortable.

How you apply it at a desk. Lower until your thighs are at least parallel in a squat, and until your chest is close to the wall or floor on a push-up. If you cannot reach that depth, regress the exercise rather than shortening it. A wall push-up done fully beats a floor push-up done halfway.

The routine#

Same five patterns, three times a week, non-consecutive days. Start at the bottom of every rep range and stay there for two weeks before touching anything.

1. 1Squat: 2 to 3 sets of 8 to 12. Bodyweight, then goblet squat holding anything heavy at your chest. Rest 2 minutes.
2. 2Hinge: 2 to 3 sets of 8 to 12. Glute bridge, then single-leg glute bridge, then hip thrust or Romanian deadlift. Pause one second at the top of every rep. Rest 2 to 3 minutes.
3. 3Push: 2 to 3 sets of 8 to 12. Wall push-up, then incline push-up on a table or sofa, then floor push-up. Rest 90 seconds.
4. 4Pull: 2 to 3 sets of 8 to 12. Band row, then single-arm dumbbell row using a heavy bag, then an assisted pull-up if you have a bar. Rest 90 seconds.
5. 5Carry or core: 2 sets. Either a 20 to 40 second plank, or walk 30 seconds with something heavy in each hand, keeping your ribs down and shoulders back. Rest 60 seconds.

That is roughly twelve working sets and about 35 minutes with the rests included. If you have less time, drop the carry first, then a set from the push and pull. Keep the hinge whatever happens.

Order matters a little. The squat and hinge go first because they demand the most and deserve your freshest attention. The carry or core hold goes last because it is the one where fatigue does least damage to technique. Beyond that, do not overthink the sequence.

Warming up is one easy set of the first exercise at half effort, then start. A long mobility routine before a session this size is time spent on the wrong thing, and it is one of the more common reasons a 35-minute plan quietly becomes an hour and then stops happening.

How to progress without a spreadsheet#

The method is called double progression and it removes almost all the arithmetic. You add repetitions until you reach the top of the range, then add resistance and drop back to the bottom.

1. 1Pick a version of the exercise where 8 reps is hard but you finish with about 2 left in reserve.
2. 2Each session, try to add one repetition to one set. Nothing else changes.
3. 3When every set reaches 12 reps with 2 still in reserve, make it harder: more weight, a harder variation, or a slower lowering phase.
4. 4Drop back to 8 reps at the new difficulty and start again.

That loop can run for a year without you making a single scheduling decision. It also survives a bad week, because a session where you match last week rather than beating it is not a failure, it is a maintained position.

What a session should feel like#

The hardest thing to calibrate from written instructions is effort, so here is the shape of a session that went right.

The first set of each exercise should feel comfortably manageable. By the last set you should be slowing down and concentrating. You should finish the session tired but able to have a conversation, and able to imagine doing it again the day after tomorrow.

What you are trying to avoid is either extreme. A session you could repeat immediately was too easy. A session that leaves you unable to climb stairs on Thursday will cost you Friday, which in a three-day week means you lost a third of it.

The reps-in-reserve check. At the end of a set, ask how many more you could have done with good form. Two is the target. Five means add difficulty next session. Zero repeatedly means you are training to failure every set, which builds fatigue faster than it builds anything else.

What trips people up#

Adding exercises instead of adding effort. When progress stalls the instinct is to add movements. Almost always the fix is to take the existing sets closer to failure, or to rest longer so the sets are better. Five patterns is enough for years.

Resting with a phone. A two-minute rest becomes six when you open a feed, and the session stretches until it feels like a chore. Set a timer and put the phone face down.

Chasing soreness. A well-run session often leaves you feeling fine. Soreness tracks novelty more than it tracks stimulus, so it fades as a signal once the routine stabilises, which is what you want.

Never getting close to failure. The opposite failure mode, and more common in people training at home. If you could have done six more repetitions, the set did very little. Two in reserve means two, not ten.

Hip thrusts, Romanian deadlifts and loaded carries all put real demand on the lower back. If you have a history of back pain, get the hinge pattern looked at by a physiotherapist before adding weight, and keep it at bodyweight until you do.