27/08/2026
If your workouts are mostly based on whatever machines are free or whatever you feel like doing that day, this is potentially your aren’t seeing any progress.
Rather than starting with individual exercises, think about the main ways your body needs to move across the week and structure your sessions around these movement patterns.
This will help you build a much more balanced program, avoid overloading one area while neglecting another, and make it much easier to see whether your training actually covers your whole body.
A simple 2-day full body routine could be structured like this:
Workout 1
Squat - goblet squat / back squat / leg press
Horizontal Push - DB bench press / BB bench press / Push Ups
Horizontal Pull - cable row / chest supported row / inverted row
Carry - farmers carry / suitcase carry / front rack carry
Rotation - cable rotation / Russian twist / land mine rotation
Workout 2
Hinge - Romanian deadlift / deadlift / hip thrust
Lunge - reverse lunge / split squat / step up
Vertical Push - DB shoulder press / BB overhead press / machine shoulder press
Vertical Pull - Pull ups / lat pulldown / assisted pull ups
Anti Rotation - plank shoulder taps / pallof press / cable anti rotation walkout
Pick one exercise from each movement pattern that matches your ability, equipment and goals then focus on progressing it over time.
Across the two sessions you’ve trained your whole body, covered all the movement patterns and now have a clear structure to follow.
For a lot of people, especially if time is tight, two well planned sessions of less than an hour will be much more productive than 4 or 5 random workouts.
The goal isn’t to make training complicated.
It’s to make sure the time you do have in the gym is actually being used well.