I'm currently following a three-times-a-week, full-body workout routine for general physical fitness, to keep my bones, lungs and heart healthy and keep my weight down. For overall fitness and weight loss or maintenance a full-body routine is much better than a split routine, especially if you focus on compound, multijoint exercises rather than isolation moves.
My routine is based on the "big four" compound exercises: the squat, deadlift, bench press, and shoulder press. These exercises burn more calories than single-joint exercises like curls, flyes, raises, and extensions. But that doesn't mean I don't do isolation movements. I usually do them as finishers at the end of each workout.
Here's my workout routine (3 to 5 sets of 5 to 8 reps per exercise):
Full-body workout
- Bench presses (chest, triceps, front shoulders) -- I usually do the bench press first not because it's the most important exercise but because the bench-press rack is the most used equipment in the gym. So when I enter the gym and see a vacant bench-press rack I start doing bench presses right away.
- Squats (legs, butt, lower back, abs) or deadlifts (legs, butt, back, arms, shoulders, abs) -- Squats and deadlifts are very taxing on the body and the nervous system, so I usually do only either squats or deadlifts per workout. But sometimes when I feel strong I'll do light squats and heavy deadlifts or heavy squats and light deadlifts.
- Bent-over rows or lat pull-downs (back, biceps, rear shoulders) -- I alternate between overhand and underhand grips for rows and wide and narrow grips for pull-downs to keep things balanced.
- Shoulder presses (shoulders, triceps) or upright rows (shoulders, biceps) -- I like to do shoulder presses standing up rather than sitting down because doing them upright engages the core at the same time. I also like to "clean" the barbell from the floor rather than using a rack. For upright rows I use a shoulder-width or wider grip to avoid rotator-cuff injuries.
- Extras (isolation moves like bicep curls or tricep pressdowns)