This can be used for fat loss with muscle retention or muscle gains. If you finish your days with a caloric Surplus, you build muscle, caloric deficit you burn fat and keep muscle. Let's work. 3 day per week total body work out for beginners (5 week circuit) as seen on bodybuilding.com forums (AllPro) with a couple of tweaks: added traps and forearms to the main lifting days... added abs and cardio on the 3 off days, total rest on the 7th day. You will do 3 work outs per week on non consecutive days. The first work out is your heavy work out. The second work out is your medium work out, use 10% less weight for your work sets. The final work out for the week is your light work out, use 20% less weight. For the first 3 exercises, you will do a light warm up with 1/4 of your work sets weight and then a medium warm up with 1/2 of your work sets weight before your 2 work sets which will be with a challenging weight (Use an online 10 rep max calculator.) Use your 10 rep max weight for all work sets. Rest 1 minute after warm up sets... 1 minute and a half after work sets. Weight days will look like this: Barbell Squats: warm-up, warm-up, work-set, work-set Barbell Bench Press: warm-up, warm-up, work-set, work-set Barbell Bent Over Row: warm-up, warm-up, work-set, work-set Barbell Shoulder Press: work-set, work-set Barbell Stiff Legged Deadlifts: work-set, work-set Barbell Curls: work-set, work-set Barbell Shrugs: work-set, work-Set Dumbbell Standing Calf Raises: work-set, work-set Dumbell Seated Palms Up Wrist Curls: work-set, work-set Dumbell Seated Palms Down Wrist Curls: work-set, work-set You will be running this program on a five week cycle as follows: Weight days: All warm up sets are 8 reps regardless of week. The first week do all work sets for 8 reps. The second week do all work sets for 9 reps. The third week do all work sets for 10 reps. The fourth week do all work sets for 11 reps. The fifth week do all work sets for 12 reps. If you got all of the required reps on the fifth week then increase the weight by 10% and repeat the cycle. If you didn't get all of the reps on the fifth week then repeat the cycle with the same weight. You shouldn't need more than one minute rest between the warm up sets and you shouldn't need more than one minute thirty seconds between the work sets. Abs/Cardio Days: Get the maximum amount of reps you can in the time allotted. 1 minute rest after each plank. Should take you 8 minutes to do the abs... do whatever cardio you like for 30 minutes to an hour. As your core gets stronger, you can cycle through the ab exercises for additional sets. Weekly flow example If you started on a Monday: Monday: Heavy Tuesday: Abs + Cardio Wednesday: Medium Thursday: Abs + Cardio Friday: Light Saturday: Abs + Cardio Sunday: Rest Diet: I'm doing this with a 16-8 intermittent fast. Join me for a nice cut. If you want to bulk, still do the intermittent fast but eat more in your window. Let's WORK!