Run Stronger: An Efficient Full Body Workout for Runners

Although there is plenty of debate over the benefits of body part split routines—where you focus on just one or two muscle groups per session—many athletes, including runners, find full-body workouts to be more practical and effective.¹Evangelista, A. L., Braz, T. V., La Scala Teixeira, C. V., Rica, R. L., Alonso, A. C., Barbosa, W. A., Reis, V. M., Baker, J. S., Schoenfeld, B. J., Bocalini, D. S., & Greve, J. M. D. (2021). Split or full-body workout routine: which is best to increase muscle strength and hypertrophy? Einstein (São Paulo), 19. https://doi.org/10.31744/einstein_journal/2021ao5781

The main advantage of full-body strength training is efficiency. If you’re balancing high mileage with a busy schedule, hitting all the major muscle groups in just 2–3 sessions per week can help you build strength, reduce injury risk, and still meet the recommended strength training guidelines without living in the gym.

For runners, this approach is especially valuable: instead of overemphasizing a single muscle group, full-body training ensures balance, power, and resilience from head to toe—key for performance and long-term health.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to structure an effective full-body workout, plus step-by-step instructions for compound exercises that improve strength, stability, and efficiency on the run.

How to Structure Your Workouts

Before diving into the specific exercises for your full-body workout plan, it’s helpful to clarify what we actually mean by a “full-body” or “total-body” workout.

As the name suggests, this style of training engages all of the major muscle groups in a single session. To achieve that balance, a well-designed full-body workout should include at least one or two exercises that target each of the following key areas:

• Muscles in the arms: biceps, triceps, brachioradialis, forearm muscles, and grip strength muscles, including the wrist flexors and extensors and finger flexors.
• Muscles in the shoulders: deltoid and rotator cuff muscles.
• Muscles in the chest: pectoralis major and minor.
• Muscles in the back: lats, traps, rhomboids, serratus anterior, posterior deltoid, rotator cuff muscles, levator scapulae, erector spinae, and multifidus.
• Core muscles: abs and lower back muscles.
• Muscles in the legs: glutes, quads, hamstrings, calves, shin muscles, adductors, abductors, and hip rotators.

There are different ways to perform full body strength training workouts. In most cases, people will perform various compound and isolation exercises for the different muscle groups listed above.

The exercises in these types of total body workouts do not necessarily work every single muscle simultaneously. 

Rather, you might perform overhead presses for your shoulders, a barbell bench press for your chest, squats for the lower body and core, etc., and the sum total of the exercises you include end up working all of the muscles in your body to give you a full body workout.

However, it can also be fun and time efficient to do a full body workout that relies primarily on full body exercises.

Some of the best full body workouts combine different compound movements into one exercise to really engage most of the muscles in the body simultaneously.

For example, you might perform a lateral lunge with a simultaneous biceps curl, a squat with an overhead press like a thruster, a resistance band deadlift, and a dynamic full body exercises like burpees or mountain climbers.

Not only are full body workouts efficient, allowing you to get a lot of strength training work done in a short amount of time by combining movements and working multiple muscle groups simultaneously, but they also help improve functional strength, coordination, caloric expenditure, and the cardiovascular endurance of the exercise.

Your muscles have to work synergistically, and if your upper body and lower body are performing different movement patterns at the same time, your core muscles have to engage to help provide a stable base of support to facilitate safe and effective movement.

The more muscle groups you work simultaneously, the greater the metabolic and cardiovascular demand. This increases your heart rate to accelerate your calorie burn, fat loss and improve fitness and muscle growth.

The Best Full Body Workout

Before beginning these resistance training exercises, warm up with 5-10 minutes of low-impact cardio. Then perform 2-3 sets of 8-12 reps of each exercise.

#1: Lateral Lunge with a Biceps Curl

This full body exercise involves performing a side lunge with a biceps curl.

1. Stand tall with feet hip-width apart, holding a dumbbell in your right hand at your side.
2. Step your left foot out wide into a side lunge, bending your left knee and pushing your hips back while keeping your right leg straight.
3. As you lower into the lunge, curl the dumbbell in your right hand up toward your shoulder.
4. Press through your left heel to return to the starting position, lowering the dumbbell back down at the same time.
5. Complete all reps on one side, then switch sides (dumbbell in left hand, step into a right side lunge).

#2: Forward Lunges with Triceps Extensions

Another great full body exercise is the dumbbell forward lunge with triceps extension.

This exercise strengthens not only your quads, glutes, and triceps, but also the smaller stabilizing muscles in your ankles and hips, along with your core. 

Because the lunge is a unilateral exercise, these stabilizing muscles are activated to help maintain your balance on a narrow base of support.

It is also a good exercise to improve your coordination.

Here are the steps:

1. Stand upright with good posture, chest up, shoulders down, and a dumbbell in each hand. 
2. To get into the starting position for your arms, bring your arms straight up overhead and bend your elbows so that the weights come back down behind your head. Your elbows should be bent as much as possible, preferably creating an acute angle (less than 90°). This will be the starting position for the triceps extension.
3. Take a giant step forward with one leg, bending both knees to drop down into a forward lunge.
4. Hold the bottom position of the lunge where your front thigh is parallel to the ground. From there, straighten your elbows to lift the weights all the way up overhead to the lockout position. Keep your upper arms fixed in place throughout the duration of the movement, with your biceps positioned around your ears. Only your lower arms should be moving up and down.
5. Bend your elbows to lower the dumbbells back down behind your shoulders as you press through your feet and engage your glutes to stand back up to the starting position.
6. Perform all your reps on one leg and then switch sides.

#3: Walking Lunges with Lateral Raises

Perform the same forward lunge, but walk forward as you do so. Instead of doing triceps extensions, perform lateral raises.

This deltoid exercise involves bringing the dumbbells straight out to your sides like a letter T.

#4: Forward Lunges With Trunk Twists 

This is another excellent full-body exercise to add to your total-body strength workouts.

Like the forward lunge with the triceps extension, this movement combines a unilateral lower-body exercise and an upper-body and core exercise.

The trunk twist portion of the exercise will engage your obliques, rectus abdominis, deeper transversus abdominis, spinal stabilizers, all of the muscles of the shoulder girdle, and arms.

Accordingly, this is truly one of the best full-body exercises.

You can use any form of weight for this exercise, but a medicine ball, kettlebell, or dumbbell works best. You will hold the implement between your two hands.

Here are the steps:

1. Stand tall with your feet shoulder-width apart, chest up, and shoulders back. Look straight ahead, holding weight against your chest with your elbows together.
2. Take a big step forward with your right foot, placing the ball of your foot on the floor in front of you. 
3. As you take this step, bend both knees until they reach 90 degrees. Your right knee will be just above the ground, and your left thigh will parallel the floor. 
4. As you step forward, engage your core and rotate your torso to your right, holding the weight against your chest.
5. Rotate back to the center and return to your starting position.
6. Alternate sides. 

#5: Medicine Ball Burpees

Bodyweight burpees are a challenging total-body exercise involving performing a squat, push-up, and vertical jump.

Adding a medicine ball makes the exercise much harder because you have added resistance, and the push-up has a narrow base of support.

For the squat, push the medicine ball straight out like a chest press.

As you drop down for the push-up, place your hands on the top/sides of the medicine ball, and for the jump, thrust the ball up overhead in your hands.

This is an excellent exercise for a full body HIIT workout (high intensity interval training) such as a tabata.

#6: Dumbbell Thrusters

The thruster is one of the best full-body workout exercises because it combines a squat with a push press.

Therefore, this move works your entire lower body, core, shoulders, upper back, and arms.

To perform a thruster:

1. Hold dumbbells at shoulder height, palms facing forward.
2. Squat down until your thighs are parallel to the floor, and then stand up, simultaneously pressing the dumbbells straight up overhead.
3. Return the dumbbells to your shoulders as you squat down for the next repetition.

Also see: Full Body Dumbbell Workout

#7: Renegade Rows With Push-Ups

Renegade rows involve performing rows in the push-up position with dumbbells.

After each rep, perform a full push-up and then row one arm when you are back up. Switch sides with each rep.

When you finish your workout, make sure to cool down with 5 minutes of low-impact cardio, such as the stationary bike.

If don’t have access to a gym and need a no-equipment, at-home workout, check out this next guide:

The 11 Best Bodyweight Exercises You Can Do At Home

References

• 1
  Evangelista, A. L., Braz, T. V., La Scala Teixeira, C. V., Rica, R. L., Alonso, A. C., Barbosa, W. A., Reis, V. M., Baker, J. S., Schoenfeld, B. J., Bocalini, D. S., & Greve, J. M. D. (2021). Split or full-body workout routine: which is best to increase muscle strength and hypertrophy? Einstein (São Paulo), 19. https://doi.org/10.31744/einstein_journal/2021ao5781