The 10-minute home workout that beats a long gym session

Some workouts feel like an act of defiance. There are days when the world doesn’t want you to take any time for yourself, when it wants all of you, every atom: in meetings, supermarkets, traffic jams, dropping children off at football practice, delivering relatives you don’t even like to dental hygienist appointments they probably don’t even need. This is where the 10-minute workout rides to the rescue.

The good news is that short bursts of exercise can be extremely effective and, depending on your goals, better than more protracted sessions. A review of the evidence carried out in the United States found that 10 minutes of exercise can be beneficial across measures including longevity: “Physical activity accumulated in bouts that are 10 minutes is associated with favourable health-related outcomes, including all-cause mortality.”

Meanwhile a Norwegian study found that two short bursts of resistance could be more effective than a single long session. The study looked at women who trained regularly and found they felt the long session was more enjoyable and valid but, in reality, shorter, more intense workouts enabled them to achieve more.

Andrew Scott, an exercise physiologist and senior lecturer at Portsmouth University, says: “People can get the same fitness benefit from shorter sessions as longer, purposeful exercise.” In other words, even walking up the stairs counts. It doesn’t have to be an activity defined as a workout at all.

For strength training, in the past I used the kind of workouts bodybuilders recommended. These were very much the War and Peace of resistance training and seemed to take up most of my teen Saturdays. Totally unnecessary says, Scott: “It doesn’t have be multiple sets of the same exercise, one good quality set per exercise, especially for resistance training novices, can be at least as beneficial.”

For heart and lung health, multiple short sessions can also be at least as good as a single longer bursts of movement. “Three 10-minute bursts of brisk walking, as opposed to a single walk of 30 minutes, deliver the same, if not more benefits for body composition and glucose control,” Scott notes.

There is a trade-off between intensity and duration – so if you are sufficiently healthy and able, you can give your body 10 minutes of serious, strenuous exercise, deliver Aunt Virginia to the dentist, and still reap the kind of rewards you’d expect from a much more time-consuming workout.

The workout

This is a 10-minute whole-body workout that does pretty much everything you need. It’s been designed by Samuel Quinn, the personal training lead at Nuffield Health gym group. He says: “There is a combination of exercises that will increase cardiovascular fitness whilst burning body fat, improve upper body, lower body and core strength, whilst improving explosiveness and power. This will also help to improve mobility, stability and balance.”

He has carefully divided the work between strength and cardio. “Of the 10 exercises, four are cardio focused and six are strength-based, however many will benefit both. This workout is to be performed two to three times per week and is perfect for building strength and cardiovascular fitness whilst improving mobility and athletic performance.”

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