This 5-Minute Bodyweight Workout Will Get You Fit Fast

You make your best effort to pick up the kettlebells or go for a run as often as you can, but there are those days (or, let’s face it, weeks), when you can barely make it home in time for dinner, let alone heading out to a workout class. The thing is, your body doesn’t care where you sweat. And to a certain extent, it doesn’t care how long you sweat for. Sure, a 30-minute bodyweight workout burns more calories than 10, but research suggests even just a handful of minutes a day devoted to elevating your heart rate can have measurable results.

A University of Utah study, for instance, found that people who exercised less than 10 minutes but at a high intensity had a lower BMI than those who worked out for more than 10 minutes at moderate intensity. And a report in the medical journal Obesity found that people who split an hour of daily exercise into 5-minute chunks were better able to control their appetite and eating compared to those who did a traditional-length workout.

So how do you work out in 5 minutes? What you need is a super-intense, Tabata-style routine that pushes your heart rate through the roof and makes your muscles beg for mercy by the time five minutes is up. We’ve got you covered with this all-in workout.

The Ultimate 5-Minute Bodyweight Workout

Start with a brief warmup (stretch arms overhead, touch your toes, open legs wide and lower into a gentle squat, stand and twist right, then left).

Minute 1: Jump rope as fast as you can for 50 seconds. Rest 10.

Minute 2: Run in place as fast as you can (like a lineman drill), raising your knees so high you hit your chest for 50 seconds. Rest 10.

Minute 3: Drop and do 20 pushups; flip and do 20 situps; flip and do 20 hand-clap pushups (push off floor with enough force that you can clap hands together in the air between reps).

Minute 4: Squat jumps for 15 seconds (squat and jump in the air vertically, landing back in a squat); box jumps for 15 seconds (stand in front of a sturdy bench or chair, bend knees and spring up onto it, then jump back down); squat jumps again for 20 seconds. Rest 10.

Minute 5: 15 burpees in 30 seconds; 30 jumping jacks in 30 seconds.

Grab some water and take a short walk when you’re done to allow your heart rate a few minutes to return to normal.