If exercise targets seem uninspiring, one way to spice them up is to make the workout minutes more meaningful. According to government guidance, adults in the UK should get at least 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity activity or 75 minutes of vigorous effort in addition to strength and flexibility activity on two days.
For many, putting this into practice is compromised by a lack of motivation. This is why fitness trends designed to break up the monotony and bring results can help.
One approach is the 12-3-30 method. Its premise is simple: walk on a treadmill set at a 12 per cent incline at 3mph for 30 minutes. Yet proponents such as Lauren Giraldo, a fitness influencer whose social media posts on the 12-3-30 have attracted 12.8 million views, credit it with significant body transformations — she attributes her two-stone weight loss to doing the workout five times each week.
Such is its appeal on social media, exercise scientists at Western Colorado University decided to test whether it works for a paper published recently in the International Journal of Research in Exercise Physiology. Lance Dalleck, professor of physiology and lead researcher on the small study, recruited 17 healthy men and women who agreed to a battery of tests and assessments while completing the workout, with a five-minute warm-up and cool-down either side of the session.
The results, Dalleck says, confirmed that “the 12-3-30 workout is a simple yet effective way to achieve substantial health benefits.” Participants burnt an average of 220 calories during the session — more than you would power-walking and about the same as a steady jog for the same duration.
They also reached a heart rate reserve (the difference between your maximum heart rate and your resting heart rate) of about 50 per cent, which is sufficient to support improvements in cardiorespiratory fitness, says Dalleck, and is linked to a reduction in the risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and other conditions.
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Are workout trends such as this really enough to keep you super-fit and super-slim over time? Much depends on your goals and where you are starting from, says George Morris, an exercise physiologist in the endurance performance centre at St Mary’s University, Twickenham.
“If your daily steps are minimal and you shy away from the gym, then something like the 12-3-30 is a great starting point for increasing fitness. It will improve your cardiovascular fitness, but the incline also adds some resistance training for the muscles of the lower body, which helps to make them stronger.”
As with any workout, Morris says you will need to adapt elements of it to progress your fitness. Start by gradually increasing the frequency of the workout from 1-2 to 3-5 times a week. “From there you can increase the speed setting on the treadmill,” Morris says. “Taking the workout outdoors and incorporating hills for a longer duration is your ultimate goal.”
Here are other ways to add variety to your activity routine:
30-30-30
What is it? Eat 30g of protein within 30 minutes of waking up in the morning and then do 30 minutes of low-intensity, steady-state exercise such as brisk walking, cycling, swimming or using an elliptical trainer at the gym.
The concept was first pushed in Tim Ferriss’s 2010 bestseller The 4-Hour Body and its popularity has been bolstered recently by wellness podcasters including Gary Brecka,whose posts about it on TikTok have attracted 21.7 million views
On his YouTube channel, Ferris says that consuming 30g of protein within 30 minutes of waking can help people to blast 10-20lb of fat in a month — he suggests 2-3 eggs with some lentils and beans with a side of spinach leaves consumed with a coffee served with full-fat cream instead of milk.
Meanwhile, Brecka says that the cardio activity that follows should not raise your heart rate above 135 beats per minute, a level at which you should be able to chat on the phone while performing it.
Does it work? It has not been the subject of any scientific studies, but there’s evidence that separate elements of the approach might be beneficial for health and weight loss. Eating a protein-rich breakfast was shown recently in a study in Nutrition Reviews to hold potential benefits in improving muscle mass for older people, and others have shown that a high-protein breakfast reduces snacking later on, although it’s unlikely that consuming it within 30 minutes of waking will make a difference to fat loss.
“For many people, simply starting the day with protein rather than sugary foods leads to fewer cravings later on,” says the Surrey-based personal trainer Daniel Oliver. “And getting the body moving early in any way helps reinforce a more active lifestyle.” The method itself isn’t a magic bullet. “What it does is encourage consistency of small, better decisions that lead to meaningful, long-term health gains,” Oliver says.
54321
What is it? Based on the principles of Swedish fartlek (meaning “speed play’’) training, this is designed to be performed on a treadmill, but you could also do it outdoors or on a bike. It involves pushing at 80-90 per cent of your maximum heart rate for five minutes followed by a five-minute recovery pace (up to 65 per cent maximum effort) and then working your way down time-wise to complete four minutes of effort and then recovery, all the way down to one minute’s worth of both.
It’s harder than it sounds — do the whole thing and you will be working out for 30 minutes with 15 minutes at high effort. You might need to reduce the segments to start with, but you can add higher bursts or shorten the active recovery to as little as 10-20 seconds as you get fitter.
Does it work? While researchers haven’t studied the 54321 approach specifically, they have looked at the benefits of fartlek training and it certainly gets the seal of approval if you do it regularly. In a 2020 study published in the International Journal of Physiology, Nutrition and Physical Education, a group of men asked to do fartlek training for three days a week for three months vastly improved cardiovascular fitness and speed endurance compared with a control group who continued with their regular exercise routine. Morrison says the big appeal of fartlek training is that it is so adaptable to different fitness levels and anyone from jogger to elite can try it.
“Studies have shown that it positively stresses both aerobic and anaerobic energy systems, producing gains in endurance and speed over time,” Morris says. “It’s a great way to break up a run or power walk.”
10-20-30
What is it? This concept consists of a 1km or 5-7 minute warm-up at a low intensity followed by 3-4 blocks of five-minute runs (or cycling, rowing, cross-training) interspersed by two minutes of active rest such as light jogging or fast walking.
Each block consists of five consecutive 60-second intervals divided into 30, 20 and 10 seconds of running at a low, moderate and fast pace respectively. In total you’ll be working out for 20-30 minutes including a warm-up. To benefit from the approach, it is recommended you do 10-20-30 training at least twice a week even as a beginner.
Does it work? One of the few trends to have scientific backing, the 10-20-30 approach has been shown in several studies at the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports to improve both fitness performance and health. In one of the papers, published in the Journal of Applied Physiology 18 moderately fit runners asked to follow the 10-20-30 programme for seven weeks improved their 1,500m run time by 23 seconds and their 5km speed by almost a minute despite spending 50 per cent less time than usual running each week. The team also reported that the 10-20-30 runners experienced lower levels of emotional stress when compared with a control group continuing their normal training.
In 2023 the same group of researchers showed that while the ten-second sprint should be fast, it doesn’t need to be flat out to get positive results. Working with a new group of fitness runners, they found that those asked to perform the 10-second blast at only 80 per cent effort achieved the same improvements in fitness as a group that sprinted flat out with 100 per cent effort. “The result of the study really came as a surprise,” said Professor Jens Bangsbo, lead author of the paper published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports.
“We think that it is related to the fact that training at 80 per cent of one’s maximum still gets the heart rate up significantly higher than a runner’s typical training.” Pushing up your heart rate leads to improvements in heart function and circulation as well as fitness levels, Bangsbo said. He suggests that recreational runners do 2-3 times a week while experienced runners can replace up to four training weekly sessions with 10-20-30 workouts for bigger gains.
3-2-1
What is it? 3-2-1 stands for a weekly three days of strength training, two days of Pilates, yoga or active stretching and one day a week of cardiovascular training, which is flexible and doesn’t have to be a gruelling session on the bike or treadmill. The seventh day of the week is for complete rest — it sounds like you might need it.
The 3-2-1 approach has been pushed on social media by fitness influencers including Courteney Fisher, who has 2.3 million followers on Instagram and 2 million on TikTok. She claims that doing daily HIIT classes were not bringing the results she wanted. “I ended up feeling really discouraged and exhausted because I was pushing my body so hard, and I was not getting to where I wanted to go,” Fisher told the New York Post.
Does it work? Most personal trainers would give the thumbs-up to the approach for offering variety and balance with a routine that targets strength, flexibility and cardiovascular fitness during a typical week.
It does fall short on UK government recommendations for activity so you would need to focus on getting brisk walking steps in as well. “What matters most isn’t the exact combination, although three weekly strength sessions is great for midlifers, it’s the consistency that this regimen promotes,” Oliver says. “If you stick to it, you will get results in time.”
