You may think your first step to getting fitter and stronger is joining a gym, but it doesn’t need to be. With just a set of dumbbells, you can tick both these boxes from the comfort of your home, and top personal trainer, James Stirling, has shared a quick 25 minute workout to prove it.
“The sets and exercises give enough time for each muscle to recover before you hit again, whilst keeping intensity high to get a lot of work done in a short time!,” he writes. “It makes it a great workout for people short on time.” It follows a circuit format – where you exercise for a set amount of time, followed by a short period of rest – helping your heart rate stay high, as well as including compound exercises to hit major muscle groups at once.
For this workout, you’ll perform each exercise for 40 seconds, followed by a 20 second rest, before moving on to the next exercise. Once you’ve performed all six, you then rest for a minute, before repeating the workout two more times. If your weights are heavier, rest for up to two minutes; even if you do this, you’ll still get through the workout in around 25 minutes. We’ve also added in some alternative exercises ourself, just in case you’re not ready to do all the ones Stirling has suggested. Here’s the workout:
- Bent-over dumbbell row – 40s
- Dumbbell hang clean – 40s
- Push up (from feet or kneeling) x to failure /or dumbbell floor press – 40s
- Alternating dumbbell lunges – 40s /or static split squats 30s per side
- Mountain climbers – 40s
- Jack knife – 40s /or deadbugs
