Between September 2021 and July 2023, Harry Styles performed more than 160 high-energy live shows to crowds around the world. Each one could last up to two hours. That got me wondering: how did he build the fitness to pull that off?
According to the singer’s Love On Tour trainer Thibo David the answer is simple: unwavering commitment and plenty of high-effort training sessions.
"Harry’s dedicated and works hard," says David. "He’s been working hard for years. He’s not someone I have to push to work out. He understands it."
Among Styles’ lengthy and rigorous training schedule is a disarmingly simple three-move bodyweight challenge comprising push-ups, sit-ups and squats. It takes just eight minutes, so I decided to give it a go.
How to do Harry Styles’ three-move bodyweight workout challenge
In eight minutes complete:
Complete 100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups and 100 squats as quickly as you can, while maintaining good form. You can break them up however you like: I did 10 repetitions of each exercise at a time, cycling through them as a circuit.
This is a tricky test. To make it easier, try modifying the push-ups by dropping your knees to the floor or placing your hands on an elevated surface. You can also decrease the target number of repetitions for each exercise to 80, 60, 40 or 20.
My takeaways
Finishing all 300 repetitions in eight minutes is no joke. I narrowly made the cut with a final time of seven minutes and 39 seconds, despite transitioning quickly between exercises and not taking extra rest.
David reveals this is only one portion of Harry Styles’ workout: the wider training day took me more than two hours, containing a grueling mix of running, weighted circuits, hill sprints and core strengthening exercises.
Running is a staple in Styles’ training, alongside swimming. He and David started with shorter runs before building up to jogs of up to 18km around London.
David recommends that most people start their training this way to develop their aerobic capacity—your body’s ability to take in and use oxygen during exercise.
"Sometimes people make the mistake of jumping straight into a routine that they’ve seen somewhere, and they’ll stick to it for a bit, but then quickly the body breaks down," says David.
"It takes time, patience and sometimes long, boring sessions to build what needs to be put in place."
How to develop aerobic capacity
"Aerobic capacity is the basis of all your training and it has to be done properly," David says.
“You have to go and do a long, very slow run or get on a bike at a very slow pace. [This type of training is] an incredible tool that people just don’t seem to want to use because of the boring aspect of it."
If you’re wondering just how slow you need to be going when you first start training, David suggests aiming for a conversational pace.
"You need to be able to have a full conversation while running. If I was to do my jogging and my running then I should be able to have a conversation with you, maybe getting out of breath every three sentences. Then I breathe and carry on talking.
“This is the type of effort that you need to target. You have to build a strong base, and this will serve you in your life. It has a big effect on building strong ligaments, strong muscles, strong joints, bringing back good blood and oxygen into the joints," says David.
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