The best exercise if you only have five, 10 or 15 minutes

Extract:

"Within a 10-15 minute time frame, Trent recommended some sort of variation of Tabata, a specialised form of interval training that was originally devised by Japanese professor Dr Izumi Tabata to train Olympic speed skaters.

"Tabata training basically means tempo training – short, fast periods of 100 per cent effort followed by a short rest," he says. "For example, 20 seconds of burpees followed by a 10 second rest, repeated seven times."

This 20/10 ratio forces the body to start moving again before it has recovered from the previous interval, which has been found to work both aerobic and anaerobic metabolic pathways more effectively than longer bouts of exercise.

Trent explains that this is great news if you're trying to shed kilos as well as increase your fitness.

"It skyrockets your metabolic rate, so for people who want to lose a bit of weight, it just strips you, big-time. Essentially, it keeps the motor running all day, so you're burning fat for a lot longer."

Movements used in Tabata are only limited by your imagination – anything from jumping jacks to push-ups to squat jumps, to kettlebell swings or cycle sprints.

"Any sort of effort that will spike your heart rate in a short amount of time is effective, says Drew. "One of my favourites is to mark out 50 metres in the park and sprint to one end and have the walk back to the other side as the rest."

The key is exerting yourself as hard as you possibly can during your work interval.

"You will know when you're doing it right because you will be pushing the absolute limit of your cardiovascular threshold."

Trent believes a five, ten or 15 minute workout is also a great way for reluctant or non-existent exercisers to ease into a regular exercise routine.

"If someone doesn't read much, you're not going to tell them to dig up a book with 800 pages in it, you'll give them a 100 page book and suggest they read for 5 minutes a day. It's the same thing with exercise, you just need to retrain the brain to do a bit more every day."

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