Sometimes it’s best to keep it simple with your workouts, because if you can just find the motivation to move for 20 minutes on any given day, you’ll be helping to improve your physical fitness and mental health.
This 20-minute standing HIIT workout will help you summon that motivation. It’s fun, accessible to all fitness levels and doesn’t require any equipment at all. If you have a place to stand and move from side to side, then you have all you need to get fitter and stronger.
The workout has been put together by fitness trainer Oliver Sjostrom and is a no-repeat full-body workout where the aim is to get your heart rate up during the intervals to boost your metabolism, burn calories and improve your cardio fitness.
If you have one of the best yoga mats to hand, then it’s worth rolling that out to stand on for extra traction and to catch your sweat. But if not, then you can do this session without any kit. It might be a fun one to do outside, in fact, provided the weather is nice.
Watch Oliver Sjostrom’s 20-minute standing HIIT workout
With each exercise in the session, you work for 45 seconds and then rest for 15 seconds. There are no repeat moves, so you’ll be doing 20 different standing bodyweight exercises in the workout.
Sjostrom does the workout with you along with fellow trainer Alessia Valastro, so you can follow their movements on screen to get your form right.
It’s also worth trying to stick with their pace to ensure you’re working at a good speed with each exercise and get the most from the session.
Of course, you can take longer breaks if you’re finding the workout too hard, moving to 40 seconds on and 20 seconds off, or 30 seconds on and off. Find the right balance for your fitness level so you’re working hard but can complete the workout.
While the workout is done standing, some jumping exercises help boost your heart rate, so it’s not entirely a low-impact session. That said, if you do wish to avoid jumping, you can modify those moves easily to stay grounded.
You’ll also be doing some classic compound exercises like squats and lunges, which engage multiple joints and muscle groups at once, often in combination with arm exercises like shadow-boxing.
As a result, this workout is great for both cardio fitness and full-body strength, making it an effective all-around option for those who don’t have a lot of time to train and want to maximize what they can achieve in 20 minutes.
Once you’re comfortable with this session, you’ll need to progress in some way to avoid hitting a plateau. A simple option is to use dumbbells for some of the exercises. This 15-minute standing dumbbell workout is a good option for those looking to move on who do have weights available.