Want To Feel Fitter? Try This 5-Minute Workout In Your Daily Routine

You’re reading Move, the nudge we need to get active, however makes us happiest and healthiest.

If you want to feel fitter and healthier, crash diets and gruelling fitness regimes are not the answer. Instead, making small and simple changes to your lifestyle will help.

You can visit the NHS weight management programme for support if you are worried about being overweight. Doctors will often recommend gradually integrating more movement into your day, and trying a five-minute home workout is a great place to start for your body and your mental health.

HuffPost UK already has lots of examples, and below, you’ll find a new routine from Natalie Blair, who’s an instructor and presenter at Les Mills (you might have heard of their classes, such as BodyPump, BodyCombat and BodyBalance).

“Below are five of BodyCombat’s main moves that really get the core working,” Blair says. “A 55-minute class is the equivalent to 1700 crunches! A brilliant workout to burn calories, you can do this at home on Les Mills+ or in your local gym.

“Even doing each of these moves by themselves at home will get the heart rate up! Plus, it won’t take very long at all.”

Jabs

A body combat staple. In a front stance, feet parallel starting with your firsts on your jaw, fully extend the arms whilst rotating through the waist line and getting the shoulders as close to your jaw as possible before returning the fist to the jaw. Visualisation works wonders here, do as many as you can in 30 seconds and repeat five times. Heart rate is gonna go up!

Uppercuts

This is a one for the external obliques. Combat stance this time (one foot in front of the other, stance longer than it is wider) lean to the side, dropping into the waist extend the arm forward (imagine striking under the jaw of your opponent) and pull back quickly to guard. With lots of reps and rotation, this definitely gets the core working hard.

Knees

Brilliant for working the core, there’s so many variations to this move, but to begin, bring your hands high above your head and as you throw the knee up, pull your hands towards the outside of your hips. Ensuring you crunch the ribs down to the hips every time will get the midsection fired up.

Front kick

Perfect for the core again but this time the hamstrings too! Combat stance, lift the knee like you did earlier with knee strike, this time extend the leg, kicking with the ball of the foot and return before landing the kicking leg. Lean back and brace the core for more balance.

Side kick

This is the one for shaping the glutes. Turn your grounded heel towards your imagined target, lifting the striking leg’s knee as high as you can towards your chest. Push the edge of your foot away with power and return knee to chest before dropping. Doing 10 of these on each leg, three times over, will have you feeling it.

Move celebrates exercise in all its forms, with accessible features encouraging you to add movement into your day – because it’s not just good for the body, but the mind, too. We get it: workouts can be a bit of a slog, but there are ways you can move more without dreading it. Whether you love hikes, bike rides, YouTube workouts or hula hoop routines, exercise should be something to enjoy.