Instagram tells us that celebs can spend hours in the gym each day, particularly when they're preparing to don superhero suits for a Marvel or DC movie role. However, if you train the right way, you can fit an effective home workout into just half an hour.
You don't need a fully-stocked gym either. A pair of the best adjustable dumbbells make for a compact, versatile at-home training tool, allowing you to change the weight to suit your strength level and up the load as you become stronger.
This is ideal for making the most of the muscle-building progressive overload principle. However, if you don't have a pair of these, a fixed weight set or even a couple of kettlebells will suffice.
A prime example of time-efficient training is this full-body dumbbell workout from yoga, wellness and fitness trainer Rhiannon Bailey. It's a circuit of five moves that hit every major muscle group in your body using just a pair of dumbbells and your bodyweight.
Perform the first exercise (alternating devil press) for 45 seconds, rest for 15 seconds, then start on the next movement. Once you've completed all five exercises, that's one round. Repeat this five times to finish the workout.
Watch Bailey's video below to find out the four other exercises that await you, and follow her lead to nail down your form. Make sure you can perform each movement with good technique, then get ready to sweat.
Watch Rhiannon Bailey's full-body dumbbell workout
With its intense bursts of work and short rest times, Bailey's session has all the hallmarks of a HIIT workout for fat loss. This partly explains why she's able to fit an effective workout into only 25 minutes, keeping the intensity elevated throughout to spike your heart rate and boost your metabolism.
However, with the addition of weighted movements like the devil press and squat to overhead press, we think this session can more accurately be defined as high-intensity resistance training or HIRT. This newer twist on HIIT maintains the calorie-burning intensity of its predecessor while adding weighted movements to develop strength and build muscle at the same time.
If you're looking to give this workout a go but don't know where it should sit among your existing training plans, we recommend using it as a standalone daily session. You'll also want to give your muscles a chance to recuperate the following day, to get the best results.
So, swerve resistance training in favor of a recovery session with one of the best foam rollers or a slower run (like one of the early workouts from our running plan for beginners).
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