Fitness
Bespoke – And Bite-Sized – Workouts Can Revolutionise Your Exercise Routine
Most of us are familiar with habit stacking – the practice of adding a new habit with an old one, the theory being that in combining the two it will help you stick to your goals. It seems that there is a similar trend emerging in our approach to working out, in which we’re fitness stacking to build our ideal exercise routines. If, like me, the thought of a 40-minute long HIIT or cardio session convinces you to disregard it before you have even started, then the idea of snacking on shorter exercises one after the other might be for you too.
My newly curated formula of 20 minutes of at-home rowing, bolted on with a 10-minute stretch and 10 minutes of mindfulness, has helped me to get back on track with a workout that motivates in the same time frame. Part of my newfound motivation is the luxury of being able to tap into digital fitness wherever I am, facilitating this new way of stacking my workouts together, depending on what I want to do or what my time allows.
Apple, whose Fitness+ platform has seen huge growth in this style of exercise, with mix-and-match workouts, has developed its short, time-sensitive class offering off the back of the demand for this type of training. The platform’s tech allows users to create a custom plan. “This is about fitness for everyone and making it fun. It’s always been our mission statement,” explains Jay Blahnik, Apple’s vice president of fitness technologies. Guest Fitness+ trainer Joe Wicks, AKA The Body Coach – our very own modern-day Mr Motivator, who kept the nation moving during the pandemic thanks to his at-home YouTube workouts – now advocates for the curated workout that suits our needs today. “Action leads to motivation and a 10 to 15-minute boost of exercise is the sweet spot. Digital fitness is enabling this – you can put 10 minutes of exercise together without effort.”
The personal trainer who regularly puts me through my paces, Luke Worthington, agrees that stacking is conducive to a great workout routine. “A well-balanced health and fitness regime should look to address all five measurable pillars of wellness: strength, cardiovascular fitness, mobility, body composition and emotional wellbeing. At first glance, trying to do all of this potentially from a standing start might make you feel overwhelmed. Creating routines in the first place is the hard part – the trick is to start to add small things bit by bit. Fitness stacking takes advantage of the routine we already have and simply adds to it, without creating extra demand to your motivation.” Fitness stacking has been born out of our appetite for streaming workout classes and signing up to fitness apps. When you have a variety of different exercises in one place, you no longer need to go out of your way to find a new studio or discipline, it’s all in the palm of your hand.
Bryony Deery, founder of Pilates by Bryony, a digital platform that offers a streaming library of more than 400 classes, has also seen a shift in how people are consuming their workouts. “We have noticed more people have created at-home workout stations so they can dip in and out of movement throughout the day, and our classes are designed to be stackable and to work for and with you. One of our most popular classes is a five-minute core workout, which people add onto their Pilates practice, or the 20-minute core and bum-focused class. People use the app to fit around their needs.” The evidence all stacks up.
It never feels like there’s enough time in the day – after prioritising your kids, work and other commitments, simply finding an opportunity to get in the gym can prove tricky. But instead of obsessing over gym sessions, Lawrence Price – former professional rugby player, coach and recent guest on MH’s Built for Life podcast – says busy dads should instead prioritise three weekly pillars.
These pillars are less about creating a perfect environment and more about building consistency that works with your life. The idea is that if life gets hectic and one pillar drops off temporarily, the other two pillars keep progress moving.
‘If pillar one is out the window because we can’t train for a couple of weeks, we can still manipulate things by making sure we’re hit hitting pillar one and three by getting those things on point,’ Price tells MH.
The 3 Pillars Every Busy Dad Should Follow
1. Increase Your Daily Movement
Price is a big proponent of increasing your NEAT – non-exercise activity thermogenesis – which is the energy your body uses for daily, non-structured exercises. These include things like walking more, taking the stairs instead of the lift or escalators, and moving during phone calls.
‘If your training window for the day has gone, then the reality is you can still take phone calls on your feet, you can take the stairs. It’s just boring to talk about – it’s unsexy, it’s uncool. But if you get people into that mindset where, whatever your life looks like, you’re prioritising that need. It’s 15% of your total daily expenditure or more,’ Price says.
‘Even even when your training window is put on the back burner, because the hierarchy of needs outside of your own health needs is obviously undulating and sometimes it pulls us away, whatever circumstance you have during the week, just moving more is something you can go towards.’
2. Strength Training
There’s no such thing as training too little – if you’ve only got time for one gym session a week, then make the most of that time and incorporate some strength training. Compound movements help to stimulate muscle growth efficiently.
‘Resistance training is the second pillar. Even if you only get one or two sessions in a week and it’s a really targeted, simple, basic functional hypertrophy routine, you know that when you’re sitting at your desk or when you’re doing the school run, your body is trying to adapt to that stimulus.’
‘If pillars one and two are the energy output pillars, pillar three is the energy input pillar,’ Price concludes.
‘If we have a rough idea of eating in alignment with our energetic needs and body composition goals, even if the environment changes we can still embody the habits and actions that align with our goals and and our visions.’
This is crucial for when you might not have time to train as much as you’d like – adapting your nutrition will still keep you on track with your goals, even if you’re expending less daily energy.
If there’s one thing Kori Sampson knows, it’s how to optimise your body composition for performance. To tap into his knowledge as an elite athlete and coach, we asked him to create a 4-week plan to help you move faster, recover quicker and keep pushing when the fatigue sets in – all while improving your muscle-to-fat ratio.
Ready to build muscle, burn fat and come out the other side looking, feeling and performing better? Click here to get 14 days of free access to the plan via the Men’s Health app.
Ryan is a Senior Writer at Men’s Health UK with a passion for storytelling, health and fitness. Having graduated from Cardiff University in 2020, and later obtaining his NCTJ qualification, Ryan started his career as a Trainee News Writer for sports titles Golf Monthly, Cycling Weekly and Rugby World before progressing to Staff Writer and subsequently Senior Writer with football magazine FourFourTwo.
During his two-and-a-half years there he wrote news stories for the website and features for the magazine, while he also interviewed names such as Les Ferdinand, Ally McCoist, Jamie Redknapp and Antonio Rudiger, among many others. His standout memory, though, came when getting the opportunity to speak to then-Plymouth Argyle manager Steven Schumacher as the club won League One in 2023.
Having grown up a keen footballer and playing for his boyhood side until the age of 16, Ryan got the opportunity to represent Northern Ireland national futsal team eight times, scoring three goals against England, Scotland and Gibraltar. Now past his peak, Ryan prefers to mix weightlifting with running – he achieved a marathon PB of 3:31:49 at Manchester in April 2025, but credits the heat for failing to get below the coveted 3:30 mark…
You can follow Ryan on Instagram or on X
Fitness
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The latest NHS exercise guidance reinforces what we’ve been preaching for years: hitting that 150-minute weekly movement target isn’t necessarily a get-out-of-jail-free card. It states that prolonged sedentary time is independently harmful, even for those of us who diligently carve out time for the gym. Verbatim, it says ‘prolonged sitting is harmful, even in people who achieve the recommended levels of moderate to vigorous physical activity’.
Chief Medical Officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty has been especially vocal about how detrimental it could be, highlighting hybrid working as a potential health hazard. ‘Without wanting to exaggerate, I think it’s important people think through, for example, hybrid working means quite a lot of people could very easily do very little other than leave their homes, where previously people would be routinely going to work, and that often meant at least some physical [activity],’ he said at a briefing.
I understand his logic, but it’s pretty reductive. Working from home isn’t the villain here – working from one chair is.
When we label remote work as “bad for your health”, we risk throwing the baby out with the bath water. In reality, for many – certainly the whole of the Women’s Health office, but also my less-fitness-conscious sister and stepdad, plus my entire friendship group – working from home often means being more active. It means more time to fit in a lunchtime run, to get some steps in before work, or to run some errands on a quick break.
On the other hand, plenty of office workers are more sedentary than they are at home. They sit at a desk for nine hours straight before driving home, whether to be seen to work tirelessly in front of their manager, or simply because they’re pulled from pillar to post in an office setting. For those who do have an office commute, eliminating that often stressful period of the day allows for better sleep, and more time for the movement breaks we need to break up the dreaded sedentary time. Not to mention that many commutes are almost entirely sedentary on a train/tube/bus.
The potential problem, the advice suggests, is the lack of incidental movement – the walk to the train, the stroll to a meeting room, or heading out for lunch – that’s naturally baked into your day when you’re in the “official” office. Without a commute or a day in the office, the onus is on you to manufacture movement in.
Regular stretching counts as a movement break
Without sounding evangelical, I’ve made this a non-negotiable part of my day. On WFH days, I work out or walk every single morning before I log on, and walk again every evening, even if just a lap around the block. During the day, I have a personal rule: if I’m downstairs, I use the upstairs toilet (and vice versa). Sounds excessive, but it forces me to activate my muscles and add to my step count every few hours.
Beyond that, the options are endless if you’re intentional. Use a standing desk or put your laptop on a kitchen worktop during calls. Take every phone meeting on foot, pacing your hallway if necessary. Set a timer to stand up every 30 mins to stretch, grab a glass of water, or do a quick load of laundry.
We don’t need to return to the office to be healthy; we need to bring movement back into our homes. The goal: to stop being professional sitters.
As Women’s Health UK’s fitness director and a qualified Pilates and yoga instructor, Bridie Wilkins has been passionately reporting on exercise, health and nutrition since the start of her decade-long career in journalism.
After earning a first-class degree in journalism and NCTJ accreditation, she secured her first role at Look Magazine, where she launched the magazine’s health and fitness column, Look Fit, before going on to become Health and Fitness writer at HELLO!
Since, she has written for Stylist, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Elle, The Metro, Runner’s World and Red. Today, she oversees all fitness content across Women’s Health online and in print, spearheading leading cross-platform franchises, such as ‘Fit At Any Age’, which showcases the women proving that age is no barrier to exercise.
She has also represented the brand on BBC Radio London, plus various podcasts and Substacks – all with the aim to encourage more women to exercise and show them how. Outside of work, find her trying the latest Pilates studio, testing her VO2 max for fun (TY, Oura), or posting workouts on Instagram.
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