As winter blends into spring, days become longer, and our thoughts begin to turn to the summer. One of the main benefits of longer days is more time to enjoy some outdoor exercise. The firmer ground underfoot makes exercise more enjoyable, too. As lockdown starts to ease towards a potentially normal summer, this article will help you create your workout plan for when lighter evenings return.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, for many of us, it was hard to find the time to get a workout in during our working day. Now that many of you will be working from home - or retired - there’s no excuse for not having just 10 minutes in your day to do a workout. In this post, we outline a short upper-body workout which complements other workout routines we’ve published on our Staying Active section.

What does “tone up” mean?

When people talk about wanting to tone up, usually they mean they want to have a more defined and sculpted body, and not necessarily bigger muscles. A toned-up body is a slimmer one, with noticeable shape and definition. Toned-up muscles are also firmer and probably a bit bigger than average-think Christian Bale in American Psycho, or Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider.

The inevitable effects of age will cause your gluteal muscles to atrophy, and the fat cells in your bottom to shrink. Your skin will lose its elasticity, and your cellulite will become more visible. What are you left with? A pasty, white, saggy bottom! A droopy bottom. However people want to ridicule it, it doesn’t make us feel good about ourselves.

In this fitness guide, we show you a basic cardio workout that will only take you around 10 minutes to complete. These 10-minute workouts will form part of a series of fitness guides for you to follow every week. Once you’ve started to become more active, you could do two of them together on the same day.

What is a Couch to 5K, and why do one?

Would you rather binge-watch on the latest Netflix series that everybody’s talking about, or run in your local half-marathon?