The New Fitness Collabs

Want to get in shape for 2018? This year, fitness is all about streamlining your regime with two complementary workouts. Jessica Salter introduces the dynamic duos you should know about

- Jessica Salter

At our family dinner table 15 years ago, listening to a tense debate between our mum and aunt about which workout was better for you – yoga or Pilates – my brothers and I sniggeringly invented what we thought was the perfect solution: yogalates. It would combine the core-improving benefits of Pilates with the breathing of yoga… Little did we know how ahead of the curve we were*.

Fast forward to 2018 and I’m gripping hold of a barre, trying to plié while lifting a 4kg kettlebell. The combination of swinging it and attempting a graceful ballet move means I’m unthinkingly ‘zipping up’ my core and building my, ahem, guns of steel. I’m a multitasking fitness machine, which is exactly why the latest trend for combination classes has taken off. We know we’re meant to do cardio, resistance training and some kind of stretch class but, frankly, who has time to schedule them all in? But we should, because pairing opposing workouts is far more effective. ‘Studies suggest that a combination of strength and endurance training in one session can result in exactly the same fitness gains as you’d get from two separate sessions,’ says Dr Amal Hassan, who specialises in sports and exercise medicine. He explains that it’s down to increased capillarisation (higher numbers of small blood vessels within the muscle) supplying more oxygen, hormones and energy to exercising tissues. Hassan adds, ‘Even once-weekly combination sessions can improve strength, power and endurance more than twice-weekly resistance or endurance sessions on their own.’ Great news for the time-poor.

YOGA X RUNNING