Can a one-minute workout whip you into shape?

We all know we should be exercising – it makes us look better, feel better and reduces our risk of developing cardiovascular disease, diabetes and even some cancers – but we’re all so pushed for time.

So what if you could work out in the comfort of your own home, in the time it takes to make yourself a cup of tea? That’s the promise of The One-Minute Workout: Science Shows a Way To Get Fit That’s Smarter, Faster, Shorter.

The book’s author, Dr Martin Gibala, who chairs the department of kinesiology at Canada’s McMaster University, has spent more than a decade researching the most efficient way to exercise and is the author of dozens of academic papers on the subject.

If you’ve heard about high-intensity interval training (HIIT) it’s thanks, in part, to him. It works on the premise that in a 20-minute session of 30-­second bursts of intense exercise interspersed with recovery periods, you can get the same results as from more sustained training at a lower intensity.

But this new book proves you don’t even need to spend 20 minutes on your workout – although, as Gibala admits, the one-minute workout will actually take you longer than a minute. “It’s one minute of exertion split into three 20-second ‘all-out’ intervals, with one to two minutes of recovery in between each interval, a three-minute warm-up, and a two-minute cool down,” he says.

The results of a trial that compared this workout with a moderate-paced 50-minute workout were staggering.

“The two groups trained three times a week on stationary bikes. After 12 weeks, both groups had improved their cardiovascular fitness by 19 per cent, despite one group spending one fifth of the time in the saddle,” says Gibala.

But you don’t have to be in the peak of physical fitness, or have a bike, to benefit from this type of training.

“Studies have been done on older people, obese people, people with diabetes, people with cardiovascular disease,” he says. “It’s effective even if all you’re doing is going for a walk.”

The book suggests “The Beginner” workout: a gentle stroll for three minutes, speed up until you are breathing deeply but could still maintain ­conversation, do that for three minutes, then ease off to a pace between the two for three minutes, speed up for three minutes and ­repeat for a total of half an hour.

“One study showed that this sort of interval walking cut fat mass and body mass and improved the ability of people with type 2 diabetes to control their blood sugar, while continuous walking did not.”

So why is this sort of thing so effective? The theory is that the changes that exercise drives in the body come about because the body registers it is losing a lot of energy.

That can happen after 45 minutes of moderate training, rather like when the fuel warning light comes on in your car, or, if you’re training really hard, the body can perceive this as a sudden loss of fuel that demands a response.

While acknowledging that Gibala and his group have done some good studies, other experts are wary of ­endorsing super-speedy workouts.

“There can be a misconception that the benefits are cumulative, that if you can improve your fitness by 10 per cent in two weeks, in another two weeks it will go up another 10 per cent,” says Dr Gary Brickley, senior lecturer in exercise physiology at the University of Brighton. “But I think, like most training principles, it will plateau after a while; we also don’t know, if you stop training, how quickly you lose any benefits.”

He adds that it’s important that exercise is sustainable long term – many worry extreme-intensity bursts aren’t – and that other aspects of fitness, such as resistance or weight training, should also be included in a training regime. But ultimately, he says, “one minute – or short bursts – of intense exercise may provide more physiological benefits than doing nothing.” Basically, if your excuse is that you don’t have time to exercise, you just lost it.

One-Minute Workout by Martin Gibala (Vermilion, £14.99)