I tried Harry Styles’ 20-minute MMA-inspired workout, and it’s one of the hardest celebrity workouts I’ve ever done

I went full beast mode and tried one of the singer’s MMA-inspired workouts for myself

The Independent's fitness writer Harry Bullmore spoke to Harry Styles' former trainer Thibo David, then tried one of the singer’s workouts (Harry Bullmore / The Independent)

Being called Harry, I have a high bar to live up to. One Harry is a literal prince, another is England men’s all-time leading goalscorer, a further fictitious wizard needs no introduction, and then there’s Harry Styles – grammy-winning heartthrob.

As The Independent’s fitness writer, one of the few areas I can hope to hold a candle to my cohorts is athleticism. So when I had the chance to chat to Styles’ former trainer Thibo David, I was keen to sample some of Styles’ workouts.

Styles trained with Executive Peak Performance founder David ahead of his Love on Tour shows in 2021 and the pair would regularly meet for 10-20km runs and two-hour gym sessions. If you want to provide a high-energy stadium show, impressive fitness levels are a prerequisite, it would seem.

Within these brutal gym sessions, Styles regularly faced 20-minute conditioning protocols inspired by David’s background in MMA. Intrigued, I asked for an example, then headed straight to the gym to give it a go. And it left me on my back.

How to do Harry Styles’ 20-minute MMA-inspired workout

Complete four rounds of:

• Alternating arm kettlebell clean x30sec
• Burpee x30sec
• D-ball or sandbag over shoulder (Styles uses 30kg) x1min
• Max height tuck jump x30sec
• Max effort SkiErg x1min
• Fast run/treadmill x30sec
• Rest x1min

“For the conditioning workouts, we would do three or four rounds of four minutes with minimal time in between,” David tells me. “I take that from fighting conditioning. Fighters train like this to get ready for the five-minute rounds in MMA. I’ve found this to be a very good way of building VO2 max [the maximum amount of oxygen your body can take in and use during exercise].”

The point of the workout is to push, and push hard. “Doing that circuit four times is a big achievement,” David adds.

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Harry Styles in Steven Stokey-Daley’s SS Daley fashion label last year (Ian West/PA) (PA Archive)

What happened when I tried Harry Styles’ workout

I fall to the ground and flip onto my back; legs leaden, dragon’s breath firing into the freezing cold air. My chest is rising and falling like the tide, and there doesn’t seem to be a single muscle in my body that isn’t sore in some way. To find out how I wound up in this situation, we need to rewind a little.

I rock up to the gym on a freezing cold Tuesday morning to give this workout a try, and I’m feeling optimistic. I’ve tried a lot of workouts from celebrities, athletes and even Olympians in the past, and always survived to tell the tale.

After a quick warm-up, I ready my equipment – a 24kg kettlebell, 40kg sandbag, SkiErg machine and accessible running route – then set a 20-minute clock and hit “start”.

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Styles’ workouts are not for the faint-hearted, the man is as much as athlete as he is a performer (PA)

The workout begins

The workout kicks off with 30 seconds of alternating arm kettlebell cleans; a full-body exercise requiring a decent dose of strength, power and coordination. I begin by switching hands with the weight on the floor, but when the kettlebell moves smoothly I switched to transitioning as I lower it from my shoulder. This speeds things up significantly, and I soon find my heart is pounding.

Then come the burpees, which again recruit muscles across my upper and lower body to keep my heart rate high. But CrossFit is my go-to training style, so I’m no stranger to this exercise, and rattle through 10 without too much trouble.

Next on the agenda is one minute of sandbag-over-shoulders – a move which very much does what it says on the tin. Styles usually uses a 30kg D-ball (or slam ball) for this, David says, but I only have a 40kg sandbag handy so sub it in. I’ll regret this later.

“We do a lot of heavy ball throws,” David tells me. “We would grab a 30kg ball from the floor, opening up the hips, getting into the most natural squat position to lift up an object, then clear the shoulder, turn around and do it again.”

I usually weave a fair amount of sandbag exercises into my regular training, so I’m not too nervous about this part. But after 30 seconds, my quads and upper body are on fire, and the sandbag is spoon-feeding me some humility.

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Thibo David has been training Styles for years and recruits a variety of styles and techniques for maximum strength and flexibility (AFP/Getty)

Fatigue sets in

From here, I move on to 30 seconds of tuck jumps. My battered legs strain to gain some height, but I can feel each bound getting less and less powerful. I’m forced to take a short break in the middle, then transition to the SkiErg machine.

“This is a max-effort, along with the run,” David advises. But after accumulating a good deal of fatigue over the last two-and-a-half minutes, my maximum effort is far from impressive. I challenge myself to hold a pace of 1,000 calories/hour on the Concept2 machine throughout, and just about succeed.

Finally, I wheel away and lollop to the door for the 30-second run. It’s like wading through a swimming pool filled with custard, but I manage to cover a bit of ground before the timer sounds.

That’s round one complete. In one minute, I’ll do it all again, then again, and again. A quick glance at my watch suggests my heart rate has shot beyond 170, which doesn’t happen particularly often. This could be a long 20 minutes.

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The Independent's fitness writer Harry Bullmore after finishing Harry Styles' 20-minute MMA-inspired workout (Harry Bullmore / The Independent)

Rinse and repeat

Over the next two rounds, though I continue to push just as hard, I lose a couple of reps on each exercise. Burpees fall from 10 reps to eight, sandbag-over-shoulders fall from 12 to nine, and I’m so tired by the time I get to the tuck jumps that I lose count.

For the final circuit, I resolve to try and reclaim my pace from the first round, and attempt to access one final reserve of energy to do so. But it’s not easy.

My muscles feel like they’ve been sapped of all strength, keeping my breathing steady requires conscious effort and my Celtic genes mean my face now resembles a perfectly ripe tomato. However, I manage it, then allow myself to collapse and recuperate.

“How was that?” a fellow gym-goer laughs. “Fun,” I tell them. “A funny sort of fun, but fun nonetheless. Fair play Harry Styles.”

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“Harry [Styles] has a very playful attitude towards exercise, which makes everything easier” (Getty Images)

Harry Styles’ workout: The verdict

I like sharing athlete and celebrity workouts for two main reasons; one, I think it’s interesting, and two, it can be a fun way to make movement more appealing. And that’s always the goal – help as many people find ways to enjoy movement, and the many benefits that come with it, as possible.

“Harry [Styles] has a very playful attitude towards exercise, which makes everything easier,” David tells me. “I think people should probably embrace that a little bit more. Nobody forces you to exercise. Training is supposed to be fun.”

Saying that, this isn’t one for beginners. The workout is hard – one of the hardest celebrity sessions I’ve tried – and exercises like the kettlebell clean and sandbag-over-shoulder require a bit of practice before you pop them in a high-intensity workout.

There are ways you can scale the workout if you’re fairly new to fitness and want to give it a try. Because the exercises are all performed for a set amount of time rather than a prescribed number of reps, you can go at your own speed and use weights that suit your strength level. While you build up the skill and confidence needed to tackle the workout as written, you might also swap some of the more demanding exercises out for other full-body moves you feel more comfortable with.

Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the workout. I love a challenge, and it delivered that in spades.

By centering the session around dynamic, compound (multi-muscle) movements performed at high-intensity, David kept my heart rate high throughout and recruited muscles across my entire body. The workout also tested several facets of fitness at once, from strength, speed and power to coordination and agility, rather than honing in on one at a time. And finally, the inclusion of less common training tools like kettlebells and sandbags forced me to move my body in a range of different ways.

So, if you’re an experienced gym-goer looking for a celebrity-inspired fitness challenge, give this a go and you’ll be golden (sorry).

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