Zero Training: This Japanese trend workout is designed to tone your body in just 5 minutes

Barre workouts, Piloxing, hula hooping—the fitness world is constantly spawning new exercise trends. They all ultimately promise the same thing: boost fat burning, help with weight loss, and strengthen muscles. Easy! A Japanese fitness trainer has now developed a method that claims to have a similar effect—but with minimal effort: "zero training."

Tomomi Ishimura founded the yoga studio "Body Tone" in New York and wrote a book titled "The Zero Training Method." The Japanese woman recommends her easy-to-follow workout primarily to those who aren't exercise-minded and just want to start somewhere. However, it's suitable for all fitness levels. The best thing about zero training: You can do it comfortably at home in just five minutes.

So what exactly is Zero Training?

Zero training is designed to help counteract muscle pain, train and tone muscles, and ultimately help you lose weight. According to Tomomi Ishimura, poor posture and unhealthy habits (yes, we mean hunched over while working on the couch with a laptop on your lap) are primarily responsible for our bodies becoming flabby and accumulating fat over the years. And usually, this happens exactly where we DON'T want it.

"When different parts of the body contract, they lose alignment with the zero position. Circulation and metabolism are compromised, and this can lead to weight gain, deterioration of the figure, and other problems," the trainer reveals on Instagram. This also directly explains what the "zero" or "null" in the name of her training method means: The goal is to restore the zero position, the ideal state of posture.

With just five minutes of daily effort, Zero Training aims to achieve this zero position with gentle breathing, stretching, and muscle-activating exercises. This should then form the basis for us becoming overall firmer, healthier, and lighter.

Zero Training: How to do the mini workout

For the exercises, you should lie on your back on the floor, preferably on a yoga mat. Ideally, you'll have a few pillows or yoga bolsters to help you get into the correct position. In this Instagram video, Tomomi Ishimura demonstrates exactly how to assume the zero position:

And here she shows you one of the exercises:

Tomomi Ishimura explains the other exercises in detail on her Instagram account .

Does Zero Training deliver what it promises?

Tomomi Ishimura claims that you can lose weight with Zero Training—and should lose up to seven centimeters from your waistline. But whether restoring this zero-point approach really leads to fat loss and weight loss is scientifically questionable. Not every body experiences the same effect from a particular training method. While some torture themselves for an hour every day in the gym and lose little or no weight, others do one downward dog a week, and the pounds just seem to fall off. Not to mention that, in addition to genetics, eating habits and other lifestyles also contribute to our fitness.

But either way, our health can benefit from better posture. We can combat back pain and other musculoskeletal problems with the gentle stretching and muscle exercises of Zero Training. The breathing exercises help us to be more mindful of ourselves and our bodies. This way, we gain a better sense of our body – regardless of our weight.

mbl Brigitte

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