Nothing beats indoor rowing

There is no shortcut to hard work, but if you aim for maximum results in return for minimum time invested in your fitness routine, look no further than the humble rowing machine.

The full-body nature of rowing makes it one of the most effective workouts you can do, whether for burning fat, toning muscle or improving cardiac health. The benefits are felt from head to toe, with every stroke seeing almost 85% of the bodies total muscle mass recruited. And unlike running, it comes with zero impact on joints such as your hips and knees. Some go so far as to say rowing is as near to the perfect form of exercise you will find.

Dr Cameron Nichol, a doctor, former Olympic rower, and two-time world silver medalist, believes that rowing is the "most time efficient total body workout" out there.

Despite the many reasons to row for general health and fitness, it's taken a long time for the rowing machine to catch up with the likes of treadmills and spin bikes on the gym floor. For many, the rowing machine remains a mysterious piece of apparatus that is far too easily neglected. "As a rowing industry, we've known for decades that we're responsible for not communicating how to row well," Nichol told Business Insider. "It's a really valuable movement, but the problem is we don't grow up with it, whereas we do running and cycling." However, the rowing stroke is a very easy movement to learn and can be mastered in just a few minutes with the help of online resources, including WaterRower's HowtoRow website.

Nichol agrees that the highly effective nature of the workout is down to the fact that it uses virtually every muscle in the body - and he proved this in a recent experiment. On Channel 4's How to Get Fit Fast TV show, Nichol conducted a small experiment at the University of Roehampton that compared the overall training stimulus of running on a treadmill versus rowing indoors.

First was calorie expenditure, how many people measure their workouts - and in these raw terms, running and rowing were found to provide similar results. The subject on the treadmill burnt 350 calories, while the person on the rowing machine expended about 335 - but Nichol says you shouldn't just think about calories.

He points to another measurement - the electrodes - to prove the effectiveness of the workout. According to Nichol, the electrodes showed how much electricity was going through each muscle group during the workout, which means "how hard and how fast those muscles are working," according to Nichol. The results showed that rowing activated more muscle groups than running.

Rowing activates nine muscle groups and 85% of the body's musculature, according to Nichol. It will work your upper and lower body, tone your arms, and strengthen your back. He concludes that you'll get more "bang for your buck" working out on the rowing machine than on the treadmill; with more muscles recruited than either running or cycling, the training stimulus on the body increases and with it, the level of adaptation to training. This means greater improvements to cardiovascular efficiency - your heart and lung health - in less time than running or cycling.

According to research by the mayo clinic, just 20 minutes spent on the rowing machine four times a week is enough to maintain a good level of fitness for most adults. At the same time, other less vigorous forms of exercise require twice the time, or 30 minutes of training five times a week to achieve the same benefit. So if you are looking for a maximum return from your training - not just in terms of fat burning, but overall health and fitness - you may want to look again at the rowing machine.