What’s the best workout? It’s a bit of a cop-out, but the correct answer is the one you actually do. Another common variation is “the one you enjoy”, but that isn’t quite as critical as “actually do”, although it certainly helps. It’s a truism that bears repeating at this time of year, when you’re wont to make ambitious, if not wildly unrealistic, resolutions in a post-festive fug of self-loathing and Quality Street wrappers.

There are many ways to get fit, at least one of which will work for you – if you do it. For that to happen, you first need to get into the habit of exercising regularly. You can sign up for a monthly gym membership, but that doesn’t mean you’ll go, as you doubtless already know. Below, MR PORTER has rounded up some ways of getting fit in 2020 that make working out a bit less like work.

A literal manifestation of New Year, new you, body transformation programmes have become increasingly popular, thanks in part to all the before-and-after posts shared by fitness communities such as the Mr Mark Wahlberg-backed F45. This global studio’s first eight-week Challenge of 2019 kicks off in February, at no extra cost on top of the £30 classes (though it is a lot of classes – as many as you can manage per week). It offers a gruelling blend of high-intensity cardio and strength training, plus meal plans and goal tracking (via an app) and the added (peer) pressure of competing alongside all the other challengers. Please note, the old you will reappear unless you maintain some of the radical diet and lifestyle overhaul afterwards.

“Pre-committing” locks in your future behaviour, and nothing motivates like a deadline. Scheduled exercise also increases adherence, as does accountability. At Roar Fitness, a personal training gym that has just opened its second outpost in the City of London, you’ll have to answer to former Olympic speed skater Ms Sarah Lindsay, who performs body alchemy with her athletic-style method. Prices vary depending on your goals. Meanwhile, transatlantic healthista club Equinox, which recently expanded to a third UK location in Bishopsgate, insists that its Tier X “personal training and lifestyle management programme” (£130 per session in addition to the £200 monthly membership), which incorporates nutrition and sleep coaching, is “the most advanced in London”.

Body transformation isn’t rocket science or magic. Train progressively harder, watch what you eat and ab-racadabra! Investing in a greater degree of individual programming and attention should deliver more return. At Lanserhof, the state-of-the-art medical-wellness facility at the Arts Club on Dover Street in London (£6,500 annually plus £1,500 joining fee if you’re not a member of the latter), you’ll receive, among other high-tech wizardry, motion-capture gait analysis in the movement and spine lab and MRI body composition. If indeed you want to know.

Behavioural science holds, fairly obviously, that if you want to make yourself do something, make it easy. If your gym is even slightly out of your way, you won’t go. Home gym equipment removes one excuse not to exercise.

Design-led (well, it is Italian) fitness equipment manufacturer TechnoGym’s new Bike, which streams live and on-demand classes from studios such as Revolution by Virgin Active in Milan and 1Rebel in London, is a belated answer to Peloton. The “Netflix of fitness”, meanwhile, is opening a London studio, so you can ride a class live IRL then see yourself in the background when you ride it on demand at home the next day.

Mirror, a 52in £1,140 looking glass-cum-screen that The New York Times dubbed “the most narcissistic exercise equipment ever”, is garnering headlines and celeb endorsements. Not so much like something out of an episode of Black Mirror as a literal black mirror, functions include fitness classes (Hiit, boxing, yoga and more), personal training (via the built-in camera) and checking your fit (as in outfit).

On a lower-tech note, Auster’s suspension trainer, the brainchild of Mr Andrew Siu, who helped prototype and produce the ubiquitous TRX, can also claim to be the only piece of kit you need. OK, several pieces if you count the detachable straps, rings and resistance bands.

You already have a screen that can beam all the fitness content you could ever need, albeit a small one that can be hard to see while you’re trying to follow along, and there is a multitude of decent apps for getting fit – not least Aaptiv, which is audio-guided.

Nike Training Club leverages the mighty Swoosh’s contacts list to give you workouts from famous athletes such as Mr Cristiano Ronaldo. Similarly star-powered, Mr Chris Hemsworth’s Centr is a holistic blend of workouts, meal plans and guided meditations from the stacked actor and his team of hand-picked experts who promise to transform you from Thor in Avengers: Endgame to Thor in all the other Marvel films.

If you’re into fitness, then the big-following instructors on Fiit will be Insta-ntly recognisable, whereas the hugely popular Freeletics relies on AI to personalise your training. Peloton’s award-winning app isn’t restricted to cycling or running, or people who buy its bikes and treadmills. And if you prefer to cycle or run outside, then Strava, which shows you nearby routes that others have completed, is predicated on another tenet of behavioural science – you’re more likely to do something if other people are doing it, too (and there’s a chance to beat them).

Retreats aren’t a novel concept, but suddenly it seems as though every fitness provider worth its Himalayan salt is offering them and the wellness travel sector is forecast to reach £701bn by 2022. Today’s active holiday is generally more intense than the term “retreat”, with its connotations of a gentle yoga session by the side of the pool at a villa in the Tuscan hills has hitherto implied, but not as brutal as a boot camp, mercifully.

Equinox predicts that “achievement-based travel” will be big in 2020 – as well it might. It has embarked on its own Equinox Explore experiences, which include hiking in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, cycling the Hudson Valley and a running tour of Florence. Equinox is hardly flying solo. London’s Third Space group has launched Escapes, coincidentally also to the Atlas Mountains. BXR, the Marylebone boxing gym backed by heavyweight champ Mr Anthony Joshua, has launched training camp-style retreats in combination with the five-star Daios Cove Resort in Crete. Even Men’s Health magazine has diversified and is hosting a fitness retreat in Italy this February.

As far as building fitness or losing weight goes, you can only achieve so much on a retreat. But given that your environment dictates your behaviour to a much greater extent than you realise or would like to admit, changing the former might help you change the latter – for a week or so, anyway.

No matter how short and supposedly painless the latest workout fad, getting and staying fit is by definition a struggle. Our brains are hardwired to conserve energy, a prudent survival mechanism when resources were scarce that works against us now we’ve developed Deliveroo and Seamless.

Learning a skill at the same time as working out can distract you from the pain and keep you coming back for more. This explains the continued popularity of boxing as a form of exercise and the battery of pugilistic gym openings, such as Rumble in Dalston, not to be confused with the US franchise; JAB in Mayfair, founded by erstwhile prize-winning fighter Mr George Veness, previously of Bodyism, and Ms Jamie Landesberg of 4 The People; and Sweat by BXR in Canary Wharf, the members’ fight club’s pay-as-you-throw studio concept.

Less combatively, a growing number of airy, sun-filled studios such as Lift: The Movement, which also teaches jiujitsu, and Move Hackney offer gymnastics-style training and are a welcome alternative to all the high-intensity, high-impact dungeons with low lighting and thumping sound systems. What trend forecasting agency The Future Laboratory called “a more measured approach to building strength”, slowly progressing towards a handstand or muscle-up, also incentivises, nay obliges, you to pay proper attention to mobility, flexibility and all that worthy but tiresome stuff that you’d otherwise not bother with.