Most gym-goers have asked themselves the same question: If I just train harder and longer, will I see double the results?
For British adventurers and identical twins Hugo and Ross Turner, that question became the basis of a full-blown experiment — one that challenged one of fitness’s most persistent beliefs: that more time in the gym means more progress.
The 36-year-old brothers, born in Exeter and best known for their global expeditions and self-experiments, spent 12 weeks testing whether doubling your workout time actually produces double the gains. The results, as they told Men’s Health, were “epically curious.”
“Because we’re twins we can directly compare one fitness regime to another or one diet versus another,” Ross said. “We wanted to identify whether doing double 20-minutes is more efficient — would you see double the gains? Interestingly, through our gym programme, we found out some epically-curious results that I think will cause a lot of people to question what they’re doing in the gym.”
The Experiment
The Turner Twins are no strangers to pushing limits. They’ve rowed the Atlantic, climbed Mount Elbrus, and trekked across Greenland’s polar ice cap. But this challenge took place closer to home — inside Virgin Active gyms in London, where both brothers trained side by side under identical conditions.
Each followed the same strength-endurance workout, featuring four exercises — deadlifts, squats, bench presses, and stretching — with 14 reps per set across four sets.
The twist? Hugo stopped after 20 minutes, while Ross restarted the timer and repeated the entire circuit for 40 minutes.
“Every single day, we had a blueprint of how our bodies were reacting to the 40-minutes vs 20-minutes,” Hugo explained.
Across the 12 weeks, Ross spent 2,280 total minutes training, while Hugo logged 1,240. Both consumed roughly 2,000–2,500 calories per day, eating practically the same meals.
Tracking Every Rep And Result
Before each session, the twins stepped onto Boditrax machines to measure weight, body fat percentage, and muscle mass. They also performed strength and cardio tests — including max push-ups, pull-ups, one-rep maxes for bench press and deadlift, and a VO2 submaximal test on a watt bike to assess cardiovascular fitness.
Ross started around one kilogram heavier than Hugo (about 88.5kg to Hugo’s 87kg), and both followed near-parallel progress throughout the trial.
“At the start, Ross started around a kilo heavier than me and throughout the whole twelve weeks we tracked and trended exactly the same,” Hugo said. “So there was no massive difference in our weight, either an increase or decrease.”
By the end, both had improved their overall fitness and strength — but the data revealed just how minimal the difference was between the two training approaches.
The Results: 40 Minutes Vs 20 Minutes
After three months of double-duty sessions, Ross expected his extra 16 hours of gym time to translate into serious gains. Instead, the brothers found only a 5% difference between their results.
“The results show that there’s less than a 5% uplift for the 40-minutes,” Hugo said. “You’d think double the work would see more than a 5% uplift, but it didn’t. It’s just not worth it.”
Ross agreed — and admitted the discovery was “a little deflating.”
“For me, knowing that I was working twice as hard and putting in twice as much effort and yet the results weren’t there was a little deflating,” he said. “I’ve put in double the work. I’ve lifted 16 hours extra over the 12 weeks. Am I seeing any results that I would say are worth doing? Not at all.”
In fact, in some areas, Hugo’s shorter workouts produced slightly better outcomes.
“Body fat for this 12-week study was slightly better on the 20-minutes,” Ross said. “Muscle mass stayed the same, and that was probably due to us eating fairly similar diet.”
Their body fat percentages remained similar, rising slightly by the end of the trial (Hugo’s from 11% to 17%, Ross’s from 15% to 17%). Their muscle mass patterns were nearly identical, fluctuating in sync from start to finish.
As for performance, Hugo managed 13 more push-ups than when he started, while Ross added only two. Ross did, however, lift 5 kilograms (11 pounds) more on his bench press by the end.
When it came to cardio fitness, Ross showed a slightly lower heart rate during the watt bike test — an indicator of marginally better endurance — but overall, their physiological changes were strikingly alike.
“The biggest finding was that we didn’t really find a huge amount of performance difference between 20 or 40 minutes, if at all,” Ross said.
The Mental Battle
While their bodies reacted similarly, the mental strain told a different story.
“Once he’d finished I had the whole lot to do again,” Ross said. “Our gym programme over the 20-minutes was quite dense, so there wasn’t a huge amount of rest time. It was 40-minutes of, ‘Yes, my mind has certainly worked out, but my body was a bit too spent.’”
Hugo, on the other hand, found shorter workouts easier to stay consistent with.
“20-minutes is far easier to execute every day if you want to find that consistency and motivation,” he said. “40-minutes you definitely found it a lot harder to motivate yourself and do that consistently.”
He added that shorter sessions kept him energized but left him mentally unsatisfied:
“I always felt motivated physically, and I didn’t knacker myself out so much, but at the end of the 20-minutes I felt like I was pumped. The downside is I never felt like I actually went to the gym.”
The Takeaway
For the Turner Twins, the message was clear: consistency trumps intensity.
“I think now we’ve done the twelve-week programme and we’ve seen the results, I’m going to struggle to do 40-minutes because I know there’s no point in doing it,” Ross admitted.
Sports scientists agree the twins’ results are interesting — but caution against drawing firm conclusions.
Michael Graham, a senior lecturer in sport and exercise science at Teesside University, told Business Insider: “We can’t confidently assume any of the relationships or differences discussed between Hugo and Ross are anything to do with them as twins or simply typical variations and similarities we would see in any pair of individuals.”
Still, Graham noted that their findings align with larger scientific research showing that shorter, well-structured workouts can be just as effective as longer ones, especially for maintaining motivation and consistency.
After 12 weeks, 16 extra training hours, and almost identical results, the Turner Twins have added another chapter to their ongoing catalogue of human experiments — and delivered a powerful reminder to anyone chasing fitness perfection.
Sometimes, doing more isn’t the answer.
“20-minutes is far easier to execute every day,” Hugo said. “And if you can do that consistently, that’s where the real results come from.”
Featured image credit: Instagram/@theturnertwiins
