The One-Minute Japanese Stretch Trend: What the Science Actually Supports

A one-minute stretching routine, done at home, promising a toned, slimmer body: that is the pitch behind a wave of "Japanese method" fitness stories now circulating in Spanish-language outlets, including a recent piece from ELLE España. The claim deserves a close look, because it rests on two separate ideas that are not equally supported by evidence: that brief stretching improves posture and muscle tone, which is plausible, and that it "slims" by targeting specific muscles, which runs against decades of exercise physiology.

The genre is not new. Over the past two years, Spanish and Latin American lifestyle media have run near-identical versions of this story under different brand names. There is the Método Sakuma, built around Japanese trainer Kenichi Sakuma's five one-minute exercises for the torso, whose book has reportedly sold more than two million copies in Japan despite outlets noting no verifiable peer-reviewed research behind it, according to coverage from Vitónica and Primera Hora. There is the Método Fukutsudzi, a rolled-towel lower-back stretch attributed to Dr. Toshiki Fukutsudzi that went viral around 2020 with promises of visible results in ten to fifteen days, a timeline outlets themselves describe as unproven, per Viapaís. And there is Zero Training, Tomomi Ishimura's breathing-and-stretch program, marketed with the same five-minutes-a-day hook, as described in its publisher's own synopsis from Planeta de Libros.

What ties these programs together is the mechanism they imply: that working a small, specific muscle group for a minute or two can burn fat in that same area. Exercise scientists call this spot reduction, and the research on it is unusually consistent for a fitness question. A systematic review covering thirteen studies and more than eleven hundred participants found no effect of localized muscle training on fat loss in the trained region specifically, a finding summarized by the University of Sydney's Faculty of Medicine and Health in a public explainer on the topic, published in late 2023. The physiological explanation is straightforward: when the body mobilizes fat during exercise, it draws on fat stores throughout the body via the bloodstream, not preferentially from the muscle doing the work. Genetics, not the location of a workout, largely determines where fat is lost first, with researchers estimating genetic factors account for roughly sixty percent of fat distribution patterns, according to the same review.

That does not mean a one-minute stretch does nothing. Stretching and short isometric holds can improve posture, increase perceived muscle tone through better alignment, and in some cases contribute a small amount to overall energy expenditure. But none of that is the same claim as slimming, and the distinction matters for anyone deciding whether to spend a minute a day on a towel-rolling exercise instead of, say, a short walk. GoodRx's review of the fat-loss literature makes the same point: sustainable fat loss requires an overall caloric deficit achieved through diet and full-body activity, not isolated movements aimed at one muscle group.

The evidence quality behind the specific "one minute" claims is also worth naming plainly. Reporting on this wave of routines consistently traces the dramatic before-and-after numbers back to self-reported anecdotes rather than clinical trials. One widely shared case, amplified by Hong Kong's Dim Sum Daily, described a Japanese homemaker who said she lost seven and a half kilograms in two months using a one-minute bedtime routine. No outlet covering these methods, across the Sakuma, Fukutsudzi, or Zero Training variants, has pointed to a controlled study measuring the specific one-minute claim against a comparison group. That is a meaningful gap for a health claim being repeated across dozens of outlets as if it were settled.

There is one Japanese exercise tradition in this space with genuine institutional weight, though it makes no slimming claims at all. Radio Taiso, the calisthenics broadcast produced by Japan's public broadcaster NHK, has aired multiple times a day for close to a century, tracing back to routines introduced around the 1928 to 1929 enthronement of Emperor Hirohito. The program was banned by American occupation authorities in 1946 for its militaristic associations and reinstated in 1951, and it still draws an estimated twenty to twenty-seven million participants weekly, according to historical accounts from Unseen Japan and the JAS-HOU educational organization. Coverage of Taiso in outlets such as El Tiempo frames it around general fitness, flexibility, and longevity for an aging population, never around fat loss or body shaping. The contrast is instructive: the one entry in this genre with real historical and institutional backing is also the one that makes the smallest, most modest claims about what it does.

For anyone drawn to a one-minute stretch after reading about it, the honest framing is simple. It may loosen tight muscles, support better posture, and take almost no time, which are reasonable reasons to do it. It is unlikely to be the mechanism behind any meaningful change in body shape, and the specific numbers attached to these routines, in the cases that have been checked, trace back to one person's experience rather than a measured trial.