It’s core day—specifically your upper core. Each of these five moves work your stomach muscles, helping sculpt your abs and, more importantly, strengthening your core.
Learn the routine you can do at home using only a yoga mat, a set of dumbells (at your preferred weight level), and fitness sliders. Put on your favorite workout playlist and jam out while you put the focus on your upper core this summer. Watch how to do each exercise in the video and see the step-by-step instructions below.
The Routine:
Toe Touches
Jackknives
Butterfly Sit-Ups
Extended Dumbbell Crunch and Reach
Slider Plank Roll-Out
The Move: Toe Touches
How to: This move is a true isolated ab exercise. Start lying on your back and extend your legs up over your hips. Engage your core muscles to reach upward toward your toes in a crunching movement. Increase the intensity by adding a dumbbell to your hands and modify this movement by placing your feet on the ground and simply crunching upward toward your knees.
The Move: Jackknives
How to: This exercise challenges your core with your arms and legs. Bring your arms and legs up together, meeting over your hips, and lower them back to the ground at the same pace. If you need to modify this movement, you can bring one arm and the opposite leg up to meet together over your hip and lower back down, alternating between each side.
The Move: Butterfly Sit-Ups
How to: Start placing the soles of your feet together on the ground. Perform the sit-up by engaging your core and start by crunching your shoulders off the ground. Reach your arms up diagonally to complete the sit-up and then slowly lower your upper body back to the floor to complete the rep. To add an extra challenge, add a dumbbell to your hands, and if you need to modify this movement, use the dumbbell to assist you off the ground.
The Move: Extended Dumbbell Crunch and Reach
How to: For this exercise, you will use your arms and your legs to crunch in toward the middle with your dumbbell adding resistance to your upper body. You will start on your back and float your legs and arms in the air, and as you exhale, use your core to contract your arms and legs in. Open back out to full extension and keep your lower back drawn toward the ground to ensure proper core engagement. To modify this, you can remove the dumbbell and tap your heels on the ground.
The Move: Slider Plank Roll-Out
How to: Start by placing your hands on something that slides on the ground surface. Slowly pull your core in as you extend your arms outward away from your hips. It’s important to not let your abs relax as you transition from pushing outward to pulling back in toward your legs. To modify this move, you can remove the sliders and simply walk your hands outward into an extended plank.
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A former Division 1 high jumper and record holder at West Virginia University, Sydney is a National Academy of Sports Medicine Personal Trainer and Fitness Nutrition Specialist in Charlotte, North Carolina. Sydney and her fiancé Dustin created the Royal Change digital media company and post a new, completely free workout every day. They have a quickly growing audience with over 53,000,000 views since they started their YouTube channel. Royal Change’s mission is to always provide high-quality fitness to everyone, everywhere, at any time.
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