Workout: Strong to the core
- Overview
Your core muscles - including abs, back and glutes - provide you with stability, balance and strength, which can help prevent injury. Follow these step-by-step instructions to a variety of exercises that will help you activate your core and feel more ready to take on the world.
You'll need: Swiss ball, cross trainer, arc trainer, plate weights.
How to perform the exercises
Steps
Warm up
- Squat (30 seconds)
- Reverse lunge reach back (30 seconds)
- Wide-hands pushup (30 seconds)
- Mountain climbers (30 seconds)
- Walking high knees (30 seconds)
3 x sets (5 min rest between sets)
- Swiss ball crunch or floor sit ups (10 reps)
- Russian twist* (20 reps)
- Lying straight leg raise (20 reps)
- Plank (60 secs)
- Single leg hip raise (30 secs)
- Side plank lift (10 reps)
- Cross-body mountain climber (10 reps)
- Superman from floor (10 reps)
*If you don't have any weights, try food cupboard basics like a bag of rice, a tin of beans or a bottle of water.
Warm down
- Jog (360 secs)
- Thoracic rotation (30 secs)
- Cat camel (30 secs)
- Hamstring stretch (30 secs)
- Lying glute stretch (30 secs)
- Side hip and quad stretch (30 secs)
- Straight-leg calf stretch (30 secs)
- Standing IT band stretch (30 secs)
Last updated Wednesday 16 September 2020
First published on Wednesday 5 August 2015