If you’re doing core workouts regularly they can start to feel quite similar. The best abs exercises like crunches, sit-ups and planks are all effective moves, but such a staple of core workouts that it can get a bit dull having to do them over and over again.
Fortunately, you don’t need to do them to build a stronger core. This standing abs workout doesn’t include any crunches, sit-ups or planks, but is still an effective session for improving your core strength and stability.
One extra benefit of not doing any floor moves is that this is a low-impact workout, and you can do it anywhere that you have room to stand and reach around you. The only kit you might need is one of the best yoga mats to protect your floor when you start to sweat and give you some extra grip during exercise where you move your feet.
The workout has been created by YouTube fitness trainer duo Juice & Toya, who demonstrate each move throughout the session. It’s perfect for beginners looking to get into core training, and more experienced people can use it as part of a wider full-body workout or as a finisher to hit the abs and obliques.
Watch Juice & Toya’s 10-minute core workout
The workout is done at a fast pace to elevate your heart rate and make the abs and obliques work as hard as possible during the sets. Each move in the session is a unilateral exercise, where you work one side of the body at a time. You work for 25 seconds on one side, then have five seconds to switch to the other, when you again work for 25 seconds.
You also get a 10-second break between moves, and with the workout being broken up into short chunks of time like this, the time really will fly by, so make sure you’re working hard to push yourself during the 10 minutes.
The workout is designed to target both the upper and lower abs as well as the obliques muscles on the sides of the stomach. For the obliques you’ll be doing twisting moves, while you hit the abs through a variety of knee tucks, bends, kicks and reaches.
While there are no weights used in the session, the movements you’ll be doing are also used in common strength exercises people do at the gym, and you can adapt the workout to include weights or resistance bands to increase the intensity.This might be worth doing once you have done it a few times and need to increase the challenge to ensure you’re still progressing.
If you have the time and energy, you could do another full round of the moves to increase the core strengthening benefits, or you could stack the session with one or two other 10-minute workouts that target other parts of the body.
If you have weights this 10-minute dumbbell workout trains the whole body, while this 7-move bodyweight workout strengthens muscles all over the body.
More from Tom's Guide
- A Pilates instructor shares an 8-minute Pilates abs workout for deep core activation — so I tried it
- Forget sit-ups — this no-equipment ab workout blasts your deep core
- Three 10-minute ab workouts that hit all your core muscles
