You can achieve almost any fitness goal using just bodyweight exercises at home, but abs workouts in particular can be highly effective without needing to use weights or any other kit. They can also be very quick while being very effective, because you can exhaust the abs muscles in no time at all using the right exercises.
At the end of this 15-minute abs workout from fitness trainer Fraser Wilson you will have no doubt that you’ve worked hard enough to strengthen and sculpt your core muscles. It’s a challenging session where you spend almost all of the 15 minutes doing exercises, with just a few short rest periods.
If you can do the workout a couple of times a week, while living a healthy lifestyle in general, you’ll quickly start to see benefits like a stronger core and more defined midsection, and the only equipment you need for the session is one of the best yoga mats.
Watch Fraser Wilson’s 15-minute abs workout
During the workout you do each exercise for 30 seconds before going straight onto the next move. Wilson doesn’t give instructions for each move, but does the workout with you so you can follow his form for the exercises, while a timer counts you down on screen.
The exercises in the workout are designed to target the whole core, with some moves focusing on the upper and lower abs, some on the obliques, and some to hit the deeper core muscles and stabilizers. As a result your abs won’t just look fantastic, but you’ll also build functional trunk strength to help with other workouts and sports performance.
In the workout the first section focuses mainly on the upper abs with moves like sit-ups , then you move onto the obliques with twisting exercises and side crunches. The third section targets the lower abs with moves like the reverse crunch, before you work on the deep ab muscles and core strength with the longest section at the end, which contains a variety of planks as well as other moves.
During your rest breaks Wilson shows you some stretches for the abs, which are well worth doing to help your core recover in between the workout sections, rather than just sitting still for a breather.
Since you don’t get any information on what move is coming up, it might be worth quickly scanning through the workout before you start to make the transitions between exercises faster. As it’s a short workout and you only do each move for 30 seconds, it’s worth maximizing the time under tension for the target muscles with each exercise to increase the benefits.
This is a tough workout and if you’re not finding that you’re able to complete each move to get the benefits, it might be worth trying a standing abs workout first instead, like this 10-minute session. You can also add your own rests to the workout by taking 10 seconds to change position and just doing each move for 20 seconds. On the other hand if you’re finding you can complete the circuit without problems, maybe try and double up for a truly taxing 30-minute abs workout.
More from Tom’s Guide
- Build a stronger core with this 10-minute standing abs workout
- Forget weights — I tried this 30-minute workout to get in shape
- 5 compound core exercises that sculpt strong obliques
