5 Core Exercises In 5 Minutes To Help With Your Strength And Confidence

Training your core can be a pain. But, it doesn’t have to be! Some people love it and centre their workouts around it. Our core is perhaps the most important part of our bodies when it comes to movement. Simply, it controls everything we do.

So if you’re someone who begrudgingly tacks core work onto the end of your workout, or you only do it when you “feel like it,” this quick circuit might be your soul mate. You’ll spend less time doing this circuit than you would be standing in line for the bathroom.

This workout has five movements total, each done for 60 seconds with minimal rest in between. If you need to pause in between exercises, that’s totally fine; the workout will just be a few minutes longer. If you can’t complete the full 60 seconds, you can break each exercise up into two sets of 30 seconds, or shorten the overall exercise time to 45 seconds.

Upright Plank:

How to:

Assume a push-up position, making sure that your spine is neutral, your hips aren’t piked up (no butts in the air), and your shoulders are stacked over your wrists.
You want to maintain a straight line from head to heel.
Focus on your breath, and hold for 60 seconds.

Side Plank:

How to:

From your upright plank, rotate your body and re-center your weight while lifting one arm to the sky.
Your body should be facing the side, and your chest should be open.
Make a conscious effort to lift your hips up (it’s easy to let them sag in this pose) and keep a straight line from head to heel.
Then stack your feet on top of each other and hold.
If you feel unstable with stacked feet, you can modify by staggering your feet.
Hold for 30 seconds on each side.

Static Boat Pose:

How to:

Next, lie down on your back to begin the static boat pose.
This is an isometric hold, meaning there’s no repeated movement involved.
Raise your legs up to a 45-degree angle, put your arms by your side, and then curl up like you would in a crunch, and hold.
Ensure that your lower back is flat against the ground and you aren’t tensing your neck or shoulders.
To modify, bring your legs to the tabletop position.
Hold for 60 seconds or two sets of 30 seconds with a pause in between.

Crunches:

How to:

From static boat pose, bring your legs to the tabletop and put your hands behind your head.
Keeping your lower back pressed to the ground, curl your body up into a crunch and then lower yourself back down.
Do this as many times as you can in a minute without sacrificing your form—aka err on the side of slow.
Intention is more important than speed, and you don’t want to strain your neck.

Dead Bug:

How to:

Finish your workout with a dead bug pose (yeah, strange name, we know).
Start by lying flat on your back and bringing legs to the tabletop with arms straight out in front of you.
Relax your neck.
Lower your right arm and left leg simultaneously (opposite arm and opposite leg) so that they’re a few inches above the ground.
From here, you have the option to return your arm and leg to starting position, switch which arm and leg you lower, and continuously alternate for a minute, or you can do a static hold on one side for 30 seconds and switch.