Banish WFH back pain and build core strength with these online ab classes

Torso-targeting tutorials are this summer’s home workout hit, says Katie Strick
It's crunch time
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You’ve managed to nail the 60-second plank and can (finally!) make it through Barry’s core section without collapsing. The next step to achieving rock-solid lockdown abs? Crunching through a whole class of it. The capital’s top trainers are getting specific: torso-targeting tutorials are this summer’s smartest workout.

Start with Flex Chelsea’s shiny new 30-minute abs, voted The Gentleman’s Journal’s best livestream abs class of lockdown so far.

The half-hour workout is streamed twice a week on Instagram and the studio’s new Zoom platform Flex Live and it’s the perfect tummy toner for beginners: trainer Jason Bone offers progressions and regressions for each move so you can fit the workout to your strength levels that day and take the toughness up over the weeks. Expect side planks, butterfly sit-ups and reverse crunches — perfect for combatting that WFH back-pain after sitting at a desk all day.

Side planks, butterfly sit-ups and reverse crunches are perfect after sitting at a desk all day

Psycle London is also on a mission to target those abdominals and obliques. Its 45-minute arms and abs workout is its second most popular on-demand class on the studio’s YouTube channel while, several in-house trainers are offering Instagram Live classes that focus entirely on whittling your middle.

The high plank fires up the core 
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If you’re pushed for time, Core Collective TV’s new arms and abs blast is just 20 minutes long, while Rebel TV and Frame Online both offer 10-minute core classes for squeezing into that lunchtime sweat session. Frame co-founder Joan Murphy leads one, while professional dancer Lizzy Evernden takes another — check her wanderlust-ful Instagram feed @lizzyevernden for abs-piration. Fly Ldn’s core workout takes just seven minutes. Its new stream-at-home abs class on YouTube takes a yogi approach to firing up your core, but don’t expect not to feel the burn. You’ll be asked to use soup or beer cans as weights while you’re crunching and twisting, while YouTube yoga hero Yoga With Adriene promises to help you carve a stomach of steel in just six minutes a day with her Yoga For Abs living room tutorial.

Frame co-founder Joan Murphy leads an online 10-minute ab workout

If you think the yoga approach is punishing, try pilates. Heartcore’s signature class and Dynamic Mat Pilates workout, both adapted for streaming online during lockdown, have been designed to boost core strength from the mat instead of the reformer machine.

Gather two hand weights, a mat and a towel and settle in for an abs-olute core killer — the studio is offering complimentary Zoom classes for Global Wellness Day this Saturday if you want to try one for free.

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