Most of the classic core exercises involve hitting the deck, with sit-ups, crunches and planks all being floor-based moves. However, you can stay standing and still get a quality core workout done, as this 10-minute dumbbell abs workout shows.
It’s been put together by YouTube fitness trainers Juice & Toya, and all you need for the workout is space to stand and a set of dumbbells. Juice is using 10lb dumbbells and Toya is using 5lb weights in the video, but they recommend anything from 2-25lb depending on your fitness level. If you have a set of the best adjustable dumbbells you can change the weight you’re using to suit each exercise in the workout.
The workout is designed to hit both the upper and lower abs, as well as your obliques, and can be done by beginners and regular gym-goers alike — just adjust the weight to suit you and take extra breaks if you are new to working out and feel like you need them.
Watch Juice & Toya’s 10-minute standing ab workout
There are eight exercises in the workout and you do two sets of each of them to target each side of the body in turn. You do 30 seconds on one side, take a 10 second break, then do 30 seconds on the other side. You then get a longer 15 second break before moving onto the next exercises.
By working each side of the body in turn you can identify any strength imbalances in your body so you can work on them later, and also focus on engaging the core muscles on each side to maximize their time under tension during your sets.
Juice and Toya have picked a mix of moves that work different parts of the core. You’ll be kicking and doing standing crunches to work the lower and upper abs, and doing twisting moves like side punches and the dumbbell woodchop to work the obliques.
The workout will also raise your heart rate to boost your cardio fitness, if you do it at a fast enough pace. The focus should first be on getting your technique right for each move and making sure you’re engaging the core muscles correctly, then you can start to push the pace to increase the challenge. Since you’re doing quite short sets you can work fast and hard knowing that a rest break is never far away.
This standing ab workout is a great standalone session you can do a couple of times a week to work on your core strength, or you can also add it onto a full-body dumbbell workout to increase the focus on your core. Once you’ve become comfortable with the routine then it’s worth progressing it so you keep getting stronger, which you can do by increasing the weight of the dumbbells you use, by working faster to get more reps in, or even by doing the circuit twice for a 20-minute session.
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