Russian twist
For this one, you don’t need any machines or gym equipment. This exercise utilizes your bodyweight and will work just as fine as the other ones. It looks perfectly easy to do but once you get cracking you will realize it is actually much harder than previously thought. Sit down on the floor or the fitness mat and lift your legs off the ground just slightly. Following that move, join your hands and interlock your fingers so that they will not separate.
After that, start rotating your entire upper body to the left, while your feet slightly move to the right. Then rotate your body right and have your feet move slightly to the left. Presto, you just did a single rep! However, this is also a very high rep exercise, so you will need at least 30 and at most 40 more reps to do a single set. Basically, you will need to perform this exercise last, after all of your other exercises and right before you go home, so do it until you reach muscle failure and you can’t move anymore. If this exercise is way too easy for you, grab any type of weight in your hands and do the same. A dumbbell, kettlebell or heavy plate will do just fine.
Toe-touch crunches
This exercise will work your entire abdominal muscle group and will strengthen your core muscles as well. To perform this exercise, lay down flat with your entire body and stretch out both your hands and your toes in opposite directions. Then, simultaneously raise your arms and legs until the tips of your fingers touch the tips of your toes. However, this movement needs to be controlled, not rapidly irrational, so with the same control, drop both your arms and your legs down to their starting positions.
If you want to push this exercise to the edge, don’t drop your legs down to the ground between reps. Keeping your legs up keeps your abdominal muscles activated and will have a greater effect as well as hurting more, which means it’s going to work more. If this is still not enough, grab a medicine ball and try it like that. Try to pass the medicine ball between being held in your hands and between your feet. If that is still not enough, grab a kettlebell or a heavy weight and to the same, without passing them to your feet.
Flutter kicks
This one may just be the hardest exercise to perform correctly. To do that, just lay down on your back, raise your legs slightly, raise your upper back off the ground and put your hands behind your head. At this point, the only thing touching the ground should be the upper part of your buttocks. To perform this exercise, start moving your legs in opposite directions, in a fluttery movement. Keep them at medium height, but don’t raise them too much and don’t touch the ground.
This exercise is the gym version of that “the floor is lava” game, and it is equally exhausting – all of your core muscles will hurt like never before and you will be in massive pain after just a fraction of a minute of doing it. However, doing flutter kicks is worth it because in the end your abs will look like that of Brad Pitt in Fight Club. This exercise, like the Russian twist is a finisher exercise, which means you should do it all the way to muscle failure, in one set for as many reps as you can handle. Crank out 30 or 40 of them, but remember, one rep is a movement that starts and ends in the same position, so don’t go halving the rep number! It may be exhausting and you will wish that you didn’t do it in the end but after the effects take place you’ll wish you did it sooner.
