Kayla Itsines’ 4-Move Oblique-Obliterating Workout

Last summer was a breakout year for Australian trainer Kayla Itsines—in addition to her Bikini Body Guide program, she developed the SELF Summer Challenge plan, and embarked on her first workout world tour. Now, she’s launched a new app, Sweat With Kayla, and has earned the title of Instagram’s biggest fitness star with every burpee, tuck jump, and pull-up she posts. 

Itsines is preparing to hit the road again, making three stops this summer (London, NYC, and LA) on her Sweat Tour 2016. And part of her tour includes meeting fans and participating in a Q&A at the London Apple Store in Covent Garden (June 17, 6 P.M., RSVP here) and NYC’s SoHo store (June 23, 7 P.M., RSVP here) with Jay Blahnik, Apple’s director of fitness and health technologies.

Whether Itsines is leading boot camps in Adelaide, Australia, or stateside, one thing is for certain—you can expect to see her post a picture of her seriously strong abs on her Instagram account that boasts 5.1 million followers. Her abs are famous—The New York Times-level famous. And while Istines agrees that the secret to great abs isn’t doing just a bunch of abs exercises (it takes full-body strength training, cardio sessions, and a healthy diet), she does a have a few go-to moves that are killer for firing up your core. Here she shares four of her top exercises for your obliques (the muscles that run along the sides of your waist). 

The Workout:

Set a timer for seven minutes and complete the four-move circuit below as many times as you can before the timer goes off—keep a steady pace and aim to complete two to three rounds. Then take a 30-second break. Oh, but you’re not done! Then you’ll reset your timer and complete one more seven-minute circuit. 

The Moves:

1. Straight-Leg Sit-Ups With A Twist — do 20 reps (10 per side)

• Start faceup on a yoga mat with your legs extended in front of you and place your hands behind your ears.
• Pull your bellybutton toward your spine and engage your abs.
• Slowly lift your head, shoulder blades, and torso off the floor. As you sit up, extend your right arm, twist your torso, and touch the floor next to your left leg with your right hand.
• Slowly untwist and lower your torso back to the mat and bring your right hand back behind your right ear. Then repeat on the opposite side.
• Continue alternating sides until you complete 20 reps (10 on each side).

2. Abs Bikes — do 40 reps (20 per side)

• Start faceup on a yoga mat with your legs extended in front of you and place your hands behind your ears.
• Raise your head and shoulder blades off the floor and lift your legs off the ground with your knees bent at 90 degrees. This is your starting position.
• Extend your left leg so that is approximately 45 degrees from the floor and bring your right knee into your chest. Now extend your right leg completely so that is 45 degrees from the floor and bring your left knee into your chest.
• When you’re ready, incorporate a twist with your upper body bringing opposite elbow and knee to meet.
• Continue alternating sides until you complete 40 reps (20 on each side).

3. Russian Twists — do 24 reps (12 per side)

• Start seated on a yoga mat with your hands clasped in front of your chest, knees bent, and feet flat on the floor. Keeping your legs together, lift your feet off the floor and extend legs so that they are almost straight. This is your starting position.
• Twist your torso to the right so that your right hand touches the floor beside you.
• Return to center then repeat twisting to the left.
• Continue alternating sides until you complete 24 reps (12 on each side).

4. X Mountain Climbers — do 40 reps (20 per side)

• Start in a high plank with feet together and hands shoulder-width apart.
• Keep your left foot on the floor and bend your right knee, bringing it under your chest and toward your left elbow.
• Extend your right leg back to plank position and repeat on the opposite side.
• Continue alternating sides until you complete 40 reps total (20 on each side). As you get comfortable with the exercise, gradually increase your speed.

“While these moves work your obliques, some of these exercises also work a number of muscle groups in your body,” she tells SELF. “The X Mountain Climbers can also help target your deeper abdominal muscles as well as your shoulders and arms.” The entire routine is just under 15 minutes, with very little downtime or rest included—and there’s a reason for that. This drives up the intensity of the workout, Itsines explains. (Of course if you need a break, take one. You know your body best.)

Decreasing your changeover time (which simply means reducing the time between exercises and sets), is one of Itsines’ top workout tips. “A faster changeover time equals a consistently elevated heart rate. This means that when you’re working out, you’re really making the most of it,” she says. “Whether I’m training my clients or working out myself, I’m always glancing at it [her Apple Watch] to keep track and countdown,” she tells SELF.

While this particular routine doesn’t require anything other than a yoga mat, if you’re doing another workout, try setting up your station before you actually start training, advises Itsines. “If you’re using any equipment such as dumbbells or a skipping rope, have them on the floor in front of you so you can access them quickly while you move through the exercises. If you’re able to complete your workout without the need to stop and locate equipment, there will be less distractions and reasons for longer changeover times.”

Abs, mastered.

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Burn Fat With This 10-Minute Treadmill Interval Workout

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If you’re trying to fit strength and cardio into one short session at the gym, chances are, you’re not going to want to spend a ton of time on the treadmill. Hey, understood—you’ve got muscles to warm up, weights to lift, and bodyweight exercises to crush. But that doesn’t mean you have to forego a killer cardio session in favor of the rest of your fitness routine—10 minutes is enough time to squeeze in an effective cardio interval routine.

This workout is simple—no adjusting the treadmill settings every 30 seconds required. Developed for SELF by Shred415 founders Bonnie Micheli and Tracy Roemer, this treadmill workout combines two-minute runs with challenging walk/jog sections—plus a mini sprint at the end. It utilizes longer periods of effort and switches between speed training and challenging inclines to raise your heart rate, burn calories, and improve your endurance.

Ready to hit the tread? Try this tough workout (and have a gym towel ready).

Related: Leave No Muscle Behind With This 8-Minute Cardio Workout

Graphic by Jocelyn Runice

You may also like: A simple fat-burning workout you can do at home:

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The 10-Minute Workout You Should Do Before Breakfast

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A morning workout can be an energizing start to a busy day, but sometimes, it’s just so damn hard to wake up in time to get to the gym, grind it out, and get all office-appropriate before work. Your solution? An equipment-free circuit workout that combines strength and cardio elements to fire up your muscles and set your day on the right track—in just 10 minutes. And you can do it in your pajamas. Win-win.

Kit Rich, an L.A.-based trainer and Lucy Activewear pro, gave SELF her simple-but-challenging formula for a 10-minute circuit workout. First start with a minute of dynamic stretches like leg cradles to get your muscles and joints moving. Here are a few stretches to get you started. Then, this is the formula you need to know:

1 minute of an upper-body exercise + 1 minute of a core exercise + 1 minute of lower-body exercise. Repeat this mini circuit three times.

Rich’s go-to combo is one minute of push-ups, a one-minute plank hold, and one minute of squats. “This circuit is such an effective workout because you work the whole body, and you get both strengthening exercises and cardio in,” says Rich. “Just 10 minutes will elevate your mood and you will have way more energy throughout the day.”

You can also sub in other exercises that hit these muscle groups—whatever you’re in the mood for. For example, try tricep dips for your upper-body move, bicycle crunches for your core move, and jump squats for your lower-body move. No matter what you choose, though, the key to this workout is minimal rest: “This keeps the heart rate up and increases intensity of workout,” says Rich. “And since it is such a short workout, you want to get in as much as you can.”

Related: 11 Clever Tips For Getting Out Of Bed For A Morning Workout

The goal? Push as hard as you can for 10 minutes, and then you’re done. Set your alarm a little earlier tomorrow and get ready to crush this circuit:

Graphic by Jocelyn Runice

You may also like: 13 incredible bodyweight exercises you can do at home:

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9 Vegetables You Can Eat as Dessert

I'm not typically a sneaky chef. I'm lucky that, so far, my daughter eats the same food at dinner that my husband and I are eating. She loves "crazy" stuff like beets, parsnips and rutabaga. That being said, she'd choose a sweet treat over veggies any day, like most kids her age. So I'm not adverse to sneaking more veggies in where she least expects it—dessert. And, let's face it: a little extra veg couldn't hurt the grownups either.

Here are 9 ways you can turn vegetables into dessert:

Why We Reach Weight-Loss Plateaus—And How To Get Past Them

Watching the pounds fall off after staying true to a workout program and healthy eating plan is an amazingly gratifying reward. Of course weight loss isn’t the only goal of sticking with a healthy routine. However, if you are trying to lose weight, it feels incredible to see your diligence pay off and bring you closer to your end goal. But anyone who has tried to lose weight also knows how frustrating it can feel when those results come to a screeching halt, regardless of the level of effort you maintain.

Hitting a weight-loss plateau sucks, but it’s also totally normal. And while you may jump to conclude you reached one because you weren’t working hard enough, or your willpower wasn’t up to par, it may be comforting to know that this phenomenon is a result of your biological needs trying to counter your efforts. But you’re more than capable of fighting back.

Why do we reach weight-loss plateaus?

Hitting a plateau is extremely common, and happens for many reasons. “If you are successfully losing weight, you’ll most likely hit a plateau at some point,” Amanda Foti, M.S., R.D., a senior dietitian at Selvera Weight Management Program, tells SELF. A plateau is when weight loss stagnates even when you’re diligent about your food and fitness habits. How quickly you reach one can take anywhere from a few weeks to a couple months, depending on the person.

There are many reasons why weight loss may taper off after initial success. Your body may start to adapt to your training routine—when you don’t vary your workouts, they can become less challenging and less effective over time. And even if you’re strength training regularly, it’s normal to lose a little muscle along with fat. Lean muscle is better at burning calories when the body is at rest, so the slight dip may cause your metabolism to slow down. Losing weight in general lowers your body’s energy needs, decreasing your metabolic rate even further. If you don’t adjust your caloric intake as your weight changes, you can end up consuming more than you should to lose weight. 

Our bodies also react to lower caloric intake and weight loss by doing the opposite of what we want. (Thanks, biology.) “As we begin to lose weight on a conventional calorie-restricted diet—following the ‘eat less, move more’ approach—the body fights back thinking that it is entering a state of starvation,” David Ludwig, M.D., Ph.D., a professor in the department of nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Boston Children’s Hospital, tells SELF. Cue the release of stress hormones like cortisol, which has been shown to promote fat storage.

Additionally, rapid weight loss through extreme calorie restriction can throw off hunger hormones ghrelin and leptin and leave you feeling constantly hungry, Foti adds. For some, years of unhealthy habits and overly processed diets can even lead to insulin resistance—meaning your cells no longer respond the right way to the hormone. Ludwig calls insulin the “ultimate fat cell fertilizer” because having too much of it creates metabolic changes that tell fat cells to hold onto calories. “You may have plenty of calories stored in fat cells, but the brain can’t see them, because it looks for available calories in the bloodstream,” Ludwig explains. Your brain then tells you to eat more.

So, how can you step in and take control?

The best way to bust through a plateau is to “engage our biological responses to work for us, not against us,” Ludwig says. Luckily, the best way to do this is to stick with healthy weight-loss habits. Here are some tweaks you can make to what you’re already doing to push past a plateau.

Rethink your nutrition: Ditch processed foods and focus on eating quality protein, whole-grain carbs, and healthy high-fat foods, like nuts, avocado, and real dark chocolate. These foods take longer to digest, giving you sustained energy and helping to prevent insulin spikes. When insulin levels are normal, fat cells stop storing calories and are able to enter the bloodstream, making them available for your body to use, Ludwig explains. This also kicks the metabolism back into gear, “and now you begin to lose weight with the body cooperating instead of kicking and screaming.”

Get more sleep: “Sleep deprivation can cause insulin resistance,” Ludwig notes. It also can throw your hormones out of whack and is connected to weight gain. Getting adequate sleep will also give you energy to power through your workouts and help you resist cravings for unhealthy foods.

Strength train: To keep up your lean muscle mass and keep your metabolism revving as you’re losing weight, make sure to incorporate strength training into your routine at least two days a week. Keep your protein intake up, too. “Opt for lean protein at every meal and snack,” Foti says.

Vary your fitness routine and kick up the intensity: “Especially if you’ve been doing the same workouts over and over, chances are your body can perform those exercises efficiently, which means it’s burning far less calories than when you started,” Foti says. HIIT workouts are great for burning fat and increases the afterburn effect, allowing your body to burn more calories even after you stop working. To optimize results, your perceived level of exertion should be between eight and 10 (on a scale of one to 10)—if you use heart rate as a measurement, aim to work at 75 to 80 percent of your max.

The key to getting past any weight-loss roadblocks is to not get discouraged. “We tend to be very critical of ourselves and when we set a goal and don’t reach it, we immediately see it as a failure,” Foti says. “Instead, know that this is part of the process” and remember how far you’ve already come.

You might also like: 8 Things Everyone Should Keep In Their Pantry

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12 Of The Best Bodyweight Exercises You Can Do For Strong, Fit Arms

Curls, presses, rows…dumbbells are great for activating the muscles of your upper body, but they aren’t the only equipment that gets the job done. In fact, your own body is one of the most effective arm-strengthening tools at your disposal. By using your own bodyweight, you can put those biceps, triceps, and shoulders to work, no weights required.

Emily Cook Harris, certified personal trainer and fitness instructor at The Fhitting Room in NYC, shared a few of her all-time favorite bodyweight exercises for arms with SELF. Her moves are tough-as-hell but insanely effective, and you don’t need to step foot in a gym to do ‘em. Plus, they’ll get the rest of your body involved, too—tight cores and glutes are a must for keeping proper form.

Ready to flex those arms? See all of the super-effective exercises demonstrated by trainer Tamara Pridgett in the video below. Work your favorites into your usual gym routine, or just try a few next time you’re hanging out with Netflix at home. 

Here are 12 ways to work your arms without any weights:

The moves:

1. Tricep Dips: Start in reverse tabletop position on the floor with your fingers pointing toward your feet. Bend and straighten your arms to complete a rep.

2. T Push-Ups: Start in a high plank with your feet hip-distance apart. Do one push-up. Then rotate your entire body to the right into a side plank, extending your left arm to the ceiling. Return to center position, do another push-up, and repeat on the left side.

3. Plank Ups: Start in a high plank. Bend one arm to bring the elbow and forearm to the floor. Bring the other arm down so you are in a forearm plank. Push back up to the start position, placing each hand where your elbows were. Repeat this movement, alternating which side you lower first with each rep.

4. Inchworm With Shoulder Taps: Start standing then bend at the waist to place your hands on the floor in front of you. Walk your hands out until you’re in a high plank. Then tap each hand to the opposite shoulder while engaging your core and glutes to keep the hips still. Walk the hands back in and return to the standing position. 

5. Superman Holds With Squeeze: Lie face down with your arms out to a T. Lift your torso and legs off the floor. Pause and then slowly lower everything back down.

6. Walking Push-Ups: Start in a high plank. Walk your hands and feet to the right, then perform one push-up. Repeat, walking hands and feet to the left this time. Try to keep your body in a straight line throughout the movement.

7. Forearm Plank Jacks: Start in a forearm plank. Keeping your core engaged, jump your feet out and in (like jumping jacks).

8. Rolling Forearm Side Planks: Start in a forearm plank and roll onto your right forearm into a side plank, reaching your left arm up to the ceiling (make sure your hips and feet are stacked one over the other). Pause for a moment, then return to a forearm plank and repeat on the left side.

9. Triangle Push-Ups: Start in a high and create a triangle with your hands under your torso. Bend your elbows and lower your torso to the ground to complete one push-up. You can also do this on your knees.

10. Hand Release Push-Ups With Arm Raises: Begin in a high plank and bend your elbows to lower your chest all the way to the floor. Quickly lift your hands off the floor, then return them to the ground and push back up to a high plank. At the top of the push-up, reach one arm straight out to the side without rotating the hips. Repeat, alternating the arm you reach to the side.

11. Incline Push-Ups: Place your arms on a bench, table, or couch and extend your legs straight behind you so that you’re in an elevated plank position. Keeping your body in a straight line and your elbows close to your body, bend and straighten your arms to complete a push-up.

12. Tricep Dips With Leg Lifted: Sit on the edge of bench with your hands just outside your hips, fingers pointed toward your feet. Move your butt off the bench and bend your legs at a 90-degree angle. Lift one leg straight out in front of you and bend your elbows to a 90-degree angle for one dip. Push back up so arms are straight and repeat, lifting the opposite leg.

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11 Clever Tips For Getting Out Of Bed For A Morning Workout

Rob and Julia Campbell / Stocksy

Half the battle of a morning workout is the part where you have to, y’know, wake up. Even though an A.M. sweat is an amazing way to get your day off to a healthy start, it can be tough to remember your fitness goals when you’re still half asleep and that snooze button is just oh so tempting.

I know this struggle all too well—even though I love the feeling of working out first thing in the morning (it’s the only thing I’ve found that gives me all day energy and a positive ‘tude), I am also the ~queen~ of sleeping through my alarm. I’ve mastered the art of turning off my alarm without having any recollection of it.  

Even though I find myself adulting these days, it’s still a major challenge. But since my morning workout is so important to me, I’ve had to get creative with ways to get #UpNOut. And once I am actually up (and out), I never regret it. Here are some of the things I’ve had success with (and a few I’ll definitely try):

Related: 4 Running Rules Zosia Mamet Swears By As She Prepares For Her First 5K

1. Set your workout gear next to your bed the night before.

monkeybusinessimages, Getty Images

Setting your workout clothes out next to your bed is a great way to streamline your morning, and it serves as a visual reminder to get going. When your running shoes are practically staring at you from the floor, it’s hard to say no. I’ve even tried getting dressed while still in my warm bed, and the struggle of it is typically enough to wake my brain up. Wiggling into a pair of tight yoga pants under the covers is just challenging as it sounds.

2. Book a non-refundable workout class.

If you’ve put your hard-earned $$ into a workout class, chances are, you’re going to make sure you get to it—personally, I think my subconscious holds me accountable when I’ve signed up and paid for an indoor cycling or reformer Pilates session. (It’s a lot like a money-shredding alarm clock, but maybe a little less aggressive.) Or, make a workout date with a friend or book a personal training session—whatever it is that motivates you to get a move on.  

3. Pre-program your coffee maker to start brewing before your alarm goes off.  

There’s something about the smell of coffee that gives you a boost, so if the sound of your alarm doesn’t quite do it for you, maybe that coffee aroma will. Relocate your coffee pot to your bedroom and pre-program it to start brewing before your first alarm, or if your machine doesn’t have that feature, get it set up the night before by putting in your grinds or popping a new K-cup into your Keurig for easier access. (Sort of like the Michael Scott approach of waking up to bacon on The Office—without as much injury potential.)

4. Go to sleep earlier. 

Yeah, yeah. “Go to bed earlier.” Problem is, that’s so much easier said than done. But if you’re not getting enough sleep, waking up can be extra brutal, so it’s worth a shot. Keri Gans, M.S. R.D., author of The Small Change Diet, once gave me an awesome tip for getting more sleep: Try scaling back your typical bedtime by just 15 minutes every night until you’re up to seven or eight hours total. Slow and steady wins the A.M. race.

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