A 27-minute full-body strength workout with rotation and anti-rotation

When I sit down to brainstorm what I might do for the next Workout of the Week, I like to look back at recent workouts I’ve done and notice the missing puzzle pieces. After all, it’s reeeeally hard to hit every possible muscle and every possible movement pattern in one half-hour movement session — but you can get quite a well-rounded experience over the course of a month or a few weeks if you’re thoughtful about it. (You don’t actually have to be thoughtful about this at all because I’m doing it for you! That’s the whole idea here!)

Anyway, not to get too geeky here, but June’s strength training workout has some great sagittal and frontal plane movements — a lunge, a horizontal press, and a pull, as well as an anti–lateral flexion exercise — but very little to offer in the transverse plane: AKA rotation. And we rotate all the time! Twisting our bodies to reach something we need, put on our seat belt, or look behind us are all crucial everyday movements, so strengthening the muscles that allow us to do those things is hugely beneficial. We also benefit from anti-rotation: having the strength and stability to avoid letting an external weight or force cause us to twist and rotate when we don’t want to.

So for this week, I combined a few exercises to hit some of these types of moves, plus an exercise I don’t love to do but really need to do more of. (It’s all good medicine, even if it doesn’t always taste great.)

Don’t be too jarred by the beginning of this video, btw: I realized after filming that for one of the exercises, I should have offered an additional option earlier in the workout (I forgot until round 3!), so I filmed a quick preamble to add to the video so you have that option in your pocket from the get-go. You’ll also see that I’m wearing not workout clothes but a big old voluminous button-up because I’ve been influenced by

Kelly Williams

’ and

Laurel Pantin

’s great work on how to wear these. (Still not convinced I’m pulling it off, but I’ll never stop trying.)

Oh, one more thing before the paywall! Substack broke the gif I included in my Pilates roll up tutorial earlier this week! It’s showing up just fine on the app and website but it didn’t work in email. So sorry about that. If you want to see it, just follow this link which I thiiiink should open in your browser or Substack app.

A no-equipment move that seriously challenges your abs

Anyway! Grab a medium to heavy weight — and maybe a lighter weight just in case that tricky exercise doesn’t feel right to you — and let’s go.