A full-body workout to train core strength and stability (in less than 30 minutes)

Hey pals: Happy Sunday, and congratulations on making it through last week without completely losing your mind.

This week’s WOW is all (or mostly, anyway!) about rotation and anti-rotation. Many standard exercises focus on moving forward and back, or moving side to side, and it’s easy to forget about rotation. But so many movements in our daily life involve rotating: turning your body to pick up a book or a laundry basket, rotating to look behind you, twisting and reaching to get something from a high shelf. (Lots of sports involve rotation, too — tennis and softball or baseball are big ones.) And then there’s anti-rotation, which helps us stay stable and supported even if we’re carrying something heavy on one side: Practicing this movement pattern helps us build even better core stability and balance.

(I’ve also thrown a side plank into the mix here, which isn’t really a rotation or anti-rotation exercise — it’s an anti-lateral flexion exercise, if you want to get technical — but it’s so good and I often forget to use it.)

This may sound like a ton of core stuff, but don’t worry; we’ll also be training lower body strength and upper body strength while we’re at it. It’s all connected!

As a reminder, if you’re doing the strength training program, you can always try the other WOWs in if time permits to get a little variety and freshness in your training. And if you aren’t, consider repeating this WOW once or twice more this week if you can. (Or finding another couple of WOWs to combine with it!)

And as always, you have full permission to skip the warmup, skip the cooldown, and/or skip 1 or 2 rounds of the circuit. Do what you can with the time and energy you have available.

Finally, fair warning that I was filming this on a school holiday and there will be a cameo about 3/4 of the way through — hopefully cute and not too distracting. Real life!

OK, here we go. Have a great workout!