5 Million People Have Done This Dancer-Approved Abs Workout—Because It’s Effective and Quick

Maybe you were one of the thousands who woke up early and spent three hours waiting in line for the cronut (10/10 would say it was worth it). Or perhaps you’ve been known to spend the wee hours of the morning queued up for the newest iPhone release. If so, then you already know that the ability to draw a crowd can be a pretty good indication that something is high quality. As further proof, we’d like to offer up this abs workout that nearly 5 million people have clicked “play” on—including Well+Good’s own editors, who regularly fire it up when we have only a little bit of time and want to feel the heat in our cores.

I’ll put it this way: Katia Pryce, the founder of DanceBody and the instructor on this video, takes you through a whopper of a core series… only to tell you that it’s actually just the warm-up. As one watcher commented, “When she said, ‘That’s your warm-up,’ I screamed a little from inside.'”

Why is the workout so difficult? Pryce’s series of movements calls for you to engage all the tiny muscles in your core. When you’re cranking through crunches, in comparison, you can often recruit larger muscles to power through the movement. “What’s great about dancing is that you learn to use your core in every movement, even when you’re standing. You can plank and crunch until you’re blue in the face but there’s a lot more to a strong core,” Pryce previously told Well+Good. “Dancers learn how to engage and utilize the entire core in movement, and often hit those underutilized core muscles that other workouts sometimes forget.”

What’s more, while many workouts are so hard and painful that you want them to be over this-minute-if-not-sooner, cardio dance classes have the capability to be extra mood-boosting. Previous research has indicated that exercise comprising unpredictable movements (like any dance sequence) can enhance neuroplasticity in the brain.

“Dance-based workouts are incredibly beneficial for both mind and body because they stimulate our wired-in emotional instinct to play, which is sorely squashed in most adults,” neuroscientist Nan Wise, PhD, previously told Well+Good. “By playing with dance, which involves moving our bodies rhythmically to music, we engage the body, mind, and brain in a form of exercise that combats the negative effects of stress, burns up the stress hormones, and elicits the feel-good neurotransmitters that promote well-being.”

So if you’re ready for a full-body (yet, particularly abs-focused) sweat session, pop on this six-minute workout and get moving. You’ll be in good company.

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