FitnessWorkouts

Burn out your abs, arms, and glutes with this 20-minute, core-quaking Pilates sesh

East River Pilates instructor Floss Brolsma is bringing Well+Good a 20 minute Pilates workout at home that works your abs, arms, and glutes.

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Photo: Getty Images/RUSS ROHDE
Published Apr 22, 2020

Written by 

Rachel Lapidos

One of the coolest things about fitness is that it’s actually not time consuming. If you’re following the Blue Zones fitness philosophy (fitting in mini bouts of exercise whenever it feels natural to you) or you’re just really into quickie workout sessions, you know that even five minutes can make you sweat. In this week’s Good Moves episode, East River Pilates instructor Floss Brolsma is bringing us a 20-minute Pilates workout you can do at home.

Throughout the 20-minute sesh, you’ll flow through classic Pilates exercises that fire up your entire body, with special attention placed on your abs (of course—it’s Pilates), arms, and glutes. Everything is low impact, relies on just you and your bodyweight, and can be done anywhere where you can place your mat (though a carpet or rug works too!). Ready to burn out those muscles? Keep scrolling to get your workout in.

Try this 20 minute Pilates workout at home

1. Standing leg extension—right: While standing, place your feet underneath your hips and keep your posture nice and tall. Sit your bottom back into a squat. Think about opening the front of your body, drawing your shoulder blades together. Shift your weight onto your left leg as you stretch your right leg right behind you. Stay long through your body, bring your weight forward to the front leg, and find your balance. Then tap your back toe down to the mat, and lift it back up. Keep the toe pointed to the back as you stretch your heart long and forward.

2. Curtsy lunge—right: Bring your right leg over to the left behind that front foot and stabilize into both feet. Come down into a curtsy lunge. Open up through the hips and knees, and squeeze your glutes to come back to the top. You should feel this in your left quad and glute. Keep your hips as open as you can, and close your ribcage at the top. The deeper you go into the lunge, the harder it will be.

Repeat these exercises on your left side.

3. Plank shoulder taps: Bring your chin to your chest and roll down to the floor into a plank position. Bring your shoulders away from your ears, draw your heels back, and reach the crown of your head forward. Take your feet a little wider onto your mat and stay stable as you tap your opposite hand to the opposite shoulder, creating a strong diagonal throughout your body. Keep your core strong, and alternate hands. Keep the shifting as minimal as possible.

4. Side plank hip dips—right: Turn your heels down to the mat as you move into a side plank on your right. Dip your bottom hip up and down, squeezing your glute as you come up.

5. Thread the needle—right: Fold your top hand underneath your body and pull it to the other side of the mat, then pull it back up overhead. Keep your shoulders away from your ears and your hips away from the floor.

6. Clams—right: Lie down onto your mat on the side of your body. Bring your top hand to the top of your hip and your feet together off of the floor, squeezing your knees together. Keep your waist tight and lift that top knee off of the knee below, then slowly float it back down. As you breathe out, squeeze through the glutes and the back of the pelvis. If you can’t feel this in the top glute, roll the top hip a little bit more forward. Keep lifting through the bottom side of the waist.

7. Leg lift—right: Squeeze your heels together at the top and bring your knees wide. With the top leg lifted, bring your bottom leg down, and lift your top leg up and down, never touching the floor. Squeeze your glutes and the back of your body.

8. Leg circle—right: Hold that top leg up, press your heel away to find more length at the top waist. Hold that length and circle the top leg out. The smaller the circle, the easier it is, and the bigger the circle, the more challenging it will be. Do five circles in one direction, then five in reverse.

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9. Modified side plank—right: Tuck your bottom leg in below and come into a modified side plank, shoulders away from ears. Lift that top leg up and squeeze through the bottom of your body as you hold.

Repeat these exercises on your left side.

10. Bridge pulse: Come onto your back, feet flat on the floor, knees bent. Reach your hands up towards the sky, shoulders away from ears, and push your hips up towards the sky. Make sure your ribs and belly are in and you’re tucking under with your pelvis. Do bridge pulses at the top as you squeeze your glutes and fire up your hamstrings.

11. Bridge pulse with heel lift: Keep your hips raised, press your big toes onto the floor, and lift your heels up as you continue to do bridge pulses.

12. Bridge pulse with extension: Hold at the top on your toes, hips raised, and bring your arms overhead behind you. Keep your knees squeezing in and pulse your hips up and down.

13. Toe tap curl: Bring your arms behind your head and raise your knees up into tabletop position. Breathe out as you curl up, hold it there, and tap one toe down. Bring that leg back into tabletop, and tap the opposite toe down. Alternate sides.

14. Single leg stretch: Curl up, reach your hands behind one thigh, and stretch the opposite leg away from you. Separate your shoulder blades and keep your elbows wide, and swap your legs as you scissor from side to side. Exhale for two breaths with one leg, then switch. Keep your chest lifted and your ribcage tucked in.

15. Arm + leg extension: Reach your arms towards the sky, shoulders down, and bring your legs into tabletop. Stay still with your legs as you reach your fingertips to the sky. Your opposite arm and opposite leg will lengthen away from the midline. Bring them back, then alternate to the other side and switch.

16. Spine stretch: feet come down, hands toward sky. breathe out, curl up reach towards wall in front of u. twist towards the back on both sides for a quick back stretch.

17. Push-up: You can do full push-ups, push-ups from the knees, or from quadruped position. Keep your belly pulled in as you inhale, lowering to the floor, and then exhale to press back up. Press the tops of your feet onto the mat as you push down and up.

18. Plank: Get into a high plank position, hands underneath shoulders, spine neutral, feet together. Hold and breathe. When you’re done, rest in child’s pose.

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FitnessWorkouts

Doing This Type of Breathing as Part of Your Pilates Practice Can Help Strengthen Your Pelvic Floor

Here's how hypopressive breathing, a deep breathing exercise, can help you with your Pilates practice and other forms of movement.

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Photo: Stocksy/Atolas
Published Jan 29, 2025

Written by 

Kelsey Kloss

If you’re obsessed with all things Pilates, you already know about the best athleisure, accessories, and self-care moments to incorporate into your practice. However, you may be less familiar with a type of breathwork that can improve your practice — and help you feel more grounded.

Experts in This Article

Anouska Shenn

certified Pilates instructor and founder of The Office Yoga Company

Blair Mauri

a pelvic floor therapist and owner of Blair Mauri Pelvic Health

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Enter hypopressive breathing, a deep breathing exercise that involves emptying your lungs completely. It’s similar to the uddiyana bandha in yoga (or an “abdominal lock”).

“It involves breathing in a way that creates a vacuum-like effect in your thoracic, abdominal, and pelvic cavities by decreasing the pressure, causing a lift and toning of the pelvic floor,” says Anouska Shenn, a certified Pilates instructor and founder of The Office Yoga Company.

But before we get into how to do it, let us clear up one thing: Don’t try any breath-holding exercises during your practice, since Pilates focuses on breathing through movements.

That said, practicing hypopressive breathing before, after, or separate from your Pilates workouts can help support your practice in a number of ways.

What is hypopressive breathing?

Hypopressive breathing is a technique that involves completely emptying your lungs and holding that breath to create a vacuum. It serves as a core exercise that can benefit your pelvic floor health.

Think of it this way: Your abdomen is a closed pressure system. That means that when the pressure changes—like with a cough, deep breath, or force like a lift—your abdominal structures need to be able to manage that pressure properly. That’s where pelvic floor exercises, like hypopressive breathing, come in.

“When we’re not managing that pressure properly, gravity takes it and sends it down into the pelvic floor,” says Blair Mauri, MS, OTR/L, a pelvic floor therapist and owner of Blair Mauri Pelvic Health. “Repeated downward pressure not only weakens the pelvic floor, but can also cause it to become extremely tense.”

That tension may lead to symptoms such as incontinence, pelvic organ prolapse, painful sex, low back pain, or chronic constipation. “Hypopressive breathing is an excellent way to optimize pelvic floor function, as it provides a natural lift to these tissues without increasing the tension,” says Mauri.

Improving your pelvic floor function can relieve pelvic pain or low back pain, improve your oxygen and energy levels, promote digestion, and support your movement throughout your Pilates practice.

In fact, an eight-week program of hypopressive exercises improved pelvic floor muscle strength and urinary incontinence symptoms in women ages 18 to 60 with pelvic floor dysfunction and urinary incontinence symptoms, per a 2022 study1 in Neurourology and Urodynamics.

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Plus, hypopressive breathing can work your lungs in a way that benefits your Pilates practice. “Optimizing your rib mobility is also important for diaphragm function and getting the most out of your breaths,” adds Mauri.

How do you do it?

First, take a few deep breaths and see where you notice that pressure (in this case, your breath):

  • Is it focused in your chest or belly?
  • Are your ribs moving apart as you breathe in?

You should feel some mobility in all of these areas, not just one. “Rib mobility is especially important for proper hypopressive technique, so you may need to start here,” says Mauri. “Take some time to retrain your breathing so that everything expands on the inhale and comes back together on the exhale.”

Once you’ve honed in on that, you can move on to your hypopressive breathing exercises, following Mauri’s instructions:

  1. 1.
    Gently exhale as if you are fogging a window. Don’t send any pressure or force down into your lower belly or pelvic floor.
  2. 2.
    After you exhale, hold your nose and close your mouth and “pretend” to inhale without actually taking in any air. Think about widening those ribs, which will make your stomach begin to look concave.
  3. 3.
    Hold this for 3-5 seconds and then inhale.

How does it benefit your Pilates practice?

This breathing technique shines as an add-on to your Pilates practice. You don’t want to hold your breath during Pilates moves (after all, Pilates is all about coordinating movement with breath), but hypopressive breathing exercises can serve as bumpers for an effective workout.

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“Hypopressive breathing is designed to stand alone, but you can use it as part of your warm-up or to close your Pilates practice,” Shenn says.

Pelvic floor strengthening is already often a key element of Pilates. In fact, a 12-week Pilates program focused on pelvic floor strengthening significantly improved stress urinary incontinence symptoms in women ages 45 to 70, with the results lasting even six months after the program, per a small 2020 study2 in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.

“Hypopressive breathing complements a Pilates routine, as it also retrains and strengthens the deep core along with your pelvic floor,” says Mauri.

A strong and coordinated deep core and pelvic floor gives you more stability as you move your body throughout your Pilates practice—and throughout the rest of your day.

“Our pelvic floor muscles work together with our deep core muscles to stabilize the spine—supporting our posture and providing a solid foundation for all of our movements,” says Shenn.

Tips to get started

As you integrate hypopressive breathing into your Pilates routine, Shenn recommends keeping these tips in mind:

  • Start with 1-3 sets of 3 repetitions, resting between sets.
  • If you’re a beginner, practice your breathing lying down or seated, before progressing to more challenging positions like side-lying or quadruped (a four-point kneeling position).
  • Do your hypopressive breathwork on an empty stomach (it’s recommended to not eat at least two hours beforehand, since this type of breathing involves suctioning the abdomen inward and upward).
  • Avoid wearing clothes that are too tight—including collars, waistbands, and belts—as they can impede your breath.

Very little research has been done on the effect of breathwork on babies in the womb, so avoid hypopressive breathing if you’re pregnant.

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One more thing to note: Certain preexisting health conditions like high blood pressure can also be contraindications for breathwork, so always check with your doctor first and consider working with a trained provider to make sure your form is correct.

  1. Molina-Torres G, Moreno-Muñoz M, Rebullido TR, Castellote-Caballero Y, Bergamin M, Gobbo S, Hita-Contreras F, Cruz-Diaz D. The effects of an 8-week hypopressive exercise training program on urinary incontinence and pelvic floor muscle activation: A randomized controlled trial. Neurourol Urodyn. 2023 Feb;42(2):500-509. doi: 10.1002/nau.25110. Epub 2022 Dec 8. PMID: 36482844; PMCID: PMC10107869.

    ↩︎

  2. Hein JT, Rieck TM, Dunfee HA, Johnson DP, Ferguson JA, Rhodes DJ. Effect of a 12-Week Pilates Pelvic Floor-Strengthening Program on Short-Term Measures of Stress Urinary Incontinence in Women: A Pilot Study. J Altern Complement Med. 2020 Feb;26(2):158-161. doi: 10.1089/acm.2019.0330. Epub 2020 Jan 9. PMID: 31916840; PMCID: PMC7044776.

    ↩︎

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FitnessWorkouts

The 10 Best Pilates Exercises for Beginners, According to a Peloton Instructor

A Peloton instructor shares the best beginner Pilates exercises and how to do them, plus the benefits of Pilates.

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Photo credit: Peleton
Published Jan 27, 2025

Written by 

Kristin Jenny

Pilates was created in the 1920s in New York City by Joseph Pilates and many of its exercises were originally used to help World War I patients rehabilitate injuries. Today, Pilates is used more for fitness than for physical rehabilitation, although its focus on building a strong core may help prevent or speed along healing from other injuries.

Experts in This Article

Rebecca Kennedy

certified personal trainer and Peloton instructor

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If you’re considering giving this mind-and-body-focused workout a try, it’s key to have a grasp of Pilates’ foundational moves so that you can safely make the most of this muscle-building, endorphin-inducing workout.

The benefits of Pilates

Pilates is a unique fitness practice in that it focuses on more than just burning calories and achieving toned muscles—although you’ll do both of those things with a regular cadence of classes.

Pilates is focused on three principles, according to the Pilates Foundation: breath, whole-body health, and whole-body commitment, with “the whole-body encompassing mind, body and spirit.” Within those principles, the concepts of breath, concentration, centering, control, precision and flow are mainstays in any well-rounded Pilates practice.

“There are many benefits of Pilates that go beyond toning muscles or getting in a great workout,” says Rebecca Kennedy, CPT, a Peloton Pilates and Tread instructor. “Some of the top benefits of Pilates for me are that it improves posture and balance, helps with overall flexibility and mobility, and is low-impact and low-stress on your joints.”

Additionally, Kennedy notes Pilates can be an excellent complementary workout to other fitness activities like running, cycling, or strength training.

Lastly, Kennedy believes the mind-body connection that is achieved from a frequent Pilates workout is unmatched in the fitness world. “A regular Pilates practice will improve your mind-body awareness while improving mental focus and concentration,” Kennedy says. “Its emphasis on enhancing breathwork can also have the effect of reducing feelings of stress and anxiety.”

Beginner Pilates tips to keep in mind

Before diving into Pilates head first, remember to listen to your mind and body—it’s better to forego a move or modify it than cause yourself pain or injury. While it may be tempting to launch into some of the more advanced Pilates moves, it’s better to view each movement with “curiosity, instead of just trying to do each move and check off a box,” Kennedy says.

She recommends nailing the basics of the moves featured below—and not just acing the look of a move, but truly internalizing the breathing rhythm, form, and alignment of these foundational Pilates movements before becoming overly concerned with time spent in a movement, number of reps, or moving into more challenging variations of a move.

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“A common misconception about Pilates is that you need to be flexible and also have a ton of equipment to get started with your practice,” Kennedy says. “Neither of these things are true. You do not need to be flexible to start a Pilates practice, and much of the equipment used is all extra, so don’t let either of those misconceptions hold you back from beginning a foundational practice.”

Finally, Kennedy reminds those who are new to Pilates that this is a slow, methodical practice. “Move slower than you think you need to, and always move with control,” Kennedy says. “Take modifications for any exercise that feels too challenging—it’s better to take a modification that allows you to maintain good form, breath control, and pelvic floor connection than to rush through a movement.”

The best Pilates exercises for beginners

Kennedy demonstrates each of the 10 moves in the video below. Follow along with her or scroll down for detailed exercise instructions.

1. The hundred

The Pilates hundred works your core and introduces the concept of timing your breath with your movements.

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