This 15-Minute Dancer Abs Workout Is Just As Tough As Planking—But So Much More Fun

When you sign up for a dance class, you know you’ll be getting in some serious cardio. But in addition to spiking your heart rate, dance can also be used to build muscle throughout your entire body, including your core. “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,” Katia Pryce, DanceBody founder 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.”

For this week’s Trainer of the Month workout, she’s teaching us how to do exactly that. For 15 minutes, she’ll coach you through moves that will get your heart pumping and light up your entire trunk. In order to get the most out of the routine, it’s important to keep your center muscles engaged through every move. According to Pryce, this means pulling your belly button in toward your spine and relaxing your shoulders. As you dance, you’ll feel your entire abdomen begin to engage, from those teeny, tiny muscles in your obliques to your lower abs.

The routine is fairly simple, which means you’ll be able to easily follow along whether you’re a beginner-level newb or have as much pro-dance experience as J.Lo did in Hustlers. For the first 10 minutes, you’ll start out standing, twisting, and crunching while you dance to target the various different sections of your core. Then, you’ll hit the mat for some lower ab work. Unlike your usual planks and sit-ups, this core workout is actually fun—so much so, that the 15 minutes will fly by (and Pryce’s soundtrack certainly helps). Ready to try it for yourself? Press play on the video above, and you’ll feel like one of the Dancing With the Stars celebs by the end of the second song.