This 10-minute abs workout has over 100 million views — here's what happened when I tried it

Tom's Guide

3 days ago

Popularity is by no means a guarantee of quality, but when a workout has over 100m views on YouTube, it certainly indicates that it's worth giving a go. This 10-minute abs workout from fitness trainer Pamela Reif has currently clocked up an incredible 107 million views, so I tried it myself to help it on its way to its next hundred million.
You don't need any equipment to give the workout a try yourself, but it's worth rolling out one of the best yoga mats if you're going to be doing it on a hard floor, as all the exercises in it are done on the ground.
The workout contains 20 exercises, and you do each of them for 30 seconds without any rest at all. That's right, zero rest, which makes this a challenging session even if you're already pretty fit, so I wouldn't say it's the best place to start if you're new to abs workouts — give this 10-minute session a go instead, perhaps.
If you are keen to try Reif's workout, then I'd advise scanning through it before you start so you know what exercises are involved. Since you don't get any rest breaks, you have to transition between moves quickly, which I found tricky with exercises like the oblique crunch that I wasn't instantly familiar with.
I certainly found the workout challenging when I tried it. Here are my main takeaways from tackling it.
I've tried a lot of abs workouts in my time, from a wide range of fitness trainers, and this was the hardest one yet, purely because of the lack of rest.
In most workouts, you do an exercise for 30-45 seconds, then get a 15-30 second break, which I really rely on to calm the burning sensation in my abs. With this workout, you never get that chance to soothe the burn, so it keeps building as you move onto the next exercise.
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There's only one thing to do if it gets too much, which leads to my second takeaway…
I can't imagine how many times I'd have to do this workout to get through it all without some extra breaks, but at my first attempt, I paused the video several times just to have a bit of a rest.
This was the only way that I was able to actually have a proper go at some exercises and get through more than a handful of reps, so it definitely helped make the workout more effective for me to take the extra breaks, and I'd advise doing so if you need to as well.
The upper and lower abs and obliques are all targeted quite directly in the workout, through crunches, leg raises, and side crunches, and you also hit the deep core through holds like the plank.
For such a short workout, it's definitely effective on this front, and if you're able to power through this session two or three times a week, then it would make a big difference to your core strength over time.
There are a lot of crunches in the workout, and when you're already struggling with the difficulty of the session, it's easy to start reaching with your neck rather than using your core muscles to lift yourself up.
I certainly noticed I was doing this, and it was one reason I took extra breaks, just to help reset my form and make sure I wasn't straining my neck.
You know it's a tough workout when the plank is by far and away the easiest move in it, and I was relieved to see it pop up on the top right of the screen as the upcoming move.
Compared to 30 seconds of bicycle crunches or jack-knifes, a 30-second plank felt relaxing, and doing it as the last move of the session let me finish on a high note of actually doing an exercise for the full 30 seconds.
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