15-Minute Holiday Workout Blitz

Crunches: Lie down with your spine pressed into the floor. Hands behind head. Suck your abs up and under your rib cage as if you're pulling it away from your belt buckle. Exhale and lift up your head and shoulders from the bottom of your rib cage. Your hands should be gently holding your head only, they shouldn't be assisting the lift. Do 20 to 30.

For Intermediate: Lift your legs into the air and do the crunches being careful not to move your pelvis around on the floor. This will work you're lower abs more intensely.

Obliques: Same position as above but add a rotation. Here's a great trick that will be your focused on your obliques and really helps isolate them! Picture a dinner napkin on your tummy. The bottom two corners on are each hip bone. The top two corners are brushing the bottom of the rib cage. When you do your rotation fold the napkin corner to corner. This will keep the work focused in your ribs. Your elbows should stay wide the entire time, no wiggling elbows! Do 20 to 30 to each side.

For Intermediate: Same set up as above, have your legs in the air and keep your pelvis perfectly still, this really increases the workload to your obliques!Wall Squats: Sit against a wall with your spine against the wall and your knees and hips at 90-degree angles. Press your heels down into the floor as hard as you can and hold the position for 30 to 60 seconds. It's hard! Do this five times.

For Intermediate: Hold for 60 to 90 seconds.

Bridges: Lie on the floor with your heels in line with your hip bones. Hands are relaxed on the floor. Inhale to prepare. On the exhale, lift your bum up in the air creating a straight line from shoulders to knees. Focus on digging the heels into the floor. This will give you lots of hamstrings but will also engage your glutes for a tighter, higher, smaller bum. Repeat this 15 to 20 times.

For Intermediate: Do 15 to 20 reps but hold at the top the bridge for a 10-count before returning to the floor. Really focus on squeezing your bum!

Push ups: I love push ups! You know the drill, do it from the knees or the toes, if you're not sure, start at the toes! You can always drop right down to the knees if it's too much. Here are my pet peeves. Don't stick your butt in the air. It should be in line with your body, think of yourself as a long, lean dart. Also, no shallow push-ups, try to get your elbows to 90 degrees at the bottom of the range of motion. Finally, keep your shoulder blades down, don't let them sneak up towards your ears, it shifts which muscle groups are working. Do 10 to 15.

For Intermediate: Toes only! Increase the work by doing a three count lower and a one count lift. Do six with this pacing and then reverse the pacing and do another six with a one count drop towards the floor and a three count lift away from the floor.


This will keep you nice and strong and feeling like you're at least getting something accomplished while you're enjoying the holiday fun. If you're not currently doing a workout routine this is actually a great place to start. Heck, there's no time like the present, right?

For more ideas on 15 minute workouts try this these great ideas.