5-Minute Abs & Core Workout
Quick routine, no equipment
For more than ten years I did a 5-minute ab workout. I liked it, so I made it into an app. Five moves, one minute each. Beginner is free.
5-Minute Abs is a quick ab and core workout you can do at home with no equipment. Every move is done on the floor with your own body weight. The workout runs 5 minutes 40 seconds.
The app keeps the time and shows you each move. All you have to do is press play and follow along.
How it works
Pick a level and press Start. When you’re in position, press the play button. You get 10 seconds to get ready. Then it’s five moves, one minute each, with 10 seconds between moves to change position. When you finish, the app counts that day as done, and seven dots show your last seven days. If you want one, a daily reminder comes at the time you pick.
- Beginner: 10 seconds on, 5 seconds rest, four times per move.
- Intermediate: 25 seconds on, 10 seconds rest, 25 seconds on.
- Advanced: the full minute, no rest.
Seeing and hearing each move
You don’t need to know any of the moves ahead of time.
- A figure does the move on screen while you do it.
- Press any move in the Beginner routine to see how it’s done, with the figure and written steps. With a plan or Lifetime, every move opens the same way.
- Each sound means one thing: get ready, go, almost there, rest, switch sides, move finished, all done.
- A voice names the next move before it starts.
- The sounds play over your own music and keep going when your phone is locked. One button turns them off.
- Buttons to go back, pause or skip ahead.
On iPad
- 5-Minute Abs runs on iPad, with a larger moving figure and countdown for the bigger screen.
- Turn your iPad sideways during a workout to see the move and the timer side by side.
- Beginner is free on iPad too; Intermediate and Advanced come with a plan or Lifetime.
On Apple Watch
- The three ready-made routines on your wrist, with the moving figure and the countdown. Beginner is free there too; Intermediate and Advanced come with a plan or Lifetime.
- Your own routines are there too, and you can build and edit them on the Watch if you’re on a plan or bought Lifetime.
- Your Watch vibrates at every change, so you can follow along without looking.
- The voice names the next move there too.
- Start a workout on your iPhone or your Watch and it shows on both. Pause or skip on either one.
- When you start on the Watch, it plays the same sounds, and the Digital Crown sets the volume.
- With your permission, the Watch app saves each workout you do on your Apple Watch to Apple Health.
- If the Watch app closes partway through a workout, it asks whether you’d like to pick up where you left off when you open it again within 15 minutes.
What’s free and what’s paid
The app is free to download, and the Beginner routine stays free on iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch.
There are three ways to open the rest inside the app: a monthly plan at $1.99 a month, a yearly plan at $19.99 a year, or a lifetime purchase at $49.99, paid once. The lifetime purchase can be shared with your family through Apple’s Family Sharing. Each one opens:
- The Intermediate and Advanced routines, on iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch
- Changing any move in any routine
- The exercise library
- Saving your own routines
You can see the name of every move in the library before you pay.
Which one fits you?
If you just want to try the harder levels for a few weeks, start with the monthly plan. If you’ll use it most weeks, the yearly plan works out to about $1.67 a month.
Lifetime is the one made for families. You pay once, and through Apple’s Family Sharing the rest of your family group can use it too, so nobody else has to buy a plan of their own. On its own, it costs about what two and a half years of the yearly plan does. Shared by two people, it costs less than their two yearly plans would in a year and a half. Shared by three or more, it costs less than one year of their plans.
The monthly and yearly plans renew until you cancel. You can cancel anytime in your Apple account settings. There’s no account to set up, and there are no ads.
To try it, download the app and press Start on the Beginner routine.
It’s a quick workout.
5-Minute Abs shows you short ab and core exercises. It is not medical advice, and it does not promise a 6-pack.
Help, privacy and terms
For help with the app, see Support for 5-Minute Abs.
The app does not collect your personal information. Read the Privacy Policy for 5-Minute Abs.
The terms for using the app are in the Terms of Use for 5-Minute Abs.