How To Get Sexier Abs In 7 Days!

Steal the routine that a-listers use to trim and tone in record time. It’s so seriously effective, this will be the cheat sheet you keep!

We have very good news for you: “It’s 100 per cent possible to see a difference in your abs in one week,” swears Astrid Swan, a celebrity fitness pro in Los Angeles. You just have to put in the work. But not the hours-on-the elliptical or endless-crunches kind of work. “You shouldn’t have to exercise for more than 30 minutes at a time,” she says. “A half hour is plenty, as long as those minutes are intense and you use them smartly.” And Astrid would know: She privately trains many famous clients, including cover stars of Shape magazine in the US who need last-minute ab toning to prep for big events or, say, bikini photo shoots. Now, she’s sharing her magic formula for flatter abs in seven days with all of us.

Kick up your cardio

“High-intensity interval training is your abs’ best friend,” Astrid says. It has been lab tested as a major belly-fat fighter: Women who did three HIIT workouts a week lost significantly more subcutaneous belly fat (the stuff you can see and pinch, thus what you care about in time crunch) than those who did only steady-state cardio, according to a study from the University of New South Wales in Australia. The researchers say that’s probably because more fat is used for fuel during HIIT than steady-state.

You can do cardio intervals with any kind of movement that uses multiple big-muscle groups and gets your heart rate way up within seconds, Astrid says. For instance: Sprint, then do plyometrics (explosive full-body jumping moves like squat jumps, burpees and speed-skater lunges), then jump rope.