Everyone loves the holidays. Spending time with family and friends celebrating all the traditions that go along with them is a great way to boost morale and bring everyone closer together. The best way to bring people together is with food. Many of us eat enough for a small village this time of year. I actually moved my military fitness test to October so I do not have to skimp on the delicious food.

This year I have employed a new strategy to get ahead of the calories I will be piling on during these occasions. I am essentially trying to turn my body into a pre-paid calorie credit card. This means I am doing a lot of different exercises and routines to burn calories and keep my body burning them for hours after my workout. This involves high intensity and exhausting the major muscle groups so your body will need to rebuild them all day long. One caveat to this is you need to eat a balanced diet (when you’e not pigging out on holiday foods) to keep the machine running.

One workout that I am doing is a core workout to exhaust my abs. The workout includes crab planks, bicycle crunches, and knee ups with a twist.

Crab planks

Some people call these Spiderman planks, too, but they are still a great way to work abs and obliques. Get into a normal plank position either resting on your forearms or hands. I personally like to go to the hands for this exercise. Then bring your left knee towards your left hand keeping your leg parallel with the floor. Hold this for a three count and then go back to the starting position and move to your right leg. Do ten reps each leg.

Bicycle crunches

You are going to lie on your back and move your feet like your pedaling a bike. Go for 30 seconds and then pedal the other way.

Knee ups with a twist

This requires a chin-up bar of some sort. You can use your kids swing set, a low hanging tree branch, etc. Grab onto the bar and bring knees to your chest. Lower them then bring them up again, but this time point them to the right. Lower them and go to the left. That is one rep. Do ten.

I do this workout three times a week before I get into the shower in the morning. It only takes about 15 minutes and keeps my abs working all day long.