Pamela Reif: "This is the toughest abdominal workout!"

The German fitness influencer is known for her tough training sessions on YouTube. Your new six-pack workout is particularly effective. We faced the killer workout!

Pamela Reif from Karlsruhe is one of the most successful fitness influencers worldwide. you first YouTube video she uploaded it in 2016, a lot has happened since then: two cookbooks, almost 8 million followers on Instagram, countless advertising deals (including Warner Music, various fashion companies), her own food brand (Naturally Pam), a podcast with her brother and business partner Dennis and even a (Pam) app.

Your most-clicked YouTube video - also an abdominal workout, by the way - has a whopping 56 million views, even though it only went online a year and a half ago. In 2020 she has it among the "30 under 30" by Forbes business magazine made it - a list of the 30 most successful people under 30. Your fitness community is scattered all over the world, and the trust in it is incredibly high. If, for example, Reif posts new products from a collection, the styles are mostly sold out within a few hours. It has not infrequently brought the websites of various companies to collapse. The servers were overloaded due to the high demand. At the age of 24, she built a whole fitness empire. Your wealth will be based on the way over four million euros estimated.

Your workouts

On her YouTube channel you can find videos for a wide variety of body parts: stomach, legs, buttocks, upper body, high intensity, dance workouts or stretching exercises. Most are ten minutes long, you don't need any equipment: you almost always train with your own body weight. One of their latest workouts is invitingly called "10 Min Killer Sixpack" - and lives up to its name. She herself describes it on Instagram as "that toughest ab workout I've ever done! "That's what she says, of all people - the one who is known for not showing the exertion of her exercises (why does she never sweat ???), gets really out of breath during this ten-minute killer workout.

The toughest AB workout?

In general, it is like this with Reif: One exercise lasts 30 seconds, then the next comes. The transition is seamless, at best you shouldn't stop in between. That makes the whole thing exhausting, of course. (There are breaks in the beginner workouts!) What makes this workout particularly hardcore is that Combination and intensity of the exercises: Most are for the lower abdomen: a part of the body that requires a lot of effort to exercise. The legs are almost always in the air: "Don't lift them with the strength of the thighs, but with the strength of the abdominal muscles," says Reif.

Why are lower abdominal exercises particularly strenuous?

Most of the time, the lower abdomen is trained through specific exercises with the legs in the air, "says Ivo Buchta, fitness trainer and founder of Shaped by IB." After that our legs very heavy - after all, they contain muscles and fat deposits - you have a correspondingly large amount of weight during lower abdominal exercises, which is increased and then decreased again. In addition, the body is not used to the angle at which it is during horizontal and lateral movements. That makes the exercise more difficult."

"The lower abdomen is an area that is usually not exercised and strengthened enough at a young age. However, in adulthood it becomes more and more important, especially what the attitude and it also affects the prevention of back pain, "explains Buchta." Exercises for the lower abdominal muscles and the core area are very important - they can often avoid pain and expensive visits to the doctor. If you have a deficit, it takes time and targeted training to make up for it. You can do a lot wrong here, so correct and precise execution is very important."

The right execution

There are a few points to keep in mind when doing workouts in the home gym. On the one hand, the correct execution of the exercises is essential: “Make sure that your lower back is flat on the mat! Lower your legs just enough so that the lower back does not lift off the mat ", explains Reif. Very important: "During training THINK about the abs! It's about the mind-muscle connection."

Buchta also emphasizes how important it is to keep the lumbar vertebrae as good as possible on the floor: "Leg lifts in particular can create a lot of pressure on the lower back."

Especially newbies to sports should go through exercises that they see on YouTube videos with a fitness trainer. This is how you can make sure you get them also performs correctly. To avoid injuries or other damage, you should have your health checked regularly by a doctor and not overexert yourself.