A 4-Move Routine to Boost Your Agility

The workout below is for Day 24 of the Good Vibes Workout, a four-week workout plan. It’s pretty great on its own, but you can also check out the full program right here or browse the calendar here. If you’d like to sign up to receive daily emails of these workouts, you can do that here.

We hope your lower-body is feeling limber and ache-free after yesterday’s hamstrings and hip-based yoga flow. Today we’re going to work a lot of those same muscles—plus some core and upper body.

In this routine, you’ll probably notice that you’re being asked to move in different directions, or different planes of motion. That’s important, since we spend a lot of our workout time in the sagittal plane, which includes the front-and-back, up-and-down motion we do with squats, bent-over rows, and overhead presses. It’s helpful to train your body this way, since we also spend a lot of time in the sagittal plane during everyday life—say, walking, running, kicking a ball, or pushing a box up on a high shelf. But it’s important to include work in the frontal plane too, which involves side-to-side (lateral) motion. In a workout, this can look like a lateral raise or a lateral lunge; in everylife life, it can be stepping out of your car or onto a curb.

By incorporating frontal plane movements into your workout, you help your body move more efficiently, safely, and with more agility, especially when quick changes of direction are necessary. That’s why the lateral lunge to hop is such a star here—it gets you working in both the frontal plane with the lunge out to the side, and the sagittal plane with the vertical jump at the end.

Besides working on balanced movement, you’ll also get a good dose of core strength here, with two plank variations: the plank up-down (which also strengthens your arms) and the plank to pike to toe touch (which gives an extra challenge to your obliques).

For an extra leg and cardio burst, stick around for the reverse lunge to hop EMOM at the end. Don’t be afraid to modify the rep range here as you see fit—because there’s a jump at the end, correct form is so, so important. If you feel your form faltering, slow down and do fewer reps, or swap the plyometric jump at the end for a low impact knee drive (lifting your knee to hip height). Everything is open to modification here!

Workout Directions

Complete each exercise for your chosen work/rest interval:

• 30 seconds work, 30 seconds rest
• 40 seconds work, 20 seconds rest
• 50 seconds work, 10 seconds rest

After all 5 exercises, rest for 60 seconds. That’s 1 round. Complete 2–5 rounds.

Exercises

• Lateral Lunge to Single-Leg Hop (Left Side)
• Plank Up-Down
• Pop Squat
• Plank to Pike to Toe Touch
• Lateral Lunge to Single-Leg Hop (Right Side)

Bonus: EMOM

After your last circuit, try the bonus EMOM: Do both moves for the recommended number of reps aiming to finish in under 60 seconds. If you have time left over, rest. At the top of the next minute, start again. Complete 4 times (a total of 4 minutes).

• Reverse Lunge to Hop, Right Side (8–10 reps)
• Reverse Lunge to Hop, Left  Side (8–10 reps)