The 21 Day Fix system is a series of seven workouts (plus several optional routines) plus a nutrition plan designed to change your body when followed as specified for 21 days. The workouts are led by Autumn Calabrese, who teaches each routine live with a group of approximately six background exercisers. In general, Calabrese sets up each move and then walks around the room, offering words of encouragement and pushing the class members to perform.

Flat Abs Fix is one of the add-on workouts for 21 Day Fix, and the theme (each workout has a theme) is "Tomorrow you'll be glad you did this today." Calabrese recommends using one moderate weight for this routine, which has NO warm-up or cool-down. There are five rounds, and each round has two exercises. You perform the exercises for one minute each, repeat both exercises, then move on to the next round.

Here are the rounds for Flat Abs Fix:

ROUND ONE
*Standing oblique crunch pulling dumbbell from overhead
*Standing knee raise to front with dumbbell pull down

ROUND TWO
*Standing side bend with dumbbell
*Forearm plank with rock

ROUND THREE
*High plank with knees in and to the side
*Side plank with hip drop

(A very brief stretch follows this round.)

ROUND FOUR
*Crunches
*Side-lying oblique crunches

ROUND FIVE
*Side obliques
*Situp with alternating leg lift using dumbbell

BONUS ROUND (on forearms; repeated once)
*Flutter kicks (30 seconds)
*Scissor kicks (1 minute)

This workout comes in at just over 30 minutes (31.5). I enjoyed the standing work more, and I found the the bonus round was unnecessary; I would have preferred to have a stretch at the end.

Instructor Comments:
I find Autumn's instruction to be just okay. She does mirror cue, which is nice, and she offers decent form pointers at times. But I'm not a fan of the walk around the room style of instructing, which comes across more like a drill sergeant to me; I find it much more motivating when the instructor does the workout right along with me the entire time. Also, I don't like the ways in which Autumn says things that could unnecessarily lead you to push yourself to injury, such as "you can do anything for 60 seconds!" (no, sometimes you can't).

Beth C (aka toaster)