The opening week of my journey to abs can be summed up best by a core exercise I’ve been working on, aptly named “Seven minutes of hell.”

I’ll give you the gist. Seven consecutive exercises ab exercises, all to be done in seven minutes and thirty seconds, each more daunting than the last. I’ve grunted and cried my way through murderous mechanisms like “figure eights,” where I am to move my legs in loops while laying down, and twisting pistons, where I must intricately jump on opposite limbs while on a plank.

It sucks, a lot.

But I’ve gotten better, if only slightly, and this morning I performed the exercise as smoothly as I’ve ever done. It’s less painful and more rewarding.

And every night once the homework is done, my brother and I go down to the basement wrestling mat, and take on the seven minutes while listening to Kendrick Lamar..

But the gains are real. It’s most evidenced by this exercise called the spider, where i sit myself up from the mat and hold my hands to my feet. I used to push myself off the mat to complete the exercise, but now I can rise up on core strength alone.