Inside the 500-Rep Nightly Core Ritual That Transformed This Paralympian’s Strength

Swimmer and 2025 SI Swimsuit model Ali Truwit demonstrates her evening workout alongside Katie Austin.

Ali Truwit / Roy Rochlin/Getty Images

While many of us may have an evening routine that consists of a little bit of skincare, Paralympic swimmer Ali Truwit’s involves of a grueling workout instead. The 25-year-old athlete completes a 500-rep ab routine before hitting the sheets each night.

Truwit, who was featured in the 2025 SI Swimsuit Issue following her photo shoot at The Boca Raton in Boca Raton, Fla., recently linked up with fellow brand star Katie Austin to demonstrate her daily ab workout.

“Two years ago I lost my foot and lower leg in a shark attack, and the doctors told me that to learn how to use a prosthetic well and really be strong in your leg, a strong core is essential,” Truwit explained in the clip. “And so every night I do 500 reps of different abs just to keep my core strong and use the prosthetic well.”

Truwit’s 500-rep daily ab workout

“I feel like having a prosthetic highlighted to me how essential your core is to like your posture and the way you carry yourself and how you move through your day,” Truwit added of her focus on strengthening her core.

The athlete noted that she switches up her ab routine regularly, but the one Truwit ran through with Austin consisted of the following moves:

• 100 bicycles
• 25 crunches
• 25 butterfly abs
• 50 penguins
• 50 flutter kicks
• 50 scissor kicks
• 20 side crunches on each side
• 60 Russian twists
• 100 hundreds

“It’s nice because depending on how long you want them to take at night, you can customize, like, which moves you do,” Truwit noted, adding that her routine is largely inspired by Pilates moves and typically ends with hundreds.

Pro tip from Austin on breathwork with core workouts

Austin, a 32-year-old certified fitness trainer and SI Swimsuit regular, knows a thing or two about movement. She’s the creator of KA Daily, where she offers daily workouts, habit tracker checklists, weekly recipes and more to subscribers.

One thing that will help you succeed if you choose to take on Truwit’s 500-rep challenge, Austin says, is focusing on breathwork.

“Something also that’s not talked about enough is the breathing that comes with abs,” Austin noted. “So every time you exert, and you crunch, that’s when you’re supposed to be exhaling. So getting the oxygen leaving your body as you crunch up.”

Tackling the New York City Marathon

At the time the workout video was filmed, Truwit was training to run the New York City Marathon, which she completed on Sunday, Nov. 2. She completed the race in 4 hours, 14 minutes and 34 seconds, and ended up raising more than $220,000 for her nonprofit, Stronger Than You Think, to help women and girls with limb loss by providing financial assistance for prosthetic limbs.

“I ran a marathon with my mom 10 days before the shark attack, so it’s nice to be able to reclaim that and also to run with such a strong ‘why,’ I feel like has helped me in my training to be like, ‘I’m running to fundraise for other young women and girls who can’t get access to those prosthetics,’” Truwit said.

Learn more about Truwit’s training and nonprofit organization, Stronger Than You Think, here.

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