I tried Kaley Cuoco's yoga routine and it HURTS!

Many celebrities love to sculpt their bodies with yoga and actress Kaley Cuoco is no exception. The Big Bang Theory & The Flight Attendant star is well known for her sculpted abs and toned body which she credits to hot yoga.

As seen from Instagram clips from her personal trainer and during magazine cover shoots, Cuoco mixes up her workout routine with a variety of HIIT, cardio and strength training, but she’s always been vocal about her love of yoga. Loyal fans of The Big Bang Theory will also know that her character Penny was seen practicing yoga in a few episodes of the show, proving that Cuoco’s passion for yoga is both on and off screen.

In conversation with Shape, Cuoco said that “doing yoga five times a week has transformed my body. I love being toned and having muscle…and I owe it 100% to yoga.” When asked how she practices yoga, Cuoco mentioned CorePower Yoga. “One morning, I’ll take the Hot Power Fusion class, which is an amazing calorie burner, or I’ll take a Yoga Sculpt class, where we wear three-pound weights during yoga moves. The sculpt classes include 20 seconds of mountain climbing or jumping jacks between poses, so I get cardio, too.”

To find out how Cuoco uses yoga to stay fit and toned, I rolled out my best yoga mat and tried a CorePower Yoga session (you can find live streams and classes on the CorePower Yoga YouTube channel) and wow… it hurts!

What is Kaley Cuoco’s workout routine?

According to multiple sources, Cuoco mixes up her workouts, incorporating cardio and strength training alongside her yoga practices. It’s worth mentioning that at the time of writing Cuoco just had a baby, so chances are she isn’t doing these intense workouts at the moment but it’s been well documented that this is the kind of fitness she likes to do.

Her general routine seems to be 30 minutes of yoga followed by 30 minutes of HIIT training, finished with a cardio blast, like 10 minutes of skipping or 10 minutes of spinning. As seen in social media clips, Cuoco likes to try different cardio exercises, including spinning, boxing, skipping and even running with a medicine ball. In sessions with her personal trainer, she’s been seen doing weighted lunges, side crunches, hip thrusts, ‘up, up, down, downs’ and other exercises that use kettlebells or dumbbells.

How to do Kaley Cuoco’s yoga routine

As yoga is Cuoco’s favourite way to workout, I decided to follow a Yoga Sculpt class from CorePower Yoga. After doing some research, I found that in-person classes can reach high levels of heat, making it hot yoga. As most CorePower Yoga studios are in the US and I’m based in the UK, I followed a YouTube class instead so my session wasn’t hot. But, for those who want to try hot yoga, make sure to read how to choose a hot yoga mat.

The Yoga Sculpt Class I chose was 35 minutes and all I needed was a yoga mat (I used the Complete Unity Yoga CompleteGrip Yoga Mat if you’re interested) and a set of the best dumbbells… and this is how it went.

After the warm up, which consisted of alternate arm and leg raises, downward dog, forward bending poses and high half lifts, the main routine was a mix of body weight poses and weighted movements.

To start, you go through the yoga flow without weights before you add them in. This flow featured half bends, lunges and Warrior poses. With the dumbbells, you start in the chair position with dumbbells above the head before moving into a lunge with your right leg forward and left leg back. Here, the dumbbells are in a tricep position before you move them above the head. From there, you move into Warrior II with dumbbells out to the side, before one dumbbell goes to the left hip while the other reaches to the sky.

After this, you add a few weighted reps in between the flow, for example, squat hammer curls in the chair position and tricep curls behind the head when your arm is up during Warrior II. The floor work is a variety of plank positions, press ups, side dips and leg raises with dumbbells overhead. The cardio portion at the end of the routine includes squat jumps and star jumps, before you have a full stretch and breathing meditation to calm and wind down.

As you can see from the video and this brief explanation, this workout is jam packed! It targets your whole body, especially your legs, core and arms, so you will be sore after doing this, even if you decide not to use weights. I found that balance is also important in this workout as a few of the moves have you standing on one leg at times. This yoga routine isn’t for the faint of heart but I completely understand why Kaley Cuoco loves it as I felt strong and toned afterwards… once everything had stopped aching, of course!

For more celebrity yoga routines, check out Jennifer Aniston's yoga flow and see how Miley Cyrus stays fit with yoga.