Floortime: What exactly is this TikTok trend?

It’s taken off on TikTok and now millions are getting down on the ground for a little time out. Find out what you’re missing out on – and discover 5 ways to take your floortime to another level.

This not-so- innovative trend simply involves sinking to the ground, sprawling out spending a few minutes ‘letting go’. It’s an opportunity to ground yourself and reset – focusing on the physical sensation of being on the floor rather than any emotional thoughts.

5 ways to use floortime to boost your health and fitness

Use the floor for your core

Some of the most popular and most effective core strengthening moves are based on the floor – so when you’re down on the ground, you can use your time wisely and give your abdominals a quick workout. Here are three core fundamentals to try:

The oblique crunch: There’s no single abdominal exercise that comprehensively works all the muscles of the core, but the oblique crunch comes close.

The double leg and arm extension: Using your arms and legs as levers is an excellent way to challenge your core – and there’s plenty of scope to adjust the intensity.

The side plank: It provides an intense core challenge, at the same time as helping strengthen your arms, shoulders, back and legs.

Perk up your posture

The Prone Cobra is a simple postural improvement exercise that is ideal to do when you’re taking time out on the floor.

• Start lying face down
• Squeeze your bum hard
• Lift your chest just off the floor – you don’t need to raise it super high
• Turn your palms out and away from your body, so that your thumbs are turned up
• Squeeze your shoulder blades tight
• Keep your chin gently tucked so that your neck is long
• Hold for 20-30 seconds and repeat 3-4 times.

Enjoy the power of Pilates

Mat Pilates can help you improve core control, strength and stamina. Using nothing but bodyweight and the floor, you can move through popular exercises like hundreds (a variation on the common crunch where you do 100 pulses); leg circles, which challenge core stability; planks and side planks; plus single and double leg stretches.

Make time for mindfulness

Mindfulness or meditation is a great way to decrease stress, plus it’s shown to increase your exercise performance. If you’re lying on the ground, it’s easy to tap into the benefits – simply get comfortable, contact your breath, and focus your mind’s attention on the breath. If you want to make it even easier, tune into a short guided meditation or mindfulness session. Just a few short minutes can help you release emotional stress and find focus and clarity.

HIIT it hard… then hit the floor

Now that you know that spending time out on the floor offers very real benefits, it might motivate you to push even harder in your next HIIT workout. It’s amazing how much extra energy you can find when you know the intense challenge is short-lived and followed by the opportunity to collapse on the floor and recover. It’s training at such contrasting extremes – high intensity followed by all-out recovery – that delivers the transformative results associated with HIIT training.

TOP TIP: To help maximise post-workout recovery, you can focus on down-regulation breathing to shift the nervous system away from stress. Try box breathing (a 5-second inhale, 5-second hold, 5-second exhale, 5-second hold) for 3-10 minutes.

This piece originally appeared at lesmills.com.