FloatFit went viral in 2016 - and looks set to be a trend in 2017
If the thought of spinning or aerial yoga classes have you yawning, then perhaps FloatFit - a fitness trend that requires sea legs - will set your pulse racing.
Float Fit combines yoga-inspired and high intensity interval training (HIIT) exercises – including planks, burpees and mountain climbers - performed atop a specially-designed board called the Aquabase.
The routines are said to target muscles across the body and burn off 400 calories in 30 minutes, as the constant fight to stay afloat engages the body. As each board costs around £699, heading to one of the classes available across the UK is the best way to give a session a go.
The whole thing sounds like a recipe for disaster - but that’s sort of the point. The instability of exercising on a board balancing on water is what its creators believe makes the workout unique.
Leila Francis Coleman, who created the aquabase board that FloatFit classes are performed on was inspired by her childhood spent sailing to harness the movement of water for fitness.
Floatfit classes were launched in July 2015, but received international attention when a video of a class in May went viral and was viewed over 120million times - causing a spike in searches for the term on Google.
To some, the idea of exercising on land let alone water is off-putting enough. Coleman admits that participants will probably fall off into the water, but that’s part of the fun.
"It’s not serious,” she says, adding that it is suitable for all age groups with their oldest participant being 80-years-old.
“He was amazing. If he can do it anyone can.”
But FloatFit will also have to compete with the myriad other fitness classes vying for the title of “trend of 2017”, just as spinning and Zumba took off in the mid-2000s and became standards in gyms across the world.
Crawling – where the weight of the body is used in plank-based exercises – is also set to be hot in 2017.
“It’s like the new version of the plank, but more interesting,” fitness expert and Balance Festival Ambassador Ashley Hunt recently told The Independent. “We have already seen the increasing popularity of crawling in states with groups forming and crawling classes such as Original Strength. The UK is now following suit.”
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