9 Tough Floor Exercises for Better Core Strength

Floor exercises are a great way to challenge the core, shoulders, and hips. They can also be a great way to build tolerance for loading the wrists. This makes floor exercises a great option for a wide range of goals; whether you’re training to get up off the floor after a fall, get better at yoga, or try your hand at gymnastics. These exercises also featured heavily in my guide to surviving the zombie apocalypse!

Picture of me with hands on the floor in a pressup position. I am pulling one knee up to my stomach.
Woman with her hands on a mat and her toes on the floor. She is pushing her hips up to the ceiling in the "downward dog" yoga pose.
By Logan Weaver on Unsplash

Some of these exercises, such as pushups and deadbugs, have been covered in great depth already. This post is aimed at building up the variety of exercises at your disposal. If you find a particular exercise here quite challenging, you can perform it on it’s own with a focus on truly mastering the technique. Alternatively, you can use these exercises in supersets and circuits as they tend to raise the heart rate.

They also force you to use the hips, trunk, and shoulders in tandem to maintain your position. Because you’re not laying on your back, these exercises also allow the shoulder blades to move freely. For these reasons, many strength coaches use them in blocks of general preparation work with their athletes.

If you want to skip the detail and just get an overview of the exercises, you can head over to this video.

Pressup Position Floor Exercises

The Pressup Step

Pressup-style floor exercises have a very obvious application to other fitness goals. They add variety to the pushup and straight-arm plank exercises, so they can be seen as supplementary exercises for either progressing or regressing those movements.

The upper body muscles work to push you away from the floor, and the abdominal muscles contract against gravity to stop your hips and stomach dropping to the floor.

Pressup Walkouts

The various exercises here will all exist on a continuum of whether they are more fatiguing for the upper body or more fatiguing for the core. This will also depend on your own strengths and weaknesses. You might even feel like they hit both areas equally hard!

Downward Dog

Pushing up and away from the floor is a great way to work the muscles that operate around the shoulder joint. When we do other pushing exercises on a bench, we don’t have the same freedom to move the shoulder blades. This means these pressup-style exercises can be extremely useful in building shoulder strength and mobility.

Plank Pushups

A lot of these floor exercises involve moving one hand at a time – this asymmetrical loading will force you to work the muscles responsible for stabilising the shoulder and core. Therefore many of these exercises are great for building up your rotational and pressing strength.

Single Arm Pressup Hold

Bear Position Floor Exercises

Bear-position exercises change your base of support, and alter the way your legs work to keep you stable. These exercises also feel like they load the knees and toes more than pushup-position work, which is a useful addition.

Bear Shoulder Tap

Bear-position exercises can also prepare you for crawling exercises. Crawling exercises add an extra dimension to your floor work, allowing you to work for longer durations and increase movement variety.

Bear Switches

By moving forwards and backwards in the bear position, you change the direction of the forces acting on the shoulders, wrists, feet, and core.

Bear Crawls

Crab Extensions

Crab Extensions

This floor exercise gets it’s own section as it’s a little different to the others. Whereas most of the other exercises focus on resisting extension (i.e. preventing you from arching your back towards the floor), the crab extensions encourage you to extend your spine and ribcage as you push to the ceiling. This makes it a great warm-up exercise. The movement produces a fairly uncommon shoulder position with your arm reaching out behind you, so ease into this one gradually.

Summary

Floor exercises are perfect as filler or additions in circuits. They provide a number of movement benefits for athletes and novice gym-goers alike. They can be done anywhere too!

These exercises won’t revolutionise your workout, nor will they take the place of your staple strength exercises, but they will deliver a number of physical and skill-based benefits.

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