Core exercise workout – on water: advanced exercises for abs, back, hips and pelvis requiring balance and coordination at The Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong
- The Mandarin Spa’s ‘Aquafit Float’ class kicks things up a notch with exercises taking place on boards floating on the hotel’s swimming pool. We gave it a try
- Keeping your balance and not falling in the water adds a whole new challenge to otherwise manageable exercises
Do you find it boring doing endless sit-ups, planks and resistance-band exercises to keep your core strong? If so, now you can kick things up a notch at The Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong’s Mandarin Spa, which is offering a new class in the hotel’s swimming pool that has you doing those exercises on a board floating on water and trying to keep your balance in the process.
This “Aquafit Float” class is reminiscent of one I took more than two years ago at its sister hotel, the Landmark Mandarin Oriental, that offered “Pool Fitmat Yoga”. Standing on floating mats tethered together, we did yoga poses focused on balancing such as warrior, reverse goddess and even wheel poses.
Three of us from the media tried out that class as guinea pigs, and one fell into the water part of the way through (not me!).
Concerned I might fall off my board into the swimming pool, I wore my swimsuit underneath a T-shirt and shorts when I recently tried out the class that has been on offer since late July. Like in the Pool Fitmat Yoga class, the floating boards were tethered together and we had to crawl gingerly from the side of the pool onto them.
