TikTok has blessed the world with some truly brainless challenges, like people eating protein powder raw, climbing atop milk crates and getting stuck in baby swings at the playground. But then there are the platform’s viral workouts, which can actually inspire millions of viewers to shake off the rust and get in shape with some exercises they haven’t tried before.
The latest trend is tagged #RocktheBoatChallenge (named for the song it samples, “Grab Da Wall and Rock Da Boat” by 504 Boyz) and has a preposterous 101.3 million views across TikTok. There’s a portion of the song where a voice sings “left-right-left-right ….” in rapid succession, at which point trainees try to perform a quick, challenging circuit:
- Four shoulder taps (two from each side)
- Six mountain climbers (three from each side)
- An unclear number of plank jacks while performing push-ups
That’s Carrie Underwood above making it look easy, but this challenge is anything but. It necessitates impressive strength and patience in the core, especially when you get to the plank jack-push ups hybrid, at which point your midsection is going to be howling. Notice the stabilization in the upper half, too, especially around the soldiers. If you tilt too much from side to side (which is exactly what the body wants to do), you could get out of sorts and and teeter over.
This obviously isn’t an entire workout — in fact, one TikTok personality reported her trainer said he’d let her skip her daily one-minute plank if she could complete the “Rock the Boat Challenge” instead — but it could be an excellent circuit. If you were to continue those plank jacks to the tune of 10 (it’s unclear when people stop because most of the videos trail off), and take one-minute breaks while running through the whole thing a total of five times, that’s a useful little HIIT workout to have in your back pocket.
To check out more examples of the trend, head here.
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