Staying Afloat

Fire up your muscles in this HIIT workout on water.

- Dawn Chen

I’ve never been a water baby. While I can swim to save my life, it’s definitely not my first choice of exercise. There’s just something about being in a body of water that makes me uneasy – perhaps it’s my belief that people were designed to stay on land (as much as possible, anyway). So it was with great trepidation that I agreed to try out FloatFit HIIT, which is essentially a HIIT (high-intensity interval training) workout performed entirely on a floating mat (called an aquabase) in a swimming pool.

FloatFit HIIT was created in the UK by a company called AquaPhysical. It was introduced here in September last year by Skyline Aqua, the only provider of FloatFit workouts locally.

Classes are conducted in a half-Olympic sized swimming pool at Parkroyal on Beach Road’s wellness floor. Each class can hold up to 10 participants, and a 55kg woman can expect to burn roughly 400 calories in just one 30-minute session since the exercises are designed to target all muscles. This, combined with the constant struggle to balance on an aquabase, engages and fires up the whole body.

The experience