What To Do With Upper Body Songs That Take Place On The Floor In UpBeat Lift

Have you noticed we have released upper body songs that take place on the floor? True story. You can find songs, like Diet Pepsi and Let's Vibe, that work the upper body while we are on the floor. Or, we should say, on top of the mat while on the floor.

What are the benefits of performing upper body movements while on the ground?

1. Increased Body Awareness

   Ground-based work builds better awareness of your body’s position and movement, which enhances coordination and control. Also, helping us focus on the range of motion we are achieving in each movement.

2. Eliminates Momentum

   When you are on the floor, it means your lower body can't generate force. Your legs are passive. No ability to push through the feet, swing into your hips, or shift your weight. Because of these benefits, the weight you are using on the floor can feel heavier than performing the movement with the same weight standing.

3. Relief For The Posterior Chain

   In UpBeat Lift choreography, there are many upper body moves that require us to be hinged forward, making our posterior chain work hard to keep us in neutral spine alignment. By bringing our body closer to the floor, or even our backs onto the floor, it will help relieve the weight and engagement that requires our posterior chain to be fired up for us while doing standing work.

Now that we know the benefits of our upper body songs on the ground, where can we put them in our playlists in UpBeat Lift? In any of our class maps for UpBeat Lift, you can see where the floor work will typically begin which is at the song category the plank. You can see after the plank is listed, the remaining song categories are on the ground. Which means all of our floor work is stacked together in the playlist.

Because we want of all of our floor work stacked together, this means our upper body songs that take place on the floor should be stacked in with our floor work. The upper body song that takes place on the floor should be placed right before the plank in any of our class maps. By keeping all of our floor work stacked together we use our time efficiently, our equipment/space efficiently, and the playlist won't feel disjointed with coming up and down during class. Class will flow as business per usual!

Now take that leap of adding in these upper body songs on the floor into your next UpBeat Lift class.