Ground Movement: 8 Floor Exercises to Rebuild Mobility

This article is part of a short healthspan series about how to improve or maintain quality of life as you age, even when you’re chronically ill right now.

Most of us struggling with chronic pain, exhaustion, vertigo and muscle weakness only dream of one thing while we’re resting yet again: Getting our physical strength and stamina back so we can move more freely and do the things we enjoy.

Well, this article will give you actionable tips to rebuild your mobility from the ground up – literally.

Think back to how you learned to move as a baby. You went from lying, rolling and rocking on all fours to crawling, sitting and kneeling, before you learned to stand and walk. Ground movement forms the foundation for moving your body, and it turns out to be a gentle but effective way to regain your mobility after illness or injury too.

What is ground movement?

Ground movement encompasses a wide variety of positions and sequences that keep your center of gravity below knee-level, with multiple points of contact of your hand, feet and limbs touching the floor. This includes relatively easy moves like floor rolling and front rocking for flexibility or squatting like a toddler, but also more complex movement flows like foot-hand crawls, tripod transitions and animal walks.

The good news is, you don’t need any equipment to practice ground movements, so it’s a low-budget form of exercise that can be done virtually anywhere. Even better, you can easily tailor these floor exercises to suit your physical needs, making it a great activity for people of all ages and abilities.

What are the benefits of ground movement for chronic illness?

As the name suggests, ground movement is done sitting or lying down on the floor. This can be convenient if you’re living with conditions like POTS, ME/CFS, movement disorders and nerve problems, when you don’t always have the energy, muscle strength or healthy blood pressure to stand upright and move around.

Floor exercises are also an accessible way to increase your range of motion, full-body strength and stability. They can be done at your own pace and adapted to your condition, reducing the risk of side effects like breathlessness and post-exertional malaise.

What’s more, many ground-based movements improve your functional fitness, as they are whole-body exercises that form the basis of the skills you need to move naturally in everyday life. Practicing ground movement can make it easier to pick things up from the floor, stand up easily and climb the stairs.

In fact, did you know that being able to get up and down from the floor unassisted is linked to living longer? So if you want to support your healthspan throughout your life, ground movement can actually be a good place to start.

Let’s take a look at 8 floor exercises to build up your mobility, strength and balance again.

8 Types of Floor Exercises to Rebuild Your Mobility from the Ground Up

Disclaimer: These tips are meant for general educational purposes only. Please check with your doctor whether this kind of movement is safe for your specific condition. You can also ask a physical therapist or qualified personal trainer for personalized advice and/or tips on how certain exercises should be done. 

To get started with ground movement, make sure you’re in a safe area with a clear surface that’s large enough to move around without hitting any obstacles. Adding a soft surface like a yoga mat can make your practice more comfortable, but if you’re mostly bed bound, you could even try to do some of the gentler floor exercises on your bed.

From relatively easy, low-impact movements you can do lying down to more strenuous exercises, let’s take a look at 8 types of floor exercises to rebuild your range of motion, stability and basic muscle strength.

1. Rolling

It may sound strange, to start rolling to improve your mobility. But rolling is actually a fun way to warm up your body, while also improving your circulation and relieving tension from your muscles and joints. Plus, it can be a helpful move to master if you’re prone to falling due to dizziness, muscle weakness or fragile bones – both to prevent injury and to help you get up again.

You could even do it lying in a (queen size) bed, so it’s the perfect move for low-energy days. However, skip rolling from side to side or rocking back and forwards if you recently had surgery, when you struggle with serious back, neck or hip injuries, or if you’re pregnant.

How to do it: Take a look at this video from Kinetic Sports Rehab how you can roll from your back to your front, follow these instructions from Original Strength on rolling from side to side, ending on all fours, and try this spinal roll and rocking from Nell Mead Physiotherapist.

2. Rocking on all fours

Another gentle way to keep your spine supple while also supporting better hip mobility is by getting on your hands and knees and softly rocking your body backward and forwards. This floor exercise will also improve the overall stability of your body.

How to do it: This clip from Chaplin Performance shows you how to gently rock your body on all fours. For a slightly intenser exercise with more stretching, you can also curl up your toes and push yourself back, as physical therapist Cara Giusti demonstrate in this video.

And while you’re on your hands and knees, you can also boost your spinal flexibility with the cat-cow pose.

3. Crawling

Anyone who’s ever seen a military movie knows that crawling is not just for babies. In fact, crawling is a whole-body but low-impact exercise that helps you to strengthen the stabilizer muscles of your back, core and pelvis. It also improves your balance and coordination. And because both sides of your body have to work together, crawling also seems to be a brain workout for your corpus callosum, the bridge between your two hemispheres.

How to do it: There are different techniques you can use to crawl, ranging from relatively easy to more complicated and intense:

• Knee-hand crawling: Like a baby, gently move forward by using your opposite hand and knee, alternating sides as you crawl. Make sure to keep your back relaxed but flat, as shown in this short clip from MovNat.
• Foot-hand crawling: Instead of crawling on your knees, lift your lower legs a few centimeters or inches off the ground and use your feet instead. Watch here how this weight-bearing floor exercise is done.
• Inverted crawling: Start by sitting on the floor with your knees bent before you and your hands slightly behind you. Lift your bottom and start crawling forward, as you can see in this MovNat video. This way, you can rebuild your muscle strength and core stability with little risk of injury.

4. Active sitting

In our sedentary society, many of us spend a lot of time sitting down – not to mention if you throw chronic fatigue, trembling legs and stiff joints into the mix. And we all know that prolonged sitting hurts our health by putting stress on our backs and decreasing blood flow to our legs, which has a negative impact on our blood pressure and blood sugar levels.

But what if you could still support your health by taking a more active seat some of the time? 

If you can, try to regularly sit on the floor without support in any position that’s comfortable to you, for as long or short as you’d like, while watching TV, playing card games around the coffee table or munching off a snack board.

You could sit cross-legged or with your legs in a V-shape. Kneel down and lower your thighs onto your calves. If sitting on your heels gets too tiring, shift your hips to one side. Feel free to use pillows or yoga bolsters to support yourself or modify seating positions. Bonus points for if you manage to squat like a toddler!

How to do it: Get inspired by these 53 ways to take a seat from Nutritious Movement.

5. Side Bent Sit Reversing

Ok, the name sounds complicated, but this move is a basic transition pose that increases your hip mobility and supports lower back health. Over time, mastering this movement will make it easier to get up and down to the floor unassisted.

How to do it: Sit down with your legs sideways, knees bent facing the same direction. Keep your feet in place while lifting your knees off the floor, slowly shifting to the other side. Lower your legs to the ground, as far as your range of motion allows without pain. This video from Girls Gone Strong will show you how it’s done.

Once your hips are loose and your legs are strong enough, see if you can go from a side bent sit to kneeling to standing without using your hands for support as you can see in this video from MovNat.

6. Kneeling

Want to go from a seated position to standing? Practicing kneeling will help you to strengthen your legs to make this transition without putting your hands on the ground to push yourself up. (Half) kneeling will also improve your balance and mobility in your hips.

How to do it: 

• Half Kneeling Switches: Work on your balance and core stability by starting in tall kneeling position, and then move one foot forward. Place it back again and switch between both legs in a controlled way, like Carla Giusti, PT shows us.
• Figure Four to Deep Kneeling: Cross your right leg in front of you, while placing your left leg bent in front of you with the knee up – as if your legs form the number 4. From that position, lean forward into a deep kneeling, as this clip from MovNat demonstrates.

7. Getting up from the floor

As we mentioned in the introduction, your ability to getting up from the floor without using your hands or knees for support is linked to living a longer life. That’s probably because the agility and stability required to do so help prevent falling and support your overall health.

So start by doing this simple Sit-and-Rise test to see how you are currently doing. Next, get comfortable with the floor exercises above, like active sitting, side bent sit and kneeling, before you practice one of the get-up techniques below:

• Easy Sit to Stand: Struggling with muscle weakness or poor balance? Grab a sturdy chair, sit on the edge of the seat with your arms raised in front of you and stand up to rebuild basic strength, like this clip from Wellen shows you.
• (Cross) Squat Get Up: Expand your ground movement repertoire by lying on the floor and rolling from back to front to build speed and move into a (cross legged) squat, before pushing yourself into a standing position. Take a look at these examples from MovNat.
• Side Bent Sit Get Up: As you’re sitting down with both your knees bent to the same side, push yourself upwards into a tall kneeling position to transition to standing, as Jeffrey S’Oguin demonstrates in this video.
• Figure Four Get Up: When you’re lying on your back, roll yourself into the Figure Four seated position with one knee raised in front of you and one leg bent to the side. Keep the momentum by leaning onto that leg in front of you and push yourself into a half kneeling position before getting up, as you can see in this clip from MovNat.
• Turkish Get Up: Regained a high fitness level? This strength-building ground movement will get you from lying on the floor to standing up straight while carrying a kettlebell or dumbbell. A Turkish Get Up is not for beginners, so check out these instructions from Girls Gone Strong to see if you’re able to perform it safely.

8. Animal walks

Once you’ve regained some mobility and strength, you could further boost your range of motion with (modified) animal moves. Walking like a bear, moving like a monkey and going sideways like a crab will give you a fun full-body workout that builds your functional fitness and improves your range of motion.

What’s more, it’s an illness-friendly way to boost your cardio conditioning while managing your limited energy.

How to do it: For instructions, check out these animal movements for beginners from GMB Fitness, that can be modified for your specific needs and abilities.

Hopefully these floor exercises have given you some ideas on how you can slowly but steadily rebuild your mobility through ground movement, by adapting the movements to your abilities and needs.

How will you add some ground movement to your daily life to improve your range of motion, stability and strength? 

For more accessible ways to boost your fitness with chronic illness, check out 24 Exercise Snacks You Can Sneak In Throughout the Day and learn about Functional Fitness: How to Train for Everyday Life.

You can also find more tips on how to support your health throughout your life in 8 Realistic Practices to Support Your Healthspan Despite Chronic Illness.