"Planking was a term myself and two other mates came up with roughly in the summer of 2008 or 2009," says 25 year-old Sam Weckert, a carpenter living in South Australia. It started as a prank on dance floors and went on to balancing flat on low-lying objects such as pot plants, post boxes and public bins.

Who invented the plank workout?

The plank was first developed by a man called Stuart McGill, who discovered that if you were in a face down position, you could effectively activate the deep abdominal muscles otherwise known as the transverse abdominis.

Why did people start planking?

Weckert, who says he wasn't aware of the U.K. game, says planking began in 2008 when he and his friends began doing the "worm" dance, a breakdancing move popularized in the 1980s, at local bars. That morphed into lying down as stiff as a wood plank, "getting drinks spilled all over you," he says.