About

Flex Challenge is a viral social game in which a person lies face down on the floor with their hands behind their back and try to get up by swinging their legs through the splits in front of them. The challenge was introduced on TikTok in January 2020 shortly after the Fish Challenge went viral which involves the same action expect the participant doesn't need to do the splits.

Origin

On January 4th, 2020, TikToker @jax_kranitz uploaded a video with the hashtag #newflexchallenge which received over 687,400 likes in 12 days (shown below).

Precursor

On December 30th, 2020, TikTok user @ashbashuno uploaded a video in which people perform what they call #thefishchallenge (shown below). The video garnered over 474,800 likes in 22 days.

Spread

In early January 2020, Jax Kranitz' video was reposted to Facebook^[3] and Instagram^[2] and gained over 6,800 reacts and 59,700 likes respectively in a week. The Flex Challenge shortly became a trend on TikTok, Twitter and Instagram. On January 9th, Twitter account House of Highlights uploaded a video of a four-year-old successfully performing the challenge (shown below).

On January 12th, Instagram user _nelchonok received over 19,000 likes in a week for completing the flex challenge (shown below). On January 20th, 2019, Time Magazine^[1] published an article about the trend.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References