Back

• Lie on your back, knees bent up over your hips and shins level, so your legs make a right angle
• Both arms reaching straight up towards the ceiling
• Find neutral and set your brace
• Press your lower back gently down towards the floor until the small of it is just about touching, closing the gap under your waist, and hold it there

Slowly lower one arm back behind you towards the floor, and at the same time straighten and lower the opposite leg, reaching the heel away and down towards the floor without letting it touch. Put a count on it so you can't rush: around three seconds to lower the arm and leg out, three seconds held still at the farthest point you can reach with your back flat, then three seconds to bring them back in. Then go again with the other arm and leg.

• Your lower back staying pinned flat to the floor the whole time, and no arching. That is the exercise
• Breathing easily throughout, no breath-holding
• Moving slowly enough that you could stop dead at any point
• The moment the small of your back starts to lift and arch away from the floor, you've gone past your limit, so shorten your reach until you can keep it flat all the way

• Lie on your side with your knees bent
• Propped up on your bottom forearm, elbow directly under your shoulder
• Set your neutral spine and brace your middle before you lift anything

Push down through your forearm and your bottom knee, and lift your hips up off the floor until your body makes one straight line from your knees, through your hips, to your shoulders. Hold that line, steady and still, for as long as you can keep good form, then lower under control. Rest, and repeat, then turn over and do the other side.

• One long, straight line from knees to head. Picture a plank, and keep it a plank
• Hips lifted and level, not sagging down towards the floor and not hitched up too high
• The top shoulder not rolling forward and the hips not drifting back. Stay square, as if you were pressed flat between two panes of glass
• The brace firm, and keep breathing behind it

• Stand tall, feet about hip-width apart, a soft bend in the knees
• Set your neutral spine and brace your middle
• Hold the broom along your back, touching the back of your head, the middle of your back, and your tailbone all at once

Push your hips back behind you, as if you were closing a car door with your backside, and let your chest tip forward as they go. Hips travel back, not down. Let your knees keep only that soft bend they started with, don't let them push forward, and feel a good stretch come on down the backs of your thighs as your hips move back. If your range allows it, let your upper body come the whole way down until it's roughly parallel with the floor, flat as a tabletop from hips to head. Put the same three-three-three tempo on it that you've used all chapter: about three seconds to lower into the hinge, three held at the bottom while you check your back is still one flat line, then three to drive your hips forward and rise back to tall, squeezing your glutes at the top.

• The flat line of your back, held the whole way. All three points of the broom stay in contact from start to finish
• The movement happening at your hips, and the work landing in your hamstrings and glutes, not as a strain in your lower back
• Depth handed to you by your hamstrings, never forced. A short hinge with a flat back beats a deep one that rounds, every time

• Stand tall, the weight hanging at your side, shoulders level
• Set your neutral spine and brace your middle, exactly as you have all chapter

Simply walk, slowly and tall, for a set distance or a set time, then turn around and come back, and swap the weight to the other hand for the return. The whole exercise is the walking. There's no clever movement to it. The work is all in what you don't let happen.

• Staying dead level and tall while the weight tries its hardest to tip you over towards it
• Both shoulders level and your spine stacked straight up. Don't lean away to counterbalance it either, that's just swapping one bend for another
• Breathing behind your brace, steps smooth and unhurried, eyes up