Gotta love an urban myth!

I do love an urban myth. One that I've heard on and off for years maintains that if you can get from lying on your back to standing without using your hands you will live a long life. Now, I suspect there may be many more variables involved in how many turns around the sun we each get, but as ever with these things, there is an element of truth to it.

Being able to get off the floor without using your hands shows good core strength in being able to support your own body weight out of its usual alignment. Most daily movement is sitting, standing, walking - it's all the same pattern and plane of movement and we rarely test whether we are able to maintain balance and stability in other positions. This skill is so important in preventing injury and maintaining physical independence.

Similarly, moving from lying to standing without using external support means your hip, knee and ankle joints will have to go through a big range of movement which, again, you may not ask them to do very often. By not practising and working on those ranges of movement your body gets used to not needing to and the skill fades - but you can get it back!

And do you have the muscle strength in your glutes, quads, hamstrings, calves and back to ensure you can stand without asking your joints to do all the work and be at risk of injury because your muscle tone is too low?

It's a simple test but quite a good one to measure confidence in your body. Let me know how you get on, and if you'd like to work at it, please get in touch, there's lots we can do to work on all of those skills. Even if the ability to get off the floor independently and with confidence is not available to you now, it definitely can be.