This “cheat” derives from a powerful and athletic reversal of hip direction—like that of the clean and the snatch—and expands the primary movers from just the back and arms down through the torso and hip to include the power zone. Far from being a cheat, kipping is a gateway skill with functional utility on the rings, parallel bars, high bar, and floor (the quickest way to get to your feet). Where most athletic communities avoid the kip, we go to great lengths to teach and learn it.

In an earlier time, the push-up was largely regarded as a measure of a person's strength and fitness. In more modern times, much of this reputation has been passed on to the bench press, but the push-up’s passing misses the great opportunity to master a gateway movement to one of the most developmental progressions in all of fitness.

There is an adjunct movement to GHD sit-ups in which the athlete is dynamic in the trunk and static in the hip. It is the AbMat sit-up, where we deliberately take the hip flexors out of the equation and work the torso dynamically. The two sit-ups, GHD and AbMat, complement each other beautifully. One is dynamic in the hips and static in the trunk; the other is dynamic in the trunk and static in the hip. In conjunction with the L-sit (static in the trunk and hip), they develop a formidable capacity in the midline.

The squat is a beautiful, natural movement. It demands midline stabilization, posterior-chain engagement and core-to-extremity movement, and it can be used to move your body weight or very large loads held in a variety of positions. At one end of the spectrum, the squat is an essential component of weightlifting and powerlifting, and at the other end, the squat is essential to getting off a toilet seat. Regardless of what the problem is, the answer is to squat.