TODAY is the day of the UK Twerking Championships – so to celebrate we’ve put together a handy guide so you too can learn to twerk.

Twerking is described by Oxford Dictionaries as as a dance involving “thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance”.

The slightly less formal good folk of Urban Dictionary define twerking as "the act of moving/shaking ones ass, buns, bottom, buttocks, bum-bum in a circular, up-and-down, and side-to-side motion."

It’s been around since the 1990s and is considered to have originated on the New Orleans ‘bounce music’ scene.

Twerking has featured on various hip-hop records, including by Beyoncé, but has really only become a worldwide mainstream craze this year thanks to the antics of Miley Cyrus.

Clips of her doing it, most famously at the MTV Video Music Awards, have led to the dance and the word entering popular culture.

So, how do you twerk? Here is our beginner’s guide to help you learn:

  • Place your hands on hips and bend your knees in a squat to look a bit like a sumo wrestler.
  • Turn your feet out with your knees positioned over your toes
  • To go forward: With your hands on your hips push forward with your thumbs snapping your waist forward.
  • To go back: With your hands on your hips push back with your fingers to snap your waist back.
  • Now practice the same movements in the squatted position but now with your hands resting out in front of you on a wall.
  • You now have the movements right.
  • Next place your hands on your knees and repeat what you have learnt. There you go, you’re twerking!

Apparently, the more ‘booty’ you have, the better your twerk will be. For more details, watch the video below.

So long as you get the gist of it down you should be good to go. You might not see the same career benefits that Miley has but you might still gain, or rather lose, something from learning to twerk – high-energy sessions can burn upwards of 500 calories an hour.

The best twerkers in the UK will be competing in solo and duo contests from 8pm tonight at Scala in Kings Cross.

If you want to send pictures or videos of you and your friends trying to twerk, go for it. Click here to email us - just don't be embarrassed if we put what you send us online!