Curl up
Side view
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Chest lift

10 reps · beginner

Take care: Let the hands support the head without pulling on it; skip it during pregnancy and after giving birth until the abdominals have recovered.

Lying on the back with the knees bent, the feet flat and the hands behind the head, the head, neck and shoulders curl up until the bottom of the shoulder blades just leave the mat (about 30°), then lower with control. The pelvis stays neutral and still.

-23°Ankle dorsiflexion
125°Knee flexion
59°Hip flexion
90°Trunk from vertical
149°Arm to trunk
134°Elbow flexion
18Ankle spacing, cm
8Hand spacing, cm
4Knee outside ankle, cm
–Knee cave, ° inside toe line
–Load left / right, %
0Pelvis drop, cm

Load and joint demand

Bodyweight: no weights. Joint demand below is your own body's weight in this position.

No gravity-based joint demand to show for this exercise.

Faults

Faults grow with knee bend and apply to lifts standing on the floor. The fault check flags a knee caving more than 10° inside the line of the toes and a load split beyond 60/40. Knee cave shows best in the front camera.

Body

Femur changes keep standing height fixed by shortening or lengthening the torso. Longer femurs force more forward lean in any squat.

Muscles worked

Abs and core
35 pts

Effort and your quota

2/10 effort2fatigue per set

10 slow, controlled reps. Pilates is practised for control, balance and mobility, never to failure, so this does not change with your limits.

Level: beginner. One round counts like light conditioning work: 35 core points.

Prime movers

Rectus abdominis, obliques, transversus abdominis.

What to look for

  • Nod the chin first, then curl the chest toward the pelvis.
  • Keep the elbows wide and let the hands only cradle the head.
  • Breathe out to lift, in to lower; keep the pelvis still.
How the model works, and its limits

One 3D skeleton drives both views. Segment lengths and widths are Winter's anthropometric ratios of height; segment masses and centre-of-mass positions follow Dempster's data. For free-standing lifts the whole-body angle is found numerically so the combined centre of mass of lifter and load sits over the middle of the foot. Arms and legs use two-link inverse kinematics with a pole direction. Rep timing follows a minimum-jerk profile.

Balance is quasi-static, so ballistic lifts are shown slowed down. Cable pull and pad support forces are not modelled. The spine is one rigid segment and joints have no range-of-motion limits or muscle forces.