8 reps · intermediate
Take care: Keep the legs higher, or the head down, if the lower back arches or the neck strains; skip it during pregnancy and after giving birth.
The second of the Series of Five: curled up with the head and shoulders off the mat, both knees drawn into the chest and the hands on the shins. Breathing in, the arms reach back past the ears and the legs reach out long at about 40° off the mat; breathing out, the arms circle round to the sides and back to the shins as the knees draw back in. The head stays up throughout.
Bodyweight: no weights. Joint demand below is your own body's weight in this position.
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.
Femur changes keep standing height fixed by shortening or lengthening the torso. Longer femurs force more forward lean in any squat.
8 slow, controlled reps. Pilates is practised for control, balance and mobility, never to failure, so this does not change with your limits.
Level: intermediate. One round counts like light conditioning work: 12 legs points, 12 push points, 29 core points.
Rectus abdominis (holding the curl), transversus abdominis, obliques, hip flexors, deltoids, quadriceps (straightening the legs).
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.