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Four-limbed staff

Chaturanga Dandasana

hold 10 s · intermediate · move in slowly, hold, come out the same way

Take care: Lower the knees, or stop higher, if the shoulders or wrists hurt; dropping the shoulders below the elbows strains the front of the shoulder.

Chaturanga Dandasana: from high plank, the body lowers as one straight board, rolling forward onto the tips of the toes, until the elbows bend to about 90° with the shoulders at elbow height and the upper arms hugging the ribs. The hands and the balls of the feet stay planted; the body stays straight from the ankles to the shoulders, hovering just above the mat.

29°Ankle dorsiflexion
3°Knee flexion
2°Hip flexion
71°Trunk from vertical
67°Arm to trunk
9°Elbow flexion
18Ankle spacing, cm
40Hand spacing, cm
0Knee 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

Triceps
35 pts
Chest
29 pts
Shoulders
22 pts
Abs and core
12 pts
Quads
12 pts

Effort and your quota

5/10 effort5fatigue per set

Hold for 10 seconds: move into the pose slowly, breathe steadily, and come out the way you went in. Yoga 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, 86 push points, 35 arms points, 12 core points.

Prime movers

Triceps, pectoralis major, anterior deltoid, serratus anterior, rectus abdominis, transversus abdominis, obliques, quadriceps.

What to look for

  • Shift forward onto the toes before you bend the elbows.
  • Elbows straight back along the ribs; stop with the shoulders at elbow height, no lower.
  • Keep the body one line; lower the knees first if the hips sag.
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.