Move into the poseBalanced over midfoot
Side view
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Halfway lift

Ardha Uttanasana

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

Ardha Uttanasana. From a standing forward fold with the hands on two tall blocks in front of the feet, the back lengthens until the spine is long and about level, the knees softly bent; the gaze moves a little forward along the mat. The hips stay over the heels (solved), the hands stay on the blocks.

2°Ankle dorsiflexion
22°Knee flexion
152°Hip flexion
132°Trunk from vertical
124°Arm to trunk
105°Elbow flexion
18Ankle spacing, cm
40Hand spacing, cm
0Knee outside ankle, cm
0°Knee cave, ° inside toe line
50 / 50Load left / right, %
0Pelvis drop, cm

Load and joint demand

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

Lower back
111 / 147
Hip extensors
72 / 95
Knee flexors
25 / 46
Calves
29 / 29

N·m now / peak over the rep.

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

Lower back
35 pts
Glutes
16 pts
Upper back
12 pts
Hamstrings
7 pts

Effort and your quota

4.5/10 effort4.5fatigue 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: beginner. One round counts like light conditioning work: 23 legs points, 12 pull points, 35 core points.

Prime movers

Spinal erectors, multifidus, hamstrings (stretched), gluteus maximus, rhomboids and middle trapezius.

What to look for

  • Hands on the blocks or shins; lengthen the crown of the head forward and the hips back.
  • Flat back, not a lifted chin: the neck stays long.
  • Bend the knees if the back rounds.
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.