Move into the pose
Side view
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Knees to chest

Apanasana

hold 45 s · beginner · move in slowly, hold, come out the same way

Apanasana: lying on the back, both knees draw in to the chest and the hands rest on the shins just below the knees, holding them in. The head, shoulders and back of the pelvis stay on the mat; the lower back softens into the floor.

-35°Ankle dorsiflexion
103°Knee flexion
50°Hip flexion
90°Trunk from vertical
53°Arm to trunk
81°Elbow flexion
25Ankle spacing, cm
56Hand spacing, cm
-2Knee 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.

Shoulder, per side
10 / 11

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
11 pts
Glutes
9 pts

Effort and your quota

2/10 effort2fatigue per set

Hold for 45 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: 9 legs points, 11 core points.

Prime movers

Spinal erectors (stretched), gluteus maximus (stretched), quadratus lumborum (stretched).

What to look for

  • Hug the knees in on an out-breath, ease them away a little on the in-breath.
  • Keep the head and shoulders down and relaxed.
  • Rock gently side to side to massage the lower back.
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.