Eka Pada Rajakapotasana (prep)
hold 60 s each side · intermediate · move in slowly, hold, come out the same way
Take care: Skip it with a knee that hurts in this position; do the reclined figure four instead. Keep a block under the front hip.
Pigeon prep, the right leg in front: the right shin lies across the mat at an angle, knee toward the right wrist and foot toward the left hip, flexed; the left leg stretches straight back with the top of the foot down. A block under the right buttock keeps the hips level. From sitting tall on the fingertips, the trunk folds forward over the front shin onto the forearms.
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.
Hold for 60 seconds on each side: 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: 35 legs points, 23 core points.
Gluteus maximus, piriformis and deep hip rotators of the front leg (stretched), iliopsoas of the back leg (stretched), spinal erectors.
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.