Move into the poseBalanced over midfoot
Load 61% on the right
Side view
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Pyramid

Parsvottanasana

hold 30 s each side · beginner · move in slowly, hold, come out the same way

Take care: Bend the front knee a little with a hamstring strain or a sensitive lower back.

Parsvottanasana. A short stance along the mat, hips square, front (right) foot forward and back foot turned out about 40°, both legs straight. The trunk folds forward from the hips over the front leg on a long spine until the fingertips rest on the mat either side of the front foot (on blocks if the floor is far). The pelvis is solved over the feet.

-30°Ankle dorsiflexion
4°Knee flexion
36°Hip flexion
2°Trunk from vertical
46°Arm to trunk
74°Elbow flexion
19Ankle spacing, cm
56Hand spacing, cm
0Knee outside ankle, cm
–Knee cave, ° inside toe line
39 / 61Load 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
4 / 146
Hip extensors
3 / 95
Knee flexors
1 / 90
Calves
3 / 96

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
22 pts
Glutes
16 pts
Hamstrings
11 pts
Calves and shins
9 pts
Quads
6 pts

Effort and your quota

4.5/10 effort4.5fatigue per set

Hold for 30 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: beginner. One round counts like light conditioning work: 39 legs points, 22 core points.

Prime movers

Hamstrings of the front leg (stretched), calf of the back leg (stretched), spinal erectors, gluteus medius, quadriceps (holding the knees straight).

What to look for

  • Hips square: draw the front hip back.
  • Fold from the hips with a long spine; bring the chest toward the shin, not the head to the knee.
  • Use blocks under the hands if the back rounds, and keep a micro-bend in the front knee.
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.