Move into the pose
Side view
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Rocker with open legs prep

hold 20 s · beginner · move in slowly, hold, come out the same way

Sitting just behind the sit bones with the knees bent, the feet lifted and the hands holding the ankles, the body finds its balance; then the legs straighten into a V about shoulder-width apart, still holding the ankles, and the balance is held. The body tips back a little as the legs reach out, keeping the centre of mass over the sit bones.

-15°Ankle dorsiflexion
105°Knee flexion
132°Hip flexion
23°Trunk from vertical
38°Arm to trunk
2°Elbow flexion
40Ankle spacing, cm
52Hand spacing, cm
-5Knee 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 / 12

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

Abs and core
35 pts
Quads
16 pts
Hamstrings
4 pts

Effort and your quota

3.5/10 effort3.5fatigue per set

Hold for 20 seconds: move into the pose slowly, breathe steadily, and come out the way you went in. Pilates 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: 20 legs points, 35 core points.

Prime movers

Rectus abdominis, transversus abdominis (holding), hip flexors (holding the legs), quadriceps; hamstrings stretched.

What to look for

  • Lift the chest and scoop the belly; don't sink into the lower back.
  • Straighten one leg at a time first if both together is too much.
  • Hold the calves if you can't reach the ankles with straight legs.
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.