Switch
Side view
Drag to orbit, pinch or scroll to zoom

Scissors

6 reps each side · advanced

Take care: An inversion with the weight on the shoulders: skip it with any neck problem, high blood pressure, glaucoma or a heart condition, during pregnancy and after giving birth, and never turn the head while up.

The classical inverted scissors: up on the shoulders with the trunk about 65° off the mat, the hands supporting the back of the pelvis and the elbows on the mat, the straight legs split wide, one reaching over toward the face and the other back toward the mat, then switch with a scissor action, pulsing twice at the widest point.

-35°Ankle dorsiflexion
3°Knee flexion
65°Hip flexion
155°Trunk from vertical
59°Arm to trunk
87°Elbow flexion
12Ankle spacing, cm
14Hand spacing, cm
1Knee 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.

No gravity-based joint demand to show for this exercise.

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
Glutes
35 pts
Shoulders
12 pts
Triceps
12 pts
Hamstrings
9 pts

Effort and your quota

5.5/10 effort5.5fatigue per set

6 slow, controlled reps on each side. Pilates is practised for control, balance and mobility, never to failure, so this does not change with your limits.

Level: advanced. One round counts like light conditioning work: 44 legs points, 25 push points, 12 arms points, 35 core points.

Prime movers

Hip flexors and gluteus maximus (alternating), hamstrings stretched (front leg), hip flexors stretched (back leg), rectus abdominis and transversus abdominis (holding the trunk up), triceps and deltoids (supporting the pelvis).

What to look for

  • Weight on the shoulders and upper arms, never on the neck: do not turn the head.
  • Keep the pelvis lifted and still; split the legs evenly from the hips.
  • Keep both legs straight and long, the toes pointed.
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.