Kick forward, then back
Side view
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Side kick

8 reps each side · beginner

Side kick, front and back: lying on the right side with the head resting on the outstretched bottom arm, both legs angled about 25° forward of the body, the top hand on the mat in front of the chest. The top leg, lifted to hip height, swings forward to about 75° with the foot flexed and back to about 25° behind the body with the toes pointed, while the trunk stays still.

-30°Ankle dorsiflexion
3°Knee flexion
26°Hip flexion
80°Trunk from vertical
171°Arm to trunk
0°Elbow flexion
0Ankle spacing, cm
27Hand spacing, cm
-16Knee outside ankle, cm
–Knee cave, ° inside toe line
–Load left / right, %
-17Pelvis drop, cm

Load and joint demand

Bodyweight: no weights. Joint demand below is your own body's weight in this position.

Shoulder, per side
12 / 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
29 pts
Hamstrings
22 pts
Glutes
22 pts
Lower back
6 pts

Effort and your quota

7.5/10 effort7.5fatigue per set

8 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: beginner. One round counts like light conditioning work: 74 legs points, 41 core points.

Prime movers

Hip flexors (iliopsoas, rectus femoris), gluteus maximus and hamstrings, gluteus medius (holding the leg up), obliques and quadratus lumborum (keeping the trunk still).

What to look for

  • Stack the hips and keep them still; the leg moves, the waist does not.
  • Kick forward twice with the foot flexed, sweep back with the toes pointed.
  • Only go as far back as you can without arching 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.