Kick up
Side view
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Side kick up and down

8 reps each side · beginner

The side kick series set-up: lying on the right side, head on the outstretched bottom arm, the top hand on the mat in front of the chest, both legs straight and angled about 20° forward. The top leg, starting at hip height, lifts straight up toward the ceiling to about 40° with the toes pointed and lowers back to hip height with control; the hips stay stacked and the waist still.

-30°Ankle dorsiflexion
3°Knee flexion
22°Hip flexion
80°Trunk from vertical
171°Arm to trunk
0°Elbow flexion
0Ankle spacing, cm
27Hand spacing, cm
-13Knee 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

Glutes
35 pts
Adductors
16 pts
Lower back
11 pts
Abs and core
11 pts

Effort and your quota

5/10 effort5fatigue 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: 51 legs points, 22 core points.

Prime movers

Gluteus medius and minimus, tensor fasciae latae, obliques and quadratus lumborum (holding the trunk still), adductors (lowering with control).

What to look for

  • Lift only as high as you can without the top hip hitching toward the ribs.
  • Kick up with energy, lower slowly as if pressing against resistance.
  • Keep the knee cap facing forward, not up to the ceiling.
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.