Circle
Side view
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Single leg circles

5 reps each side · beginner

Lying on the back with the left leg straight on the mat, the right leg points straight up and draws a circle about 40 cm across with the toes: across the body, down toward the left leg, round and back up, then the other way. The pelvis stays still on the mat.

-25°Ankle dorsiflexion
3°Knee flexion
85°Hip flexion
90°Trunk from vertical
29°Arm to trunk
53°Elbow flexion
19Ankle spacing, cm
60Hand spacing, cm
0Knee 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
11 / 11

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
Adductors
29 pts
Glutes
22 pts
Hamstrings
4 pts

Effort and your quota

5/10 effort5fatigue per set

5 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: 55 legs points, 35 core points.

Prime movers

Hip flexors, adductors, gluteus medius, rectus abdominis and transversus abdominis (keeping the pelvis still); hamstrings stretched.

What to look for

  • Keep the pelvis still: make the circle only as big as you can without rocking.
  • Press the arms into the mat.
  • Bend the bottom knee, foot flat, if the hamstrings are tight.
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.