Move into the poseBalanced over midfoot
Side view
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Standing forward fold

Uttanasana

hold 30 s · beginner · move in slowly, hold, come out the same way

Take care: Bend the knees generously and come up slowly with a rounded back if your lower back is sore; rise slowly if you get light-headed.

Uttanasana, with the knees bent as much as the back needs. Feet hip-width; from standing the body folds forward from the hips until the trunk hangs down over the thighs and the hands come to the mat just in front of the feet (blocks under them if the floor is far). The knees soften to about 20° so the spine can stay long; the hips are solved back over the heels so the centre of mass stays over the feet.

7°Ankle dorsiflexion
4°Knee flexion
1°Hip flexion
2°Trunk from vertical
16°Arm to trunk
20°Elbow flexion
18Ankle spacing, cm
54Hand spacing, cm
0Knee outside ankle, cm
–Knee cave, ° inside toe line
50 / 50Load left / right, %
0Pelvis drop, cm

Load and joint demand

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

Lower back
7 / 143
Hip extensors
4 / 93
Knee flexors
10 / 44
Calves
29 / 29

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

Hamstrings
11 pts
Calves and shins
9 pts
Lower back
7 pts
Quads
6 pts
Glutes
5 pts

Effort and your quota

2.5/10 effort2.5fatigue per set

Hold for 30 seconds: move into the pose slowly, breathe steadily, and come out the way you went in. Yoga 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: 27 legs points, 7 core points.

Prime movers

Hamstrings (stretched), calves (stretched), spinal erectors (stretched), gluteus maximus (stretched), quadriceps (holding).

What to look for

  • Fold from the hips, not the waist; bend the knees as much as you need.
  • Let the head and neck hang heavy; hands to the floor, blocks or shins.
  • Weight toward the balls of the feet so the hips stay over the heels.
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.