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Supported headstand

Salamba Sirsasana

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

Take care: Learn it from a teacher, at a wall; skip it with a neck or shoulder injury, high blood pressure, glaucoma or a heart condition, and during pregnancy.

Salamba Sirsasana: the forearms on the mat, elbows shoulder-width, fingers interlaced and cupping the back of the head, the crown on the mat. From a tuck with the knees bent and the hips over the shoulders, the legs rise and straighten until the body is vertical. The forearms and shoulders carry most of the weight; the elbows and hands are placed so the forearms lie on the mat.

-20°Ankle dorsiflexion
135°Knee flexion
106°Hip flexion
173°Trunk from vertical
154°Arm to trunk
120°Elbow flexion
22Ankle spacing, cm
8Hand 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

Shoulders
35 pts
Upper back
29 pts
Triceps
12 pts
Abs and core
12 pts
Lower back
12 pts
Glutes
12 pts

Effort and your quota

5/10 effort5fatigue 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: advanced. One round counts like light conditioning work: 12 legs points, 47 push points, 29 pull points, 12 arms points, 25 core points.

Prime movers

Deltoids, trapezius, serratus anterior, rotator cuff, triceps (pressing the forearms down), rectus abdominis, transversus abdominis, spinal erectors, gluteus maximus, hip flexors (lifting the legs).

What to look for

  • Press the forearms down so the shoulders lift away from the ears; very little weight on the head.
  • Come up with bent knees, slowly; never kick up.
  • Practise against a wall until you can stay up for a minute with control.
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.