Lift
Side view
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Swan

6 reps · beginner

Take care: Lift less, or keep the forearms down, if the lower back pinches; skip it during pregnancy.

The swan prep: lying face down with the legs straight and a little apart, hands on the mat beside the shoulders, elbows bent and pointing back. The chest lifts about 40° by extending the spine, the arms pressing toward straight, then lowers with control; the legs stay long on the mat.

-75°Ankle dorsiflexion
2°Knee flexion
6°Hip flexion
90°Trunk from vertical
41°Arm to trunk
132°Elbow flexion
35Ankle spacing, cm
54Hand spacing, cm
-5Knee 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

Lower back
35 pts
Glutes
22 pts
Hamstrings
16 pts
Triceps
12 pts
Upper back
12 pts
Abs and core
4 pts

Effort and your quota

6/10 effort6fatigue per set

6 slow, controlled reps. 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: 39 legs points, 12 push points, 12 pull points, 12 arms points, 39 core points.

Prime movers

Spinal erectors, multifidus, gluteus maximus, hamstrings, triceps, lower trapezius; abdominals stretched.

What to look for

  • Lengthen forward before you lift: head, then chest, then upper belly.
  • Keep the abdominals lifted away from the mat and the legs long and heavy.
  • Shoulders slide down the back as the arms press.
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.