Lower
Side view
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Toe taps

8 reps each side · beginner

Take care: Tap with one leg only, and keep the range small if the lower back lifts; skip it during pregnancy and after giving birth.

Lying on the back with the head down, the arms long by the sides and both legs in tabletop (knees over the hips, bent to a right angle), one leg lowers from the hip, the knee keeping its angle, until the toes tap the mat, then lifts back to tabletop. The lower back stays still on the mat.

-30°Ankle dorsiflexion
90°Knee flexion
90°Hip flexion
90°Trunk from vertical
29°Arm to trunk
53°Elbow flexion
17Ankle 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

Effort and your quota

2/10 effort2fatigue 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: 35 core points.

Prime movers

Transversus abdominis, rectus abdominis (holding the pelvis still), hip flexors (iliopsoas), obliques.

What to look for

  • Move only from the hip: the knee stays at a right angle.
  • Keep the lower back from arching as the foot lowers.
  • Breathe in to lower, out to lift.
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.