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Upward plank

Purvottanasana

hold 20 s · intermediate · move in slowly, hold, come out the same way

Take care: Do reverse tabletop instead if the wrists or shoulders complain; keep the head neutral with a neck problem.

Purvottanasana: facing up, the hands flat under the shoulders with the fingers pointing toward the feet and the arms straight; the legs straight and together with the heels on the mat and the toes reaching toward it. The hips lift until the body is one straight line from the ankles to the shoulders, and the head releases back. The hips start a little low and rise into the line.

-50°Ankle dorsiflexion
27°Knee flexion
27°Hip flexion
59°Trunk from vertical
66°Arm to trunk
9°Elbow flexion
18Ankle spacing, cm
40Hand 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.

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

Glutes
35 pts
Hamstrings
29 pts
Triceps
22 pts
Upper back
16 pts
Lower back
12 pts
Quads
12 pts
Shoulders
12 pts
Chest
4 pts
Abs and core
4 pts

Effort and your quota

8.5/10 effort8.5fatigue per set

Hold for 20 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: intermediate. One round counts like light conditioning work: 76 legs points, 38 push points, 16 pull points, 22 arms points, 16 core points.

Prime movers

Gluteus maximus, hamstrings, triceps, posterior deltoid, spinal erectors, rhomboids, quadriceps; anterior deltoid, pectoralis major and hip flexors stretched.

What to look for

  • Shoulders over the wrists, fingers toward the feet.
  • Press the heels down and lift the hips until the body is one line.
  • Release the head back only if the neck is happy; otherwise keep the chin slightly in.
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.