Move into the poseBalanced over midfoot
Side view
Drag to orbit, pinch or scroll to zoom

Warrior II

Virabhadrasana II

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

Take care: Ease the bend if the front knee hurts or drifts past the ankle; skip it with a painful knee or hip.

Virabhadrasana II. Feet about 125 cm apart along the mat, the front (right) foot turned out 90° and the back foot turned in slightly. The front knee bends to about 90° over the ankle while the back leg stays straight; the pelvis height and tilt are solved for those two knees, the trunk stays upright over the pelvis and the arms reach out level with the shoulders.

-32°Ankle dorsiflexion
8°Knee flexion
40°Hip flexion
0°Trunk from vertical
45°Arm to trunk
0°Elbow flexion
124Ankle spacing, cm
132Hand spacing, cm
-23Knee outside ankle, cm
–Knee cave, ° inside toe line
52 / 48Load left / right, %
3Pelvis drop, cm

Load and joint demand

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

Calves
14 / 14
Shoulder, per side
8 / 12

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

Quads
35 pts
Glutes
35 pts
Adductors
29 pts
Abs and core
12 pts
Shoulders
8 pts

Effort and your quota

8.5/10 effort8.5fatigue per set

Hold for 30 seconds on each side: 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: 99 legs points, 8 push points, 12 core points.

Prime movers

Quadriceps and gluteus maximus of the front leg, adductors, gluteus medius, deltoids (holding the arms), core.

What to look for

  • Front knee over the ankle, pointing the same way as the toes.
  • Back leg straight and strong, outer edge of the back foot pressing down.
  • Shoulders stacked over the hips, arms level, gaze over the front hand.
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.