Prasarita Padottanasana
hold 30 s · beginner · move in slowly, hold, come out the same way
Take care: The head goes below the heart: skip long holds with high blood pressure, a heart condition or glaucoma, and come up slowly.
Prasarita Padottanasana A. Feet about 130 cm apart and parallel (toes a little in), legs straight. The trunk folds forward from the hips until the head hangs between the feet; the hands are on the mat under the shoulders with the elbows bent straight back, and the crown of the head comes toward a block. The hips are solved over the feet.
Bodyweight: no weights. Joint demand below is your own body's weight in this position.
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.
Femur changes keep standing height fixed by shortening or lengthening the torso. Longer femurs force more forward lean in any squat.
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: beginner. One round counts like light conditioning work: 34 legs points, 12 push points, 12 arms points, 9 core points.
Hamstrings and adductors (stretched), spinal erectors (stretched), calves (stretched), quadriceps (holding the knees straight), triceps.
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.