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Dolphin plank

Makara Adho Mukha Svanasana

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

Take care: Lower the knees to the mat, or come out, if the shoulders or lower back hurt.

Makara Adho Mukha Svanasana (forearm plank): the forearms flat and parallel on the mat, elbows under the shoulders, on the balls of the feet with the feet hip-width, the body one straight line from the heels to the crown. The forearms and the balls of the feet stay planted while the body rocks forward until the shoulders are stacked over the elbows; the line from ankle to shoulder is kept straight throughout.

53°Ankle dorsiflexion
3°Knee flexion
2°Hip flexion
80°Trunk from vertical
90°Arm to trunk
74°Elbow flexion
18Ankle spacing, cm
38Hand 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

Abs and core
35 pts
Shoulders
16 pts
Upper back
12 pts
Quads
12 pts
Glutes
12 pts

Effort and your quota

5/10 effort5fatigue per set

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: 25 legs points, 16 push points, 12 pull points, 35 core points.

Prime movers

Rectus abdominis, transversus abdominis, obliques, anterior deltoid, serratus anterior, rotator cuff, quadriceps, gluteus maximus.

What to look for

  • Elbows under the shoulders, forearms parallel, press them down.
  • Heels reach back, crown reaches forward: no sagging or piking hips.
  • Lower the knees if the lower back starts to sag.
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.