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One-legged bridge

Eka Pada Setu Bandha Sarvangasana

hold 15 s each side · intermediate · move in slowly, hold, come out the same way

Take care: Keep the head still and the weight on the shoulders, not the neck; stay in two-footed bridge with a neck injury or a weak lower back.

Eka Pada Setu Bandha Sarvangasana: from bridge pose (lying on the back, feet flat and hip-width, the hips lifted until the thighs are about level, arms long beside the body), the right knee draws in toward the chest and then the right leg extends straight up toward the ceiling while the hips stay level, the weight on the left foot and the shoulders.

-14°Ankle dorsiflexion
141°Knee flexion
65°Hip flexion
90°Trunk from vertical
14°Arm to trunk
23°Elbow flexion
20Ankle spacing, cm
44Hand spacing, cm
4Knee 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

Hamstrings
35 pts
Glutes
35 pts
Lower back
29 pts
Abs and core
16 pts

Effort and your quota

7.5/10 effort7.5fatigue per set

Hold for 15 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: intermediate. One round counts like light conditioning work: 70 legs points, 45 core points.

Prime movers

Gluteus maximus and hamstrings of the standing leg, spinal erectors, gluteus medius (keeping the hips level), hip flexors of the lifted leg, transversus abdominis.

What to look for

  • Find bridge first, then press down through the standing foot.
  • Keep the hips level as the leg lifts; don’t let the free side drop.
  • Keep the head still: the neck is carrying weight.
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.