Eka Pada Utkatasana
hold 20 s each side · intermediate · move in slowly, hold, come out the same way
Take care: Keep a hand on a wall or chair if balance is unsteady; skip it with a knee that hurts as the crossed leg turns out.
Eka Pada Utkatasana (standing pigeon). Standing on the right leg with the knee bent about 45° and the hips sitting back, the left ankle crosses over the right thigh just above the knee, the left foot flexed and the left knee opening out to the side. The trunk leans forward about 30° over the shin and the palms press together at the heart. The centre of mass is solved over the standing foot, front to back and side to side.
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 20 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: 57 legs points.
Gluteus maximus, piriformis and deep hip rotators of the crossed leg (stretched), quadriceps and gluteus maximus of the standing leg, gluteus medius, foot and ankle stabilisers.
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.