Zip upBalanced over midfoot
Side view
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Zip-up

8 reps · beginner

From the classical standing arm series: standing in pilates stance (heels together, toes apart), the hands together in front of the hips, palms down. The hands draw straight up the front of the body to under the chin, the elbows lifting out wide above the hands, the body growing tall; then the hands lower with control. Classically the heels may also rise as the hands come up; here they stay down, and the light hand weights are left out.

5°Ankle dorsiflexion
3°Knee flexion
1°Hip flexion
1°Trunk from vertical
25°Arm to trunk
48°Elbow flexion
13Ankle spacing, cm
7Hand spacing, cm
2Knee outside ankle, cm
–Knee cave, ° inside toe line
50 / 50Load left / right, %
0Pelvis drop, cm

Load and joint demand

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

Lower back
13 / 19
Hip extensors
7 / 10
Knee flexors
12 / 14
Calves
25 / 25

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

Shoulders
35 pts
Upper back
29 pts
Biceps
22 pts
Adductors
16 pts
Abs and core
12 pts

Effort and your quota

4.5/10 effort4.5fatigue per set

8 slow, controlled reps. Pilates 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: 16 legs points, 35 push points, 42 pull points, 22 arms points, 12 core points.

Prime movers

Lateral and anterior deltoids, upper trapezius, biceps, adductors (squeezing the heels together), transversus abdominis.

What to look for

  • Zip the hands up close to the body, elbows leading wide and high.
  • Stand tall and squeeze the heels together as the hands come up.
  • Lower slowly with control.
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.