Technique
- Stand tall with your feet hip-width apart, then shift your weight onto one straight, engaged standing leg.
- Lift the opposite knee, flex that foot and cross the ankle over your standing thigh, just above the knee.
- Bring your palms together at your chest in prayer position and lengthen your spine, keeping your torso upright.
- Press your crossed knee down and out to open the hip while keeping your hips level and square to the front.
- Fix your gaze on a point ahead and hold, then release and repeat on the other side.
Form tips
- Stay tall; do not sit back into a squat.
- Flex the crossed foot to protect that knee.
- Keep your hips squared to the front rather than letting the lifted-leg hip open up.
Logging: Work each side for the time indicated.
Muscles
Strength
Secondary
- Legs
Flexibility
Primary
- Glutes
Secondary
- Pelvis
- Hamstrings
- Quadriceps
Individual muscles
Individual muscles
- Flexor digitorum brevis
- Flexor digitorum longus
- Flexor hallucis longus
- Flexor hallucis brevis
Equipment
Appears in
Strength
Flexibility
Balance
Other disciplines
Joint movements
Regressions
Tree pose
Novice
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Want to log this exercise? Open it in Calistree. Text and images are used under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0; the video plays from the original source.