Warrior III
वीरभद्रासन तृतीय
Vīrabhadrāsana III — an intermediate balance pose that works the hamstrings, glutes, spinal erectors.
How to do Warrior III
Read all of it before starting, and read the cautions further down before starting at all.
Start in a short lunge with the hands at the chest and the front knee bent.
Shift your weight forward onto the front foot until the back foot is light.
Lift the back leg and lower the torso together until both are roughly level with the floor.
Straighten the standing leg without locking it, and keep the lifted hip level with the standing hip.
Reach the arms back alongside the body, forward past the ears, or keep them at the chest — hold, then change sides.
Hold: 20–45 seconds each side. Keep the breath moving throughout — if you are holding it, the pose is too much for today.
Muscles worked
Where the effort and the lengthening land. Primary groups do most of the work; secondary groups assist or are stretched.
What Warrior III does
Described mechanically — what the movement does to muscle and joint. Not a list of conditions it treats, because a pose does not treat conditions.
- Loads the standing hamstring and glute in a long lever position.
- Trains the spinal erectors to hold a horizontal torso against gravity.
- Demands constant ankle correction on the standing foot.
Warrior III is one of 31 balance poses in this library and one of 60 poses rated intermediate. Poses held on a reduced base — one foot, two hands, or the forearms.
Who should skip Warrior III, or change it
- Hamstring strain on the standing side.
- Low blood pressure or dizziness with the head at hip height.
- Low back injury — keep the torso higher and the lifted leg lower.
- Second and third trimester pregnancy: not a practical shape.
General information only — not medical advice. Some asanas are unsuitable during pregnancy, injury or specific conditions. Learn from a qualified teacher and stop if anything hurts. If you are pregnant, recovering from surgery or managing any health condition, ask your doctor before starting a practice, and learn the pose itself from a qualified teacher who can see you move.
Common mistakes in Warrior III
What tends to go wrong, and the specific correction — not "engage your core".
MistakeLifted hip rolling open towards the ceiling.
FixTurn the lifted toes down to the floor and level the hips before lifting higher.
MistakeTorso dropping much lower than the lifted leg.
FixThink of the body as one straight line hinging at the standing hip.
What a practice like this costs in energy
Nobody has measured a single asana in a metabolic cart. The 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities publishes MET values per style of practice, so Warrior III is mapped to the nearest published code — 02175, yoga, Power, 4 MET — and the figures below are for a practice of that kind, not for holding this one pose.
| Time practising | 10 min | 20 min | 30 min | 45 min | 60 min |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Calories | 49 | 98 | 147 | 221 | 294 |
Calculated as MET × 3.5 × 70 kg ÷ 200 kcal per minute — the standard ACSM relationship, shown in full on the method page. Scale it to your own weight by multiplying by your weight in kilograms and dividing by 70. The whole activity dataset, including every non-yoga activity, is at BurnLab.
Questions
How do you do Warrior III?
Start in a short lunge with the hands at the chest and the front knee bent. Shift your weight forward onto the front foot until the back foot is light. Lift the back leg and lower the torso together until both are roughly level with the floor. Straighten the standing leg without locking it, and keep the lifted hip level with the standing hip. Reach the arms back alongside the body, forward past the ears, or keep them at the chest — hold, then change sides. Hold for 20–45 seconds each side.
What does Warrior III work?
Primarily the hamstrings, glutes, spinal erectors, with the abdominals, calves, shoulders assisting or lengthening. In mechanical terms: loads the standing hamstring and glute in a long lever position.
Who should not do Warrior III?
Hamstring strain on the standing side. Low blood pressure or dizziness with the head at hip height. Low back injury — keep the torso higher and the lifted leg lower. Second and third trimester pregnancy: not a practical shape. This is general information, not medical advice — if any of these apply to you, ask your doctor and learn the pose with a qualified teacher rather than from a page.
Is Warrior III suitable for beginners?
Not as a first pose. Warrior III is rated intermediate here: it assumes a working base of strength and range, and a teacher who has watched you move. Build up through the balance poses marked beginner first.
How many calories does Warrior III burn?
The honest answer is that nobody has measured a single asana. The 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities publishes MET values for styles of yoga, not for individual poses. Warrior III sits closest to Compendium code 02175, yoga, Power, at 4 MET — about 147 kcal for 30 minutes of that kind of practice for a 70 kg adult. Holding one pose for a minute is a rounding error either way.
Sequences that use Warrior III
Related poses
More balance poses — first at the same level, then the rest of the family.
Asana names are traditional. Every step, benefit and caution on this page is written for YogaPath rather than reproduced from any book, studio or other library — see how this site is written. Energy figures derive from the 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities. General information only — not medical advice. Some asanas are unsuitable during pregnancy, injury or specific conditions. Learn from a qualified teacher and stop if anything hurts.