Seated Hanging Leg Raises - A new approach to an old favorite.
By Nick Nilsson
www.fitstep.com

The hanging leg raise is an excellent abdominal exercise. This variation is not only easier on your lower back but helps to remove the hip flexors from the movement, all the while increasing the contraction on the abs.

This exercise targets the abdominal muscles with an extremely intense contraction. The range of motion of the exercise is short but the tension on the abs is excellent.

Pull your butt off the bench and raise your knees up into your chest. Hold your breath while doing this short movement to help stabilize the abs and improve the contraction.

Start:

Finish:

The movement itself looks like the top bit of a hanging leg raise. Squeeze hard at the top then lower your legs and set yourself back down on the bench. Release all tension on the abs as you exhale then do another rep.

This exercise results in a very hard contraction in the abs for several reasons:

First, the position of the legs at the start of the rep is already near the maximum contracted position of the abs.

Second, your abs start the movement in a mechanical disadvantage because they are already shortened. This means they must work harder in order to achieve the contraction.

Third, releasing all the tension on the abs between reps means you dissipate all the elastic tension that the muscle normally builds up in a regular movement.

Put these three points together and you can see that the abs have to start from scratch at a mechanical disadvantage near their peak contracted position. The results: major burn!

Another advantage this exercise has over regular hanging leg raises is that it primarily targets the abs. Normally, when you do hanging leg raises, the first part of the movement involves a lot of hip flexor action. This variation starts the movement with the hip flexors already almost fully contracted. The tension in this position goes primarily to the abs.

Even better, this version greatly reduces stress on the lower back by eliminating the first part of the movement. Generally, pain in that area occurs due to the torque on the lower back as you raise your legs from hanging directly down to bringing them up about halfway. Skip that range of motion and you skip the pain.

If you are looking for an exercise to really bring out the washboard in your abs, give this one a try. I would recommend also doing a set or two of Small Ball Crunches  to hit the stretched and middle ranges of motion of the abs. The Seated Hanging Leg Raise is perfect for finishing the abs off.