reckonerHanging leg raise
The hanging knee raise with the legs straight. The longer lever makes it one of the hardest things you can ask of your abs: in one lab study it challenged the abdominal wall more than the other whole body exercises tested1. It earns its place once the knee raise is still and easy.
Straight legs up, no swing.
- Pattern
- Core flexion
- Trains
- Abs, hip flexors
- Kit
- Bodyweight, pull up bar
- Loading
- Your own bodyweight
- Reckoner prescribes
- 2 sets of 10 to 15 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- Nothing to add, so the sets climb instead
- Skill
- Technical
- Recovery cost
- Low
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Shoulder, lower back
Muscles worked
How to do it
Hang still before you lift anything
Grip the bar about shoulder width, arms straight, shoulders pulled down away from your ears. Wait until you have stopped moving, because any swing you start with becomes momentum the abs never have to beat. Every rep starts from a still hang.
Tilt the pelvis first
Before the legs move, curl your pelvis up so your lower back rounds slightly toward the bar. Leading with the pelvis is what puts the abs into the lift rather than leaving the legs to swing from the hips. Then raise the legs.
Raise straight legs to hip height or higher
Legs together, knees straight. Lift until your feet are at least level with your hips, and higher if the legs stay straight. Straight legs are the whole difference from the knee raise, so they stay straight.
Lower slowly and kill the swing
Take two or three seconds on the way down and stop with your legs under you, not behind you. Legs that drop fast swing back behind you and launch the next rep for free. If your body is still swinging, wait it out before the next rep.
What goes wrong
Swinging the legs up
Momentum gets the feet higher, so the rep looks better and feels easier. The swing did the work, not your abs. If you need it to reach hip height, the knee raise is the right lift for now.
Bending the knees as you tire
It happens without a decision because a shorter lever is easier, and the set looks the same from your end. The lever gets shorter and the set gets easier. Stop the set when the legs bend.
Shrugging into the bar
Letting the shoulders ride up feels like resting in the hang. You end up hanging off the joints instead of holding yourself. Pull them down before the first rep and keep them there.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, run through the real engine. Nothing below was typed in: the prescription, the decision and the sentence beside it all come from the same code that writes your week.
| Week | Prescribed | What it did |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 x 10 | More reps 10 → 11 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 2 x 11 | More reps 11 → 12 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 2 x 12 | More reps 12 → 13 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 2 x 13 | More reps 13 → 14 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 5 | 2 x 14 | Deload 40% of sets offFive weeks of building, then one week lighter. About 40% of the sets come off. The load holds and your reps stay where you earned them, so you keep the strength and lose the fatigue. |
| 6 | 1 x 14 | More reps 14 → 15 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. The lighter week is over, so this is back to two sets. |
Real engine output, not an illustration. Every row was produced by running the engine itself when this page was generated.
The full rule, and why the reps move before the load does, is in how Reckoner decides to add weight.
Questions people ask
Hanging leg raise or hanging knee raise?
Knee raise first. The bent knee version, hung from straps, was among the highest abdominal exercises measured in one study2, so it is not the easy option. Straight legs make it harder again, which is why Reckoner keeps the leg raise for lifters past the beginner stage.
Why do my hip flexors burn more than my abs?
Lifting the legs is the hip flexors' job, and they are listed beside the abs as the muscles this lift trains. If you feel only the front of your hips, slow down and make the pelvis tilt the first thing that moves.
Will Reckoner put this in my plan?
It can, once you are past the beginner stage, as the next step from the knee raise. Shoulder and lower back are both recorded against it, as they are against the knee raise, so declaring either in setup takes it out of your plan.
Similar movements
There is no load to ease on this lift, so Reckoner offers one of these the first time it stalls. Each of them has a page.
Sources
- McGill, Andersen and Cannon, Journal of Sports Sciences, 2015. Muscle activity and spine load during anterior chain whole body linkage exercises: the body saw, hanging leg raise and walkout from a push-up fourteen men, with the hanging straight leg raise creating the highest challenge to the abdominal wall of the three exercises tested, over 130 per cent of maximal voluntary contraction in rectus abdominis. Over five years old, and still the study that measured it
- Escamilla and colleagues, Physical Therapy, 2006. Electromyographic analysis of traditional and nontraditional abdominal exercises: implications for rehabilitation and training twenty-one healthy adults, with the hanging knee-up with straps among the exercises highest in upper and lower rectus abdominis, internal oblique and external oblique activity. Twenty years old, and the same source the hanging knee raise page cites