The best and most popular exercise for the press is hanging or horizontal leg raises. Read about the technique and watch the video. The content of the article:
- Execution technique
- Tips & Tricks
- Video
Millions of people all over the world are striving for a flat relief belly with clearly visible cubes. The secret to getting a good abs is simple: eating right and exercising regularly. One of the best abdominal exercises is hanging legs. Performing it technically correctly, you can achieve stunning results.
Read How to Pump Up Your Abs with a Gym Roller
Do classic twists give a load to everything? muscles of the press. Any muscle is pumped and developed using the base. For the press, the basic exercises are twisting with a weight behind the head and leg raises in the hang.
No matter how many newfangled simulators appear, classic exercises have always been and will remain the most effective and efficient. So hanging legs is considered the best exercise for developing endurance, strength and relief of the lower part of the rectus abdominis muscle and the external oblique muscle. No other exercise can compete with hanging leg raises to develop the lower abs.
Hanging leg lift technique
There are many good ab exercises, such as bench raises, machine leg raises. They are modified versions of the standard hanging leg raises. Understanding the technique of the main exercise allows you to perform secondary ones with high quality without falsehood.
Maintaining all the rules in lifting the legs in the hang provides high-quality developed abdominal muscles in the guise of the cherished relief cubes.
Exercise technique:
- Jump up and grab the bar with your hands with a wide or medium grip. If, thus, to it is lacking, use a bench or stand. But in any case, the feet in the starting position should not reach the floor.
- Hang loosely from the bar with your arms and legs fully extended. Bend your back slightly at the lower back.
- Inhale and intelligently create a "ballistic" movement at the start, with your legs tilted back a little. Then, with a quick jerk, lift your legs up as high as possible, but in any case above the horizontal.
- Pause for a second at the peak of the upper phase of the movement and tense the muscles being worked out with all your might.
- Exhale and start lowering your legs to the starting position as slowly as possible to feel the muscle tension.
- Do as many times as you can without cheating.
The full version of the exercise is undesirable for pioneers - weak muscles will not allow it to be performed correctly. At first, it will be enough to raise your legs to the horizontal. Not sparing yourself and not filonya from systematic training, it will soon be possible to switch to a more difficult performance (raise your legs higher).
If the exercise is difficult to perform with straight legs, bending them at the knees is a more simplified option, but the pumping efficiency is slightly less.
If, in addition to lifting the legs, twist the pelvis up, the amplitude of movement of the legs will increase, and the press will simply "burn". Experienced athletes are able to use their abdominal muscles at full power, for this they raise their legs to the crossbar, but this option is within the power of a real pro.
Hanging Leg Raises: Useful Tips and Tricks
The most common mistake that almost all beginners face is rocking while doing leg raises. You can tilt your legs a little back, but if you swing like a pendulum, the abdominal muscles will not receive the proper load, even if they perform a large number of repetitions. Experienced athletes are advised to use such a technique as an incomplete return to the starting position: if they do not fully lower their legs, the abdominal muscles will be in constant tension, this will make it possible to load them even more.
Also, you cannot help yourself with your hands. They should be relaxed and fully erect.
When performing lifts, you can turn your knees to the left or to the right. This option will remove some of the load from the rectus abdominis muscles and connect the lateral muscles of the torso to work. It is undesirable for women to include such lifts in their program. Their frequent performance stimulates muscle growth in the area of the lower ribs, which visually makes the waist wider. With the starting leg lift in the hang, the muscles of the abdominal region are in isometric tension, that is, they do not change their length. Therefore, the initial phase of lifting the legs (up to an angle of 30–45 degrees from the starting vertical) is practically useless for the abdominal muscles, here all the work is taken over by the hip flexor muscles. But when the leg lift is performed above the horizontal level, the abdominal muscles actively join the work.
There is no need to use weights in the form of any weight on the legs, lifting perfectly loads the muscles with its own weight of the legs and shoes on it.
It is very important to maintain the correct breathing technique when performing any exercise, including when swinging the press. It is correct to exhale with effort, that is, at the moment when the maximum load is overcome. Holding your breath during the leg lift phase will increase the power of the effort and allow you to tighten the abdominal muscles even more. If you exhale during the initial phase of the rep, the load on the muscular region of the abdomen will be less.
Opinions about when to perform abdominal exercises were divided, some believe that you need to pump it at the very beginning of the workout in order to disperse the blood and prepare yourself for basic exercises, others argue that before performing heavy basic exercises, the core muscles should not be tired, therefore they recommend pay attention to the press at the end of the workout. Both statements are equally equal, so it is necessary to allocate for the abdominal muscles or a separate workout or work out as it is convenient for the body.
The abdominal muscles can be well pumped, but if the percentage of subcutaneous fat is off scale, you will not see mind-blowing cubes. A rule that everyone needs to know and always remember: it is impossible to achieve a relief press with exercises alone without cardio training and proper nutrition.
Video with Denis Borisov about the technique of hanging leg raises:
