Hanging Leg Raise

What is the Hanging Leg Raise?

The hanging leg raise is an advanced bottom-up abdominal movement performed hanging from a pull-up bar. You raise straight legs by curling the pelvis, which biases the lower portion of the rectus abdominis, a region that’s hard to load hard with standard crunches.

Muscles worked

Primary: Abs

The rectus abdominis drives the movement, flexing the trunk and tilting the pelvis posteriorly to lift the legs. The lower fibers work especially hard here.

Stabilizers

The forearms and grip hold you to the bar isometrically, and the transverse abdominis braces to control the swing.

How to perform the Hanging Leg Raise

1. Hang from a pull-up bar with a full grip, shoulders active and pulled down, and the body still to kill any swing before the first rep.
2. The rep only trains the abs once the pelvis tucks: initiate by posteriorly tilting the pelvis so the hips curl up, not just the legs.
3. Keeping the legs straight, raise them by rounding the lower back and lifting the pelvis toward the ribcage until the legs reach or pass horizontal.
4. Think of curling your pubic bone up toward your sternum at the top rather than simply hinging at the hip.
5. Pause at the top where the abs are fully shortened, resisting the urge to let momentum throw the legs up.
6. Lower the legs slowly under control, resisting the swing, and stop the descent before the shoulders lose their active set.

Suggested working range: 10–15 reps. Default progression: double progression.

Mechanics

A hanging, bottom-up trunk-flexion isolation: the real work is the posterior pelvic tilt that curls the pelvis toward the ribs, with the straight legs acting as a long lever. Raising the legs without that pelvic curl just swings the hip flexors, so the ab emphasis depends on rolling the pelvis up rather than only lifting the thighs.

Form cues

• •Curl the pelvis up toward your ribs at the top. Don’t just raise the legs, or the hip flexors take over and the abs coast.
• •Kill the swing: start each rep from a dead hang and lower under control so momentum doesn’t do the work.
• •Keep the legs long and rise smoothly; if you can’t stop swinging, bend the knees to shorten the lever.

Common mistakes

• •Raising the legs by hinging only at the hips without tucking the pelvis, which turns it into pure hip-flexor work.
• •Using a big body swing to kip the legs up with momentum instead of a controlled ab contraction.
• •Dropping the legs fast and bouncing out of the bottom, wasting the eccentric and re-loading the swing.
• •Letting the shoulders go passive and hanging dead so the joint is unsupported at the bottom.

Variations & alternatives

• •Hanging knee raise: bend the knees to shorten the lever, the standard easier regression of this movement.
• •Lying leg raise: the same bottom-up flexion done on the floor when a bar isn’t available.
• •Reverse crunch: a floor variation that isolates the pelvic-tilt curl with almost no swing.

Crunch

Abs · Bodyweight

Cable Crunch

Abs · Cable

Machine Crunch

Abs · Machine

Decline Crunch

Abs · Bodyweight

Ab Wheel Rollout

Abs · Bodyweight

Programming: sets, reps & when to use it

Work the hanging leg raise in the 10–15 rep range, treating quality of the pelvic curl as the goal rather than max reps. If you can’t hit the bottom of the range with straight legs and no swing, regress to knee raises until strength catches up.

Frequently asked questions