I’ve heard it said quite a lot recently (most notable by Bret Contreras in his ‘Don’t Be Like Donald Duck’ article) that hanging leg raises are recommended to people in anterior pelvic tilt because they encourage the pelvic to rotate posteriorly.
However, I can’t imagine how this would work, because don’t they overwork the hip flexors, causing them to become even tighter, and put you even further into anterior pelvic tilt? Why wouldn’t hanging leg raises make anterior pelvic tilt even worse?
Is there any way to do the hanging leg raise without utilizing the hip flexors? Have hanging leg raises helped anyone in anterior pelvic tilt, or has it made it worse?
Hanging leg raises are good because they train the hips to flex through a full range of motion while keeping the pelvis in posterior tilt and the spine flat. When you do hanging leg raises correctly, your abs are contracting to hold your spine flat and your pelvis in posterior tilt despite your hip flexors trying to make your lumbar spine extend and bring your pelvis into anterior tilt.
Strong does not necessarily imply tight. You can have strong hip flexors that allow your hip to extend to its end range. So working your hip flexors through a wide range is actually a good thing. You need strong hip flexors at the bottom of a squat in order to keep your lumbar spine slightly extended.
The key point is that your abdominal muscles need to be “stiffer” than your hip flexors in order to hold your spine and pelvis in the correct position while your hip flexors are acting on your limbs. You can have strong hip flexors, but you need strong abs as well so that when the hip flexors contract, they just create motion at your femur instead of your lumber spine.
there’s two different ways to do hanging leg raises.
the first is to hang from something (duh) and just curl your hips up, so it’s like a crunch.
the second is a little more complicated, but is (IMO anyway) a better exercise for posture correction. You need one of those hanging leg raise apparatuses that have a back and arm rests so you’re not hanging from something. You flatten the small of your back against the backrest like when you are doing dead bug variations, and raise your legs up and down. It’s basically a really advanced version of the leg lowering exercise you can do lying on the ground. You need to have a very strong core to be able to resist the weight of your legs pulling your pelvis into anterior tilt. It’s not impossible to do these hanging from something, but it’s easier to keep your pelvis posteriorly tilted when you have the backrest to flatten your lumbar spine against.
When done properly it is literally impossible to not be in a posterior pelvic tilt at the top of a hanging leg raise.
Doing them on a Roman chair is ok, but the best way to do them is on “stall bars” if you really want to maximize the benefits and correct APT. If you don’t have access to stall bars you can have a training partner stabilize your shoulders from moving backwards or set up two bars in a power rack (if yours will allow you to do this), one higher to hang from and the other lower to brace your back against.
To do a full hanging leg lift, start from a dead hang, then, without letting your shoulders move backwards, your shoulders extend (like a pull-over or straight arm pull-down), or your arms bend at all, lift your legs (keep them locked straight) until your shins or insteps touch the bar above you. At this point you will be in a hanging “pike” position. Now lower the legs back in control to the starting position. If you perform HLR’s like this It is almost guaranteed to improve your APT issues as well as make your abs very strong.
Realistically though you will most likely not be able to do this, so some good regressions are:
bent leg HLR’S performed like the above, then progress to partial ROM straight leg HLR’s, then full ROM negative HLR’s and finally the real thing
straight leg HLR’S on an ab bench/slant board (the ability to adjust the angle will allow you to modify the difficulty to meet your current level
First half of this movement (you don’t have to pull to an inverted hang and perform a negative “front pull”):
Here is just the leg lift motion by itself. Note that Brandon is very, very strong and this exercise is little more than conditioning for him at his level, so he kind of breezes through them and his form gets a little sloppy as a result. Also, don’t listen to Brandon’s suggestions for reps though, he is an advanced gymnast and likely not familiar with training non gymnasts.
We do an exercise we call Knees to Elbows, basicly, hanging, I keep my elbows bent and locked at a 90, and my knees bent and locked at a 90, I start with my lowback arched and my abs streatched, then slowly curl my abs up till my knees are touching my elbows, hold and squeeze for a second, then uncurl and repeat, you can use ab hoops to take grip out of picture if wanted.
this movement feels natural, and your abs will be sore for days, from top to bottom. At my gym, people have been doing this exercise for years, and for some the only ab exercise they use, 2cents, goodluck
[quote]AnytimeJake wrote:
We do an exercise we call Knees to Elbows, basicly, hanging, I keep my elbows bent and locked at a 90, and my knees bent and locked at a 90, I start with my lowback arched and my abs streatched, then slowly curl my abs up till my knees are touching my elbows, hold and squeeze for a second, then uncurl and repeat, you can use ab hoops to take grip out of picture if wanted.
this movement feels natural, and your abs will be sore for days, from top to bottom. At my gym, people have been doing this exercise for years, and for some the only ab exercise they use, 2cents, goodluck[/quote]
Knees to elbows is a decent ab exercise in general, but it’s not only easier than Hanging Leg Raises/Hanging Leg Lifts by several magnitudes of difficulty, it’s also very easy to rely too heavily on the lats to pull the knees to the elbows (which only shortens the lats further, not good if trying to correct APT issues) and doesn’t build anywhere close to the degree of active flexibility/compression strength.
I’ve had issues with APT for years and one of the culprits (and something that I discovered was also prevalent in the majority of my trainees/clients who also had excessive APT) was a lack of shoulder ROM caused at least in part by overly tight lats. Beginning and maintaining as flexed of a shoulder position as possible will force the spinal flexors and hip flexors to do the work and not allow the lats to take over.
