Weighted situps

I did hanging leg raises today, at first i didn't really feel them in my abs, but the last few reps when i struggled to keep my legs straight while raising them i felt the burn in my abs. Don't like the strain on the arms though...ill get used to it i guess.
 
theGOOCH said:
I stopped doing direct ab work months ago and have noticed no difference. squats, deads, and standing military press are all I do for abs
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Personally, I cant say something like that. While I could have leaned and revealed my ab core without any direct ab work, the direct ab work does have a function and is the main reason I do it:

1. Weighted Crunches: They seem to add some Motor function control, and squeeze and flex control, I cant get with indirect exercises (i.e.Dead lifts and Squat. I have out grown the crunches (even with varying the pause-squeeze seconds. Im not piling over a hundred pounds while doing crunches)

2. Weighted Half-Up situps: seem to add hardness at rest (with me)

I pulled my groin muscle once doing weighted leg lifts--not something one wants to do, lol.
 
Karky;248831[QUOTE said:
]I've done ab rollouts (with a BB though, not a wheel, don't have one). though they didn't really progress that much, I got to 3x5 kneeling going all the way down and up again.

And I got that I'm suppose to be able to do those 3 things before I add weight to anything, but why?

I just don't get it. If I can do 100bw crunches, but can't hold a plank for 2 min, should I do 3x100 crunches instead of adding weight and doing 3x10?
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No it isn't that really so much as you need to not being doing crunches in the first place more so. See the crunches are obviously pointless for you to be doing because you are dominate in some area. Further talk could help me figure out where, my money goes on your hip flexors. If you can do 100 crunches with ease I can assure you that you aren't doing them right if you can't do a 2 min plank. My point is instead of putting weight on an exercise that you can't fire properly, work on exercises that you either

1-Can fire properly or
2-Forces you to fire properly

The reason those things make great tests is that all three combine help to force that firing. The Ab wheel I like because you can fake your way through a leg raise, even a plank, but you have to be pretty strong in the upper body and just have no neuro control to not use a large amount of core muscles in that movement. Alternating arms and legs doing a elbow plank movement is good as well if your upper body or even hip flexors are dominating in a plank movement.

A good test when doing a plank to see if you are focusing it correctly is where you start to feel pain or shake as you get tired. If you start to feel the pressure on your upper back, shoulders or arms take and draw in your scaps and better brace your core region. You should only fail in your core region, your should only really shake and lose strength in your core region. Anywhere else and you are not receiving the benefit of that exercise which is likely why you were not advancing in it, because you weren't getting any benefit from it.

What should I do if my hip flexors are to dominant? and I didn't get the part with putting your weight on the elbows and shoulders? are you saying not to do this? and to evenly distribute the weight instead?
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The answer is above, but I wanted to point out that fact.
and I always train my abs towards the end of every workout, with exercises like: crunches, situps, renegade rows, full contact twists, woodchoppers, hanging leg raises, leg raises, etc
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Twist, chops and rows are all great. I would personally stray from crunches, situps and raises until you can stabilize and compress correctly.

If all of these are progressing, but I still suck at the ab wheel and planks, why should I drop everything else to focus on that? Why are those exercises the exercises best suited to test if you're core is strong enough, when there are so many different core movements out there?
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Like I said before its not that these are the only or king movements, they are just good movements to trick firing. Some other good movements are supermans, hyperextentions, reverse hypers, knee ups, etc.
 
I'm acquainted with the statements that leg raises don't work the lower abs.
I personally do leg raises regularly, and each time i do them I can feel the burn in the lower ab region, I've seen some lower ab development since I started doing them, but I cannot state with certainty if that is due to me doing leg raises.

Since I can feel the burn in the lower abdominal area.. feel the lower ab muscles working, how can you say that they don't quite work the lower ab region.
 
Does anyone have a picture of these so called leg raises?

Dont forget the hip flexors are beneath the lower abs somewhat so dont get confused. The abs and anterolateral muscles also act as a pressure bag which keeps the trunk stable which may be what your reffering to.
 
hanging_leg_raises.JPG


Thats the way I started doing them
 
remember to eliminate the curve in the lower back (so your lower back is in contact with the floor, at all times), it's very easy to arch when your feet gets close to the floor. Don't! You'll use a lot of abs to just keep the lower back straight.
 
Karky said:
Also I notice when I do planks that my quads also fatigue along with my abs..
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Curious Karky,

When you do planks do you have a harder time keeping you butt down, shoulders drawn back or

Keeping your pelvis and scaps from dipping.
 
err.. not sure what you mean by keeping the scaps from dipping. The only hard part is that my abs fatigue very fast. I kinda hold my entire body up with them. It gets easier if I stick my butt up offcource, but I don't do that since it's cheating, and I don't really have a hard time keeping it down either. My abs just fatigue quickly, it's almost a bit weird. Maybe I'm focusing too much on using just my abs? (if that's even possible.. I guess focusing on only using your abs is really a good thing? :p )

again, thanks for following up, I really appritiate it, as I've got to fix these!
Do you have any other exercises aside from rollouts, planks and leg raises that will work on the same way with challenging my weakness? My new training "thing" is kind of having a lot of variety, only repeating the same exercises every 4-6 weeks or so, and working on other similar exercises in the mean time (for example, deadlifts, RDL, sumo dl, GMs, rack pulls, then deadlifts again).
 
I did these today and i sure felt my lower abs burning, especially when i was bringing down the legs slowly.
 
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