Tired of those love handles? Hanging knee raises is what you need to get a flat belly in no time. Read on to know how to do hanging knee raise exercise.

Hanging Knee Raises

If you wish to strengthen your abdominal muscles, go for the hanging knee raise exercise. The hanging knee raise is an exercise which is aimed at strengthening the lower abdomen muscles. Although you can literally hang from anything to perform this exercise, the most popular method is to hang down from a pull up bar. All you require to do is to hang from a horizontally placed bar, keeping your arms parallel to the body length. Your legs should be kept perfectly straight. This exercise is highly recommended if you want a flat belly. The lower abdominal muscle group strengthens to increase your body’s spinal stability. If properly executed, the exercise can help you achieve maximum muscle contraction and faster belly fat reduction. 
 
Hanging knee exercise has numerous variants, the straight leg variant being the most effective, since it involves both the lower and upper portions of the abdominals, ensuring maximum muscle stress. The exercise produces a large amount of tension, resulting in greater strength and imparting proper definition to your body. Even the free hanging pose of the body strengthens the spinal cord, which increases the backbone strength further and increases stability. Though this exercise is difficult to execute, it is advantageous as no complicated equipments are required to perform it. You don’t have to splurge money in a gym in order to build up your abdominal muscles. Instead, just a commonly available horizontal bar would serve the purpose right.
 
How To Do Hanging Knee Raises Exercise
  • The body should hang from the bar freely, without resisting the force of gravity. Keeping the position of your torso intact and legs together, slowly pull up your knees. Pause for a second and slowly lower your knees back to the original position.
  • Besides a single horizontal bar, double bars with elbow rest are also used to perform this exercise. You need to rest your elbows on the bars. Just like the horizontal bar arrangement, the knee should be slowly raised. This way, the arm is not stressed much and the abdomen is squeezed alone.  
  • A normal workout should consist of 2 or 3 sets with 6 to 12 repetitions each. An adequate interval between each set is essential.
  • It all depends on the angle at which you raise your leg. For instance, if you pull your legs straight up, it will focus more on the lower and mid-abdominals. Whereas, if you bring your legs up in a twisting movement or your right leg over left and vice versa, then the outer oblique or side abdominal muscles would get worked.
Note
  • The key to this exercise is control of pace. Increasing the pace reduces the stress on the abdominal muscles and hence makes the exercise ineffective. So, in order to reap the maximum benefits out of this exercise, slow it down as much as you can.
  • The torso should be kept absolutely still while executing the knee raise exercise. Your upper body muscles should not play any role in the exercise. It is all about raising your knee.
  • Allow the body to hang freely without any resistance against the gravitational force.
  • Prevent your body from swinging from side to side while raising the knees. This will increase the effectiveness of the entire exercise.

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