Hanging Pike

What the hanging pike actually trains

A hanging pike is a straight leg raise performed from a hang, taken until the legs are roughly parallel with your torso and your body forms a folded L shape.

The rectus abdominis and the obliques do the abdominal work, but only during a specific portion of the movement, and being precise about that portion is the difference between a good hanging pike and a long hip flexor exercise.

Raising your legs from a hang to hip height is hip flexion. The psoas major, iliacus and rectus femoris move the femur towards the pelvis, and the abdominals mostly hold the ribcage and pelvis together while it happens. That is real work, and it is not a fault. Hip flexors are supposed to flex hips, and the endless advice to somehow remove them from leg raises is anatomically confused.

The abdominal work arrives when you tuck the pelvis under and continue lifting past hip height. That posterior tilt is lumbar flexion, which is what the rectus abdominis actually does, and it is the part almost everyone skips.

Beyond that, the exercise makes demands that have nothing to do with your abs. Your grip has to hold your bodyweight for the duration of the set. Your lats and shoulders have to keep you from hanging slack. And your hamstrings have to be long enough to let straight legs reach parallel, which for a lot of people is the actual limiting factor.

That combination is why this sits at the hard end of the leg raise family. It is a good exercise. It is also a poor place to accumulate abdominal volume, because so many things other than your abs will end the set first.

Setting up and executing

Hang from a pull up bar with an overhand grip, hands about shoulder width apart. Straps are legitimate here if your grip gives out first.

Pull the shoulder blades down so you are hanging actively rather than slack.

Bring the legs together, lock the knees, brace the abs and let any swing settle.

Raise the straight legs forward and up. As they pass hip height, tuck the pelvis under and keep lifting until the legs are roughly parallel with your torso.

Pause for a beat at the top.

Lower over three seconds, under control, all the way back to a full hang. Let the swing settle before the next rep rather than using it.

The mistakes that cost you the most

Never tilting the pelvis is the mistake that defines this exercise. If your legs come up to ninety degrees and stop, with your lower back staying flat against nothing in particular, you have performed a hip flexor exercise with a stiff torso attached. The tuck is where the abdominals shorten. Without it there is no abdominal training happening, however hard the set feels.

Swinging between reps is the second. A hang is a pendulum, and once it starts moving it will happily carry your legs most of the way up for you. Every rep should start from stillness.

Dropping the legs throws away the eccentric, which is half the rep and the half that is easiest to control. It also produces an unpleasant jolt at the bottom of the hang. Three seconds down.

Bending the knees to reach the top is a quiet substitution; a bent knee rep is a genuinely easier exercise. Do it deliberately if you need to, but do not let it happen at rep eight.

Ignoring the hamstrings is a mistake of diagnosis. If tight hamstrings stop the legs at forty five degrees, no amount of abdominal strength will move them further.

Sets, reps and rest by goal

Low reps, full rest, and fewer sets than you would give an easier abdominal movement.

For muscle gain, three sets of six to twelve with ninety seconds rest. For strength, three sets of five to eight with two minutes. In a fat loss phase, three sets of eight to fifteen with a minute.

Rest is longer than most core work because your grip and your lats need it as much as your abdominals do.

Progress first by adding range, which means taking the pelvic tuck further and finishing higher. Then by adding reps. Then by adding a dumbbell between the feet, which is the honest way to keep loading the movement once bodyweight reps come easily.

Pallares and colleagues found full range training produced better outcomes than partial range work, and here the full range specifically means the portion above hip height that most people never reach.

Pedrosa and colleagues found that training at long muscle lengths produced favourable hypertrophy outcomes, which is an argument for a controlled full hang at the bottom rather than a rushed rebound.

Schoenfeld and colleagues found a dose response between weekly hard sets and hypertrophy. The practical problem with this exercise is that grip fatigue caps the number of hard sets you can accumulate, which is a good reason to do most of your abdominal volume elsewhere.

Refalo and colleagues found stopping a rep or two short of failure produces comparable growth, and on a hanging exercise the last rep is usually the one where the swing appears.

Where it fits in your split

Late in a session on a day where a bar is free and your grip is warm.

On push, pull and legs it belongs after the back work on pull day. On an upper duo it fits near the end of the shoulders and back session. On a bro split it should come first on abs day, while you are fresh enough to do it well. On an upper and lower split it fits the end of the upper session. On a full body programme it only works if your grip has something left.

The awkward truth is that this exercise competes with your pulling. Doing it before rows and pull ups will cost you grip on the exercises that matter more; doing it after means attempting a demanding movement with tired hands.

Once or twice a week is plenty. This is a skill and strength movement, not a volume tool.

Variations worth knowing

The hanging knee raise keeps the knees bent throughout, which shortens the lever dramatically. That is where most people should start, and there is no shame in staying there for months.

The hanging leg raise takes straight legs to roughly hip height, one stage short of the full pike.

Toes to bar continues past parallel until the feet touch the bar, which adds a genuine lat contribution and turns the movement into something closer to a full body pull.

The captain's chair leg raise supports the forearms on pads, removing the grip limitation entirely.

The lying leg raise runs the same pattern on the floor, far easier, and remains a useful entry point.

And the weighted hanging leg raise, with a dumbbell held between the feet, is how you keep progressing once the bodyweight version stops being hard.

What the evidence says

Escamilla and colleagues compared commercial and common abdominal exercises with electromyography and found that hanging and leg raise style movements produced high abdominal activity relative to many popular alternatives.

A second study by Escamilla and colleagues on traditional and nontraditional abdominal exercises found substantial hip flexor involvement in leg raise patterns, which supports treating that involvement as inherent to the movement rather than as a technique fault.

A third study by Escamilla and colleagues on core muscle activation reinforced how much exercise selection changes which muscles do the work.

Pallares and colleagues found full range of motion training produced greater strength and hypertrophy adaptations than partial range training, supporting taking the legs past hip height rather than stopping at ninety degrees.

Pedrosa and colleagues found that training at long muscle lengths produced favourable hypertrophy outcomes, supporting a full hang at the bottom of each rep.

Schoenfeld and colleagues found a dose response between weekly hard sets and hypertrophy, which is the reason to be realistic about how many hard sets a grip limited exercise can supply.

Refalo and colleagues found stopping short of failure produces comparable hypertrophy to training to failure, which is convenient when the failure rep on a hanging movement is the one that swings.

Common questions

How is this different from a hanging leg raise?

Only in how far you go. A hanging leg raise stops at roughly hip height; a pike continues until the legs are parallel with the torso. The pike is the harder end of the same movement, not a separate exercise, so there is no reason to programme both.

Why can I not get my legs above ninety degrees?

Usually hamstring flexibility rather than abdominal strength, and occasionally an unwillingness to tuck the pelvis. Test it by lying on your back and raising a straight leg. If it stops early there too, work on the flexibility and use bent knee raises in the meantime.

My grip fails before my abs. What do I do?

Use lifting straps, or move to a captain's chair where the forearms are supported. Neither is cheating. If the goal is abdominal training, having your hands end the set is simply the wrong constraint.

Should I feel this in my hip flexors?

Yes. The psoas and iliacus raise the legs, so they will work hard and often ache. That is normal and not a sign of poor technique. It only becomes a problem if you never add the pelvic tuck, in which case the abs are along for the ride.

Will this give me visible abs?

It will build the muscle. Whether the muscle is visible depends on your body fat, and no abdominal exercise reduces fat over the area it trains. Spot reduction does not work.