Many people in the gym do not understand the anatomy of the human body, thus perform exercises and mistakenly think they are working out a certain muscle group when they in fact are not. One of the most common mistakes I see in the gym everyday is people working out their lower abs with the abdominal exercise – leg rises on the captain’s chair.
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People think they are working out their lower abdominal muscles performing this ab exercise, however, they are only working out a primary hip flexor muscle group known as the iliopsoas which consists of the psoas major, psoas minor, and iliacus. These muscles are extremely important in everyday movements such as standing, walking, and running. The iliopsoas muscle especially the psoas major, and psoas minor are located below your rectus abdominis muscle. During the abdominal workout and exercise ‘leg rises people misconstrue what is being worked out because the iliopsoas muscles are actually fatiguing and not your lower ab muscles. Therefore, it gives the perception that you’re working out your lower abs because they are ‘fatiguing’ when in reality it is your hip flexor muscles bearing all the work.
Performing the ab workout leg raises, you are only isometrically contracting your abdominal muscles. This means that you’re muscles do not have an eccentric or concentric contraction in movement. Your lower abdominals are generating force, but they aren’t changing length.
People who perform leg raises either lack the strength to properly perform the exercise and their muscles fatigue quickly, or they feel a burning sensation in their lower abdomen area don’t realize that it is really their hip flexor muscles causing this tiring or burning sensation while working their “lower abdominal muscles”. Thus they interpret this as working out their rectus abdominis. The only workout the rectus abdominis is doing is isometrically contracting and flexes the spine from where it originates to where it inserts.
To effectively workout the lower abdomen during leg raises, you need to concentrate on flexing your hip at the end of the leg raise, thus concentricallycontracting your lower abdomen a little.
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