Hanging core exercises offer some of the most challenging variations available. Having these exercises in your tool kit will mean as long as you can find somewhere to hang from you’ll be able to work your core strength and work it to a very high intensity. Here we offer 10 of the most challenging core variations for you to add into your core training and workouts for both intermediate and advanced trainers.

Benefits Of Hanging Core Exercises

1. Great For Advanced Individuals

Hanging core variations offer some of the most challenging variations for the core, making them excellent for advanced individuals to continue to see progress. Some of the variations in this list require an already very strong core, and will be perfect for those who need very hard exercises to see progress.

2. Develop Grip And Upper-Body Strength

Often times these hanging core variations require you to hold on for extended periods of time, this has the secondary benefit of improving grip strength. Most of the time the core work is so challenging that you wont even feel that your grip or upper-body are being stimulated, but that doesn’t mean its not having a secondary benefit.

3. Beginners See Visible Progression

Beginners can see progress very clearly with hanging variations. If at the start of their training journey they are not able to hang from the bar, to being able to do passive and active hangs then progressing to knee raises and maybe even eventually Tuck L Hang. It is a great way to keep people motivated by allowing them to clearly see their progress.

How To Use Hanging Ab Exercises To Train Abs

1. Pick The Correct Level Of Difficulty For Each Exercise

If you’re not advanced, do not use advanced exercises, this can leave you feeling disheartened and unmotivated. A lot of these variations require an already established strong anterior core and if you’r not ready to perform the exercise you simple wont be able to put yourself in the correct position. Have some humility and start at the beginning.

2. Use Progressive Overload

Progressive overload is a very simple concept that involves adding difficulty (through intensity or volume) over time. This will allow you to see long term progress in all the movements involved in strength and conditioning. Progressive overload can be used within an exercises by adding sets or reps but can also be applied from one exercise to the next. By starting with a simple variations and slowly adding complexity overtime you will be progressively overloading your body and will adapt accordingly.

3. Use Other Variations (rotation, resisting rotation)

Hanging abdominal exercises do not offer much variety in terms of movement patterns they can be used to target the core. They are excellent at developing the anterior core but do not offer many exercises to work on rotation movement and resisting rotation movement so make sure your using other functional core exercises to target these crucial movement patterns.

This core workout is for people with advanced skill levels looking for a challenging abs workout. It includes one hanging ab exercise and two different exercises to add variety and use multiple movement patterns. This should make for a tough ab workout even for experienced trainees.