How effective are hanging crunches?

[Fergs103]

Been out of the gym for a couple months now, doing home workouts and everything is going fine, except I don't have an ab machine. I don't really know how effective those things are as far as ROM goes but I could load on a ton of weight and see results, so now I'm reduced to just plain old crunches and so to try something more difficult I started hanging down from my pull up bar. Its pretty damn hard, but looking at pictures of myself a few months ago I'm not sure if I'm just hitting my hip flexors and getting the abs only as a secondary thing, so are hanging crunches effective and this is all in my head or should I head back to the gym at for my ab workout?

 

[poison]

Hanging crunches are as good as it gets, if you do em right. This means grab the bar and raise your quads to paralell to the ground, as if you are seated in an imaginary chair, hands overhead. THAT is the starting point, and your hips remain locked there throughout the set, no movement from the hip flexors. Now, raise your knees to your chin (or more accurately curl your pubic bone to your sternum), using your abdominals only, then LOWER TO PARALLEL. Do not lower knees below parallel, because then you will be working the hip flexors.