Pinpointing the Lower Abs

'lo,

I’m having a tough time working my lower abs. All the floor crunches and cable crunches I’ve been doing are making the top two rows decent, but I can’t even feel my lower ones when I flex my abs.

Can someone please suggest something that would help target them specifically? Note that hanging raises are out. I have pretty bad anterior pelvic tilt and overdeveloped hip flexors, so whenever I try to do the raises, it’s nearly impossible for me to fire my abs, and the hip flexors takes over instead.

The crunches and planks my physiotherapist has me doing just aren’t cutting it… I’m thinking that the route of my problem is from abs that are weak and underdeveloped.

Please suggest some exercises!

You need a latex belt that you can wear 24 hours a day. That way you can do isometrics at your desk and in your sleep.

hanging leg raises…a bunch of them, and other leg raise variations

Try scissor kicks and jack knives

[quote]Drillhair wrote:
'lo,

I’m having a tough time working my lower abs. All the floor crunches and cable crunches I’ve been doing are making the top two rows decent, but I can’t even feel my lower ones when I flex my abs.

Can someone please suggest something that would help target them specifically? Note that hanging raises are out. I have pretty bad anterior pelvic tilt and overdeveloped hip flexors, so whenever I try to do the raises, it’s nearly impossible for me to fire my abs, and the hip flexors takes over instead.

The crunches and planks my physiotherapist has me doing just aren’t cutting it… I’m thinking that the route of my problem is from abs that are weak and underdeveloped.

Please suggest some exercises! [/quote]

i think the best thing would be to address the issue rather than work around it, almost any lower ab exercise is going to engage the hip flexors to some extent. Read pavels take on hanging leg raies

Try the following:

Foam roll and stretch the heck out of your quads and hip flexors
Use bulgarian split squats and lunges as your primary quad exercises as they will open up the hip
Do the non tripod exercise for the lower abs and low ab function. You can see the non tripod, an excellent hip mobility curcuit and some glute activation stuff that should help here:

evolutionaryathletics.com/blogs/exercise-index/