Seated Leg Tucks

🎯 Abdominals🏋️ Body onlyBeginnerIsolation

How to do the seated leg tucks

  1. Sit on a bench with the legs stretched out in front of you slightly below parallel and your arms holding on to the sides of the bench. Your torso should be leaning backwards around a 45-degree angle from the bench. This will be your starting position.
  2. Bring the knees in toward you as you move your torso closer to them at the same time. Breathe out as you perform this movement.
  3. After a second pause, go back to the starting position as you inhale.
  4. Repeat for the recommended amount of repetitions.

Muscles worked

The prime movers are the rectus abdominis and the obliques, which flex the trunk forward and resist it being pulled into extension or twisted out of line.

Every exercise for:Abdominals

How this movement works

One joint changes angle and the resistance travels toward you along a single arc. Nothing is positioned to help, so tension stays where you aimed it and the usable load drops sharply against a multi-joint pull for the same muscle. Protect the range of motion; buying weight by shortening the arc defeats the point.

It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.

What you need

No equipment at all. The resistance is your own bodyweight, so you progress by changing leverage, range or tempo rather than by adding plates — and you can do it anywhere.

Every exercise using:Body only

These train the abdominals too, using equipment this one does not:

Difficulty

Listed at beginner level: the pattern is simple enough to pick up without coaching, and a position that goes wrong mid-set is obvious enough to correct on the next repetition.

Of the 97 abdominals exercises in this database, 69 are listed at beginner level.

Related exercises

Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →

ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.