Steps
- Hang from a chin-up bar with your legs and feet together using an overhand grip (palms facing away from you) that is slightly wider than shoulder width. Tip: You may use wrist wraps in order to facilitate holding on to the bar.
- Now bend your knees at a 90 degree angle and bring the upper legs forward so that the calves are perpendicular to the floor while the thighs remain parallel to it. This will be your starting position.
- Pull your legs up as you exhale until you almost touch your shins with the bar above you. Tip: Try to straighten your legs as much as possible while at the top.
- Lower your legs as slowly as possible until you reach the starting position. Tip: Avoid swinging and using momentum at all times.
- Repeat for the recommended amount of repetitions.
Tracking it in OneRep
Add the hanging pike to a routine and your previous weight and reps sit beside every set, so the decision to add load is made by what is already on the screen rather than by memory. Exercise history and volume trends are one tap away, and logging works offline for the gyms where signal does not reach.
Because OneRep tracks food on the same timeline, a stall on this lift can be read against what you were actually eating that month — which is the difference between a programming problem and an eating one. More on that in tracking progressive overload without a spreadsheet.
Where the instructions come from
The steps above come from free-exercise-db, a public-domain exercise dataset. They are general guidance, not coaching for your body: if a movement hurts, stop and get someone qualified to look at it.