Exercise library

How to do the Seated Flat Bench Leg Pull-In

A beginner compound exercise using bodyweight, working the abdominals.

Primary musclesAbdominals
Secondary musclesNone recorded
EquipmentBodyweight
LevelBeginner
TypeCompound
ForcePull

Steps

  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.

Tracking it in OneRep

Add the seated flat bench leg pull-in 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.