Lower Ab Exercises?

[kowie]

I always hear from everyone that you can't isolate your ab muscles, but this is confusing to me. I'm pretty tall for a female (5'10") and can hold a plank for a pretty decent amount of time, but when it comes to doing things like leg lifts on the bar, I can't do even lift my legs more than a couple inches. I can lift my knees up, but I don't really feel anything. I've tried other exercises on the floor like v-ups that I've heard help, but they usually just hurt my back and I can never really feel my abs working at all. My lack of ab strength is affecting my ability to swing up on my jumps. I usually just stay in a 90 degree position and when I try to bring feet to hands, I just fold up but my hips don't get any higher. So anyway my question basically is how can I improve my lower ab muscles or just swing up more? Thanks.

[EIUvltr]

I wouldn't focus so much on your lower abs but rather on strengthening the front of the body as a whole. High bar work is great for this. Also planks are more of an endurance test than strength (unless you put 45 lbs plates on your back). The AB wheel will help as well as improve your upper back strength. The stir the pot exercise is also a decent progression from planks http://youtu.be/hGdi03dieXk but again, this is a tad bit more endurancey than strength. But a good stepping stone nonetheless.

[kowie]

I wouldn't focus so much on your lower abs but rather on strengthening the front of the body as a whole. High bar work is great for this. Also planks are more of an endurance test than strength (unless you put 45 lbs plates on your back). The AB wheel will help as well as improve your upper back strength. The stir the pot exercise is also a decent progression from planks http://youtu.be/hGdi03dieXk but again, this is a tad bit more endurancey than strength. But a good stepping stone nonetheless.

Thanks! What exercises would you reccomend doing on the highbar? I've been working on Bubkas (well more like modified Bubkas...) but what else can I do?

[EIUvltr]

Honestly my area of expertise when it comes to gymnastics exercises per se. However I can tell you that simply being on the bar helps. Pulling yourself up in different ways, swinging around, etc. If your school has a gymnastics team, I highly encourage you to go forge a relationship with the coach/team. They are normally more than happy to help. Just be sure to explain to them that the pole is far more similar to the high bar than the rings. They should be able to take it from there.

Also for what its worth, you can isolate your abdominals, multifidus, transverse, etc. But its not recommended. The idea of isolating supposedly weak core muscles was popular for a while until everyone realized it wasn't helping and was actually hurting in some instances.