Setup

Sit on the floor and lean your upper body back at an angle. Place your hands on the floor behind or beside your hips, fingers pointing forward, and let them take just enough weight to keep you steady. Lift your feet off the ground, knees bent, and hold your torso leaning back. That's your start — body leaning one way, legs the other, stomach holding both.
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Why the setup does the work here

Hands on the floor aren't cheating — they're what lets you go hard. Without them you spend the whole set fighting to stay balanced, and balance work quietly steals effort from the muscle you came to train. Let the hands hold you up and all your attention goes into one thing: squeezing the core. Just keep the weight on them light — they steady you, they don't carry you.
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Technique

Pull your knees in toward your chest and crunch your upper body forward at the same time, so both ends fold toward the middle. Squeeze hard at the top for a second. Then extend your legs away and lean your torso back, opening your body into a long line — without letting your feet touch the floor. Keep the movement steady and controlled, and breathe out every time you fold in.
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Why technique decides everything here

The squeeze is the whole exercise, and it only counts if both ends move. Pull the knees in while your chest stays back and it's a hip exercise. Crunch forward while your legs hang still and it's a weak sit-up. Fold both toward each other and your stomach shortens from the top and the bottom at once — that's the point of a tuck. The other half is the extension. Feet staying off the floor keeps the muscle loaded the whole set, so the moment you stop resting your heels, the work never lets up.
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Common Mistakes

Pushing hard into the hands and pulling yourself up with your arms. Dropping the feet to the floor between reps, which resets the tension. Rushing, so the legs swing in and out on momentum. Keeping the torso still and only moving the knees. And rounding the shoulders forward while the ribs never actually curl toward the hips.
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Where people lose results

People treat this like a speed exercise and bounce through twenty reps that all look the same. Slow it down until you can feel the squeeze at the top, hold that second, and stop the set when the fold gets shallow — not when you hit a number. When it gets easy, extend the legs further out or slow the opening phase down instead of adding reps.