The 12 Greatest Hamstring Workouts for Muscle Mass, Energy, and Extra

“Don’t skip leg day” has nearly grow to be a meme within the health club, warning devoted lifters to provide decrease physique coaching as a lot emphasis, depth, and a focus as their higher physique.

That’s all nicely and good, however even in terms of “leg day,” many lifters nonetheless find yourself skipping a comparatively massive portion of their decrease physique. Not even addressing the flamingo-legged elephant within the room that’s calf coaching. The extra pressing physique half that deserves your consideration is the hamstrings.

Whether or not it’s for athletic efficiency, total-body energy, or an entire and well-developed set of legs, listed below are some must-do actions to focus on the backs of your thighs.

Greatest Hamstring Workouts

Romanian Deadlift

Whereas the standard deadlift is understood for constructing severe energy and measurement in the complete posterior chain (decrease again, glutes, and hamstrings), the Romanian deadlift zones in even additional on that progress stimulus by adjusting the vary of movement and physique positioning.

By retaining your legs very barely bent, put your hamstrings into an extended stretched place whereas additionally forcing them to contract more durable throughout hip extension, which each contribute to higher progress.(1)

Tips on how to Do the Romanian Deadlift

Stand holding a barbell with a barely wider than shoulder-width, overhand grip. Pull your shoulder blades again and lift your chest. Barely bend your knees and push your glutes towards the wall behind you.

Concentrate on feeling your hamstrings stretch as you “attain” your tailbone to the wall. When the bar reaches as little as potential with out rounding your again, drive your heels “by” the bottom and push your hips ahead to return upright.

Advantages of the Romanian Deadlift

• As a barbell motion, the Romanian deadlift permits the usage of probably heavy weights, which contributes to energy good points.
• This motion places the goal muscle by an extended vary of movement with a deep stretch, which advantages muscle progress.

Break up-Stance Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift

Single-leg coaching might be extremely useful for energy, energy, and muscle progress.(2) Nevertheless, many lifters battle with steadiness to the detriment of any single-leg train. Taking a staggered or split-stance drastically reduces the steadiness calls for whereas sustaining the single-leg emphasis.

The split-stance dumbbell Romanian deadlift permits you to concentrate on working the hamstrings of your lead leg, whereas your rear leg supplies simply sufficient stability to remain regular. Utilizing dumbbells as a substitute of a barbell permits an extended vary of movement whereas lowering decrease again pressure.

Tips on how to Do the Break up-Stance Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift

Stand with a dumbbell in every hand by your sides. Take a shoulder-width stance with the toes of 1 foot in keeping with the heel of the lead foot. Maintain your again straight whereas pushing your hips and glutes behind you. Enable your palms to face one another because the weights decrease towards your entrance foot. Pull together with your entrance leg, not the rear foot, to face upright. Carry out all reps on one leg earlier than switching sides.

Advantages of the Break up-Stance Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift

• This motion pairs the advantages of single-leg coaching with the soundness of a bilateral (two-legged) train.
• The split-stance dumbbell Romanian deadlift permits a major muscle-building stimulus from comparatively gentle weights, as a result of stance and leverage.

Single-Leg Single-Arm Romanian Deadlift

The only-leg, single-arm Romanian deadlift would possibly look, and even sound, extra like a circus trick than a severe coaching train. Nevertheless it’s a top-level alternative for muscle-building pressure and high-performance athleticism.

By requiring one leg to supply stability and the alternative arm to hold the burden, you’re making a total-body motion that hits your legs, core, and again like nothing else.

Tips on how to Do the Single-Leg Single-Arm Romanian Deadlift

Stand with a dumbbell in your left hand, by your aspect together with your palm going through your physique. Barely bend your proper knee, lean ahead at your hips, and let your left leg increase into the air as the burden strikes towards the bottom. Keep away from twisting your shoulders or rounding your backbone. Transfer slowly to manage the burden and preserve steadiness. Whenever you’re reached so far as your mobility permits, slowly return to the beginning place. Carry out all reps on one aspect earlier than switching palms and legs.

Advantages of the Single-Leg Single-Arm Romanian Deadlift

• This complete train works the “posterior indirect sling” — a sequence of muscle mass which play a key function in posture, particularly when strolling and shifting.
• The only-leg, single arm Romanian deadlift strongly works the indirect muscle mass of the abs and core.
• Stabilizer muscle mass within the ankles, knees, hips, and shoulders are recruited, making the train an environment friendly method to enhance joint well being.(3)

Standing Leg Curl

The standing leg curl machine might be present in a number of completely different however comparable varieties. Some enable your non-working foot to be planted firmly on the bottom in a totally standing place whereas different machines, generally referred to as “kneeling leg curls” have a specialised pad to assist your non-working leg in a bent place. The general outcome and efficiency is identical with both.

Standing leg curls can help you emphasize knee flexion (bending your leg), a key operate of the hamstring muscle. An added advantage of the standing machine is performing the work unilaterally, concentrating on every leg by itself.

Tips on how to Do the Standing Leg Curl

Setup within the machine with the curl pad positioned simply above the ankle of the working leg. Safe your torso in place utilizing any out there handles. Brace your core and squeeze the heel of your leg towards your glutes. Obtain an entire vary of movement. Decrease the burden below management till your leg is absolutely straightened. Carry out all reps on one aspect earlier than switching legs.

Advantages of the Standing Leg Curl

• The standing leg curl applies fixed pressure to the goal muscle, in contrast to free weight actions which apply various ranges of resistance on account of gravity.
• Unilateral (single-leg) coaching may also help to handle and proper muscular imbalances between sides.
• The design of the machine limits your potential to scale back muscle activation by utilizing full-body momentum to swing the burden.

Seated Leg Curl

The seated leg curl, like many machines, requires some individualized setup for the best coaching expertise. Most machines have an adjustable again pad, thigh assist, and ankle pad which should be accurately set in place to maintain your physique in essentially the most environment friendly place. Most individuals, nevertheless, skip this important step.

This strict motion can present an intense hamstring contraction with little to no contribution from different physique components, making it an excellent muscle-builder.

Tips on how to Do the Seated Leg Curl

Regulate the again pad to place your knee joint in keeping with the pivoting leg attachment. Set the thigh pad to safe in opposition to the tops of your quadriceps. Regulate the ankle pad to sit down simply above your heel. Brace your core and drive by your heels to succeed in a full contraction, together with your toes well-under the seat of the machine. Straighten your legs below management.

Advantages of the Seated Leg Curl

• The seated leg curl places the physique in practically equivalent positioning because the quadriceps-focused leg extension whereas coaching the direct reverse muscle group, making the 2 actions an excellent superset.
• This machine supplies vital assist which eliminates momentum and removes your potential to raise the burden utilizing something however strict hamstring activation, resulting in a higher muscle-building stimulus.
• The seated place modifications the stretch in your hamstring muscle mass, which can contribute to higher progress in comparison with a mendacity leg curl.(4) 

Mendacity Leg Curl

The mendacity leg curl could also be the most well-liked hamstring train, but it surely’s additionally one typically completed incorrectly. Many lifters hike their hips off the pad as they curl, which shifts focus away from their hamstrings and onto their glutes and hip flexors.

To maximise hamstring recruitment, it’s important to maintain your hips pinned to the pad all through the complete repetition. Some lifters discover it crucial to boost their higher physique onto their forearms, and even maintain themselves up utilizing straight arms, to maintain their hips in place.

Tips on how to Do the Mendacity Leg Curl

Lie face down on the machine with the pad resting above your ankles. Flex your abs to make sure a secure higher physique. Steadily carry your heels as shut as potential to your glutes. Ideally, they need to be capable of contact briefly. Decrease the burden below management.

Advantages of the Mendacity Leg Curl

• The mendacity place places your hamstrings into an extended stretched place, which may also help enhance hamstring flexibility and progress.
• The mendacity leg curl permits for a robust peak contraction, which might contribute to constructing energy and muscle.

Excessive Leg Press

The leg press is a standard and efficient train for quadriceps progress, however a slight foot adjustment can shift muscle recruitment and emphasize your hamstrings.

Setting your toes comparatively greater on the urgent platform than within the conventional leg press will emphasize the hamstrings (and glutes) greater than the quadriceps.(5) This turns the train right into a extremely efficient hamstring motion which additionally permits comparatively heavy weights.

Tips on how to Do the Excessive Leg Press

Sit in a leg press machine and place your toes shoulder-width aside together with your toes close to the highest of the foot platform. Maintain your toes flat as you decrease the burden so far as your mobility permits. Your decrease again ought to stay involved with the pad always. From the underside place, straighten your legs to close lockout. 

Advantages of the Excessive Leg Press

• The excessive leg press permits you to work the hamstrings utilizing heavy weights, which contributes to muscle progress and energy good points.
• This leg press variation might be carried out towards the top of a hamstring-focused exercise, to totally exhaust the fatigued muscle, or originally of a hamstring exercise to overload the goal muscle with heavy weights.

Kettlebell Swing

The kettlebell swing is without doubt one of the most generally recognized kettlebell workout routines and might be programmed for muscle-building, energy, conditioning, or fats loss.

In contrast to many workout routines within the health club, the kettlebell swing primarily emphasizes the concentric (lifting) part of every repetition with comparatively much less emphasis on the eccentric (reducing) part. This helps to enhance energy output whereas additionally stimulating muscle progress.

Tips on how to Do the Kettlebell Swing

Stand together with your toes well-beyond shoulder-width aside, with a kettlebell on the bottom a number of inches in entrance of your toes. Bend your legs barely and drive your hips again as you seize the highest deal with of the kettlebell utilizing a palm-down grip with each palms. Pull the kettlebell again towards your physique, letting it swing simply behind your legs. Brace your core and maintain your again straight as you contract your decrease physique to carry the burden close to chest-height utilizing the hip drive, not actively lifting together with your arms. Enable the burden to fall again alongside its path simply behind your legs and repeat.

Advantages of the Kettlebell Swing

• The kettlebell swing is proven to enhance total energy and explosive energy.(6)
• This dynamic motion builds grip energy, core energy, cardiovascular conditioning, and metabolic stress for a muscle-building stimulus.
• As a result of it requires minimal tools and restricted house, the swing is a handy and space-efficient option to prepare your decrease physique. This makes it ideally suited for dwelling gyms or these with restricted entry to weights.

Slider Leg Curl

If your private home health club doesn’t have a pair of furnishings sliders, you’re lacking out on an especially efficient addition that opens up loads of new workout routines for the complete physique. To your leg exercises, particularly, they’re an ideal different to any leg curl machine.

The sliders can help you carry out knee flexion on practically any floor (rug, tile, health club flooring, and so forth.). As a result of they’re designed to actually slide on the bottom, additionally they require elevated core engagement, so your abs and hips can be working more durable than throughout any machine-based curl.

Tips on how to Do the Slider Leg Curl

Lie on the bottom together with your legs straight and a slider below every heel. Maintain your head and shoulders on the bottom as you curl your toes towards your glutes whereas driving your hips up. Think about a metal rod working out of your chest to your knees — don’t enable your physique to bend on the waist. Pause briefly and management each toes as you come to the beginning place.

Advantages of the Slider Leg Curl

• The slider leg curl is without doubt one of the solely hamstring curl choices in a house health club with out a devoted leg curl machine.
• The instability of the sliders will increase the core stability calls for of the train.
• The slider leg curl might be progressed like different body weight actions utilizing added load, modifications in rep velocity, or utilizing a single-leg.

Seated Resistance Band Curl

Resistance bands are extra generally related to higher physique workout routines, however this decrease physique different is one other extremely efficient machine different while you’re in a house health club or touring.

With the seated resistance band curl, you solely want a band, a stationary object to function anchor level, and a bench, field, or chair to sit down on. This delivers a high-tension train concentrating on the hamstrings with little to no assist from different muscle mass.

Tips on how to Do the Seated Resistance Band Curl

Connect a resistance band to an immovable object a number of toes in entrance of a field, bench, or chair. Sit on the field with the band behind your ankles and your torso upright. Brace your higher physique and prolong your legs till they’re practically straight. Maintain your toes near the bottom as you drive your heels again below your physique so far as potential. Don’t enable your higher legs to rise, which might take pressure off your hamstrings. Maintain the contraction for one second earlier than straightening your legs and repeating.

Advantages of the Seated Resistance Band Curl

• The seated resistance band curl is an environment friendly hamstring train when coaching with restricted tools.
• Resistance bands supply “accommodating resistance” — more difficult because the band is stretched farther and comparatively much less difficult within the stretched place— which might scale back pressure on the knee joint.

Nordic Hamstring Curl

The Nordic hamstring curl is a comparatively superior train as a result of it’s, primarily, a leg curl carried out with your individual body weight. Nevertheless, easy modifications and changes might be made so lifters of any expertise and energy stage can profit from this highly effective motion/

The Nordic hamstring curl can be supported by a major quantity of analysis exhibiting its advantages for lowering the danger of hamstring accidents in athletes in various sports activities.(7)

Tips on how to Do the Nordic Hamstring Curl

Kneel on the bottom together with your heels locked into place below an immovable object, corresponding to a Smith machine on a really low setting or a closely loaded barbell. Start in a “tall kneeling place”, sitting upright together with your shins on the bottom and a straight line out of your knees by your torso to your neck. Keep a stiff physique place as you slowly decrease your self ahead to the bottom. Maintain your palms up and able to catch your self. Concentrate on feeling pressure in your hamstrings. Whenever you really feel pressure lowering, Pull your self again to an upright place. Alternatively, 

Advantages of the Nordic Hamstring Curl

• The Nordic hamstring curl is supported by analysis to assist scale back the danger of hamstring accidents in athletes.
• As a result of this motion emphasizes the eccentric (reducing) portion of the vary of movement, it creates a major progress stimulus. Nevertheless, bear in mind that any eccentric emphasis also can result in vital post-exercise muscle soreness.(8)
• This is without doubt one of the few body weight workout routines to notably goal the hamstrings with knee flexion (curling), making it efficient for train selection.

SHELC

The supine hip extension leg curl, or SHELC, is an intensive body weight train concentrating on the hamstrings and glutes. It’s usually completed on an train ball, however the same motion might be completed on a big foam curler.

The overall motion is much like the slider leg curl, nevertheless, the SHELC is carried out by an extended vary of movement. The “softness” of the train ball additionally makes the train extra unstable and recruits extra stabilizer muscle mass within the core, hips, and ankles.

Tips on how to Do the SHELC

Lie on the bottom together with your calves on an train ball. Maintain your head, shoulders, and elbows flat on the bottom all through the train. Press your decrease legs into the ball as you increase your hips to the ceiling. Maintain a straight line by your whole physique as you pull your toes towards your physique. Pause briefly on the peak contraction. Slowly straighten your legs and briefly pause, supporting your physique in a straight line earlier than repeating the subsequent repetition. Maintain your hips elevated till the top of the set.

Advantages of the SHELC

• This body weight train works the hamstrings throughout hip extension in addition to knee flexion, the 2 key capabilities of the muscle, which might result in a higher progress stimulus in comparison with different workout routines.
• The instability of the train ball will increase core stability necessities, in addition to recruitment of smaller decrease physique muscle mass, which may also help enhance joint well being. 

The Hamstring Muscle tissue

Whereas sure “hamstring workout routines” isolate and emphasize the particular hamstring muscle mass, different actions will recruit different leg muscle mass together with the glutes, quadriceps, and calves.

Hamstrings

Your hamstrings, on the backs of your thighs, are a group of a number of similar-functioning muscle mass together with the biceps femoris, on the outer portion of the leg, and the semitendinosus and semimembranosus, each alongside the interior a part of the leg.

Your hamstrings are labored throughout two main forms of actions. They’re recruited throughout hip extension — shifting your thigh from in entrance of your physique in line below your torso — which is carried out throughout Romanian deadlift variations. The hamstrings are additionally accountable for knee flexion, or bending your leg, throughout any kind of leg curl.

Glutes

The glutes are a comparatively robust muscle concerned primarily in hip flexion. They are going to be recruited to help throughout many hamstring actions, notably hip extension workout routines carried out with a straight or comparatively straight leg. The glutes are minimally concerned throughout leg flexion, making these leg curl variations a better precedence while you wish to emphasize the hamstrings over the glutes.

Quadriceps

The muscle mass on the entrance of the thigh — the quadriceps — are anatomically reverse from the hamstrings. Not solely are they situated on the alternative aspect of the higher leg bone, however they work in an reverse (or antagonistic) function for knee extension or straightening the leg.

Nevertheless, in sure multi-joint workout routines just like the excessive leg press, the quadriceps are recruited to assist prolong the leg and raise the burden. Equally, your quads are recruited in workout routines just like the slider leg curl to manage your descent as you straighten your leg and stretch your hamstrings.

Calves

The calf muscle mass on the again of your decrease legs are primarily accountable for flexing and lengthening your toes. Nevertheless, a part of the calf muscle extends over the knee joint and is recruited throughout hip flexion. That is why, on sure workout routines carried out with straight or practically straight legs, you might really feel pressure behind your knees or your calves.

How Typically Ought to You Prepare the Hamstrings

In an excellent coaching situation, hamstring coaching would obtain as a lot consideration as quadriceps coaching. Nevertheless, in actuality, many lifters tack on one or two hamstring workout routines after a lot of quad-focused actions.

An efficient answer to this less-than-attentive method to hamstring coaching is to easily separate the quadriceps and hamstrings into two exercises. Quite than having “leg day,” design a quadriceps exercise together with squat and lunge variations and carry out a separate exercise targeted on the forms of workout routines listed above.

Whereas every session can be comparatively shorter and might be paired with one other physique half relying in your coaching cut up, attacking both sides of your thigh with extra focus permits higher coaching depth, comparatively extra quantity, and it decreases the probabilities of “forgetting” to coach them.

Whether or not you’re addressing them instantly on their very own or as a part of a extra complete decrease physique exercise, instantly coaching your hamstrings a couple of times per week might be an efficient option to construct muscle and energy whereas recovering sufficiently.

Tips on how to Progress Your Hamstring Coaching

Irrespective of how typically you’re concentrating on your hamstrings, it’s essential to make use of a wide range of workout routines which handle each capabilities of the muscle. In any exercise, you’ll want to embody Romanian deadlift variations which prepare hip flexion, in addition to performing leg curl variations to work knee flexion.

To prioritize hamstrings throughout any exercise, use a number of units of any leg curl because the very first train of the day. This pre-exhaust method fatigues your hamstrings and makes them extra more likely to attain muscular failure earlier than different physique components skilled in further actions.

This helps to emphasise the hamstrings throughout workout routines by which different muscle teams might obtain comparatively higher consideration (such because the excessive leg press and even in the course of the conventional squat) and helps to make sure optimum recruitment of the hamstrings.

Tips on how to Heat-Up Your Hamstrings

“Hamstring tear” is a phrase that may strike worry into any skilled lifter or athlete. Not solely can a hamstring damage require vital restoration time, however it might probably grow to be a recurring challenge requiring ongoing consideration and adaptation.

Correctly warming up your hamstring muscle mass, glutes, hips, knees, and ankles can enable for extra coaching depth with a diminished danger of damage. Starting every hamstring exercise with a easy, low-intensity sequence of body weight squats, unweighted single-leg Romanian deadlifts (modified toe touches), and traditional standing leg swings (aspect to aspect in addition to entrance to again) can go a great distance towards getting ready your muscle mass and joints for extra intense coaching.

No Again Seat for the Hammies

Simply because you possibly can’t flex your hamstrings and see them within the mirror is not any excuse to faux they’re not there, actually supporting each step you’re taking and (nearly) each transfer you make within the health club. It’s well-past time to place the again of your thighs entrance and heart, and provides your leg improvement, decrease physique energy, and athletic energy an actual kick within the pants.

References

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