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New moves for hamstrings
Add some muscle to your hamstrings, improve athletic performance, and prevent injury with these challenging new exercises.
A great set of hamstrings will always stand out. Building them can even help protect your knees and prevent injury. Here are some new moves to strengthen the muscles in your hamstrings.
1. Slow Eccentric Slider Hamstring Curl
you may have heard nordic curly hair And the benefits of controlled eccentric training (slow descents), especially for preventing hamstring injuries. Well, here’s a great option that’s also good for your hamstrings. Exercises like this also tend to favor more of the biceps femoris, which is good for “outside” hamstring development.
The weightlifting part is the hip bridge – easier to do with heavier weights because you have a greater mechanical advantage.On the way down, you can do something like leg curls, which can be done by slider. In this section, the hamstrings are at a mechanical disadvantage and therefore need to do more work with the same relative load during the descent.
The result of all this? During the eccentric portion of the lift, the hamstrings are overloaded.
Like Nordic curls, these moves can mess with your hamstrings for a few days, so keep an eye on the volume. Just 2-3 sets of 5-8 repetitions and keeping negative effects in check is the best place to start. As your hamstrings get more accustomed, add another set or two.
2. Dumbbell Hamstring Walk
This exercise is relatively simple, but deceptively difficult. If your hamstrings are good, these shouldn’t be a challenge. However, if your hamstrings or gastrocnemius (the large, meaty part of your calf) are a little out of whack, cramping is very common.
Keep your feet as narrow as possible on the dumbbells, pointing your toes. Keeping your feet together will stop the dumbbell from turning in one direction. You can also use a foam roller.
By plantar flexing your ankle (like a ballerina), you’ll create a joint contraction of your calves and hamstrings. This co-contraction increases hamstring activation. Insufficient activity of the gastrocnemius causes your hamstrings to work harder. Don’t believe me? Just try any ham curling machine that has a plantar flex position and notice the difference.
Raise the dumbbells to the position before the tension in the hamstrings disappears. You will know when. Walk back as far as you can, on your toes, and go as far as you can.
That’s a representation. Perform 3-5 full repetitions without relaxing the tension. Increase the reps over time, or try placing a barbell on your hips to increase the difficulty.
3. With Prone Hamstring Curl
When choosing exercises, one of your main considerations should be muscle length. Exercises that train the muscles in the longest position (imagine hips bent, knees straight) work well, but so do exercises that train the muscles in the shortened position (imagine hips straight, knees bent).
Banded hamstring curls put your hips in a straight position and work them with your knees bent. With this position and the rising band resistance, these load the hamstrings the most in the shortened position. Because of this, these train your hamstrings in the elongated position very poorly, but the squeeze and pump you get more than makes up for it.
Combine them with more hip-focused exercises like RDLs, back extensions, pull throughetc.) to cover all bases. Groups of 20-30 reps work well towards the end of the workout. Or you can start with them—your squats will feel smoother after you pump your hamstrings.
4. Landmine Single Leg RDL – Same Side
Single-leg RDLs are most often done with contralateral loading: loading with the other hand on the stance foot. Contralateral training is great for athletic development, but if you’re more concerned with hamstring expansion, focus on ipsilateral training.
“Same side” means using the same side of the arm and leg. The ipsilateral RDL tends to be more stable and puts more emphasis on the hamstrings of the front leg. You can do these front or sideways.
Dumbbells or kettlebells will work, but if you want to really load those hamstrings (and glutes), using land mines provides more stability. The rod remains in contact with the floor throughout the lift. More stability means more output, so it can be a great way to intensify your single-leg workouts.
These are available for various rep ranges.
5. Hip Belt RDL
Since your hamstrings are made up of a disproportionate amount of fast-twitch fibers, vigorous exercise is required.
That said, you could argue that straight-leg deadlifts are more hamstring-intensive than Romanian deadlifts, and you’d be correct. However, there is less stress on the lower back during RDL because the load is closer to the axis of rotation and closer to the bottom of the support. This means the RDL is the better choice when you want to gain weight.
The belted RDL is a great way to work your hamstrings and glutes. Pulling your hips back with an elastic band has a definite advantage in promoting proper RDL technique, and can be a useful outward coaching tip if you’re new to it.
With the setup shown in the video, you can use more band resistors. You’ll be able to double the band and have more control. Bonus: it seems to promote better hip articulation – there is something to hinge (bow).
Of course, the elastic band helps to increase the horizontal load on the buttocks, making it a powerful butt exerciser. To work your hamstrings and the rest of your posterior chain, sets of 6-8 work well here.
You can avoid locking out by doing two-thirds of the motion on the bottom for more hamstring bias. Or, you can lock out at the top and tilt your pelvis a little backward for extra hip stuff.
6. Triple Hamstring Bridge
Your hamstrings need to be trained at different lengths. One of the best descriptions of this comes from Mr. Olympia Jay Cutler, who said, “Do some exercises to squeeze the muscle, and some exercises to stretch it.”
When it comes to lower body workouts, many people lack hamstring variety, and thus the emphasis on different joint angles and muscle lengths. This causes underdeveloped hamstrings and sacrifices strength. It also makes you more vulnerable to injury.
So make sure you have some variety. Choose one hip-focused hamstring exercise (RDL, back extension, pull-ups, etc.) and one knee-flexion-focused exercise (hamstring curls, GHR, Nordic) from each workout start.
You can also do exercises that cover a lot of joint angles and even incorporate isometric grips. Isometric training helps activate high-threshold motor units and creates a lot of metabolic stress—a potent stimulus for muscle growth.
When done as a mechanical drop set, you’ll start in your weakest position with long hamstring length and toes. Then move to a slightly shorter position, on tiptoe. Finally, move to the traditional bridge with your heels pulling your hamstrings. Do 5-10 repetitions in each position, isometric contraction for 5-10 seconds per repetition.
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