Whether or not your health objectives are performance-related or extra about the way you look in a pair of denims, prepare to fulfill your new favourite energy transfer: hamstring curls.
Positioned south of your glutes, your hamstrings are a strong (but usually ignored) muscle group that helps bend your knees, prolong (straighten) your hips, and rotate your legs. The hamstrings come into play throughout purposeful actions, like strolling and climbing stairs, and might be strengthened with compound actions, just like the squat and deadlift.
However incorporating hamstring workouts into your resistance coaching can amplify your outcomes and supply extra focused advantages associated to lower-body energy and energy, damage prevention, and aesthetics (learn: a shapelier butt).
Beneath are six completely different hamstring curl variations you are able to do with no machine, starting from beginner-friendly banded leg curls to a extra superior body weight hamstring curl.
To carry out every isolation train accurately, you’ll want entry to an train mat, resistance band, dumbbell, stability ball, bench or chair, and gliders.
1. Standing Hamstring Curl
Problem degree: straightforward to reasonable
This standing, single-leg hamstring curl might be carried out as a body weight train or with a resistance band looped round your ankles.
- Stand together with your toes hip-width aside. Place your fingers in your hips or maintain onto a secure floor, just like the again of a chair or a wall, for steadiness.
- Shift your weight to your proper leg and, holding your left foot flexed, slowly draw your left heel towards your butt.
- When you’ve gone so far as you may go, pause for a second. Slowly decrease your left foot to the bottom.
- Repeat for the desired variety of repetitions, then swap legs.
2. Seated Hamstring Curl
Problem degree: straightforward to reasonable
To carry out seated hamstring curls, anchor a resistance band to a pole, weight rack, or heavy fixture at about ankle top. Prepare your chair or bench so that you just’re dealing with the anchor level.
- Sit on the bench and prolong your proper leg so there’s a comfortable bend in your knee. Loop the open finish of the resistance band across the again of your proper ankle. (Alternatively, you may place the band round each ankles to work each legs on the identical time.) There ought to be a reasonable quantity of pressure on the band. That is your beginning place.
- Protecting your chest up and your shoulders again, slowly draw your proper heel again towards the bench so far as you may. Pause for a second.
- Slowly prolong your leg to return to the beginning place.
- Repeat for the desired variety of reps, then swap legs.
3. Glider Hamstring Curl
Problem degree: straightforward to reasonable
The glider hamstring curl takes the already difficult glute bridge and dials it up a notch. For those who don’t have gliders, strive substituting paper plates or sporting slippery socks on onerous flooring.
- Lie in your again together with your arms at your sides, knees bent 90 levels, and left heel resting on a glider.
- Interact your core and elevate your hips so your physique kinds a straight line out of your shoulders to your knees. That is your beginning place.
- With management, slowly prolong your left leg by sliding the glider away out of your hips.
- Go so far as you may whereas nonetheless sustaining management and holding your hips lifted. Then, use your hamstrings and glutes to slip the glider again towards your hips.
- Return to the beginning place and repeat for the desired variety of reps earlier than switching sides.
4. Mendacity Hamstring Curl
Problem degree: reasonable to difficult
When carried out with a dumbbell between your toes, the mendacity hamstring curl — often known as the inclined hamstring curl — engages the hamstring muscle tissues in each legs. It’s also possible to anchor one finish of a resistance band to a pole, weight rack, or heavy fixture at about ankle top and slip the opposite finish of the band round one or each ankles.
- Lie face down together with your legs collectively and your brow resting in your fingers. For those who’re utilizing a dumbbell, place the deal with between your toes. For those who’re utilizing a resistance band, ensure you’re dealing with away from the anchor level and loop the open finish across the backs of each ankles. (For those who’d want to work one leg at a time, loop it round one ankle and preserve the opposite leg prolonged on the ground.)
- Interact your core and, holding your toes flexed, slowly draw your heels towards your butt. Proceed to maintain your thighs pressed in opposition to the bottom.
- When you’ve gone so far as you may, pause, then slowly decrease your toes again towards the bottom.
- Repeat for the desired variety of reps. (For those who go for the single-leg mendacity hamstring curl, full each repetition on one leg earlier than switching sides.)
5. Stability Ball Hamstring Curl
Problem degree: reasonable to difficult
By introducing a component of instability, the Swiss ball hamstring curl exams your steadiness and fires up your core muscle tissues whereas additionally constructing energy in your hamstrings.
- Lie face up together with your again on the bottom, legs prolonged, and calves resting on the soundness ball. Open your arms to a “T” place to assist steadiness.
- Interact your core, contract your glutes, and press the backs of your legs into the ball to elevate your butt off the bottom till your physique kinds a straight line out of your shoulders to your ankles. That is the beginning place.
- Together with your toes flexed, slowly draw your heels towards your butt, permitting the ball to roll towards you and underneath your toes.
- Pause, then slowly prolong your legs, rolling the ball away from you, to return to the beginning place.
- Repeat, holding your hips lifted, for the desired variety of reps.
6. Nordic Hamstring Curl
Problem degree: difficult
For those who’re on the lookout for a problem, give the Nordic hamstring curl a shot. Carried out from a kneeling place, this superior motion requires sufficient hamstring energy to each decrease and elevate your torso with management.
- Begin in a tall kneeling place. (Place a rolled-up towel or pad underneath your knees for consolation.) Anchor your toes by slipping your heels underneath a heavy weight rack or piece of furnishings, or ask a associate to carry your toes in place.
- Protecting your core engaged, slowly lean ahead at your knees and decrease your torso to the ground. Use your glutes and hamstrings to manage your descent.
- When you’re a number of inches from the ground, permit your fingers to catch the load of your physique in opposition to the bottom. Instantly draw your self again as much as a tall kneeling place utilizing your hamstrings and glutes. If obligatory, use your fingers to help you.
- Repeat for the desired variety of reps.
Hamstring Curls: Advantages
Your hamstring muscle tissues play a important function in flexing your knees and increasing and rotating your hips. You want them for on a regular basis actions like strolling, working, squatting, climbing stairs, and bending over.
Including hamstring curls to your exercise may help you preserve wholesome purposeful motion patterns by strengthening these muscle tissues, however that’s not their solely profit. Listed here are a number of extra causes to think about incorporating leg curls into your strength-training routine.
Versatility
There’s a hamstring curl choice for each degree of capability and expertise (simply take a look at the above listing of choices), and you’ll simply make every variation tougher or simpler by adjusting the resistance.
Power and energy
The hamstring muscle tissues include a considerable amount of kind II muscle fibers, that are liable for shortly producing giant quantities of pressure. So, whether or not you play a sport or simply need to climb stairs sooner, hamstring curls may help you develop extra lower-body energy.
Damage prevention
Analysis exhibits that often performing the hamstring curl — the Nordic hamstring curl, particularly, which applies load to the hamstrings as they’re lengthened — might cut back the speed of sports-related hamstring accidents by as much as 51 p.c.
Addresses imbalances
As visible creatures, we are inclined to deal with the “mirror muscle tissues,” or the physique elements we are able to see, and neglect in regards to the muscle tissues that make up the posterior chain. This could create problematic muscle imbalances that may result in motion compensations and damage.
Workouts that strengthen the muscle tissues that run alongside the bottom of the physique, just like the hamstring curl, may help restore and/or preserve steadiness.
A shapely rear
It’s not all in regards to the legs. Properly-defined hamstrings may help intensify your butt, making it look tighter and extra lifted. Hamstring curls can set off hypertrophy, or muscle progress, which is liable for a extra shapely booty.
Hamstring Curls: Muscle tissues Labored
Whereas some leg curl variations like the soundness ball hamstring curl and the glider hamstring curl interact the glutes and deep core muscle tissues, all hamstring curl workouts primarily goal the hamstrings, a gaggle of muscle tissues positioned on the backs of your thighs.
The anatomy of the hamstrings, which originate on the pelvis and insert into the knee simply above the calve, is comprised of three separate muscle tissues.
Biceps femoris
Comprised of each an extended head and a brief head, the biceps femoris is the outermost hamstring muscle and is liable for flexion of the knee, extending the thigh on the hip, rotating the decrease leg when the knee is barely bent, and rotating the thigh when the hip is prolonged.
Semimembranosus
The innermost hamstring, the semimembranosus additionally features to flex the knee, prolong the thigh on the hip, and help in each thigh and lower-leg rotation.
Semitendinosus
The semitendinosus, which is positioned between the biceps femoris and the semimembranosus, has primarily the identical features because the semimembranosus.
