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 power transfer: hamstring curls.
Positioned south of your glutes, your hamstrings are a strong (but usually neglected) muscle group that helps bend your knees, lengthen (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 power and energy, damage prevention, and aesthetics (learn: a shapelier butt).
Under are six completely different hamstring curl variations you are able to do with out a machine, starting from beginner-friendly banded leg curls to a extra superior body weight hamstring curl.
To carry out every isolation train appropriately, you’ll want entry to an train mat, resistance band, dumbbell, stability ball, bench or chair, and gliders.
1. Standing Hamstring Curl
Problem stage: 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 along with your toes hip-width aside. Place your palms in your hips or maintain onto a secure floor, just like the again of a chair or a wall, for stability.
- Shift your weight to your proper leg and, maintaining your left foot flexed, slowly draw your left heel towards your butt.
- When you’ve gone so far as you possibly can go, pause for a second. Slowly decrease your left foot to the bottom.
- Repeat for the desired variety of repetitions, then change legs.
2. Seated Hamstring Curl
Problem stage: 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 simply’re going through the anchor level.
- Sit on the bench and lengthen your proper leg so there’s a smooth bend in your knee. Loop the open finish of the resistance band across the again of your proper ankle. (Alternatively, you possibly can place the band round each ankles to work each legs on the identical time.) There needs to be a reasonable quantity of rigidity on the band. That is your beginning place.
- Preserving your chest up and your shoulders again, slowly draw your proper heel again towards the bench so far as you possibly can. Pause for a second.
- Slowly lengthen your leg to return to the beginning place.
- Repeat for the desired variety of reps, then change legs.
3. Glider Hamstring Curl
Problem stage: straightforward to reasonable
The glider hamstring curl takes the already difficult glute bridge and dials it up a notch. In case you don’t have gliders, strive substituting paper plates or sporting slippery socks on arduous flooring.
- Lie in your again along with your arms at your sides, knees bent 90 levels, and left heel resting on a glider.
- Interact your core and raise your hips so your physique kinds a straight line out of your shoulders to your knees. That is your beginning place.
- With management, slowly lengthen your left leg by sliding the glider away out of your hips.
- Go so far as you possibly can whereas nonetheless sustaining management and maintaining 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 stage: 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 tissue in each legs. You can too 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 along with your legs collectively and your brow resting in your palms. In case you’re utilizing a dumbbell, place the deal with between your toes. In case you’re utilizing a resistance band, be sure you’re going through away from the anchor level and loop the open finish across the backs of each ankles. (In case you’d desire to work one leg at a time, loop it round one ankle and hold the opposite leg prolonged on the ground.)
- Interact your core and, maintaining 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 possibly can, pause, then slowly decrease your toes again towards the bottom.
- Repeat for the desired variety of reps. (In case you go for the single-leg mendacity hamstring curl, full each repetition on one leg earlier than switching sides.)
5. Stability Ball Hamstring Curl
Problem stage: reasonable to difficult
By introducing a component of instability, the Swiss ball hamstring curl checks your stability and fires up your core muscle tissue whereas additionally constructing power in your hamstrings.
- Lie face up along with your again on the bottom, legs prolonged, and calves resting on the steadiness ball. Open your arms to a “T” place to assist stability.
- Interact your core, contract your glutes, and press the backs of your legs into the ball to raise 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 lengthen your legs, rolling the ball away from you, to return to the beginning place.
- Repeat, maintaining your hips lifted, for the desired variety of reps.
6. Nordic Hamstring Curl
Problem stage: difficult
In case you’re in search of a problem, give the Nordic hamstring curl a shot. Carried out from a kneeling place, this superior motion requires sufficient hamstring power to each decrease and raise 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 companion to carry your toes in place.
- Preserving your core engaged, slowly lean ahead at your knees and decrease your torso to the ground. Use your glutes and hamstrings to regulate your descent.
- When you’re a number of inches from the ground, permit your palms to catch the burden 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 vital, use your palms to help you.
- Repeat for the desired variety of reps.
Hamstring Curls: Advantages
Your hamstring muscle tissue play a crucial position 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 might help you preserve wholesome purposeful motion patterns by strengthening these muscle tissue, however that’s not their solely profit. Listed here are a number of extra causes to contemplate incorporating leg curls into your strength-training routine.
Versatility
There’s a hamstring curl choice for each stage of means and expertise (simply have a look at the above checklist of choices), and you may simply make every variation more durable or simpler by adjusting the resistance.
Power and energy
The hamstring muscle tissue include a considerable amount of sort II muscle fibers, that are liable for shortly producing massive quantities of pressure. So, whether or not you play a sport or simply need to climb stairs sooner, hamstring curls might help you develop extra lower-body power.
Harm prevention
Analysis reveals that frequently performing the hamstring curl — the Nordic hamstring curl, particularly, which applies load to the hamstrings as they’re lengthened — could cut back the speed of sports-related hamstring accidents by as much as 51 %.
Addresses imbalances
As visible creatures, we are inclined to deal with the “mirror muscle tissue,” or the physique elements we will see, and neglect concerning the muscle tissue that make up the posterior chain. This may create problematic muscle imbalances that may result in motion compensations and damage.
Workouts that strengthen the muscle tissue that run alongside the bottom of the physique, just like the hamstring curl, might help restore and/or preserve stability.
A shapely rear
It’s not all concerning the legs. Nicely-defined hamstrings might 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 steadiness ball hamstring curl and the glider hamstring curl have interaction the glutes and deep core muscle tissue, all hamstring curl workouts primarily goal the hamstrings, a bunch of muscle tissue situated 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 tissue.
Biceps femoris
Comprised of each a protracted 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 capabilities to flex the knee, lengthen the thigh on the hip, and help in each thigh and lower-leg rotation.
Semitendinosus
The semitendinosus, which is situated between the biceps femoris and the semimembranosus, has primarily the identical capabilities because the semimembranosus.
