Whether or not your health targets 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.
Situated south of your glutes, your hamstrings are a strong (but usually missed) muscle group that helps bend your knees, lengthen (straighten) your hips, and rotate your legs. The hamstrings come into play throughout useful actions, like strolling and climbing stairs, and may be strengthened with compound actions, just like the squat and deadlift.
However incorporating hamstring workout routines into your resistance coaching can amplify your outcomes and supply extra focused advantages associated to lower-body power and energy, harm 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 appropriately, you’ll want entry to an train mat, resistance band, dumbbell, stability ball, bench or chair, and gliders.
1. Standing Hamstring Curl
Problem degree: simple to reasonable
This standing, single-leg hamstring curl may 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 arms 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, 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 required variety of repetitions, then change legs.
2. Seated Hamstring Curl
Problem degree: simple to reasonable
To carry out seated hamstring curls, anchor a resistance band to a pole, weight rack, or heavy fixture at about ankle peak. Organize your chair or bench so that you just’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 similar time.) There needs to be a reasonable quantity of stress 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 required variety of reps, then change legs.
3. Glider Hamstring Curl
Problem degree: simple 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, attempt substituting paper plates or carrying slippery socks on onerous flooring.
- Lie in your again along with your arms at your sides, knees bent 90 levels, and left heel resting on a glider.
- Have interaction 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 required 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 — also referred to as the susceptible hamstring curl — engages the hamstring muscle mass in each legs. You may also anchor one finish of a resistance band to a pole, weight rack, or heavy fixture at about ankle peak 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 arms. For those who’re utilizing a dumbbell, place the deal with between your toes. For those who’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. (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.)
- Have interaction your core and, maintaining your toes flexed, slowly draw your heels towards your butt. Proceed to maintain your thighs pressed towards 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 required 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 mass whereas additionally constructing power in your hamstrings.
- Lie face up along with your again on the bottom, legs prolonged, and calves resting on the soundness ball. Open your arms to a “T” place to help steadiness.
- Have interaction 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 below 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 required 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 power to each decrease and raise your torso with management.
- Begin in a tall kneeling place. (Place a rolled-up towel or pad below your knees for consolation.) Anchor your toes by slipping your heels below a heavy weight rack or piece of furnishings, or ask a associate 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 manage your descent.
- When you’re just a few inches from the ground, permit your arms to catch the load of your physique towards the bottom. Instantly draw your self again as much as a tall kneeling place utilizing your hamstrings and glutes. If vital, use your arms to help you.
- Repeat for the required variety of reps.
Hamstring Curls: Advantages
Your hamstring muscle mass play a vital function in flexing your knees and lengthening 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 useful motion patterns by strengthening these muscle mass, however that’s not their solely profit. Listed here are just a few extra causes to think about incorporating leg curls into your strength-training routine.
Versatility
There’s a hamstring curl possibility for each degree of potential and expertise (simply take a look at the above listing of choices), and you’ll simply make every variation more durable or simpler by adjusting the resistance.
Power and energy
The hamstring muscle mass comprise a considerable amount of kind II muscle fibers, that are answerable for rapidly producing giant quantities of drive. So, whether or not you play a sport or simply need to climb stairs quicker, hamstring curls might help you develop extra lower-body power.
Damage 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 scale back the speed of sports-related hamstring accidents by as much as 51 %.
Addresses imbalances
As visible creatures, we are inclined to concentrate on the “mirror muscle mass,” or the physique components we are able to see, and overlook in regards to the muscle mass that make up the posterior chain. This could create problematic muscle imbalances that may result in motion compensations and harm.
Workouts that strengthen the muscle mass that run alongside the bottom of the physique, just like the hamstring curl, might help restore and/or preserve steadiness.
A shapely rear
It’s not all in regards to the legs. Properly-defined hamstrings might help intensify your butt, making it look tighter and extra lifted. Hamstring curls can set off hypertrophy, or muscle development, which is answerable for a extra shapely booty.
Hamstring Curls: Muscle groups Labored
Whereas some leg curl variations like the soundness ball hamstring curl and the glider hamstring curl have interaction the glutes and deep core muscle mass, all hamstring curl workout routines primarily goal the hamstrings, a bunch of muscle mass 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 mass.
Biceps femoris
Comprised of each a protracted head and a brief head, the biceps femoris is the outermost hamstring muscle and is answerable 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, lengthen 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 basically the identical features because the semimembranosus.