Hamstrings

Overview

Effective hamstring training involves targeting the biceps femoris, semitendinosus and semimembranosus to some capacity.

These are all bi-articulate muscles that cross the hip and knee joint, therefore involved in both knee flexion and hip extension.

Because of this hamstring training should generally be thought of as two distinct motor patterns.

Hamstrings and glutes are intrinsically linked, and the same situation applies for glutes and quadriceps, so consideration of your glute and quadriceps training is required when planning your hamstring programming.

Prescription

Minimalist

An absolute minimalist approach means 1 movement ‘slot’.

In this case if we can only 1 motor pattern, there’s a clear winner:

  • Hamstring-dominant hinge

Moderate

If we have more resources to expend on the muscle group, it is of course the preferred approach.

In this case the movement slots would look like this:

  • Hamstring-dominant hinge
  • Any knee flexion

Maximalist

This is the approach if we are throwing everything at the kitchen sink. Use sparingly either if you are in a plateau or looking for a specialisation phase.

Here the movement slots might look like this:

  • Hamstring-dominant hinge
  • Unilateral hinge
  • Knee flexion (shortened-biased)
  • Knee flexion (lengthened-biased)

Standout exercises

Hamstring-dominant hinge movement

This is the quintessential movement and if serious lower body gains are your goal, this is a staple.

Trap Bar Romanian Deadlift

  • This is stable, infinitely loadable, and allows you to load the hamstrings in the mid and lengthened positions. Just a perfect exercise.
  • A trap bar probably has some marginal benefits over a barbell with targeting the hamstrings specifically. If you don’t have easy access to one, a barbell is perfectly fine of course.
  • A minority of people may need to start on a plate or jump box to achieve full range of motion in the hamstrings. This is pretty rare; probably only if you have long arms and very flexible hamstrings.

Barbell Romanian Deadlift

  • Honestly this is so similar it could be written in as the same section as the trap bar RDL.
  • Both are excellent options. All else being equal and if you have convenient access to a trap bar, yes there is some marginal reasoning that the side loading weight loads the hamstrings better than the front loading weight, but this is a 51-49 type of difference.

Smith Machine Romanian Deadlift

  • The more stable version of the barbell RDL. The added stability doesn’t mean it’s a better exercise – the barbell RDL is stable enough – but it does serve as an interesting variation to focus more on the mind muscle connection, for example.

SSB Good Morning

  • This will likely put more load on the spinal erectors but it can still be a worthy hamstring alternative. Probably not quite as straightforward and effective as the RDLs, but a good option to sub in on occasion. The safety squat bar pretty much is objectively better than the barbell so we’ve listed it as a SSB; if you only have access to a barbell then the low bar good morning is better than the high bar good morning.

Unilateral hinge movement

DB B-stance RDL

  • The B-stance allows a deep stretch of the hamstrings, and the unilateral portion allows you to entirely focus on the mind muscle connection with each hamstring.
  • The glutes will also be worked significantly here; that should be considered a feature not a bug.
  • If possible, do these with a foam roller. Specifically you’ll be squeezing on end of the foam roller with the inside of your lead knee, pressing the other side against a wall. This setup forces you into the foot placement and weight distribution we want to train; that is weight on the inner parts of the foot. Otherwise, the foam roller just drops to the ground.

Knee flexion (lengthened-biased) movement

Seated Leg Curl

  • I do believe this should be the default choice but not because of the over cited lengthened vs shortened reasoning. For what it’s worth the lying leg curl takes other smaller muscles (the semimembranosus) into a lengthened position anyway.
  • The real benefit is this is more difficult to mess up. We don’t need to deal with lower back arching (as much) and you can keep your eyes on your feet as your drive down, maintaining a dead on straight angle with your feet.

1-leg Seated Leg Curl

  • The one legged version done on the same machine. One variation is to drive down with both legs and then release the other leg, controlling the eccentric with one leg. This is arguably the best variation of the uni-lateral work to provide an overload stimulus.

Glute-Ham Raise

  • This is a bodyweight exercise with the same fatal flaw as several others such as the ab wheel. The vast majority of lifters cannot do these for full reps with strict form as it’s simply too difficult. Whereas a leg curl machine is probably superior to sloppy reps, and much simpler than gimmicky banded or assisted regressions.
  • This is often mis-attributed to being the magic exercise that bulletproofs knee injuries in athletes, when in reality it’s almost certainly simply going into knee flexion for a full range of motion, with control, with progressive load, using any exercise.
  • That being said if this is done well it is another strong option for hamstrings.

Knee flexion (shortened-biased) movement

Lying Leg Curl

  • A staple of hamstring training and still for good reason.
  • This is more of an intermediate and advanced exercise as it’s insidiously easy to do wrong as a beginner. When you have experience though this is a must.

1-leg Lying Leg Curl

  • The one legged version done on the same machine. Same as the seated leg curl, we are treating the overloaded version as best. Drive down with both legs and then release the other leg, controlling the eccentric with one leg.

Standing Leg Curl

  • Another great variation. We really have to push back against the demonisation of the standing and lying variations. As you can see, this is an extremely short list of exercises already. There’s only so many ways you can target the hamstrings, so it makes sense to keep in options to rotate over the months and years.

Execution

With hinges, the key is neutral spine and weight distribution of the foot.

At the lengthened part of the hamstrings, you can always lower the bar further by rounding the lower back. This is not working your hamstrings more!

You always want full contact of the foot with the ground; the big toe, the little toes and the heel. To be even more precise, we want a roughly even distribution of weight in the starting position. As you hinge back, you should be putting more output onto the inner parts of the foot; specifically the ball of the big toe and the inner parts of the heel.

With leg curls, keep the hips pressed onto the pads of the machines and purely focus on knee extension.

Generally speaking we want to avoid a knee extension plus lumbar spine extension movement. On occasion, a few cheaty reps of these at the end of a set with strict reps can help push past some plateaus. They should not however be considered the norm.

Programming

Reps, tempo, sets, rest times

The hamstrings are one of the most straightforward muscles conceptually; assume standard reps and sets.

Intensifiers and volume

Hinge movements do not go well with intensifiers so progression should be done with straight sets only.

Let curl movements is another story entirely. Mechanical drop sets suit them perfectly; start with a full ROM with strict form, to a partial ROM with strict form, then finish with cheat reps. You could also use clusters sets and drop sets.

Indeed my absolute favourite combo for leg curls (and leg extensions, for that matter) is a cheat cluster set with an iso hold. Specifically:

  • Set to failure on full ROM reps with strict form, rest 20 secs
  • Set to failure on full ROM reps with strict form, rest 20 secs
  • Set to failure on full ROM reps with strict form
  • Continue with partial ROM reps with strict form
  • Continue with (slightly higher) partial ROM reps with cheaty form
  • Hold an iso hold for 10 secs in the middle position

That’s one set.

Sequence

As always the standard rule with a muscle group with multiple exercises in a session is shortened biased first, mid-range biased second, lengthened biased third.

Leg curls can almost always be done first (or second after calves) in lower body workouts. This primes our legs for heavier work and warms up the knees.