Whether or not your health targets are performance-related or extra about the way you look in a pair of denims, prepare to satisfy your new favourite power 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 practical actions, like strolling and climbing stairs, and will 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 and not using a 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

Issue stage: straightforward to average

This standing, single-leg hamstring curl will be carried out as a body weight train or with a resistance band looped round your ankles.

• Stand along with your ft hip-width aside. Place your fingers in your hips or maintain onto a steady floor, just like the again of a chair or a wall, for stability.
• Shift your weight to your proper leg and, conserving your left foot flexed, slowly draw your left heel towards your butt.
• When you’ve gone so far as you’ll be able to go, pause for a second. Slowly decrease your left foot to the bottom.
• Repeat for the required variety of repetitions, then swap legs.

2. Seated Hamstring Curl

Issue stage: straightforward to average

To carry out seated hamstring curls, anchor a resistance band to a pole, weight rack, or heavy fixture at about ankle top. Organize 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 tender bend in your knee. Loop the open finish of the resistance band across the again of your proper ankle. (Alternatively, you’ll be able to place the band round each ankles to work each legs on the identical time.) There ought to be a average 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’ll be able to. Pause for a second.
• Slowly prolong your leg to return to the beginning place.
• Repeat for the required variety of reps, then swap legs.

3. Glider Hamstring Curl 

Issue stage: straightforward to average

The glider hamstring curl takes the already difficult glute bridge and dials it up a notch. Should you don’t have gliders, attempt substituting paper plates or sporting 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.
• Interact your core and elevate your hips so your physique varieties 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’ll be able to whereas nonetheless sustaining management and conserving 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

Issue stage: average to difficult

When carried out with a dumbbell between your ft, the mendacity hamstring curl — also referred to as the susceptible hamstring curl — engages the hamstring muscular 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 along with your legs collectively and your brow resting in your fingers. Should you’re utilizing a dumbbell, place the deal with between your ft. Should you’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. (Should you’d desire 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, conserving your ft 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’ll be able to, pause, then slowly decrease your ft again towards the bottom.
• Repeat for the required variety of reps. (Should you go for the single-leg mendacity hamstring curl, full each repetition on one leg earlier than switching sides.)

5. Stability Ball Hamstring Curl

Issue stage: average to difficult

By introducing a component of instability, the Swiss ball hamstring curl assessments your stability and fires up your core muscular tissues 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 assist stability.
• 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 varieties a straight line out of your shoulders to your ankles. That is the beginning place.
• Along with your ft flexed, slowly draw your heels towards your butt, permitting the ball to roll towards you and below your ft.
• Pause, then slowly prolong your legs, rolling the ball away from you, to return to the beginning place.
• Repeat, conserving your hips lifted, for the required variety of reps.

6. Nordic Hamstring Curl

Issue stage: difficult

Should you’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 elevate your torso with management.

• Begin in a tall kneeling place. (Place a rolled-up towel or pad below your knees for consolation.) Anchor your ft by slipping your heels below a heavy weight rack or piece of furnishings, or ask a companion to carry your ft 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 couple of inches from the ground, permit your fingers 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 needed, use your fingers to help you.
• Repeat for the required variety of reps.

Hamstring Curls: Advantages

Your hamstring muscular tissues play a crucial 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 will help you preserve wholesome practical motion patterns by strengthening these muscular tissues, however that’s not their solely profit. Listed here are a couple of extra causes to contemplate incorporating leg curls into your strength-training routine.

Versatility

There’s a hamstring curl choice for each stage of capacity and expertise (simply take a look at the above checklist of choices), and you may simply make every variation tougher or simpler by adjusting the resistance.

Energy and energy

The hamstring muscular tissues comprise a considerable amount of kind II muscle fibers, that are chargeable for shortly producing massive quantities of pressure. So, whether or not you play a sport or simply wish to climb stairs sooner, hamstring curls will help you develop extra lower-body power.

Damage prevention

Analysis reveals that recurrently 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 concentrate on the “mirror muscular tissues,” or the physique components we are able to see, and neglect in regards to the muscular tissues that make up the posterior chain. This will create problematic muscle imbalances that may result in motion compensations and damage.

Workout routines that strengthen the muscular tissues that run alongside the bottom of the physique, just like the hamstring curl, will help restore and/or preserve stability.

A shapely rear

It’s not all in regards to the legs. Effectively-defined hamstrings will help intensify your butt, making it look tighter and extra lifted. Hamstring curls can set off hypertrophy, or muscle development, which is chargeable for a extra shapely booty.

Hamstring Curls: Muscle tissue Labored

Whereas some leg curl variations like the soundness ball hamstring curl and the glider hamstring curl interact the glutes and deep core muscular tissues, all hamstring curl workouts primarily goal the hamstrings, a bunch of muscular 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 muscular tissues.

Biceps femoris

Comprised of each an extended head and a brief head, the biceps femoris is the outermost hamstring muscle and is chargeable 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.