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 robust (but usually ignored) muscle group that helps bend your knees, lengthen (straighten) your hips, and rotate your legs. The hamstrings come into play throughout practical 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, harm prevention, and aesthetics (learn: a shapelier butt).

Beneath are six totally 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 degree: straightforward to average

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 palms 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, 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 desired variety of repetitions, then swap legs.

2. Seated Hamstring Curl

Issue degree: straightforward to average

To carry out seated hamstring curls, anchor a resistance band to a pole, weight rack, or heavy fixture at about ankle peak. 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 gentle 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 similar time.) There ought to be a average quantity of pressure on the band. That is your beginning place.
• Conserving 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 lengthen your leg to return to the beginning place.
• Repeat for the desired variety of reps, then swap legs.

3. Glider Hamstring Curl 

Issue degree: straightforward to average

The glider hamstring curl takes the already difficult glute bridge and dials it up a notch. In the event you don’t have gliders, attempt substituting paper plates or carrying slippery socks on exhausting flooring.

• Lie in your again together with your arms at your sides, knees bent 90 levels, and left heel resting on a glider.
• Have interaction your core and carry your hips so your physique types 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’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 desired variety of reps earlier than switching sides.

4. Mendacity Hamstring Curl

Issue degree: average 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 muscular tissues in each legs. You can even 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 together with your legs collectively and your brow resting in your palms. In the event you’re utilizing a dumbbell, place the deal with between your toes. In the event you’re utilizing a resistance band, ensure you’re going through away from the anchor level and loop the open finish across the backs of each ankles. (In the event you’d favor 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, conserving 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’ll be able to, pause, then slowly decrease your toes again towards the bottom.
• Repeat for the desired variety of reps. (In the event 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 degree: average to difficult

By introducing a component of instability, the Swiss ball hamstring curl assessments your steadiness and fires up your core muscular tissues whereas additionally constructing power in your hamstrings.

• Lie face up together with your again on the bottom, legs prolonged, and calves resting on the steadiness ball. Open your arms to a “T” place to assist steadiness.
• Have interaction your core, contract your glutes, and press the backs of your legs into the ball to carry your butt off the bottom till your physique types a straight line out of your shoulders to your ankles. That is the beginning place.
• Along 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, conserving your hips lifted, for the desired variety of reps.

6. Nordic Hamstring Curl

Issue degree: difficult

In the event 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 carry 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 accomplice to carry your toes in place.
• Conserving 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, enable your palms 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 palms to help you.
• Repeat for the desired variety of reps.

Hamstring Curls: Advantages

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

Versatility

There’s a hamstring curl possibility for each degree of means and expertise (simply take a look at the above record of choices), and you may simply make every variation more durable or simpler by adjusting the resistance.

Power and energy

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

Harm prevention

Analysis exhibits that usually performing the hamstring curl — the Nordic hamstring curl, particularly, which applies load to the hamstrings as they’re lengthened — might scale back the speed of sports-related hamstring accidents by as much as 51 %.

Addresses imbalances

As visible creatures, we are inclined to give attention to the “mirror muscular tissues,” or the physique elements we are able to see, and neglect concerning the muscular tissues that make up the posterior chain. This may create problematic muscle imbalances that may result in motion compensations and harm.

Workouts that strengthen the muscular tissues that run alongside the bottom of the physique, just like the hamstring curl, may help restore and/or keep steadiness.

A shapely rear

It’s not all concerning the legs. Effectively-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 chargeable for a extra shapely booty.

Hamstring Curls: Muscle mass Labored

Whereas some leg curl variations like the steadiness 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 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 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 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.