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 energy transfer: hamstring curls.
Positioned south of your glutes, your hamstrings are a strong (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 energy and energy, damage prevention, and aesthetics (learn: a shapelier butt).
Under are six totally 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 degree: 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 ft 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, conserving your left foot flexed, slowly draw your left heel towards your butt.
- When you’ve gone so far as you may 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: 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 just’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 may place the band round each ankles to work each legs on the similar time.) There must be a reasonable quantity of rigidity on the band. That is your beginning place.
- Holding your chest up and your shoulders again, slowly draw your proper heel again towards the bench so far as you may. 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: straightforward to reasonable
The glider hamstring curl takes the already difficult glute bridge and dials it up a notch. If you happen to don’t have gliders, strive substituting paper plates or carrying slippery socks on exhausting 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 lengthen your left leg by sliding the glider away out of your hips.
- Go so far as you may 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
Problem degree: reasonable 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 muscle groups in each legs. You too can 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. If you happen to’re utilizing a dumbbell, place the deal with between your ft. If you happen to’re utilizing a resistance band, be sure to’re going through away from the anchor level and loop the open finish across the backs of each ankles. (If you happen to’d choose to work one leg at a time, loop it round one ankle and maintain 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 may, pause, then slowly decrease your ft again towards the bottom.
- Repeat for the required variety of reps. (If you happen to 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 assessments your stability and fires up your core muscle groups whereas additionally constructing energy 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 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.
- Together with your ft flexed, slowly draw your heels towards your butt, permitting the ball to roll towards you and underneath your ft.
- 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 required variety of reps.
6. Nordic Hamstring Curl
Problem degree: difficult
If you happen to’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 energy to each decrease and elevate your torso with management.
- Begin in a tall kneeling place. (Place a rolled-up towel or pad underneath your knees for consolation.) Anchor your ft by slipping your heels underneath a heavy weight rack or piece of furnishings, or ask a companion to carry your ft in place.
- Holding 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 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 obligatory, use your palms to help you.
- Repeat for the required variety of reps.
Hamstring Curls: Advantages
Your hamstring muscle groups play a essential position in flexing your knees and lengthening and rotating your hips. You want them for on a regular basis actions like strolling, operating, squatting, climbing stairs, and bending over.
Including hamstring curls to your exercise will help you preserve wholesome practical motion patterns by strengthening these muscle groups, 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 capacity and expertise (simply have a look at the above record of choices), and you’ll simply make every variation tougher or simpler by adjusting the resistance.
Power and energy
The hamstring muscle groups comprise a considerable amount of sort II muscle fibers, that are chargeable for rapidly producing giant quantities of drive. So, whether or not you play a sport or simply need to climb stairs quicker, hamstring curls will help you develop extra lower-body energy.
Damage prevention
Analysis reveals that repeatedly 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 groups,” or the physique components we will see, and neglect concerning the muscle groups that make up the posterior chain. This could create problematic muscle imbalances that may result in motion compensations and damage.
Workouts that strengthen the muscle groups 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 concerning the legs. Nicely-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 groups Labored
Whereas some leg curl variations like the soundness ball hamstring curl and the glider hamstring curl interact the glutes and deep core muscle groups, all hamstring curl workouts primarily goal the hamstrings, a gaggle of muscle groups 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 groups.
Biceps femoris
Comprised of each a protracted 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, 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 primarily the identical features because the semimembranosus.
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