Hamstring Exercises: Since the quadriceps are often the major focus of leg exercises, many people don’t undertake enough hamstring exercises. Not that it matters because your quadriceps are the largest and most strong muscles in the body. However, given that they comprise about a third of the muscle mass in your legs, you shouldn’t disregard working out your hamstrings. Maintaining good hamstring health prevents injuries, minimises muscle imbalances, and builds stronger, more muscular legs.
The long and short biceps femoris, the semitendinosus, and the semimembranosus are the four muscles that make up your hamstrings, which are situated in the rear of your leg. Your hamstrings’ main function is to support knee joint flexion while also assisting with hip extension and thigh rotation.
When activated, the hamstrings frequently enlist stabilising muscles as well as muscular fibres from the quadriceps and glutes.
The Top Ten Hamstring Exercises for Your Weight Training Programme
After discussing the significance of maintaining your hamstrings, let’s look at some of the top hamstring exercises for power and strength:
1) Romanian Deadlift
A number of advantages make deadlifts one of the most crucial weight training exercises. Virtually every muscle in your body is used throughout the activity, which is also a great technique to create safe motor patterns, increase coordination and agility, and stabilise the trunk.
Deadlifts aid in developing functional strength, which makes daily tasks like unloading groceries much simpler. The activity increases bone density, joint stability, and knee and hip range of motion. Your hamstrings get a great workout from most deadlift variations, but the Romanian deadlift targets them the most.
How to deadlift in the Romanian style:
- With an overhand grip, take hold of the barbell in front of you and maintain it at hip height.
- Maintain a straight back while pulling your shoulders back.
- As you progressively lower the bar to the ground, shift your hips back.
- At the bottom, push your hips forward to stand back up with the barbell at hip height. Three sets of eight to twelve repetitions are ideal.
2) Bulgarian Split
The Bulgarian split, also known as the split squat, is a unilateral exercise that boosts balance, strength, hip mobility, and general agility. It’s a great technique to exercise other muscles in your legs while strengthening your hamstrings.
The exercise emphasises gluteal-thigh strength, ankle alignment, hip mobility, and foot strength. Since you must maintain balance while you complete your reps, the exercise also works your core.
A Bulgarian split appears as follows:
- A platform that is knee-high is about half a metre in front of you. Place the toes of one of your legs on the platform while you extend it backwards. Depending on what seems most comfortable for you, you can either have your toes tucked in or flat. Keep your hips and shoulders in line.
- Slowly bring your rear leg’s knee towards the floor while maintaining your body erect until your front knee is at a 90-degree angle. If your mobility let it, you could even lower yourself below that.
- Before switching legs, complete eight to twelve repetitions. Throughout your reps, make an effort to maintain an equal weight distribution on your foot. By taking a set of dumbbells or a kettlebell, you may increase the difficulty of the workout.
3) Prone Leg Curls
One of the greatest hamstring isolation workouts is prone to leg curls. It enables you to concentrate only on hamstring targeting and muscle contractions. It works well for hamstring strengthening exercises that require heavy weights and low repetitions, but it performs best during exercises that promote hypertrophy (bodybuilding), which calls for lesser weights and greater repetitions.
You may stretch your hamstrings to exhaustion while performing pronated leg curls without having to worry about keeping your balance or losing weight. Use this exercise to exhaust your hamstrings towards the end of your sessions.
When doing prone leg curls:
- Knees should be off the rear edge of the bench as you lie face down like a hamstring-curl machine. The ankle pads should touch your calves just above your ankles as you place your lower legs under them.
- Curl your legs till your ankle pads contact your rear while maintaining a motionless upper body.
- At the peak of the exercise, pause for two seconds before lowering your legs till they are straight to complete one rep. Three sets of eight to twelve repetitions are ideal.
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4) Kettlebell Swings
When performed correctly, kettlebell swings are a great technique to work your hamstrings. Before moving on, let’s be clear that you shouldn’t swing the weight with your hands while doing the action. You just need your arms to support the weight; your legs, hips, and core are used to swing it.
Kettlebell swings enhance aerobic endurance, balance, power, and overall body strength when performed properly.
Kettlebell swing technique:
- Holding a kettlebell in both hands, maintain your posture. If this is your first time practising the exercise, use a modest weight.
- Squeeze your shoulder blades together, relax your knees, and maintain your arms at your sides.
- Lower your backside and back while shifting your weight on your heels.
- Drive your heels into the ground as you explode through your hips to lift the weight. Maintaining long arms, try to lift the weight to your chest. To gain an additional height, snap through your hips while tightening your core and glutes.
- As the kettlebell touches the ground once more, shift your weight back to your heels to finish a rep. Three sets of eight to twelve repetitions are ideal.
5) Single-leg Romanian Deadlift
A more difficult form of the Romanian deadlift is the Romanian deadlift. It is a unilateral exercise that has been shown to be among the finest for boosting hamstring strength and power.
A fantastic exercise for correcting muscle imbalances in the legs is the single-leg Romanian deadlift. It also improves core and hip stability, balance, and coordination. To become used to the action, repeat this exercise several times without weights before using a dumbbell or kettlebell.
The workout looks like this:
- Start by standing up straight, your knees slightly bent, and your feet somewhat wider than shoulder-width apart. Lift one of your feet about one inch off the floor.
- As you lower your torso until your upper body is parallel to the ground, hinge at your hips.
- To end a rep, go back to the starting position. Three to five sets of eight to twelve repetitions are your goal.
6) Good Mornings
Here is one of the less well-liked hamstring exercises you ought to undertake. Since you can’t use a loaded barbell for this exercise, many weightlifters avoid it, but that’s exactly why it works your hamstrings so well.
All you need for a comprehensive hamstring exercise is good form and modest weight. Good mornings provide you the chance to tighten your hamstrings as they extend.
To complete the activity:
- Using your upper traps, pick up a barbell like you would while doing a back squat. Keep your feet somewhat more apart than shoulder width when standing up straight.
- By pulling your hips back and bending your knees just a bit, you can move your torso forward. Think about attempting to close a door with your behind. When your spine is parallel to the floor, lower your torso until it is.
- To finish a rep, pull your torso back to the beginning position while maintaining core tension. Three sets of eight to twelve repetitions are ideal.
7) Razor Curl
Flexing your hip is necessary for the razor curl because it allows your hamstrings at the hip and knee to contract more forcefully. After gaining hamstring strength, you should incorporate this more challenging exercise into your weight training regimen. Your glutes and hamstrings are worked during the workout, strengthening them. Your core is also strengthened by it.
The workout looks like this:
- Get a training partner to keep your feet in place or use something substantial to support your feet.
- Slightly flex your hips and hold that stance throughout the workout. Until you contact the ground, lean forward while managing the contraction of your arms. Go as low as you can if your level of flexibility prevents you from doing it.
- To end a rep, go back to the starting position. If you need to, you are permitted to aid with your hands.
8) Glute-Hamstring Raise
The glute hamstring lift exercises your posterior chain while primarily using your hamstrings. It’s also one of the few workouts that work your hamstrings for both their basic functions of extending and bending at the knee. One of the best exercises to target your hamstrings is the glute-hamstring rise since it does this in a single fluid motion. The majority of hamstring workouts simply target one of these activities.
Starting with your torso parallel to the floor, lift your entire body, using your hamstrings, until it is perpendicular to the floor.
To complete the activity:
- A glute-ham bench is required to complete the exercise. The footplates and ankle pads on these benches are adjustable. You’ll need to experiment to see which configuration is most effective for you. When you get on the footplate, you want it to be far enough away so that your knees will hang over the pad. When your feet are on the plate at the peak of the movement, the ankle pads should be adjusted such that your shins are slightly inclined upward.
- Sit down on the machine, tuck your pelvis, and contract your abdominals. This is where the activity begins and also happens to be the peak.
- Until your torso is parallel to the ground, gradually extend your knees to lower yourself. To bring your torso a few inches below parallel, softly flex your hips.
- As you extend your hip, drive the balls of your feet into the footplate, causing your heels to lift off the footplate. To finish a rep, push through the pad and bend your knees to return to the starting position. As many repetitions as you can in three sets is your goal.
9) Cable Pull-Through
Since the cable pull-through uses wires to apply stress to your muscles throughout the activity, it is a great exercise for your hamstrings and glutes. It’s a terrific approach to train your glutes and hamstrings to hypertrophy and gain strength and power.
By requiring you to sit back on your hips, the exercise improves your ability to lock out your glutes. It improves your capacity to carry out other hamstring workouts that call for hip flexion. Anyone wishing to exercise their glutes and hamstrings while resting their lower back will find it to be a great workout.
How to pull a wire through:
- The lowest level should have a cable set with a rope attached to it. Maintaining the rope attachment between your legs, turn away from the machine.
- Take a few steps away from the cable machine while keeping your hands facing apart until you feel some stress in the cable.
- Set your feet approximately hip-width apart and lower your body. Maintain spinal neutrality while in this position. To go back to the beginning and revers the process, squeeze your glutes. Three sets of eight to twelve repetitions are ideal.
10) Lateral Lunges
A unilateral exercise that works your frontal plane is the lateral lunge. In contrast to traditional lunges, which entail stepping backwards or forward, this activity involves side-to-side motion.
Lateral lunges sometimes referred to as side-stepping lunges, assist in treating muscular imbalances, developing mobility, and improving balance. You can execute the exercise using simply your body weight or with resistance bands, kettlebells, dumbbells, and barbells. It strengthens your adductors and hip muscles while also working your hamstrings.
To complete the activity:
- With your core taut and a dumbbell or kettlebell held at chest height, stand straight.
- Keep your left leg straight as you take a big stride to the right. As you squat as low as you can comfortably, push your hips back and bend your right knee. At the very least, try to parallelize your thigh with the ground.
- Drive forcefully up and to the left to return to your starting location. On the opposite side, repeat. For each direction, aim for eight to twelve repetitions. Try to get three sets.
These are the 10 Top Hamstring Exercises for Strength and Power. Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.
