Hamstring Destroyer – A Tip to Make Them Scream

So some time ago I posted a Note that included a little adjustment to how you perform any leg curl variation that would increase the tension/stress on the hamstrings. Most people dorsiflex their ankles when doing leg curls; that is, the toes are pulled towards the shins. Yes, you can use more weight here, BUT that’s because your calves are assisting in the movement. The calves are a biarticular muscle, meaning they cross two joints, the ankle AND the knee, and therefore have functions at both. The function at the ankle is obvious given how we train calves, BUT they also assist in knee flexion. However, when they’re functioning at the ankle – flexing your calves, plantar flexion, etc. – they cannot assist at the knee joint. Thus, pointing your toes during leg curls makes your hamstrings do ALL the work. Note, as mentioned in that Note, if you’re new to this, your calves are going to cramp badly as the motor pattern for that movement has your calves conditioned to be involved. You’re now inhibiting them. So, just a heads up, that cramping is normal and will go away once a new pattern is developed.

Now, a NEW tip that makes lying leg curls even HARDER, even with the previously mentioned tip in place. And yes, you once again will have to go even lighter, but again, let’s remember the point in the pursuit of development – TENSION. Your muscles do not know how much weight you’re lifting; they only experience tension.

So, it’s all in the set up and then you have to maintain it. We’ll compare to when we do SHELCs. How do we do this movement? SHELC stands for Supine Hip Extension into Leg Curl. The key here that we’re going to focus on and apply is the ‘hip extension’. So before we do the leg curl part of the SHELC, we bridge up using the glutes into hip extension; then that high bridge position is maintained throughout the set. Good so far right?

Now, we’re going to bring an attempt at hip extension into the Lying Leg Curl. How do we do this? When you lie down and get into position, the first thing you’re going to do is drive your hips into the bench by forcefully contracting your glutes. This is the exact opposite of how a lying leg curl is traditionally done; we just lie on the bench, glutes are soft, often times they rise during the leg curl, and moreso as fatigue sets in.

Ok, so again, contract your glutes hard to drive your hips into the bench. And this position you must maintain during the entire set – hard glutes and hips driven into the bench. It is MUCH harder, so weights have to come down, but the tension placed on your hamstrings is huge.

<>Hamstrings tend to be predominately fast twitch in most people so they respond to lower reps. So a good application here would be to start your set in this fashion, glutes driving the hips into the bench (and of course ankle plantar flexed, not dorsiflexed) and go to failure, maybe 4-6 reps. Then, relax the glutes, resume the ‘normal’, more biomechnically advantageous position for a leg curl and bust out a few more reps to failure.

Try it – this is a killer, killer way to do leg curls. If you don’t hate me, you didn’t do it right.