Let’s face it, your quads and glutes get a lot of love in the gym, but your hamstrings? Sadly, probably not so much. When you’re flexing in the mirror (and you know you are), how often do you admire your hamstrings? If you don’t notice then visually, there’s a good chance as well you don’t include hamstring exercises to your training as often as you should, which can lead to weak or underdeveloped hamstrings. So, there’s a strong chance you’re not maxing out your strength potential with your lower-body training.
Weak hamstrings are a leading cause of hamstrings strains, so it’s essential to prioritize the posterior part of you legs for not only aesthetics, but also performance and injury prevention. The hamstrings are extensors at the hip and flexors at the knees and they play an important role in your performance and the health of the lower body.
Here we’ll go into hamstring anatomy, the benefits of training the hamstrings, and four exercises to add size and strength to this important region.
HAMSTRING ANATOMY
The hamstrings are often thought of and referred to as one muscle, but the hamstrings are a group of three muscles on your posterior thigh: biceps femoris (long and short head), semitendinosus, and semimembranosus. These three hamstring muscles originate in the posterior lower pelvis, and they insert medially and laterally below the knee on the fibula and tibia.
The exception here is the biceps femoris short head, which originates from the lower femur. The main movements of the hamstrings are
Hip Extension: Squat, deadlift, and hip thrust
Hip Hyperextension: Glute kickback
Knee Flexion: Squat and hamstring curl variations
The exercises focused on here involve hip extension and knee flexion. Save the glute kickbacks for booty day.
HAMSTRING TRAINING BENEFITS
Think of your legs like a car. Your quads act like shock absorbers for the knee and the hamstrings act like the brakes. If your brakes don’t work, your knees are in trouble. So, training the hamstrings will go a long way in keeping your knees healthy. Here are a few other important benefits of training your hamstrings.
Reduces Hamstring Strains: Hamstrings strains suck and they usually happen when they extend eccentrically. When you’re training hamstring eccentric strength with the 4 exercises on this list, it reduces the risk of hamstring strains because of improvements in eccentric knee flexor strength and the length of the biceps femoris. Plus, reducing any strength imbalance between the quads and hamstrings decreases injury risk to the knee and hamstring also.
Run Faster and Better: Strengthening your hamstrings goes a long way in helping you run faster by improving your neuromuscular coordination, power, and VO2 max. Plus, it helps you run more efficiently because of better movement coordination and stride efficiency.
Improved Technique: If you have a strength imbalance between your hamstring and quads, strengthening your hamstrings will improve your eccentric control on deadlifts and squats and lockout strength on both.
THE 4 EFFECTIVE HAMSTRING EXERCISES
To add muscle and strength to the hamstrings you need exercises that go through a large range of motion. This gives you more muscle-building potential because the hamstrings are under tension longer.
Second, you need to incorporate progressive overload — how else are you going to get stronger? Here are four exercises that do just that.
This hamstring curl variation strengthens the hamstrings as hip extensors and knee flexors and the stabilization demands make your muscles work harder too. When you concentrate on the eccentric, you will go a long way to bulletproofing your hamstrings.
How it helps: The increased stabilization needed here improves your hip and core stability while training your hamstrings through a large ROM.
How to do it: Lay on your back, place both feet on a stability ball, perform a hip extension and lift one leg off of the ball and bend this knee. Now, curl the ball towards your butt with the working leg while engaging your glutes. Slowly reverse and lower your hips to the floor, and repeat.
Sets and reps: Three sets of 6 to 12 reps will have your hamstrings screaming for mercy.
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Barbell Good Morning
The barbell good morning primally trains the hamstrings as hip extensors along with the lower back and glutes. This exercise puts the hamstrings through a large ROM with the potential for progressive overload for better muscle-building potential.
How it helps: Trains the hamstrings, glutes, and lower back as a unit for better posterior strength.
How to do it: Set up as you would for the barbell back squat, unrack from the power rack, and walk backward a few steps. With a slight bend in your knees and hip hinge while keeping your chest up and shoulders down until you feel a good stretch in your hamstrings. Reverse by contracting your glutes and hamstrings until lockout.
Sets and reps: Not a maximum strength exercise but an accessory exercise to build hamstring strength and muscle. Two to 4 sets of 6 to 12 reps work well.
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Romanian deadlift
The Romanian deadlift has you lowering the bar to mid-shin level instead of the floor and this keeps constant tension on the hamstring and glute muscles. This deadlift variation makes it a better option to add muscle and strength to your hamstrings than the regular deadlift.
How it helps: The constant tension on the hamstrings combined with the load will really add some heft to your hamstrings. There is nothing fancy about this deadlift variation but it’s an oldie and a goodie.
How to do it: Set up as you would for your conventional deadlift. Hinge down and grip the barbell with an overhand grip and hinge back up. With your chest up and shoulders down, take a deep breath in and hinge until the barbell is at mid-shin level feeling a stretch in your hamstrings. Pause for a second and exhale and use your hamstrings and glutes to pull you back to lockout.
Sets and reps: Can be trained for strength and muscle. 3 to 6 reps for strength and 6 to 12 reps for muscle.
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Landmine single-leg Romanian deadlift
The traditional single-leg Romanian deadlift exercise is a great exercise but difficult to perform because of the balance requirements. Enter the landmine single-leg RDL. With the long lever and a more fixed bar path this variation is easier to do and allows you to go heavy because of the increased stability.
How it helps: This allows you to go hard and heavy on the hamstrings while strengthening imbalances between sides.
How to do it: Stand perpendicular to the landmine barbell, hinge at the hips and grip the barbell with one hand and then stand up. Lift the foot that’s the same side as the loaded hand off of the floor, maintaining a slight bend in your knee Then find your balance and hinge forward until your torso is about parallel to the ground and hinge back up.
Sets and reps: Best trained as an accessory exercise for strengthening imbalances and adding muscle. Three sets of 6 to 12 reps is recommended.
