Whether your fitness goals are performance-related or increasingly well-nigh how you squint in a pair of jeans, get ready to meet your new favorite strength move: hamstring curls.

Located south of your glutes, your hamstrings are a powerful (yet often overlooked) muscle group that helps wrench your knees, proffer (straighten) your hips, and rotate your legs. The hamstrings come into play during functional activities, like walking and climbing stairs, and can be strengthened with compound movements, like the squat and deadlift.

But incorporating hamstring exercises into your resistance training can overdraw your results and provide increasingly targeted benefits related to lower-body strength and power, injury prevention, and philosophy (read: a shapelier butt).

Below are six variegated hamstring flourish variations you can do without a machine, ranging from beginner-friendly banded leg curls to a increasingly wide bodyweight hamstring curl.

To perform each isolation exercise correctly, you’ll need wangle to an exercise mat, resistance band, dumbbell, stability ball, seat or chair, and gliders.

1. Standing Hamstring Curl

Difficulty level: easy to moderate

This standing, single-leg hamstring flourish can be performed as a bodyweight exercise or with a resistance wreath looped virtually your ankles.

• Stand with your feet hip-width apart. Place your hands on your hips or hold onto a stable surface, like the when of a chair or a wall, for balance.
• Shift your weight to your right leg and, keeping your left foot flexed, slowly yank your left heel toward your butt.
• Once you’ve gone as far as you can go, pause for a second. Slowly lower your left foot to the ground.
• Repeat for the specified number of repetitions, then switch legs.

2. Seated Hamstring Curl

Difficulty level: easy to moderate

To perform seated hamstring curls, vise a resistance wreath to a pole, weight rack, or heavy fixture at well-nigh toddle height. Arrange your chair or seat so that you’re facing the vise point.

• Sit on the seat and proffer your right leg so there’s a soft wrench in your knee. Loop the unshut end of the resistance wreath virtually the when of your right ankle. (Alternatively, you can place the wreath virtually both ankles to work both legs at the same time.) There should be a moderate value of tension on the band. This is your starting position.
• Keeping your chest up and your shoulders back, slowly yank your right heel when toward the seat as far as you can. Pause for a second.
• Slowly proffer your leg to return to the starting position.
• Repeat for the specified number of reps, then switch legs.

3. Glider Hamstring Flourish

Difficulty level: easy to moderate

The glider hamstring flourish takes the once challenging glute underpass and dials it up a notch. If you don’t have gliders, try substituting paper plates or wearing slippery socks on nonflexible flooring.

• Lie on your when with your stovepipe at your sides, knees wilting 90 degrees, and left heel resting on a glider.
• Engage your cadre and lift your hips so your soul forms a straight line from your shoulders to your knees. This is your starting position.
• With control, slowly proffer your left leg by sliding the glider yonder from your hips.
• Go as far as you can while still maintaining tenancy and keeping your hips lifted. Then, use your hamstrings and glutes to slide the glider when toward your hips.
• Return to the starting position and repeat for the specified number of reps surpassing switching sides.

4. Lying Hamstring Curl

Difficulty level: moderate to challenging

When performed with a dumbbell between your feet, the lying hamstring flourish — moreover known as the prone hamstring flourish — engages the hamstring muscles in both legs. You can moreover vise one end of a resistance wreath to a pole, weight rack, or heavy fixture at well-nigh toddle height and slip the other end of the wreath virtually one or both ankles.

• Lie squatter lanugo with your legs together and your forehead resting on your hands. If you’re using a dumbbell, place the handle between your feet. If you’re using a resistance band, make sure you’re facing yonder from the vise point and loop the unshut end virtually the backs of both ankles. (If you’d prefer to work one leg at a time, loop it virtually one toddle and alimony the other leg extended on the floor.)
• Engage your cadre and, keeping your feet flexed, slowly yank your heels toward your butt. Continue to alimony your thighs pressed versus the ground.
• Once you’ve gone as far as you can, pause, then slowly lower your feet when toward the ground.
• Repeat for the specified number of reps. (If you opt for the single-leg lying hamstring curl, well-constructed every repetition on one leg surpassing switching sides.)

5. Stability Wittiness Hamstring Curl

Difficulty level: moderate to challenging

By introducing an element of instability, the Swiss wittiness hamstring flourish tests your wastefulness and fires up your cadre muscles while moreover towers strength in your hamstrings.

• Lie squatter up with your when on the ground, legs extended, and calves resting on the stability ball. Unshut your stovepipe to a “T” position to aid balance.
• Engage your core, contract your glutes, and printing the backs of your legs into the wittiness to lift your stump off the ground until your soul forms a straight line from your shoulders to your ankles. This is the starting position.
• With your feet flexed, slowly yank your heels toward your butt, permitting the wittiness to roll toward you and under your feet.
• Pause, then slowly proffer your legs, rolling the wittiness yonder from you, to return to the starting position.
• Repeat, keeping your hips lifted, for the specified number of reps.

6. Nordic Hamstring Curl

Difficulty level: challenging

If you’re looking for a challenge, requite the Nordic hamstring flourish a shot. Performed from a kneeling position, this wide movement requires unbearable hamstring strength to both lower and lift your torso with control.

• Start in a tall kneeling position. (Place a rolled-up towel or pad under your knees for comfort.) Vise your feet by slipping your heels under a heavy weight rack or piece of furniture, or ask a partner to hold your feet in place.
• Keeping your cadre engaged, slowly lean forward at your knees and lower your torso to the floor. Use your glutes and hamstrings to tenancy your descent.
• Once you’re a few inches from the floor, indulge your hands to reservation the weight of your soul versus the ground. Immediately yank yourself when up to a tall kneeling position using your hamstrings and glutes. If necessary, use your hands to squire you.
• Repeat for the specified number of reps.

Hamstring Curls: Benefits

Your hamstring muscles play a hair-trigger role in flexing your knees and extending and rotating your hips. You need them for everyday movements like walking, running, squatting, climbing stairs, and limp over.

Adding hamstring curls to your workout can help you maintain healthy functional movement patterns by strengthening these muscles, but that’s not their only benefit. Here are a few increasingly reasons to consider incorporating leg curls into your strength-training routine.

Versatility

There’s a hamstring flourish option for every level of worthiness and wits (just squint at the whilom list of options), and you can hands make each variation harder or easier by adjusting the resistance.

Strength and power

The hamstring muscles contain a large value of type II muscle fibers, which are responsible for quickly generating large amounts of force. So, whether you play a sport or just want to climb stairs faster, hamstring curls can help you develop increasingly lower-body strength.

Injury prevention

Research shows that regularly performing the hamstring flourish — the Nordic hamstring curl, specifically, which applies load to the hamstrings as they are lengthened — may reduce the rate of sports-related hamstring injuries by up to 51 percent.

Addresses imbalances

As visual creatures, we tend to focus on the “mirror muscles,” or the soul parts we can see, and forget well-nigh the muscles that make up the posterior chain. This can create problematic muscle imbalances that can lead to movement compensations and injury.

Exercises that strengthen the muscles that run withal the heinie of the body, like the hamstring curl, can help restore and/or maintain balance.

A shapely rear

It’s not all well-nigh the legs. Well-defined hamstrings can help underscore your butt, making it squint tighter and increasingly lifted. Hamstring curls can trigger hypertrophy, or muscle growth, which is responsible for a increasingly shapely booty.

Hamstring Curls: Muscles Worked

While some leg flourish variations like the stability wittiness hamstring flourish and the glider hamstring flourish engage the glutes and deep cadre muscles, all hamstring flourish exercises primarily target the hamstrings, a group of muscles located on the backs of your thighs.

The torso of the hamstrings, which originate at the pelvis and insert into the knee just whilom the calve, is comprised of three separate muscles.

Biceps femoris

Comprised of both a long throne and a short head, the biceps femoris is the outermost hamstring muscle and is responsible for flexion of the knee, extending the thigh at the hip, rotating the lower leg when the knee is slightly bent, and rotating the thigh when the hip is extended.

Semimembranosus

The innermost hamstring, the semimembranosus moreover functions to flex the knee, proffer the thigh at the hip, and squire in both thigh and lower-leg rotation.

Semitendinosus

The semitendinosus, which is located between the biceps femoris and the semimembranosus, has substantially the same functions as the semimembranosus.

The post 6 Ways to Do a Hamstring Flourish Without a Machine appeared first on BODi.