Strengthen Your Hamstrings At Home

Strengthen your hamstrings at home

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You can’t have strong injury free legs without training your hamstrings they play an important roll in stabilizing the knee joint and improving the posture of our hips or pelvis.

Now before we go into some exercises you can do at home to strengthen your hamstrings. Let’s take a look at the muscles involved and how they work.

There are 3 muscles that make up the hamstrings the Semi-mem-bran-os-us, semi-ten-din-os-us and the biceps femoris, which has both a short and long head. The short head isn’t considered a hamstring muscle because it is attached to the femur and not the pelvis but it contributes to knees flexion and gets worked along with the hamstring muscles when we curl our our lower leg.

The hamstrings attach below the knee with the biceps femoris going along the outside of your knee attaching to the fibula and the other two muscles going along the inside of your knee to the tibia. They not only stabilize the knee but they can turn your lower leg both away from your body and towards the centre line of your body.

Now as I mentioned earlier the upper attachment of the hamstrings is on the pelvis. It is responsible for tilting our pelvis forward or posteriorly and when we have weak hamstrings we tend to have an anterior pelvic tilt which can cause low back, hip and even knee pain.

The hamstrings are also responsible for extending the hip which is a movement we do when we get up off a chair, pick something up off the floor or climb stairs and It is a key muscle when it comes to being able to run faster.

A couple of exercises that work great to strengthen our hamstrings through hip flexion are Romanian Deadlifts and hamstring bridges. A tip with hamstring bridges is to use the distance from the bench as a drop set. Start farther away from the bench then you normally would. Then do your reps until you are almost at failure then move forward a bit and rep it out again. For the last set you will be in the traditional hamstring bridge position. To advance this exercise you can do it one leg at a time or add weight.

The next exercise that I am I big fan of is Romanian Deadlifts. You lower the weight moving your hips back until you feel a good stretch in your hamstrings. Without any rounding of your back. Then you lead with your hips driving them forward as you lift the weight.

A good away to get the feel of this movement is to add a band around your waist it will pull your hips back as you lower the weight queuing correct form and when you drive your hips forward the band it will also provide some added resistance for not only the hamstrings but the glutes as well.

The single leg Romanian deadlift lift is a great way to help eliminate any muscle imbalances you may have though the hip hinge. If your have trouble with balancing on one leg you can always do this exercise supported with one hand holding onto a doorway or a post.

The kettlebell or dumbbell swing is another great exercise. The key here is to not swing the weight with your arms but to drive the weight up with your hips as you move them forward.

You don’t need a leg curl machine to do leg curls. My two preferred ways to do hamstring curls is with bands or my Lebert HIIT System.

One exercise that is super effective for your hamstrings if you don’t have any equipment is the floor hamstring curl. You just need a smooth floor and a pair of socks. Keep your core tight and raise your body up so it is supported by your heals and the back of your shoulders. Then pull your heals back towards you.

The Nordic curl is a phenomenal hamstring exercise and I have a rather unique way of doing it. Basically how you do a Nordic curl is you brace your feet under something like a bed or a couch. Then slowly lower your body by straightening out your knees controlling the decent or the eccentric portion of the rep with your hamstrings. Once you reach the floor pull with your hamstrings and push yourself back up then repeat.

I like to use a band with this exercise that I attach to the top of a door to assist me. It works perfectly as it provides the most resistance at the end of the movement where we are the weakest. And allows me to primarily use my hamstrings on the concentric part of the movement.