The Best Way to Do the Nordic Hamstring Curl

Instructions

  1. Kneel on a pad with your feet anchored under a secure object (the bottom of a squat rack, a partner’s hands, the edge of a treadmill, or a dedicated Nordic curl bench).
  2. Keep your body in a straight line from your knees to your shoulders, brace your core, and squeeze your glutes.
  3. Lower your torso toward the floor in a controlled manner, resisting the whole way down with your hamstrings.
  4. When you can no longer control the movement, place your hands on the floor to take just enough weight off your hamstrings to allow you to lower your chest to the floor (like a push-up).
  5. Push off the floor to raise your torso, then use your hamstrings and glutes to continue raising your torso and return to the starting position.

Expert Tips

  • Kneel on something soft. A yoga mat is ideal, but a folded towel works too.
  • Keep your glutes, hamstrings, and back muscles engaged throughout each rep, and keep your torso in line with your thighs. This keeps tension on your glutes and hamstrings.
  • Since it can be hard to complete a full repetition of this exercise without using your hands, you can hold the part of each rep that feels most difficult for five seconds before lowering your torso to the floor.
  • If you have a tendency to bend at the waist, think about lowering your hips to the floor rather than your chest.
  • To do Nordic hamstring curls at home, wedge your feet under a couch or bed frame.

Mike’s Take

The Nordic hamstring curl is one of the only bodyweight hamstring exercises worth doing.

The reality is that the hamstrings are a hard muscle to train with your body weight alone—more or less all of the best exercises involve using a machine (leg curl) barbell (Romanian deadlift, good morning), or dumbbells (dumbbell RDL).

You can try to replicate these exercises at home without the proper equipment, but it’s impractical. The Nordic hamstring curl is one of the few bodyweight exercises that allows you to train your hamstrings with high levels of tension, through a meaningful range of motion, without any special equipment.

All of that said, here’s why I almost never program the Nordic hamstring curl over other hamstring exercises:

  1. The exercise has an extremely uneven resistance curve—it’s easy at the top of each rep but becomes exceptionally difficult as you lower yourself to the floor. This isn’t ideal for gaining muscle or strength, because it means your hamstrings are only being trained with high levels of tension for a relatively small portion of each rep.
  2. It’s impossible to know how much your arms are really assisting. For example, if you get 8 reps instead of 6, is that because your hamstrings are stronger, or because you used your arms a bit more to help? It’s impossible to know for sure.
  3. Finally, like all bodyweight exercises, it’s difficult to add weight in small increments to this exercise. You can hold a weight to your chest or wear a backpack, but that quickly becomes impractical (and you’ll still probably need your hands free to assist at the bottom of each rep).

Thus, it’s best to think of the Nordic hamstring curl as a good hamstring exercise if you can’t train with machines, barbells, or dumbbells, but it’s still suboptimal.

If you’re going to do the Nordic hamstring curl, I’d recommend you do it for 2–3 sets of as many reps as you can get with 1–2 minutes rest. Once you can do at least ~10–15 reps without using your hands to assist you, it’s time to switch to a more challenging exercise (ideally a machine, barbell, or dumbbell hamstring exercise).

Nordic Hamstring Curl Alternatives

  • Seated Leg Curl. My favorite hamstring isolation exercise. This allows you to train close to failure and through a full range of motion, to isolate your hamstrings effectively, and add weight in small increments.
  • Lying Leg Curl. Another excellent option that you can think of as more or less interchangeable with the seated leg curl.
  • Barbell Romanian Deadlift. The best barbell hamstring exercise there is. It trains hip extension rather than knee flexion, so it complements the Nordic curl rather than replacing it.
  • Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift. The same hip hinge with dumbbells—handy at home or when the barbell is taken.
  • Barbell Good Morning. Another hip hinge, and a good option when your grip or lower back is the thing limiting your RDLs.
  • Glute-Ham Raise (GHD Machine). This is a decent alternative, but it doesn’t have any meaningful advantages over the leg curl, is harder to progress, and more awkward to perform.

Nordic Hamstring Curl Workout

Here’s a sample workout that shows how to program the Nordic hamstring curl into your training:

Bodyweight Squat: 3 sets | 10–15 reps | 1–2 min rest
Nordic Hamstring Curl: 3 sets | 10–15 reps | 1–2 min rest
Push-up: 3 sets | 10–15 reps | 1–2 min rest
Bodyweight Row: 3 sets | 10–15 reps | 1–2 min rest

Muscles Worked by the Nordic Hamstring Curl

Hamstring anatomy: the biceps femoris, semitendinosus, and semimembranosus

The hamstrings are made up of three muscles: the semimembranosus, semitendinosus, and biceps femoris (which has two heads, a long one and a short one). The Nordic hamstring curl trains all three as well as the glutes and lower back to a lesser degree.

More Hamstring Exercises

The post The Best Way to Do the Nordic Hamstring Curl appeared first on Legion Athletics.

https://ift.tt/ekC0FAp August 10, 2026 at 04:30PM Legion Athletics

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An Expert Guide to Lyle McDonald’s Generic Bulking Routine

Image
Lyle McDonald’s Generic Bulking Routine is a bulking workout plan designed to boost muscle growth and strength gain. Unlike many strength training programs, the Generic Bulking Routine is for a very specific set of people. Specifically, it’s for those who are eating plenty of calories, are looking to gain lean muscle mass fast, and have at least 12 months of experience with weightlifting. In this article, you’ll learn what the routine is, why it’s one of the best bulking workout plans on the internet, and everything you need to know to get started on the program, including the workouts, schedule, exercises, rest times, progression scheme, and more. Table of Contents What Is Lyle McDonald’s Generic Bulking Routine? A Complete Guide to Lyle McDonald’s Generic Bulking Routine Schedule Exercises Bulking Workout Routine Rest Progression What Is Lyle McDonald’s Generic Bulking Routine? The Generic Bulking Routine is a 4-day strength training program created by Lyl...
Read more

The Complete Guide to Mike Mentzer’s Workout Routine

Image
Most people think building muscle requires doing more—more sets, more reps, and more hours in the gym. Mike Mentzer disagreed. His workout routine took the opposite approach: short, brutally intense workouts followed by long recovery periods. This approach worked for Mentzer and even inspired bodybuilding legends like Dorian Yates to follow his methods. But how did Mentzer train exactly? And does his workout routine hold up to modern science? In this article, you’ll get a full run down of Mentzer’s workout plan, learn what science says about his methods, and learn how to adapt his program for maximum results. Key Takeaways The Mike Mentzer workout routine emphasizes low volume, training to failure, and extended rest between workouts, but these principles don’t align with how most people like to train or what research shows drives muscle growth. Mentzer’s workout plan is a 3-day split (chest and back, legs and abs, and shoulders and arms) with just one heavy set per exercise ...
Read more

Your Next Chest Routine for Mass: 7 Must-Do Pec Exercises

Image
Many gymgoers think that the only exercise you need for a massive chest workout is the bench press. While it’s true that the bench press is one of the very best chest exercise s for gaining size and strength, it’s not enough on its own to develop truly impressive pecs. A true chest routine for mass must include exercises that allow you to train your pecs with heavy weights, through long ranges of motion, and at varying angles. What’s more, these exercises must allow you to lift progressively heavier weights over time, since this is essential for muscle growth.  From my experience training thousands of people, the exercises that work best as the basis of a chest day workout routine are: Barbell bench press Incline barbell bench press Dumbbell bench press Incline dumbbell bench press Close-grip bench press Dip High-to-low cable fly In this article, you’ll learn why these exercises should be the foundation of every good mass-building chest workout program , discov...
Read more