If you are on a mission to get stronger and perform better in your sport, then more likely than not, you’ve found it important to focus on hamstring training.
We know hamstrings are important to athletic success. Improved hamstring strength helps prevent injury and can even make athletes faster, such as a study that showed Nordic hamstring training actually improved the short sprint time of soccer players (Krommes 2017).
When it comes down to it, some of the freakiest athletes I’ve worked within the sprinting and jumping field have had some serious hamstring strength. You’ll hear stories of elite Russian long and triple jumpers doing sets of 10 razor curls like it’s nothing. There are videos of athletes like Adam Archuleta doing natural glute ham raises with added weight, and doing so explosively!
See 2:45 in the video above for a great demo of explosive hamstring strength
All this considered, there is also the physique element of having a nice set of hamstrings (don’t pretend you don’t care), it just rounds things out and makes an athlete look balanced, not only in the muscular component but also in effect on their posture. The hamstrings provide a pull that controls one’s anterior pelvic tilt and they even play a role in the breathing process.
So all this being said, as a sports performance community, we know many of the common hamstring training exercises, such as:
- Glute Ham Raises
- Nordic Hamstrings, Natural GHR’s and Razor Curls
- 45 Degree Back Extensions
- High Rep Leg Curls
Each of the above exercises has a definitive ability to truly help an athlete in terms of their strength, quad/hamstring balance, sprinting, as well as injury prevention.
Many athletes are doing the above exercises in volume, but not seeing the changes, and specifically the performance changes they may want. My goal, as always, is to help try to expand the conscious awareness of myself, and then the performance community as to what else out there exists for training.
To this end, I have listed 5 “unconventional” hamstring training exercises and ideas that can really get the job done in terms of letting the bodywork as intended when it comes to activating and training hamstrings. These 5 concepts will help you get a lot more out of your existing hamstring training and transform you as an athlete. They are as follows:
- Sprint More “Folded” Instead of Tall (sprint from the hamstrings)
- Reposition Your Pelvis in the Weightroom
- Inhibit Your Medial Gastrocs
- Train at Max Length (Jefferson Curl, Standing ISO Glute Ham)
- Center Mass Bell Swings
Sprint More “Folded Up”, or “Squatted” Instead of Tall
Right off the bat, this one will ruffle some feathers, and that is the fact that continually running “tall” and getting triple extension in every single drill will lead to a path where we reduce the natural compressive forces of the body that power explosive movement while simultaneously reducing the ability of the body to recruit muscle into critical movements.
Sprinting “tall” will decrease the muscular recruitment available in your sprinting, as well as limit your top-end speed capacity. It seems crazy, doesn’t it?
Why is this? Don’t the best sprinters run with the highest relative hip height to others?
The answer: Yes, but this is not because they are actively trying to run tall. Rather, their foot strike position and strength allows for an eccentric loading of the glutes and a vertical support.
These athletes still run “squatted” or “folded” (folded vertically, not folding the torso forward like a hip hinge) if you look at hip and torso angles relative to the ground at the point of contact. In acceleration, the squatted and folded action is even more noticeable and important.
It is the activity of the foot and fascial system that help to create the hip height these athletes do achieve in top-end running, it’s not something that can just magically be “coached”.
Running squatted is pretty simple, it’s the timing that can get tricky, but as long as I’ve coached athletes, the best accelerators and team sport movers are the best operators moving in this position (so why aren’t we training it?):
What is running folded up? I learned this, and many other things, from Adarian Barr, and you can get much more detail on squatted running and other sprint concepts in my book “Speed Strength” as well as by attending a “Rewire” clinic (we’re hosting one in Santa Clara, CA June 22-23), but generally speaking, it is moving in a position that resembles a squat in looking at the angle of the torso and the hip.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BrS6x1cH6ri/
This folding up allows an athlete exposure to ground contacts in a folded and squatted position that fast acceleration demands while keeping on their timing, and in top-end speed, it allows an athlete to cast the swing leg shin out in front (at the right time of course) in order to allow the glutes to operate eccentrically.
Folded, squatted positions also keep the hamstrings at relatively shorter working lengths at key points in the stride, and therefore make them more accessible in terms of recruitability. When you start going through the paces of squatty running, you really start to feel how it changes the muscular recruitment patterns. I’ve found this to be true using EMG shorts as well in hip height and related muscle activation.
I know and do believe that the idea of the fastest sprinter in the back half of the 100m is the athletes who uses the “least” amount of muscle, and I totally get this. I also know that the hamstrings being “on” when they shouldn’t be also can be a factor in injury, but the timing involved there is a little different story. That all withstanding, the ability to turn muscles on and off rapidly in compressed positions is a key ability in speed. As for the thought of injuries, heel striking and timing mismanagement is a much bigger deal than running “too low”. As for the thought of injuries, heel striking is a much bigger deal than not “running tall”. Running “squatted” but getting a solid supinated foot-strike is key and common in fast athletes.
Again, if you want more information on why running “tall”, lifting the knees high, and other popular sprint running cues can have a detrimental effect, then check out my book Speed Strength for a thorough explanation.
Reposition Your Pelvis (In the Weightroom)
For sprinting, we need to “fold” more to get more out of the natural compression of the body, use our pertinent sprint movers more, and be faster.
Pelvic action is sprinting is reciprocal, however, meaning that each “innominate” of the pelvis will rotate back and forth as the corresponding leg swings back and forth. I’m not big on rigidly cueing the pelvis during sprinting, because it can reduce the fluidity and range of an athlete in their stride.
A fixed hip, purely “frontside” mechanic position where the backside mechanics are strongly reduced leads to a robotic motion and a reduction of the maximal energy storage and release of the foot. (This vertical stomping style sprint doesn’t make you fast, see the below video for a good example where the two fastest guys in this race are the furthest thing from inhibiting backside mechanics).
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bw0Rg3qHcQY/
Casting = Eccentric Glute Utilization in Sprinting.
Backside Mechanics = Indication of Quality of Footstrike and Energy Return
In the weight room, we need to be very aware of the actions of our pelvis when it comes to which muscles are being trained and affected. The weight room can really change some paradigms, because when we are loading the body, we can choose between a movement strategy that uses the joints impinging on each other, or we can use the muscles to power the movement.
If you listened to podcast #78 with Justin Moore of Parabolic Performance, then you’ll remember him talking about how squatting in the typical “butt back chest out” manner is really a poor strategy in regards to getting muscles to work properly. That lifting posture puts the biggest strain not on the muscles, but on the joints, particularly those of the spine. In doing so, this makes the lift hinge on the action and timing of the spinal erectors. Do this enough, and you become a much different athlete over time.
Hamstring movements, such as a Nordic hamstring, athletes can really cheat themselves out of hamstring activation by simply extending the spine (chest out lumbar extension), which creates the sense of forward movement, but the hamstrings aren’t really doing anything.
In any sort of hinge, or even squat, the same idea is present, since shortening the spinal erectors and subsequently losing the abdominal wall will cause a loss of pelvis control and a slack on the hamstrings.
To get more out of your hamstrings in the weight room, it is critical to get into the arch of the foot (in squatting and deadlifting), engage the abdominal wall, and maintain a level of neutrality in the pelvis relative to the spine. Take a look at the hinge action of an elite Olympic lifter for a great example here, which has active abs, eccentrically lengthening hamstrings, and no spinal extension (extra lumbar and thoracic curve).
https://www.instagram.com/p/BiC2H9mAfKc/
Even in squatting, I’ve noticed that many of the best athletes can do a deep squat and talk about how lit up their hamstrings are the next day. The lower tier will just feel it in their quads and back, which is a compensation pattern relative to original human movement.
Like Justin Said in podcast #78
“If I keep active abs and I keep active, eccentrically lengthening hamstrings, in a squat, then I have a chance to get my pelvic floor under my rib cage, and I have a chance to drive it up with my hamstrings, glutes and quads, rather than just my back and quads”
Inhibit Your Medial Gastrocs
A simple, but really effective way to get the hamstrings to do more is to inhibit muscular compensators of the knee joint that are robbing the hamstrings of their power.
Case in point here is the medial gastrocnemius, or the inside head of the upper diamond-shaped calf muscle.
As biomechanist and foot expert, Zig Ziegler talked about in our recent podcast, what happens on a level of the foot can manifest itself in which head of the gastrocnemius gets developed. If the medial head is over-developed, it can create an excessive pull in knee-flexion exercises and cause the hamstrings to down-regulate.
I’ve found this to be particularly true in performing Nordic hamstrings.
I find that I can only make it about 1/3 of the way down to the ground before I feel a pain in the back of my knee, and have to let off the gas, letting myself drop. For a long time, I just thought that this was an issue with my hamstring strength, but I recently realized that it had very little to do with my hamstrings.
In fact, any “weak” muscle in the body must be looked at from a very holistic perspective as to why it may not be contributing to a particular movement. Did you just think that we are all born with a “weak” gluteus medius that must be regularly strengthened via monster walks, or are there other factors at play?
To this end, I found that inhibiting my medial gastroc compensation patterns through direct current stimulation, I could do subsequent Nordic hamstrings, go at least 2/3 of the way down with no pain, and feel my hamstrings working hard.
In many cases, we need to learn which muscles to inhibit much more than which ones to turn on. When we get too far into the “turn on” end of things, we can easily spend 20 minutes “activating” all the “weak” muscles in the body before we start the workout.
To reduce the compensations of the medial gastroc, you can use basic soft tissue means, such as a barbell or massage ball, although like in my case, direct current stimulation is truly awesome.
Train At Maximal Muscle Length
Many reading this probably know of the BFS, “Bigger Faster Stronger” training program. One of the staple auxiliary exercises in the program is one that, at first glance, would make a lot of coaches cringe, which is the straight leg box deadlift.
Track coaches talk about the importance of “general strength” where tissues are taken and loaded through their max length. We have Jay Schroeder’s extreme ISO’s, BFS’s straight leg RDL’s and then Jefferson Curls which has been popularized recently by Gymnastic Bodies and Christopher Sommer. “Strength in Length” is a big aspect of getting an optimal training stimulus!
Even the bottom end of a Nordic Hamstring, for those athletes strong enough (and disinhibited enough) to get there, provides an awesome “strength in length” effect that transfers to the length the hamstrings are operating under in sprinting. As I’ve learned from Bret Contreras, you can put a little bend in the hip to get even more length out of the hamstrings in this drill.
Some athletes may be able to do a back squat and achieve this, but many do not. To ensure that the hamstrings are worked from all ends of the spectrum, put some exercises in the program such as the straight leg deadlift and Jefferson Curl.
Even PNF hamstring stretching has benefits in this realm in my opinion, and many (including myself at times) dismiss anything that has “stretching” in it as a performance enhancer, but to me, the integrated neural effect and loading into the stretch has strong benefits to it.
Check out podcast #148 as well with Ben Patrick on how he is using “strength in length” means to revolutionize his athletic training process.
Center Mass Bell Swings
Although the center-mass bell swing is still a general “strength” exercise, there are some subtle differences to it that I believe make it an athletic hamstring torcher.
https://www.instagram.com/p/_Jt6kHOfeI/
The first exercise here is a good example of what Cory and I were doing. I did this with a little less knee bend, and we alternated between bi-lateral and then working split where one bell would drive between the knees and the other outside of the body.
There is some ridiculous hamstring loading going on in that front leg in the first video
I first did this type of swing with Cory Schlessinger prior to our recording of podcast #138, and it opened up my eyes to what was possible for posterior chain training with lighter weights. In doing these I’ve never felt my hamstrings so “torched” in such a small period of time, and with very light and ballistic movements. This was a very athletic way to train, no doubt. In the weight room, it’s important to consider training all phases of muscular contraction and various (preferably long) lengths, and this is a great way to do it.
I’ve done traditional kettlebell swings now for almost 10 years, and like them as a general strength movement with some bilateral vertical jump improvement factors (they help athletes load the movement better with the posterior chain and create some relaxation/contraction factors).
In all my time doing kettlebell swings (and I’ve done 1,000’s of them) I’ve never felt my hamstrings working even close to as much as how the Center Mass Bell swings (with very light weights as well, only 25# each hand) got them. In our episode together, I went on and on about this because I was so fired up about it!
I think the reason for this is the same as a critical drawback of traditional kettlebell swings, and that is the “cowboy” stance that an athlete needs to take when working the kettlebell, along with the fact that the weight is distributed between legs in the traditional kettlebell swing.
Basically, in that scenario, you are opening your knees up a bit, taking the slack out of the outer aspects of your hamstrings, and passing the bell by in the center, equally distributing weight between your hamstrings (and glutes and spinal erectors).
In the Center Mass bell swing, you can swing one small bell down the middle, and the other off to one side of the body. In doing so, you are
- Creating a situation where you don’t have to bow out as much and
- Putting much more of the force on a single leg
This situation makes this training movement gold if you have these tools available.
About Joel Smith
Joel Smith, MS, CSCS is an NCAA Division I Strength Coach working in the PAC12 conference. He has been a track and field jumper and javelin thrower, track coach, strength coach, personal trainer, researcher, writer and lecturer in his 8 years in the professional field. His degrees in exercise science have been earned from Cedarville University in 2006 (BA) and Wisconsin LaCrosse (MS) in 2008.
Prior to California, Joel was a track coach, strength coach, and lecturer at Wilmington College of Ohio. During Joel’s coaching tenure at Wilmington, he guided 8 athletes to NCAA All-American performances including a national champion in the women’s 55m dash. In 2011, Joel started Just Fly Sports in an effort to bring relevant training information to the everyday coach and athlete. Aside from the NSCA, Joel is certified through USA Track and Field and his hope is to bridge the gap between understandable theory and current coaching practice.
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