Hamstring Exercise Tips

Video Transcript

"This next exercise works, what I like to call the bicep of the leg. It's the back of the leg, hamstrings, so it's going to support hip and knee joint from behind. This particular piece of equipment is called a seated leg curl and once you get advanced standing leg curls are very effective and functional for carryover value in everyday life. You have an adjustment here, where you're going to rest your ankle and you have an adjustment, usually your back pad adjusts. You want to make sure you got that close enough again where you going to find this point of origin here on the bar to line it up with that knee joint like you would in a leg extension. Again I like to work on these pieces of equipment unilaterally, one leg at a time. You can just put that up there for rest or you can work bilateral, both legs at a time. When you bring this pad down here, you'll always have one; you want to make sure that rest above the knee joint. You don't want pressure there. Again selecting a weight that's going to fatigue that back of the leg in about twelve to fifteen reps. Make sure you're sitting upright. If the seated pad behinds you tends to make you slouch back, try to weigh more on the side of neutral pelvis, neutral posture coming up. You don't want hip flexers to be involved in this in the front of the leg; you want to focus primarily on the back. Big inhale, exhale, boom you're going to pull and you might have seen this where you're prone, lying on your stomach, the stopping point's the same way, ankle, knee in line with the hip. It's not going to do you any good, you're not going to get anymore work load if you were to take that foot and drive it back passed, again you're going to have that sheering force on your knee joint, noted and flexed, no need. Big inhale, exhale, hold it, make sure your back stays nice and pressed against the mat and you got that nice line there. Inhale up, exhale cause this is your contraction phase. This is where the muscles are pulling together, and inhale again, and exhale, squeeze and hold, stopping point and release. The biggest thing you're going to see happen is you're going to want to come forward. You're going to slide all the time so it really does take a lot of core strength, more than you realize to sit up here, and exhale, and release. And that's how you can do an effective seated leg curl for the hamstrings, bicep of the leg."