How to build powerful hamstrings is one of the 1 million dollar questions I have got many times in my personal training career. Being a muscle group that’s not seen in the mirror, many folks will struggle getting that mind-muscle connection with them. Here between us, it’s easy to train arms or chest for men. For women, glutes are an absolute go to most of the time. But how many people do you see in gyms literally BLASTING their hamstrings? Very few, right? So yeah, today we will speak about it and I will give you a few pointers on how to start building them.
How to Build Powerful Hamstrings step by step part 1:
First of all, you need patience, unfortunately. I have said many times: you can cheat a bad diet with metabolism enhancing drugs. You can cheat bad muscle building genetics with anabolic steroids. There are 2 things though you can’t buy in a pharmacy: TIME and WORK ETHIC. When you put them together, there you have a powerful combination. Understand this first before we can move on to technicalities.
Hamstrings anatomy: your hamstrings will be composed mainly of 3 muscles – the Biceps Femoris, Semimembranosus and Semitendinosus. They will act extending the hips and flexing the knees, and are innervated by the sciatic nerve (L4-S3).
The biceps femoris extends the hip and also rotates at the knee and hip laterally (feet turned outside). The semimembranosus and semitendinosus also extend the hip and rotate the hip and knee medially (feet turned inwards). I made this very simple to understand. There are more details to it, but keeping this info in mind will already help you.
How to Build Powerful Hamstrings step by step part 2:
Being a predominantly fast-twitch muscle group, hamstrings will respond better to heavier loading. In fact, according to research, “Muscle volume was correlated with knee flexor maximal strength at all velocities and contraction modes *1”. That means, you have to get them stronger (which will work for most muscle groups, by the way. Or have you ever seen a skinny guy squat 300kg for 1 rep?). In the other hand “BFlh MHC composition was not found to be “fast”, and therefore composition does not appear to explain the high incidence of hamstrings strain injury.”, meaning, the biceps femoris is not predominantly a fast-twitch muscle group, so varying rep ranges is an important factor too. The take away is: the majority of your hamstring training should be heavy. I’d say a 80/20% rate is a good starting point (this is not scientific, by the way, but I found this “system” to work well with myself and others).
Source:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27739112/
How to Build Powerful Hamstrings step by step part 3:
Training Periodization – usually alternating very heavy training periods (3-5 reps in a Nordic Hamstring curl, for example) with not so heavy training periods (6-8 reps for the usual seated or lying leg curls, or Romanian and Stiff Legged Deadlifts) will do a great job at it. Obviously nothing impedes you from training at higher rep ranges, and in fact the guys at Westside Barbell implement sets of up to 100 reps for banded leg curls, which will definitely help especially with building strength endurance and tendon adaptations to reduce the likelihood of injury. In this next article the researchers found that “effective hypertrophy-oriented training should comprise a combination of mechanical tension and metabolic stress”, meaning, you should train heavy and light as well. As mentioned before, according to my experience, training hamstrings at heavier schemes most of the time produces superior results, BUT, changing it from time to time is important too.
Source:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6950543/
How to Build Powerful Hamstrings step by step part 4:
Train at short and long muscle lengths – there is a huge variety of exercises one can choose from, but mostly you can train your hamstrings whether flexing the knee (like in a leg curl) or extending the hip (like in a Romanian Deadlift). When you compare the seated leg curl and the lying leg curl, this study
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33009197/
found that: “Hamstrings muscle size can be more effectively increased by seated than prone leg curl training, suggesting that training at long muscle lengths promotes muscle hypertrophy, but both are similarly effective in reducing susceptibility to muscle damage.”
Does that mean you should train exclusively doing seated leg curls? No. The lying leg curls put less strain on the lower back, so if you have lower back issues, that’s something to consider. Also, this study from 2015
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24978835/
found that “Results showed that the LLC elicited significantly greater normalized mean activation of the lower lateral and lower medial hamstrings compared with the SLDL (p ≤ 0.05).” That means that, if you are lacking in the lower portion (closer to the knees) hamstrings, lying leg curls are an absolute go to. But also it is important to note that training your muscles at long muscle lengths (stretched) is extremely important and favorable. In fact, doing partial reps at those long muscle lengths like in a Stiff Legged Deadlift, can be potentially favourable, as this study suggests: “partial ROM training in the initial phase of the knee extension exercise promoted greater relative hypertrophy in certain muscle regions”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33977835/
The study’s limitation though was that it was carried on the quadriceps muscle (thigh muscle), therefore it’s hard to conclude that this is how it works for hamstrings too, but if I had to bet, I would definitely put some money on it.
How to Build Powerful Hamstrings step by step part 5:
“Injury prevention” – there is no such thing as “injury prevention”. You can reduce the likelihood of an injury, but preventing it is impossible. Achieving structural balance between quadriceps and hamstrings strength is of utmost importance when it comes to keeping your knees healthy. Quadriceps to Hamstring strength ratio was shown to be beneficial in reducing the likelihood of injuries in this study here:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27002102/
It found that: “The small associations between lower hamstring eccentric strength and lower quadriceps concentric strength with HSIs can only be considered as weak risk factors.”
Whatever is your objective, do not forget to train your hamstrings. Whether you are looking for aesthetics or just for health purposes, or both. They are not visible from the front, but when you turn on your side they will definitely catch attention, whether you’re a man or a woman. Also they will keep your knees healthy as you can see. Go hard on them and be patient. They will grow, just like all other muscle groups.
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