Hamstring Training for Athletes

The hamstrings play a vital role in improving performance. Athletes that are wanting to improve their performance in their respected sport need to focus on training the posterior chain. Want to be stronger? Hamstrings. Want to be faster? Hamstrings. Want to reduce hamstring injury? Train the hamstrings. Want to look good from behind? Hamstrings (second to glutes). Want to make it on SportsCenter or Bleacher Report? Get really good at nordic hamstring curls. I’ve worked with a lot of athletes and the strongest, most explosive ones have crazy strong hamstrings. If you need a physique incentive, go ahead and take a look at Cristiano Ronaldo’s hamstrings. All of this information is great, but the ability to train them correctly is the important part. 

First, let's briefly go over what the hamstrings are. The Biceps Femoris, Semitendinosus and Semimembranosus are the group of muscles’ that make-up the hamstrings. The text books will say that the hamstrings will extend the hip and flex the knee, which is true, but more importantly they play a large role in high speed sprinting, decelerating hip flexion and knee extension, eccentrically stabilizing the knee (which can aid in ACL injury reduction), posture and internally rotating the lower leg. The Biceps Femoris has both a long head and short head and while the long head crosses both the hip and knee joint the short head only crosses the knee, which inhibits its ability to extend the hip. In other words, the long-head of the Biceps Femoris, Semitendinosus and Semimembranosus are biarticular joints which flex the knee and extend the hip. 

I am not going to get into any static stretching nonsense because I already went on a rant on it in two other posts. If you’re interested here they are Stop Stretching Your Hamstrings! Part 1 and Stop Stretching Your Hamstrings! Part 2. If you can’t tell by the titles, stop stretching your hamstrings.

As you can see the hamstrings have many functions, but they can only aid in performance when they are healthy. Hamstring stains, mostly to the Biceps Femoris are the number one injury in soccer and such related injuries are on the rise in basketball and baseball. The Biceps Femoris is also known as the lateral hamstrings, this is actually why when most athletes pull their hamstring they will hold the lateral aspect of their hamstrings. About 12-16 percent of all soccer related injuries are to the hamstrings (Mendiguchia et al., 2020). Hamstring injuries usually occur during both the swing and stance phase of sprinting. As sprinting speed increases so does the length, stress, force and contractions time of the hamstrings. The terminal swing phase (final phase before foot ground contact) in sprinting has shown to put the most musculotendon force and strain on the hamstrings (Schache et al., 2012). This phase and even at foot ground contact is when the hamstrings are at their longest and most vulnerable for injury. What type of muscle contractions occur during this phase? Many isometric and eccentric contractions. Saying that, it is important to train the hamstrings accordingly. I believe that the hamstrings should be trained with a variety of stimuli mainly made-up of eccentric and isometric exercises with different positions, forces, velocities, intensities and volume.

Hips are the name of the game here. Exercises need to focus on hip extension and not knee flexion. Stay away from that stupid leg curl machine at VASA. Here are a couple of my favorite hamstring exercises for athletes:

1-Arm 1-Leg DB RDL

This may be one of the most common “hamstring focused” exercises out there, but it's for good reason. Training on one leg can be considered “functional” mainly because sprinting is performed unilaterally, so it would make sense to perform exercises on one leg. The RDL incorporates all 3 muscle actions - eccentric, isometric and concentric. The great thing about this exercise is it is easy to manipulate tempo, so if the goal is to focus on eccentric and isometric actions one can simply change the tempo accordingly.

1-Leg Good Mornings

A progression from the above exercise is the 1-Leg Good Morning. Good Mornings get a bad reputation mainly due to the fact that a lot of powerlifters use them, but honestly I like them. The only difference between a Good Morning and a DB RDL is that the Good Morning is loaded at the top (on the back), which might even be better in certain cases. Some athletes have a hard time staying stiff in the backside during a DB RDL which usually results in rounding of the lower back, but the 1-Leg Good Morning requires the entire posterior chain to stay stiff, including the erector spinae. With the 1-Leg Good Morning the weight is pretty light making it more back friendly than most hip dominant exercises. I coach a pause at the bottom to make sure technique is flawless and we take advantage of that isometric action. In my eyes, it looks pretty damn similar to a back extension.

Band Resisted Barbell RDL

This is just another RDL variation, but it's performed bilaterally; the barbell allows for more load and the band adds a form of accommodating resistance. Performing hamstring exercises with large amounts of load is sometimes necessary because of the overwhelming dominance of Type II (fast twitch) muscle fibers in the hamstrings. The band allows for max tension at the top of the movement where an athlete is the strongest, focuses on eccentric control and aids in enhancing overall power. 

Nordic Hamstring Curls

This may be the king of all exercises when it comes to reducing hamstring injuries. Nordics have shown to be extremely effective in reducing hamstring injuries because of their ability to increase muscle fascicle (bundles of muscle fibers) length due to the high eccentric action of the exercise. Longer fascicles = lower risk of hamstring injury. Note: I see 2 main reasons why maybe not every athlete is fit to perform Nordic Hamstring Curls. 1. The athlete is extremely weak in the posterior chain, which regressing the exercise to partial ranges of motion may be a necessary step. 2. Athletes possess different degrees of anterior pelvic tilt. In extreme cases (low back pain is present), slow eccentric exercises that lengthen the hamstrings may not be the best option. 

Knees Flexed Nordic Hamstring Curls

This is another variation of the original Nordic Hamstring Curl, but obviously in this variation the hips are in a flexed position. Why does this matter? When sprinting is broken down there is a moment (right before foot ground contact) where the hips are flexed and the hamstrings are eccentrically contracting. According to research, manipulating the angle of the hips can change the muscle activity of the Semitendinosus and Bicep Femoris (Hegyi et al., 2019). If the goal is to reduce hamstring injury (by lengthening muscle fascicle length) it is better to perform Nordics with hips flexed due to the higher passive forces (Hegyi et al., 2019). 

Physio Hamstring Curls

But wait, I thought you said not to focus on training the hamstrings as knee flexors?? Yeah I did say that, but at the end of the day one of the functions of the hamstrings is to flex the knee so it would be naive not to perform any hamstring focused knee flexion exercises. Physio Hamstring Curls are a great way to do so. This is because now we are talking about a closed-chain exercise (foot in contact with a supporting surface). If the exercise is performed correctly, the glutes will act as stabilizers for the trunk resulting in more than just a hamstring exercise.

1-Leg Hamstring Bridge

This exercise is an easy way to train the hamstrings isometrically at their longest position. The goal is to make the hamstrings strong when they are the most vulnerable, which is when they are stretched long. Simply changing the arm placement from the ground to across the chest (shown in video) can make the exercise more difficult. 

Hamstring Tantrums

This is another one of my favorites, but it is extremely difficult. Hamstring Tantrums (the name I got from P3) is a progression exercise from the 1-Leg Hamstring Bridge. This exercise requires fast contractions of the distal hamstrings. One of the most important components in sports performance is the ability to contract and relax when needed to without delay. If an athlete is not able to contract (or relax for that matter) properly they are going to be at a higher risk of injury. This is why neuromuscular coordination training is vital in aiding for injury protection. 

1-Leg RDL Plate Drops

Again, the hamstrings need to be able to withstand high velocity and high forces. As sports performance coaches we need to use exercises that require the hamstrings to eccentrically and isometrically contract at such rates. A great way to do so is to introduce elements of perturbations (rapid external factors) to the musculature to allow the athlete to deal with high velocity and rapid forces. In this case, the perturbation is performed in a “closed” (athlete knows where the external factor is being applied) scenario, but adding open perturbations could have a place as well. 

Sprinting

This may seem a little bit too obvious, but sprinting has shown to be the greatest exercise for hamstring injury prevention (Mendiguchia et al., 2020). Sprinting has shown to involve multiple different muscle contractions and ultimately it is the most specific exercise for transfer to sport, as it is hard to train the elastic components of sprinting without really performing any sprinting. The stretch-shortening cycle is firing quickly during sprinting -- something that is very difficult to mirror with other exercises. While an athlete performs sprinting exercises, it is a great time to focus on having the athlete develop proper sprinting mechanics specifically to backside mechanics and hip separation. Pertaining to using sprinting as a tool to reduce hamstring injury I take an approach I took from Mike Robertson a couple years back of microdosing. Using microdosing with sprinting is easy and does not require a lot of time. For example, I will have my athletes perform about 10-12 10 yard sprints with a full recovery 2-3 times a week. 

As you can see, there is a lot to consider when it comes to training the hamstrings and exercise selection. Notice how the majority of the above exercises are focused on hip extension rather than knee flexion. Being able to understand the true functional functions of the hamstrings will allow for better training and less hamstring injuries. Remember, always take an individualized approach. 

References

Hegyi A, Lahti J, Giacomo JP, Gerus P, Cronin NJ, Morin JB. Impact of Hip Flexion Angle on Unilateral and Bilateral Nordic Hamstring Exercise Torque and High-Density Electromyography Activity. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther. 2019 Aug;49(8):584-592. doi: 10.2519/jospt.2019.8801. Epub 2019 Mar 26. PMID: 30913969.

Mendiguchia J, Conceição F, Edouard P, Fonseca M, Pereira R, Lopes H, Morin JB, Jiménez-Reyes P. Sprint versus isolated eccentric training: Comparative effects on hamstring architecture and performance in soccer players. PLoS One. 2020 Feb 11;15(2):e0228283. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0228283. PMID: 32045411; PMCID: PMC7012429.

Schache AG, Dorn TW, Blanch PD, Brown NA, Pandy MG. Mechanics of the human hamstring muscles during sprinting. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2012 Apr;44(4):647-58. doi: 10.1249/MSS.0b013e318236a3d2. PMID: 21912301.