How to grow your legs (hamstring edition)
Nikola Man
Back in the land of building a large and strong pair of legs, this time around we will be discussing how to develop hamstrings. As is the norm, we will start with some anatomy.
The hamstring is made up of 4 distinct muscles.
The semimenbranosus, semitendinosus and the long head of the biceps femoris muscle are all biarticular because they cross both the knee joint and the hip joint. As a result, they can perform hip extension based movements like in a deadlift and knee flexion like in a leg curl.
The biceps femoris short head only crosses the knee joint and as such can only assist in knee flexion.
In summary, we have 4 muscles that can flex the knee and 3 muscles that can extend the hip. Based on that analysis of the anatomy, we need to include exercises that train both movement patterns.
Before we move on to talk about volume, I’d like to mention the king of all lower body movements – the squat. Remember the article on quad training? Well, squatting has basically no place in this one, because the squat is a really, really bad hamstring exercise. Luckily, the deadlift is king here, especially some variations of it, but more on that later on.
Volume time:
Minimum volume (MV)
The MV, as explained in multiple posts before, is the number of sets you need to do in order to keep the targeted muscle the same size. You can think of it as maintenance volume. Why is maintenance volume included in all of these articles? I am glad you asked, it is always included for 2 reasons:
Your muscles will simply stop adapting at some point which means that you need to back off high volume and let them re-sensitize to growth
If you want to really prioritize another muscle group, you might want to keep your hamstrings (or any other muscle group) the same size so it’s nice to know what amount of work will be necessary for maintenance
My regular readers are probably wondering why this is in here, but I have some new readers who have asked me to elaborate on this concept so I did.
Anyway, if you want to maintain your hamstring size, you should be doing 4 fairly heavy sets of a hip extension (hip hinge) movement.
Minimum-effective volume (MEV)
If you want to achieve at least some growth for your hamstrings, you should be doing around 6 sets per week. You can set it up the following way
3 sets of stiff-legged deadlift on Tuesday, 3 sets of good mornings on Friday
Or
4 sets of stiff-legged deadlift on Tuesday, 2 sets of lying leg curls on Friday
This might not seem like much, but if you’re doing the work with proper technique and sufficiently heavy, your hamstrings will get really messed up (in a good way).
Maximum recoverable volume (MRV)
MRV, for most people, tends to sit around 20 sets per week. Please note that this is the maximum amount of work you can do and still recover. Do not read this recommendation and immediately start doing 20 sets every week. Start with 6 and build up from there. Most of your weeks should be somewhere between 10 and 18 sets.
Intensity and frequency
Intensity is going to be split into two parts. The first is the intensity you should be doing your hip hinge exercises with. Namely, you should be doing these as your main compound, heavy exercises. Therefore, strive to keep them in the 6-10 rep range. On the other hand, knee flexion movements should be done with lighter weights because the hip hinge movements have already taken care of the heavy stuff. Keep your leg curls and other knee flexion exercises anywhere between 10 and 20 reps.
Frequency-wise, you should look to do at least 2 sessions per week. In my view, 2 sessions is just fine, but 3 sessions can be great too, especially if you’re struggling to make your hamstrings grow.
Exercise selection
Stiff-legged deadlift (I really recommend this one)
The first 4 exercises are hip extension (hinge) movements, whereas the leg curls are knee extension movements. The back extension is there for variety’s sake, but it is not an exercise you can load really heavily and still perform safely.
Tips for making a program
You probably saw that I left a special recommendation for the stiff-legged deadlift. This is because it emphasizes the eccentric (negative) part of the movement which has independently been shown to produce hypertrophy signalling. More importantly though, people are usually going really heavy on their main deadlift movement (usually conventional or sumo) which is absolutely fine, but you have to keep in mind that your glutes and your lower back take over so your hamstrings don’t get as much stimulus.
That is why I recommend establishing a solid mind-muscle connection with your hamstrings on the stiff-legged deadlift and doing the exercise with around 8 reps, this way you get the much needed high intensity from the heavy weight and your hamstrings remain the primary muscle mover.
Another tip I have for you is to make sure that you have both types of movements. Include at least one hip extension movement like the stiff-legged deadlift and one knee flexion movement. I suggest that you pick either the lying leg curl or the seated leg curl based on which one feels better for you. Just remember to keep your leg curls fairly light and focusing on the contraction. Hip hinges should have a bigger focus on the stretch of the hamstring.
Lastly for this section, you can do hip hinge exercises with a lower intensity. The most common one I see is the stiff-legged deadlift with dumbbells. In that variation of the exercises the loading is relatively light and the repetitions are high. It can be included as a so-called finisher exercise.
Other important comments
This section is usually a bit longer or at least it was when we talked about quads. This time around I only have one comment to add (I promise it will be short).
Execute the exercises with proper technique. You will be helping yourself in two ways. First and foremost, some of the exercises can carry a high risk of injury if done incorrectly with a weight that’s too heavy so it would behoove you to do the exercise properly in order to avoid unnecessary injury or potential lower back pain. The second benefit is that you will be providing a significantly better growth stimulus to your muscles. So yeah, you avoid injury and get better gains by working out with good form. It’s a no-brainer really.