Your glutes and quads shouldn’t always be the stars of your lower-body workouts: Adding some hamstring exercises into the mix will make sure you’re training efficiently and, most importantly, keeping your bottom half as strong and balanced as possible.
A lot of leg moves naturally engage those back-of-the-leg muscles to some extent, but strength training that specifically targets your hammies can be even more beneficial. Need some inspo? Below, we’ve rounded up some of the best hamstring exercises out there that are worthy of your next leg day. Some use external resistance like barbells, dumbbells, or even resistance bands, and others you can do with just your bodyweight. But before we get into them, let’s talk about why you should even care so much about building strength there in the first place.
What are your hamstrings, and what do they even do?
Your hamstrings are actually made up of three separate muscles—the biceps femoris, semimembranosus, and semitendinosus—all of which run along the backs of your thighs. Together, they are crucial part of your posterior chain, or the muscles that run along the back of the body from head to toe. They help you extend your hips and flex your knees, movements which allow you to do everything from standing upright and bending forward to walking, running, and jumping, Dane Miklaus, CSCS, CEO and owner of Work training studios in Irvine, California, and Meridian, Idaho, tells SELF.
Why are strong hamstrings so important?
One of the benefits is greater power, especially in those movements mentioned above, like sprints and jumps. Plus, training your hamstrings helps you work toward a better balance, which is important both during strength training and in everyday life.
That’s because lots of people tend to be quad-dominant, Miklaus explains, meaning that their quad muscles (which run along the front of the thighs) are way stronger than their hamstring muscles. It makes sense, considering we spend most of our time moving forward, which engages the front of the legs more than the back. But while it’s normal for your quads to be a bit stronger than your hamstrings, a large imbalance between the muscle groups can set the stage for knee injuries or knee pain down the line, especially if sprinting, jumping, lunging, or squatting are regular parts of your routine.
“If you are not stabilizing at the knee appropriately—and that’s a big part of what your hamstring does, it helps keep the knee joint in place—you risk a greater incidence of injury when your quads are way overdeveloped and the hamstrings are too weak,” he explains.
Plus, thanks to too much inactivity throughout the day—think long days sitting at your desk or in your car for your commute—your hamstring muscles tend to tense up, Miklaus says. This tightness can contribute to lower back pain. So moving them regularly, like with hamstring-focused leg exercises, can keep those muscles loose, which can help ward off that discomfort, he says.
What are the best hamstring exercises you can do?
The best hamstring exercises are those that incorporate hip extension (think hip hinge, like if you were deadlifting) or knee flexion (like with a glute bridge, where your hamstrings fire as your heel applies force to the floor), says Miklaus. These types of compound exercises target your hamstrings and work them in a functional way—meaning, you’re moving similarly to how you would in everyday life and engaging other muscles around them, too.
