Only a handful of gym-goers get excited about leg day. And then, on leg days, only a few of them will train their hamstrings. Admittedly, quads don’t get the same love that chest muscles get, but for unknown reasons, the hamstrings get even less – it’s like they always receive the short end of the stick in terms of building leg strength and size.
And that’s really a shame, because the hamstrings are kind of like the triceps of the legs in the way their development holds the key to building truly big, powerful and sculpted legs.
The most important function of the hams is hip extension, which as you can guess, is vital for explosiveness, sprinting, jumping and overall pelvic mobility. They also play an important role in stabilizing the knee joint, so it’s easy to understand how a pair of weak, underdeveloped hams will diminish the effectiveness of your leg training, make you look like a novice, and leave you at risk for imbalance and injury.
If you’ve been slacking on your hamstring training or your posterior chain could use some extra activation, here are the best moves that will bring up your hams and develop a truly strong, well-developed backside.
Hamstring Anatomy – What You’re Actually Training
The hamstrings are a group of three muscles running along the back of the thigh:
- Biceps femoris – the largest of the three, with two heads (long and short). Responsible for knee flexion and hip extension.
- Semimembranosus – runs along the inner thigh, assists with hip extension and internal rotation of the knee.
- Semitendinosus – runs alongside the semimembranosus, same functions.
All three cross both the hip and knee joints, which is why you need both hip-dominant exercises (Romanian deadlifts, hip thrusts) and knee-dominant exercises (leg curls, Nordic curls) to fully develop them. Training only one movement pattern leaves half the muscle undertrained.
The hamstrings are primarily composed of fast-twitch muscle fibers, which respond best to high intensity and heavier loads – not endless light leg curls. Keep this in mind when selecting exercises and rep ranges.
The Best Hamstring Exercises
1. Romanian Deadlifts – 4 x 6-8
Romanian deadlifts are one of the most effective and most overlooked hip-dominant exercises for training your legs – especially the hamstrings. They can give you much of the full-body benefit of squatting, while targeting the posterior chain far more directly.
Because the hamstrings are primarily fast-twitch, they cannot be fully developed with leg curls alone. RDLs allow you to use heavy weights through a full hip hinge pattern – which overloads the hamstrings in a way isolation work never can. They’ll also improve your hip extension and strengthen the entire posterior chain.
Related: Romanian Deadlift: Technique Guide
Hold a bar with a pronated grip at hip level, keeping your shoulders back, knees slightly bent and back slightly arched. Lower the bar by moving your hips back as far as you can while keeping the bar close to the body – ideally ending just below the knee. Return to the starting position by driving the hips forward.
2. Barbell Hip Thrust – 4 x 6-8
Hip thrusts are one of the best exercises you could ever perform for developing strength, power, endurance and mobility in the core and the entire lower body – including the glutes, quads, hams and calves.
They’re mainly used to activate dormant glutes and improve hip extension, but the hamstrings’ contribution is just as important as the glute activity in the successful execution of this lift. Double win.
Sit on the ground with your back against a bench and feet planted firmly on the floor in front of you. Grab a padded barbell and place it in your lap. Keeping your lower back and knees stable, raise the barbell by extending your hips, pushing them forward as you squeeze the glutes. Continue rising until your body forms a straight line from your shoulders to your knees, then slowly descend back.
3. Barbell Box Squats – 4 x 6-8
For hamstring development, box squats beat squatting to full depth because when properly performed, they recruit significantly more hamstring tissue.
The most important advantage is the forced pause at the bottom – which makes you recruit more muscle fibers to get out of the hole and back up, translating to bigger strength and mass gains.
Stand in a power rack with a box behind you that brings you to parallel depth. Place your feet wider than shoulder width to shift more emphasis onto the glutes, adductors and hams. Maintain a tight core and head facing forwards.
Push your knees and butt out as you descend. Sit back with your hips until seated on the box, pause to relax the hip flexors, then forcefully drive upward off the box.
Related: Why the box squat might be your solution to knee pain
4. Eccentric Glute Hamstring Raises – 2 x 6-8
The hams and quads provide power for hip and knee movement and play a crucial role in knee stabilization. Training hard and heavy with weak, too-tight hams will most likely result in a hamstring injury. This can be prevented by training with exercises that focus on eccentric strength – and there’s no better way to do that than eccentric glute hamstring raises.
Related: Eccentric Training: Getting the Positive Effect of Negative Training
Get in a tall kneeling position with your heels secured under an immovable object. Without bending forward at the waist, squeeze your hams and abs and dig in hard with your heels as you slowly descend toward the floor – a 5-second negative rep. At the end of the movement, land gently in a push-up position. Push yourself back up to the starting position and repeat.
5. Lying Leg Curl – 3 x 10-12
While hip-dominant exercises are the foundation of hamstring training, the lying leg curl is the most direct isolation movement available for the knee-flexion function of the hamstrings. It’s not glamorous, but it targets the hams from a different angle than any hip-dominant exercise – and complete hamstring development requires both.
Lie face down on a leg curl machine with the pad resting just above your heels. Keep your hips pressed firmly into the bench – don’t let them rise as you curl. Pull the pad toward your glutes as far as possible and squeeze hard at the top. Lower slowly – a 3-second eccentric is more effective than letting the weight drop.
Related: Seated Hamstring Curl: Technique and Common Mistakes
Sets and reps: 3 sets of 10–12. Use a weight heavy enough that the last 2 reps require genuine effort. This is an isolation exercise – don’t ego-lift it.
6. Stiff-Leg Deadlift – 3 x 8-10
Similar to the Romanian deadlift but with straighter legs, the stiff-leg deadlift places the hamstrings under a deeper stretch at the bottom of the movement. This increased stretch creates greater mechanical tension across the full length of the muscle – a different stimulus than the RDL that’s worth including for complete hamstring development.
Hold a barbell at hip height with a shoulder-width grip. Keeping your legs nearly straight (a soft bend in the knee is fine), hinge at the hip and lower the bar toward the floor, allowing it to travel close to your shins. Feel the stretch across your entire hamstring. Drive through the hips to return to the starting position. Don’t round your lower back – if you can’t maintain a flat back with the bar near the floor, only lower it to mid-shin.
Sets and reps: 3 sets of 8–10.
7. Good Morning – 3 x 8-10
The good morning is a barbell exercise that targets the hamstrings and lower back with a hip hinge pattern similar to the Romanian deadlift – but with the bar on your back rather than in your hands. This changes the resistance profile and creates a unique training stimulus for the posterior chain.
Place a barbell across your upper back as you would for a squat. Stand with feet shoulder-width apart. Keeping your core braced and back flat, hinge forward at the hip until your torso is roughly parallel to the floor – or as far as your hamstring flexibility allows. Drive back up through the hips. Keep the movement controlled throughout.
Related: Good Morning Exercise: How to Do It and Why
Sets and reps: 3 sets of 8–10. Start light – the good morning is technically demanding and loads the lower back. Build the load progressively.
8. Swiss Ball Hamstring Curl – 3 x 12-15
An underrated bodyweight exercise that challenges the hamstrings through both knee flexion and hip extension simultaneously – making it one of the most complete hamstring exercises available with no equipment beyond a stability ball. The instability of the ball also recruits the core and glutes heavily, making this far more demanding than it looks.
Lie on your back with your heels resting on top of a Swiss ball, legs straight, arms flat at your sides. Bridge your hips up off the floor so your body forms a straight line from heels to shoulders. From this position, pull the ball toward your glutes by bending your knees – keeping the hips high throughout. Extend back to the starting position and repeat without letting the hips drop.
Sets and reps: 3 sets of 12–15. When this becomes easy, try it with one leg at a time.
How to Program Hamstring Work
Most people train hamstrings with one or two exercises tacked on at the end of a leg session – which is why most people have underdeveloped hamstrings. For real development, treat them as a primary muscle group:
- Frequency: train hamstrings directly twice per week – once with a hip-dominant focus (RDL, hip thrust, good morning) and once with a knee-flexion focus (leg curl, Nordic curl, Swiss ball curl)
- Volume: 12–16 working sets per week for most people. This is higher than most people currently do – and that’s exactly why most people have underdeveloped hams
- Rep ranges: the hamstrings are fast-twitch dominant – they respond well to heavier loading (6–8 reps) on compound movements. Use higher reps (10–15) on isolation exercises for metabolic stress and pump
- Order: do hip-dominant compound movements first (RDL, hip thrust) when you’re fresh, and isolation work (leg curls) at the end
A simple sample hamstring session:
Romanian deadlifts 4×6-8 →
Hip thrusts 4×6-8 →
Lying leg curl 3×10-12 →
Swiss ball curl 3×12-15.
That’s roughly 50 minutes of focused posterior chain work that most people never do – and it’s why the people who do it have legs that look completely different from those who don’t.
Related: The Best Thigh Workouts for All Upper Leg Muscles
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