The Athlete

Hamstring Training

The HAM Man - Fivos Averkiou.

It's recommended that on should train hamstrings on different days to quads. Normally, people don't usually train their whole upper body in one workout so why should they train their lower body in one workout? Another reason for training Hamstrings on different days is that after finishing Quad workout, its hard to summon the physical and mental energy to give hamstrings a 100% workout (or to put it another way to smash em up!).

After a good 10 minutes on the bike or any other CV type equipment, begin slowly stretching. I think it's very important to go through this process as it can help in avoiding any potential injury of the Hamstrings. A point to note; never stretch a cold muscle! Your muscles are like play-do. If you stretch play-do straight out the can it will snap, if you roll play-do in your hands for about 10 seconds then you can stretch it without it snapping!

Hamstring training begins for me with a superset of Hamstring curls and stiff legged dead lifts. I prefer to use a seated leg curl (like the Hammer Strength one) rather than a lying one. I will do four supersets of this movement. The weight is relatively light as I put about two twenty kilo plates on the leg curl and one twenty kilo plate either side of the bar for the stiff leg deadlifts. Once the set is underway I try to aim for at least fifteen to twenty reps on both exercise.

The next movement in my hamstring onslaught is two sets to failure on the abductor and two sets to failure on the adductor machine. Now you guys might be saying that's a girls exercise!? but believe me its not! Your hamstrings make a massive part of your overall leg size at these two exercises will directly hit the adductor/abductor like no other movements can. Ill start this exercise with fifty percent of my maximum to get the muscle nicely warmed up. Once I'm happy I begin two sets to failure of each exercise. Once I have finished these sets my hamstrings a completely fried. To finish off the workout I'll either do some lunges on a smith machine usually two sets with two twenty kg plates on each side for about twenty reps or Ill kneel on the end of a bench and contract my hamstring for about twenty reps. Once I'm done with the workout Ill do some more stretching to finish everything off.

So in summary my workout looks like this :

10 mins warm-up on bike

5-10 mins of stretching

Superset: leg curl and stiff legged deadlifts 4 sets of 20 reps per exercise.

2 sets to failure on adductor machine

2 sets to failure on abductor machine

2 sets of lunges or bench hamstring contractions.

5 mins stretching

Give my workout a go and watch your hamstring grow like you have always wanted them to!!!!

- The Athlete.org