Tonight I did a glute bridge variation that burned the crap out of my hams. You bridge with your shoulders on one bench and your feet extended straight out on a separate bench. So contracted you are in a lying position.
Anyone else know any good hip extension hamstring exercises with little or no spinal loading?
Glute ham raises
Feet on a stability ball, roll ball in and out.
Single and double leg hamstring lifts.
Swiss ball leg curls are amazing, always liked that exercise better than any other hammie exercise (machine or otherwise). Of course once you get to like 4 x 30, it’s hard to increase the load.
This is a good one (combines knee flexion and an isometric contraction in hip extension): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baMFUXIvvT8&
Straight hip extension based for hammies… I really like banded hyper-extension drop-sets (yeah it hurts).
Also this is a great article: http://www.T-Nation.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance/12_hamstrings_exercises_for_hardasses&cr=
That kneeling hip extension is brutal. That article is a nice find.
Has anyone had luck loading swiss leg ball curls?
[quote]Fletch1986 wrote:
That kneeling hip extension is brutal. That article is a nice find.
Has anyone had luck loading swiss leg ball curls?[/quote]
Nope… you can do it with some bands, it’s just too much of a bitch, lol. Once you are good on swiss ball leg curls in terms of strength, I would recommend Valslide Curls w/ Band Resistance (a lot more stable, unlike the swiss ball… you can use furniture movers for this). A GHR machine is cool too but loading that is weird, as gravity takes over for some of the top movement. At the end of the day, a decently-made lying leg curl machine is pretty sweet, lol.
[quote]PB Andy wrote:
[quote]Fletch1986 wrote:
That kneeling hip extension is brutal. That article is a nice find.
Has anyone had luck loading swiss leg ball curls?[/quote]
Nope… you can do it with some bands, it’s just too much of a bitch, lol. Once you are good on swiss ball leg curls in terms of strength, I would recommend Valslide Curls w/ Band Resistance (a lot more stable, unlike the swiss ball… you can use furniture movers for this). A GHR machine is cool too but loading that is weird, as gravity takes over for some of the top movement. At the end of the day, a decently-made lying leg curl machine is pretty sweet, lol.[/quote]
I use furniture sliders as well(bought at lowes) and they work well.I put a light dumbell in my hip crease to make these harder.
Thanks for the suggestions. I also like to do hyper extension barbell good mornings. These get hard with just 60 or 70 pounds.
Pull throughs work good too.
As said, you can never or rarely beat glute ham raises or its knock off variations (natural glute hamraises/russian leg curl) for something that doesn’t load your spine and brutalizes your hamstrings.
As for hip extension exercises with very little load, straight leg pullthroughs are supposed to be great for hamstrings/lower back/glutes. I would recommend Romanian deadlifts for a back friendly hip extension hamstring exercise (however it still uses heavy weight) to limit the loading you could do it with a pause or multiple.