Just tried natural glute ham raises for the first time and they seem like a great exercise. I hooked my feet under the footpad of a leg curl machine that has a kind of inverted v shape to it so a slightly greater range of motion than doing them to the floor but much shorter than a glute ham raise machine which my gym doesn’t have. Couldn’t do the lat pulldown machine variation cos the seat part is too narrow.
Anyway, my question relates to progression. I’m a bit worried about the controlling the push off phase - either maintaining the same force from session to session if I’m shooting for increased sets/reps or reducing the force if I’m keeping sets/reps constant and trying to vary load. The latter is more relevant to me in the short term as I’m thinking of doing a CW program that calls for 10 sets of low reps.
One idea I have, that I have yet to try out myself simply because my home gym setup needs a little work to make it happen is as follows:
Attach a triceps rope to the high position of a lat tower with a long cable (x-over tower is probably enough - i.e. a multi-pulley system), put a little weight on the stack (the less the better), hold the rope over your shoulders, face away from the x-over tower and go down in the GH exerise.
(The trick is fixing a “GH device” in front of the tower…that’s my problem right now). When you’re at the lowest position, the small weight you’re holding onto will provide some upwards pull, courtesy of the lat-tower weight stack; so you won’t need to “push-off”. YOu increase or decrease weight accordingly, and you’re all set.
Progression comes from reducing weight after every workout or so till you don’t need it any more (then you start ADDING weight). This quantifies your strength, which is better than trying to judge the force in this weeks push versus last weeks.
I am not yet strong enough to do GH raise without push-off, and like you, I never really know how-much force I use.
I agree with you that low-rep sets is right for GH raise. For me, they are too intense to do more than 5-reps (even with a push-off).
As and when I get my setup working at home, I’ll post a picture (darn site easier to understand than my typing I’m sure).
I actually asked the question of Tate at a recent seminar what he would suggest for a natural glute hame raise. His first point was that it wouldn’t really be a glute ham raise. He then suggested getting a round object like a foam roll and fixing it to at least help it resemble the top range of motion of a glute ham raise.
Regarding whether this is a ‘true’ glute ham raise, I suppose I’m less concerned about that, more interested in a really good hamstring exercise that provides a different stimulus from the leg curl. I’m getting over a low back injury at the moment so deadlift variations are out. My hamstrings are sore as hell today after 6 sets of 5 yesterday but I hadn’t trained for a few weeks so leg curls might have had the same effect. Still, the eccentric part of the exercise feels really intense and vs the lying leg curl the movement is at the opposite insertion point so I feel I’ve got some variety with this exercise. Plus it’s been recommended by several of the experts on this site (e.g. Chad Waterbury, Joe DeFranco) and that’s good enough for me.
Interested in any and all views though - thanks again for your input.
