Chasing that quad sweep or teardrop often takes first place when it comes to growing bigger legs – but focusing solely on the 'mirror muscles' is a rookie mistake.
Your hamstrings, at the back of your thighs, need some TLC too, especially if you’re planning on putting on a pair of hoodie daddy shorts anytime soon.
The hamstring muscle makes up around 1/3 of your leg mass and is a strong, powerful muscle. Ensuring the hamstrings are well conditioned can help shrug off common hamstring injuries, reduce muscle imbalances, and build overall strength and size in your legs.
So if you’re wondering what the best hamstring strengthening exercises are, then don’t worry, we’ve done the leg work for you. We’ve put together a list of our best hamstring exercises to build big hamstrings – and we’ll go through how to do each with perfect form, so you can walk into leg day with confidence.
Ready to hit leg day hard? Download The Gymshark Training App to get your hands on the best hamstring workouts, or start a structured workout plan to really escalate your gains.
Contents:
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What Are The Hamstrings?
It would be pretty hard to exercise the hamstrings if we didn’t know what they were. So before we dive straight into the best hammy exercises, let’s work out exactly what these muscles are, where they’re located, and how we can target them.
The hamstring muscles are located at the back of the thigh, and are made up of 4 muscles:
Biceps Femoris (long head and short head)
Semitendinosus
Semimembranosus
The main action of the hamstring muscles is to provide flexion at the knee joint, along with assisting hip extension and thigh rotation. Effective hamstring exercises will try to replicate this movement, using load to build hamstring strength. For example, the leg curl machine adds resistance to knee flexion, and Romanian deadlifts add resistance to the lengthened hamstring and hip extension.
Of course, the hamstring doesn't work in silo, and recruitment from quads, glutes and further stabilizing muscles are required to adequately strengthen and grow the hamstring muscles.
If hitting your hamstrings hard is on your agenda, then keeping your posterior chain and back in tip-top condition will help keep you injury-free. Try these back stretches to improve flexibility!
The Best Hamstring Exercises To Build Big Hamstrings
Now we’ve covered the basics of what the hamstring muscles are, it’s time to get into the best hamstring exercises to build big hamstrings.
We’ve split these into three subsections, Barbell Hamstring Exercises, Dumbbell hamstring exercises, and machine hamstring exercises, to make it easy to jump to the specific exercises that you have equipment for.
Got full access to everything? No problem: We recommend starting with compound exercises such as deadlifts or good mornings, before moving on to isolation exercises such as your machine hamstring curls. Working out from home? All of these exercises can be done with a dumbbell or kettlebell, or even just your body weight.
The Best Hamstring Exercises:
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Barbell Hamstring Exercises
Deadlifts
First up: The deadlift. One of the biggest and most respected gym exercises, the conventional deadlift is a compound movement that allows a serious amount of weight, and volume to go through your hamstrings, glutes, and back. After all, having big, well developed hamstrings is no good if the other muscles in your posterior chain are weak!
Deadlifts can be taxing on your lower back, so be sure to have a conservative approach to the progression of weight, reps, and sets when looking to build bigger hamstrings. Move slowly through the negative phase of each rep to really help target and develop the hamstrings.
How To Do Deadlifts:
Step up to the loaded barbell, positioning the bar so that it hovers over the mid to bottom laces on your shoes. Feet should be shoulder width, directly under hips, toes pointing forward.
Squat down, taking hold of the bar and gripping it thumb distance outside of your shins.
Keeping a neutral spine, inhale and retract your shoulders whilst engaging your lats.
Extend your legs, pushing into the ground with your feet, lifting the bar as you do so, but keeping your arms straight. As the bar becomes level with your knees, extend your torso and continue to straighten your legs until your body is fully upright.
Hold the top position for a couple of seconds as you exhale, squeezing your shoulder blades together before lowering the bar, keeping a proud chest, and ensuring the back does not round. The weight should be controlled back to the platform. Repeat.
Romanian Deadlifts
Unlike regular deadlifts which put a lot of the workload onto the lower back, Romanian deadlifts (or stiff leg deadlifts) place the majority of the workload onto your hamstrings. This allows a more targeted approach to training your hamstrings, placing them under greater tension whilst placing less stress on your lower back, making them one of the best hamstring exercises for your next hammy workout!
How To Do Romanian Deadlifts:
Load the barbell on the lifting platform. Positioning your feet under the bar hip-width apart, toes facing forward.
Bend your knees, squatting down to take hold of the bar. Keep a neutral spine and place your hands about a thumb width outside of your legs.
Stand fully upright. You are now in your starting position.
Before beginning your RDL, engage your lats by squeezing your shoulder blades together and imagining you have apples in your armpits that you can’t let fall out.
Hinge by pushing your hips back, letting your knees bend slightly as the bar moves down your thighs and shoulders come over your toes.
Hinge under you feel a deep stretch in your hamstring muscles, whilst maintaining a neutral spine. The bar will typically finish around the middle of your shins.
Read our Ultimate Guide To Romanian Deadlifts to discover our top tips to perfect your RDL form, plus some variations to add to the mix.
Good Mornings
Good mornings may not be the most common exercise seen in the gym, but it’s time you wake up and pay them some attention as they are definitely up there as one of the best hamstring exercises.
Unlike deadlifts, which allow you to look strong as you load on weight plate after weight plate, good mornings aren’t going to allow you to lift a lot of load - but that's a good thing.
Using moderate weight and good technique, this hamstring exercise is great for creating time under tension and adding resistance to your hamstrings in their lengthened state. Plus, they do a great job of hitting the glutes, creating a peachy behind to fill your scrunch bum leggings.
How To Do Good Mornings:
Take hold of the barbell in both hands, just outside of shoulder width. Duck under the bar and rest it on the soft part of your upper back.
Stand up to unrack the bar. Take a couple of steps back from the rig.
Position your in a narrow stance, about shoulder width-wide, with toes pointing forward. Keep a soft bend in the knees.
Take a deep breath into your stomach, pushing your hips back, aiming to get your torso to a 45-degree to 90-degree angle (you should feel a stretch in your hamstrings whilst maintaining a neutral spine).
Pause, before returning to starting position, thrusting your hips forward, squeezing your glutes and hamstrings.
Good Mornings can be a difficult movement to master! Read our Ultimate Guide To Good Mornings for tips on mastering the hip hing plus form tips and advice on sets and reps!
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Hamstring Exercises With Dumbbells & Kettlebells
Single Leg Romanian Deadlifts
A test of courage, as well as balance; The Single Leg RDL is a unilateral exercise, making it a more challenging variation of the regular Romanian Deadlift we covered earlier.
The Single-Leg RDL is generally performed with a singular dumbbell, and this study found it to be one of the best hamstring exercises for targeting the biceps femoris [1]. By isolating the entirety of the load into one leg, you’ll be able to focus on building one leg at a time.
If you're new to this one, start without any weight before proceeding to use a kettlebell or dumbbell for increased resistance.
How To Do Single Leg RDLs:
Stand with feet directly under hips. Lift one foot up, bending the knee to rest the tips of your toes on the floor. This will be leg the moves.
Most of your weight should now be through the opposite leg, foot planted firmly on the floor, keeping a soft knee. This with be the working leg.
Begin the movement by hinging at the hips, pushing your butt back, straightening the bent leg out behind you as your lean your torso forward. Make sure to not come below parallel and maintain a neutral spine throughout. Hips and shoulders should stay square i.e. you don't lead over to one side or twist.
Pause for a second, then return to an upright position, bringing the back leg back in, resting the toe back on the floor where you started.
Repeat for 10 repetitions, then switch legs and perform on the other side.
Bulgarian Split Squats
Bulgarian split squats are often seen as more of a quad exercise, but they are actually a great all-rounder for building bigger, stronger legs - whilst also developing your posterior chain as a whole.
The Bulgarian split squat is a unilateral leg exercise that places increased stress through the leg muscles, resulting in an utterly miserable, but effective leg exercise - no pain no gain, right!?
Try this exercise using just your body weight at first as it can be hard to balance! Once you feel comfortable with the movement, perform this exercise with a pair of dumbbells or even a heavier barbell if you’re feeling really confident!
How To Do A Bulgarian Split Squat:
Stand perpendicular to a flat bench (or box), 2-4 feet out from it, depending on your leg length. Hinge forward to pick up the dumbbells (if opting to use them), holding one in each hand, arms fully extended by your side.
Take one leg back, resting the tops of your shoelaces on the bench top. Brace your core, keep your chest proud, and squeeze your shoulder blades together to stabilize yourself. Keep your eyes focused on a spot ahead of you.
Lower yourself down, bending the front leg, aiming to get the back knee close to the ground, but not touching it. In the bottom position, your front leg should be bent at a 90-degree angle, quad parallel to the floor, knee in line with toe. Keep your chest up and core braced throughout.
Pause, then reverse the movement, pushing through your front foot and squeezing your glutes to drive yourself back to the starting position, straightening the front leg but not locking it out at the top.
Repeat for the desired rep range, then swap legs.
Bulgarian Split Squats can be a little tricky to master. For help setting up and tips for perfect form, read our Bulgarian Split Squat Guide.
Kettlebell Swings
We’re taking things up a notch now and picking up the pace! Kettlebell swings are a favorite in CrossFit WODs, F45 workouts, and more – but did you know that they not only train the ‘hinge’ movement pattern used across many hamstring exercises, but are ideal for developing strength, building power, and growing your hamstrings?
Don’t just take our word for it – studies back this up, finding Kettlebell Swings to be one of the most effective hamstring exercises for activating the biceps femoris [1].
Whilst you could go light with the weight, rep out more sets, and increase your heart rate pretty high, we’d suggest loading up with a kettlebell on the heavier side to build big hamstrings – just make sure you nail the form and technique first! Add these to a superset or a circuit during your hamstring workouts.
How To Do Kettlebell Swings:
Place the kettlebell roughly 1-1.5 feet in front of you. Position your feet slightly wider than shoulder width, toes pointing forward or slightly out at 45 degrees.
Hinge down to take hold of the handle, pushing your hips back, bending your knees slightly and keeping a flat back. Pull your shoulder blades back and down to engage your lats.
Contact your lats, swinging the kettlebell back between your legs. Weight should be kept in your hips and you should feel a load in your hamstrings.
Use momentum to swing the kettlebell up in line with your eyes, keeping your arms loose to allow the kettlebell to swing freely and squeezing your glutes to generate power. Your knees should straighten and your torso move into an upright position. Brace your core at the top.
Let the kettlebell naturally fall, bringing it back between your legs before swinging it back up for another rep.
When you have completed the prescribed reps, place the kettlebell back on the floor in your starting position.
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Machine Hamstring Exercises
Seated Hamstring curls
Few exercises isolate the hamstrings as well as seated hamstring curls do. Also referred to as seated leg curls, this hamstring exercise specifically targets the inner side of the hamstrings (the semitendinosus).
Seated hamstring curls have become a favorite amongst bodybuilders trying to build well-proportioned legs. Even if you aren’t a bodybuilder, if your quads are significantly larger than your hamstrings, you can use seated hamstring curls to correct muscle imbalances between the front and back of the leg muscles. Aesthetics aside, ironing out muscular imbalances is important for minimizing risk of injury, such as ACL tears or knee injuries, making seated hamstring curls one of the best exercises to focus on building your hamstring muscles.
How To Do Seated Hamstring Curls:
Select an appropriate weight with the pin load. Adjust the seat back on the seated hamstring curl machine so that when seated, the end of the seat comes to about three-quarters of the way down your hamstrings, just above the back of your knees.
Lift your legs to sit on the padded lever. It should sit just below your calve muscles, on your achilles (you may need to use the lever to adjust if necessary).
Move the other pad so it sits on the top of your quads. Place your hands on the handles of that pad, or use the handles down by your side (this may vary depending on the machine you are using).
Begin the movement: curl your legs down, pulling the padded lever back as far as you can.
Pause for a second, squeezing your hamstrings, before straightening your legs to slowly return to starting position. Repeat.
Tip: Focus on an explosive concentric phase (inward movement) for 1 second and a controlled eccentric phase (releasing movement) for 3 seconds.
Superset seated hamstring curls with leg extensions for ultimate well-rounded leg development.
Prone Leg Curls
Like the seated hamstring curl, the prone leg curl, or lying leg curl, is an isolation exercise designed to purely target your hamstrings. Prone leg curls will, however, emphasize the outer hamstrings more (the biceps femoris) than the seated leg curl variation.
Prone leg curls can be used for building strength across lower rep ranges, but are best when used for hypertrophy or high-rep training to failure - allowing you to exhaust your hamstrings with no risk of dropping weight or losing balance. For this reason, prone leg curls are often performed at the end of a hamstring focused leg day to increase total volume through the hamstring muscle.
How To Do Prone Leg Curls:
Set the lying leg curl machine to an appropriate weight using the pin stack.
Adjust the round pad so it rests just above your ankle (on your achilles) when lying down.
Lie face down on the machine, placing your ankles underneath the pad and taking hold of the handles at the front of the machine.
Keeping your body flat against the bench, curl your legs up, bringing the pad as close to your glutes as you can.
Pause, squeezing your hamstrings for a second, then reverse the movement, controlling the weight as you straighten your legs.
Tip: Just like the seated hamstring curl, during the prone leg curl you should try and move fast on the concentric phase, and slow and controlled on the eccentric phase.
Struggling to choose between the seated leg curl and the prone leg curl? We put the two test the test.
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Ready To Build Big Hamstrings?
We know you’re probably eager to start building your hammies right away, but that doesn’t mean you need to do all these hamstring exercises at once. It's best to choose a few of the above exercises and focus on technique and strength development.
A recent study found that the best hamstring exercises for muscle activation were:
Kettlebell Swings
Single-Leg Romanian Deadlift
Prone Hamstring Curl
You could pair the 3 hamstring exercises above, with another exercise from our leg day guide for the ultimate leg workout!
Hamstring Exercises FAQs
The hamstrings’ main role is to flex the knee and extend the hip. Choosing exercises that allow you to add resistance while performing these movements will help you strengthen and grow your hamstrings.
You can target your hamstrings through a combination of compound exercises that work multiple muscle groups, or isolation exercises, that target solely the hamstrings. The best hamstring exercises in this article are a great place to start! Usually, you would focus on compound movements such as deadlifts or Bulgarian split squats at the start of your workout and then move onto isolation exercises such as the hamstring curl or prone leg curl to isolate the hamstrings, iron out imbalances, and create well-rounded legs in the second half of your hamstring focused leg day.
Without a doubt, yes! Your hamstring muscles make up 1/3 of your leg mass and are critical in everyday movements. Stronger, more conditioned hamstrings will help you jump higher, run faster, and be more explosive in any sport.
Strengthening your hamstrings will also improve your posture, particularly if you spend large amounts of your day sitting down. Strong hamstrings help to stabilize your hips and keep your spine properly aligned, easing lower back tightness and helping to prevent injury. Plus, did we mention strong hamstrings look great? It’s all very well training your quads, but giving time to hamstring exercises on leg day is vital to building well-rounded legs.
In short, yes, but if building big hamstrings is your main goal, then squats wouldn’t be top of our list for the best hamstring exercises. Why? Because when you squat, you bend the knee and hip at the same time, meaning the length of the hamstring hardly changes. To fully recruit the hamstrings, you need to dramatically lengthen or shorten them, which doesn’t happen during squats.
If hamstring strengthening exercises are your priority, focus on movements such as the Romanian deadlift and prone hamstring curl, which have been proven to activate the specific hamstring muscles to greater effect compared to squats (study) [3].
You don’t need a gym and lots of equipment to get a good hamstring workout in. If you’re lucky enough to have dumbbells or kettlebells at home, then you’ll be able to perform dumbbell single leg RDLs, Bulgarian split squats, and kettlebell swings at home. You can also perform deadlifts, RDLs, and prone leg curls using dumbbells (for the last one, you’ll need to place a single dumbbell between your feet when lying on the floor).
If you don’t have any free weights, using a resistance band can be a great way to add resistance to any of these hamstring exercises from home.
Check out our guide on How To Use Resistance Bands To Get The Most From Your Workouts.
If you don’t have any equipment at all, you can do many of these exercises using just your body weight. If building hamstring strength is your goal, we would highly recommend investing in at least a couple of resistance bands, however, as this will be more effective in helping you to build strength, compared to high rep, lighter weight bodyweight training.
To strengthen your hamstring muscles, hamstring exercises should be performed at least twice a week. How you do so will vary depending on your training split [4].
If you work to an upper-lower split, you may have two leg days a week, with one hamstring-focused leg day and one quad-focused leg day (that still works the hamstrings during compound exercises). Or, you might work to a push-pull-legs split, which sees you focus equally on the glutes, hamstrings, and quads during one leg session. This would be a good opportunity to implement supersets of isolation exercises following your main compound lifts, for example supersetting the hamstring curl machine with the leg extension machine, to work two opposing muscle groups back-to-back to maximize leg gains.
Many people don’t appreciate this underrated benefit of training hamstrings: building well-developed hamstrings does, in turn, improve the appearance of your glutes. By building strong, toned hamstring muscles, you’ll accentuate your lower glutes, therefore making your butt look rounder, perkier and peachier!
Looking to grow your glutes even more? Check out our Best Glute Exercises To Increase Size And Strength
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WRITTEN BY: CHRIS BECK
Chris Beck is Senior Editor at Gymshark, with a passion for curating informative conditioning and health content. Chris is an experienced Personal Trainer, and also holds qualifications in Nutrition, Sports Performance and is a certified Crossfit Level 1 Trainer.
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References:
Green, D.J. (2018). ACE - CertifiedTM: February 2018 - ACE-SPONSORED RESEARCH: What Is the Best Exercise for the Hamstrings? [online] www.acefitness.org. Available at: https://www.acefitness.org/continuing-education/certified/february-2018/6896/ace-sponsored-research-what-is-the-best-exercise-for-the-hamstrings/.
www.acefitness.org. (2018). New Research Determines Which Hamstrings Exercises Yield The Best Results. [online] Available at: https://www.acefitness.org/about-ace/press-room/press-releases/6935/new-research-determines-which-hamstrings-exercises-yield-the-best-results/.
Ebben, W.P., Leigh, D.H. and Jensen, R.L. (2000). The Role of the Back Squat as a Hamstring Training Stimulus. Strength and Conditioning Journal, 22(5), p.15. doi:https://doi.org/10.1519/00126548-200010000-00004.
Schoenfeld, B.J., Ogborn, D. and Krieger, J.W. (2016). Effects of Resistance Training Frequency on Measures of Muscle Hypertrophy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Sports Medicine, [online] 46(11), pp.1689–1697. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-016-0543-8.
