Nordic Hamstring Curl

Execution

1. Make one straight line from knees to head, squeezing your glutes and bracing your belly.
2. Inhale and lower forward as slowly as you can, refusing to let the hips fold.
3. Hold on until you cannot resist any more, then catch yourself with both hands on the floor.
4. Push off your hands to get back to kneeling, because that push-up back is expected and necessary.
5. Start with 3 reps a session and only add more when you are not badly sore two days later.
6. Cramping or a sharp pain in the back of the thigh ends the session and sends you back to the dumbbell hinge.

Quick cues

• One line from knees to head.
• Lower as slowly as you can.
• Fall like a felled tree.
• Three reps is a full first session.
• The hips never fold.

Common faults

• Fault: Folding at the hips so it becomes a bow instead of a whole-body lower

  Fix: Squeeze the glutes throughout and run a dowel down your back to check the line holds.

• Fault: Free-falling and only then putting the hands down

  Fix: Loop a band across your chest to a high anchor behind you to share the load for the first six weeks.

• Fault: Doing 10 reps in the first session and being wrecked for a week

  Fix: Cap the first session at 3 reps and add 1 rep every two weeks.

• Fault: Hooking the heels under something that gives way

  Fix: Get a partner to hold your ankles, or use the bottom bar of a loaded power rack.