My gym recently got a Hammer seated leg curl machine. Last night, I alternated 5x5 squats to just below parallel (311 tempo) and the seated leg curls with 90 seconds in between. I normally do ass-to-grass squats, but I’m trying to train differently for a couple of weeks.
Do seated leg curls actually tax the quadriceps slightly? I feel a contraction at the end of the movement that I don’t get with the lying variety.
Does anyone think leg curls of the seated variety–via the hamstrings or the quads–are going to hold back the load I can squat from parallel?
you did the workout, so you should know if it curtailed your poundages.thats pretty much an individual thing.
I guess you could be taxing the quad since you are stretching it when the hamstring is fully contracted. If you do a search on t-mag, you can see that stretching a muscle during training isn’t a good idea.
In faith,
Sam
Well, I did the FIRST workout, where I wasn’t pushing to the limit. I thought people may have seen some EMG studies, or might relay their experiences with doing lying leg curls and squats, a common pairing.
That’s an interesting point, Sam. I hadn’t thought of it like that.
did you feel excessive fatigue in your quads, i mean more than normal? there is probably some carryover, but i couldnt answer you for sure. if you’re tryin to move big weights you should probably concentrate on that first, then do leg curls as assistance work. but i know both poliquin and waterbury like to superset compound movements with big weights, and they obviously know whats goin on. give it a go for a bit and let us know.
peace, flash
Just wanted to share my experience. It seems that with this machine there is a way to get a isometric contraction with the quads at the end, yet it does not seem (to me) to relax the hamstrings.
But you can avoid this isometric action of the quads by accelerating the load for the full ROM and without pausing, resisting the weight for the eccentric phase, so that only for a split second between the two phases the weight starts to drop on its own.
Thanks for everyone’s input before.