At 44, as a novice, I struggle to do quads and Hamstrings on the same leg day so I’ve been splitting leg day into 2 days each week. My quad day is leg extensions, hanging leg raises, and squats. This is really working well for me. I do calves both days.
Quads: Mondays
Hams: Thursdays
My Hamstring day is working well also but I think I need to rearrange it.
Here’s my current hamstring/Posterior chain day. Excluding warmup stuff.
*Calf raises 1 dropset (6 weight drops) each weight to fail.
*Romanian Deadlift 3x10 (currently using 225)
*Back Hyper extensions 3 sets AMRAP
*Seated Leg Curls 1 dropset, 6 weight drops, all weights to failure.
Occasionally I’ll swap the RDL for sumo deadlift.
So far my hams are growing better than ever (so are my quads for that matter)
However, how would you arrange that ham day? What other exercises do you suggest I add? I don’t have a Nordic or glute-ham chair at my gym unfortunately.
Note, my goal is general fitness/physique. I’m not a competitive lifter and not using gear.
Exercises really matter very little. Pick any 2 you like, progress on them and you will gain like 95% of the muscle in that group you possibly can. I have never heard anyone say smth like “you can see by his legs that he does rdls and doesnt do any leg curls”. It is impossible to determine which exercises were used by a certain person by his body. Which means that its the training stimulus and genetics, not exercises as such. Do the ones that feel good in the muscle and that are easiest to overload long term…thats it.
I’d probably do the leg curls first, but that’s minor.
I’d likely pair hamstrings with delts on that day to get a little more out of my trip to the gym, but that’s a bit tangential to your question.
Honestly, if your goal is to grow your hamstrings, and you say they’re growing better than ever, my “now” advice would be to change nothing. Like @RT_Nomad, do it until it stops being awesome, then do something else! I often have to remind myself the same.
Do believe athletes need to lift stuff off the ground in their strength training?
Like, it is important to for everyone to be able to lift “dead” weights, without the eccentric? Is that a “skill” that’s important and everyone needs to work on?
Or is it enough to do top down stuff like RDLs to strengthen the posterior, (or whatever else) and then just practice the motions of your sport in sport practice?
FWIW - I never did a single deadlift until after my playing days were done. I’m not saying that’s the answer, but that’s the way it was and we liked it
Is it a useful skill in general? Sure, but I wouldn’t call it a priority when looking at the majority of sports. Athletes who are bigger and stronger in general will probably improve their ability to pick stuff up off the ground.
My gut says yes. Strength training is mainly for two things in my opinion:
Make athletes physically robust
Give athletes the ability to produce high outputs
Physical robustness refers to the ability to create force in somewhat “extreme” positions, and the “quality” of athletes’ connective tissues. Both of these things are likely better trained by RDLs
Training output comes down to training the far right and far left of the force-velocity curve. If I want to train max strength, the far right, I’m going to choose the exercise that allows athletes to shift the most load. This would be a trap bar deadlift. If I want to train speed, I’m going to have my athletes sprint and jump, and maybe olympic lift.
Deadlifts, in my opinion, are a jack of all trades, master of none sort of exercise. Pretty much any adaptation I’d look to create in a program (other than getting better at deadlift) could be trained better by something other than a conventional deadlift
The first six years I lifted weights I never did a deadlift. But I did do hanging cleans.
When I decided to try powerlifting I started doing deadlifts. They seemed fairly productive, but who knows, maybe they were of no benefit to my physique.
When I hurt my back (pretty badly) I quit deadlifting (and squats) for the next 12 years. Did I miss deadlifting? Yes. I was pretty good at deadlifting.
The next few years I did some 10 rep deadlifts after doing bent over barbell rows on Back day, until I got an autoimmune disease.
Trying to make a comeback from my disease, I did some reverse band accommodated deadlifts. I thought they were beneficial. I liked it heavy at the top.
Currently, at 74 years old, I rarely deadlift, but if I do I only do 135lbs for 10 reps (artificial hips).
So I never did a deadlift when I played sports, BUT that did become a gap when I was in the Army. Much of our job involved being in a 15-degree forward lean while anteriorly loaded for long periods of time - still and moving. It also seemed like there was always something that needed to be lifted off the ground. Getting better at deadlifts here was an absolute must. I was not strong enough at the beginning. I don’t necessarily think it contributed to my injuries, but it was something I found I had to shore up quickly when I got into it. In fact, I think deads could be your main lift along with some pullups and low back extensions.
So, I guess my moral is, it depends on the sport/ athlete.
Last year I did a lot of traditional deadlift but found RDL to be much more appropriate to my goals and didn’t quite push my 44 year old body into overtraining.
Standard deadlift is great and I do throw in a few sets on occasion just to keep form in memory but for Posterior chain, it doesn’t seem to focus like RDL.
I got away from Anteriorly Loaded, bottom to top stuff for awhile, and before long I wasn’t strong enough to do the yard work anymore. I lost my robustness.
Then I did stuff like 45 degree back raises with a barbell starting on the ground, 1 leg RDLs with a kettlebell on the ground, deadlift isometrics barely lifting the bar off pins(sometimes paired with jumps) and now I’m robust again.
Some baseball coaches were the first guys I heard talk about using the Isos that way. They were trying to match the height and foot position of the pulls to specific areas for different athletes. Like narrow stance, near the knees for batting and wide stance near the ground for pitching. I thought it was pretty neat.
Then when I looked around more, track guys were into it too.
And isos with jumps were slightly less boring than just the isometrics.
