I train in a commercial gym, and they don’t have anything to do GHR’s or reverse hypers. The only way we’ve found is to do GHR’s the old fashioned way, working the eccentric on the floor with a partner holding your legs. However I definetely feel like it’s a bitch to perform, and these days I end up training alone a lot because my regular training partner has had surgery and is out of the game for a while.
I’ve had a bit of an issue with stiff legged deadlifts in the past and found that they overstressed my low back quite a bit. So I’m looking for other options to bring my hams back up because I feel like they are definetely holding back my squats. I tried the one legged stiff legged DL’s with little success, because with anything above 50 lbs (dumbbells) I end up losing balance before I get a chance to work my hams.
I’m currently doing some snatch grip DL’s from a deficit and haven’t been doing any conventional pulling for a while now. So my question is - Are snatch grip DL’s (on top of some box squatting) enough to ensure proper hamstring development or do I need to be doing more? I could dabble into the SLDL’s once more and hope to not get injured again. Or maybe some good mornings?
[quote]PPK wrote:
I train in a commercial gym, and they don’t have anything to do GHR’s or reverse hypers. The only way we’ve found is to do GHR’s the old fashioned way, working the eccentric on the floor with a partner holding your legs. However I definetely feel like it’s a bitch to perform, and these days I end up training alone a lot because my regular training partner has had surgery and is out of the game for a while.
I’ve had a bit of an issue with stiff legged deadlifts in the past and found that they overstressed my low back quite a bit. So I’m looking for other options to bring my hams back up because I feel like they are definetely holding back my squats. I tried the one legged stiff legged DL’s with little success, because with anything above 50 lbs (dumbbells) I end up losing balance before I get a chance to work my hams.
I’m currently doing some snatch grip DL’s from a deficit and haven’t been doing any conventional pulling for a while now. So my question is - Are snatch grip DL’s (on top of some box squatting) enough to ensure proper hamstring development or do I need to be doing more? I could dabble into the SLDL’s once more and hope to not get injured again. Or maybe some good mornings?
Thanks in advance people.[/quote]
Romanian Deads, Good mornings(do many variations), pull throughs, even some leg curls every now and then for high reps just for added volume to your hamstrings.
Also make sure your technique is solid on your squats and deadlifts.
And btw, what did your training partner have surgery on?
I’m constantly seeking to make my technique better… Now I know I’ve gotten it to a point where I can say that it’s decent but I don’t think it’ll ever be perfect. He had surgery on something in his lower intestines that caused pain when he had to take a shit. I think they cut up his lower abs/obliques to fix it… Haven’t seen it, but I’m guessin it’s not pretty.
He’s out for 4-5 more weeks I think.
Good idea on the high rep leg curls… Can’t say I would’ve thought about this one myself. I had forgotten those in the abyss of BBing single joint movements a while ago.
The hammies are fast-twitch muscles. You’d be better off doing leg curls for 4-5 sets of 5-6 reps with the heaviest weight you can muster. Do these twice a week- early in the week with heavy weights, and then later in the week with 75-80% of the weights you did on the first day. Really concentrate on exploding the weight up during the concentric phase.
A couple ideas for going GHRs alone: Lock your feet under the DB rack, or you can use a smith machine. Lower the bar all the way down and load a few plates on each side so it won’t move.
For quite some time now I have relied on squats/goodmornings/RDLs/pull throughs for the vast majority of my lower body work. I went from having almost non existant hammies (literally no visual change when I flexed at the knee) and a half assed squat to having good sized legs and soon hope to hit 2xBW squat for 5 reps.
another good exercise is 45 degree back raises, I just started doing these again but my gym took the piece of equipment out to have it recovered/painted.
Finally if anything is causeing you injury I would look at the execution of the lift and not the lift itself. There isnt anything inherently wrong with SLDLs but if you useing crappy form its easy to hurt yourself.
[quote]OKLAHOMA STATE wrote:
The hammies are fast-twitch muscles. You’d be better off doing leg curls for 4-5 sets of 5-6 reps with the heaviest weight you can muster. Do these twice a week- early in the week with heavy weights, and then later in the week with 75-80% of the weights you did on the first day. Really concentrate on exploding the weight up during the concentric phase.[/quote]
Highly disagree with this. The hamstrings may be “fast-twitch” muscles, but going heavy on a fucking leg curl is just gay.
I suggested leg curls for high reps because if he is already doing heavy gms, sqs, and pulls throwing some high-rep leg curls will just give him more volume work for his hamstrings. The leg curl certainly isn’t going to be the cornerstone of his training, rather an accessory or finishing move to get a lot of blood to the muscle.
Some exercises just aren’t meant to go heavy on. Would you do 5x5 for some tricep pushdowns?