I work out at home with a power rack. I don’t have one of those machines to work my hamstrings. What can I do to work them ?
Also, I recently had surgery, and am fully recovered. I can start lifting again, and today was my first day. I’m training in accordance with The Waterbury Method (10x3), and I was doing squats today when all of a sudden my left leg began cramping like CRAZY. I mean my muscles were being tied into knots. I know its my first day back, and I did take it slow. I stretched, warmed up with some really light weight, and then jumped right into it. How can I prevent the cramps? (they were pretty bad, scary almost). Stretching? Nutrition? Using lighter weight? longer warmup? what can i do? Thanks in advance.
Stiff leg or Romanian deadlifts. These work great on the posterior chain and I find that the stretch under tension actually stops my hamstrings from cramping.
Also, there is a lot of controversy about stretching before strength exercises actually weakening the muscle for the lift. I say get a good warm up but leave the stretching to be done separately.
It seems that there is a laundry list of stuff that can help, most mentioned here too, in the Westside methods. They really emphasize the posterior chain, and the hammies are hit hard. This is where I get my stuff for the posterior chain. They say that the power rack accomplishes nearly all of your lifting needs if you’re strapped on equipment, so you should get pretty far in that aspect.
[quote]JMB wrote:
You mean other than deads and goodmornings? Think I’ve heard something about King deads burning up the hammies. Also Sitting GMs. Check out: http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=459875
The glute/ham raise mentioned in this article is a great ham ( and low back) exercise that I do on a regular basis. My problem was I do not use a workout partner so I have no one to hold my feet. I place the rack at upper thigh level with the bar loaded with 225 lbs. Then I place an incline bench under the bar with the incline set to be about 3-4" below the bar. This creates a foot hold where the back of the heel catches on the bar and the anterior lower leg is on the bench with knees pointing down the incline. This creates a good angle and allows me to do this killer exercise w/o a partner. I can also adjust the incline if needed for +/- resistance or differing angles. You have to be patient in developing the ability to do this exercise becasue at first it is hard and you most likely wont’ be able to do many reps (if any unassisted)but well worth it.
Maybe you “jumped right into it” a bit too soon. After a layoff I always prefer to take a week of light to moderate full-body workouts to get back into the flow and see how the body feels before trying to get in there just to see how strong I am. It’s tempting, I know, to see how much you can still lift after a break but this can do more damage than good if you’re not careful.
goodmornings, rdl’s, sldl’s, 1-leg variations of all them, 1-leg back extensions, zecher goodmornings, waiters bow’s, seated goodmornings, dimel dl, nghr… theres a lot you can do without a ghr or reverse hyper