Best and Worst Hamstring Exercises for the Posterior Chain
The hamstrings play a crucial role in running and agility-based sports and aesthetics. Well-developed hamstrings balance out the quads and are vital for strong hip extension and knee flexion, making them essential for movements like sprinting, jumping, and heavy lifting.
However, hamstrings are often overshadowed by the quads in many leg workouts, leading to muscular imbalance, reduced athletic performance, and a higher risk of injury.
In this article, we’ll break down the best and worst hamstring exercises so you can optimize your training and maximize growth while avoiding ineffective workouts for your hamstrings.
The hamstrings are a group of three muscles that run at the back of your thing. When you decelerate, the hamstrings produce a powerful contraction to control the knees and pelvis, allowing you to suddenly stop or shift to another direction rapidly.
When the hamstrings are strong and well-developed, they stabilize the pelvis and reduce the risk of overuse injuries to knees, particularly in sports that require sudden change in direction or abrupt stopping from running motion.
If you optimize your hamstring workouts and consistently perform them, you can effectively increase the size of your hamstrings, making them more prominent and allowing a more developed posterior chain that complements the quads and glutes.
The hamstrings consist of three primary muscles:
- Semimembranosus (inner part)
- Semitendinosus (middle part)
- Bicep Femoris (outside part)
The semimembranosus, semitendinosus, and long head of the biceps femoris cross both the hip and knee joints, contributing to hip extension and knee flexion. The short head of the biceps femoris only crosses the knee joint, meaning it contributes to knee flexion.
We’ve chosen the best exercises based on their ability to engage the hamstring muscles effectively, maximize the range of motion, limit compensatory movements, and allow optimal progressive overload.
The semimembranosus is one of the medial hamstrings on the inner side of the back of your thigh. Its primary functions are hip extension and knee flexion, making it essential for athletic movements like sprinting, jumping, and deadlifting.
To optimize training for the semimembranosus, you need exercises that stretch and contract this muscle fully, engaging both the hip and knee joints.
Squats are a go-to exercise for lower body development, but they’re surprisingly ineffective at targeting the hamstrings, especially the semimembranosus.
Studies have shown squats are among the least effective movements for hamstring engagement. They primarily focus on knee extension, with the quads and glutes doing most of the work. During squats, the semimembranosus doesn’t experience much tension because it is stretched at the hips and shortened at the knees simultaneously, canceling out its overall activation.
This exercise requires to perform knee flexion while stabilizing the hips, which fully engages the semimembranosus. This dual action improves strength and coordination between the hamstrings and glutes.
The GHD is especially great for targeting glutes and hamstrings, which helps strengthen your posterior muscles.
Other great exercises for the semimembranosus:
The semitendinosus is the middle part of the hamstrings, located between the semimembranosus and biceps femoris long head. It stabilizes the hip and knee joints during functional movements.
Developing this section of the hamstrings helps improve athletic performance and prevent running injuries.
While seated leg curls isolate knee flexion, they don’t mimic how hamstrings work during physical activities.
The semitendinosus's primary role is to stabilize and extend the hip during standing, sprinting, and jumping movements.
Seated leg curls don’t involve the glutes or require hip stabilization, making them less effective for real-world hamstring function. Relying too much on this type of isolation work can even increase injury risk by failing to train the hamstrings in their natural role.
The Single-leg Romanian Deadlift fully engages the hamstrings by emphasizing on hip extension during the movement. By slightly bending in the knees and pushing the hips back, you can effectively engage and place significant tension on the semimembranosus muscle, providing you with enough stimulus for muscle growth.
SRDLs also allow a deep stretch on the hamstrings, particularly on the hips. As the hips move through a greater range of motion, the semitendinosus is activated to its full length, making it one of the top inner hamstring builders.
Other great exercises for the semitendinosus:
The biceps femoris is one of the two lateral hamstring muscles, consisting of two distinct parts: the long head and the short head.
The long head of the biceps femoris functions in both hip extension and knee flexion, while the short head only acts on knee flexion. This unique structure makes the biceps femoris crucial for stability and strength during movements like running, jumping, and lifting.
While deadlifts are great for activating the hamstrings and posterior chain, the hex bar variation dramatically shifts the emphasis away from the hamstrings to the quadriceps.
This exercise places the lifter in a more upright position, which reduces the involvement of the posterior chain, including the bicep femoris, making it a suboptimal choice for hamstring development.
Lying leg curls are one of the most effective exercises for isolating the bicep femoris. EMG studies have shown that lying leg curls activate even the lower portion of the hamstrings more effectively than hip extension exercises, which is critical for targeting both heads of the bicep femoris.
Other great exercises for the bicep femoris:
To optimize posterior chain strength and development, you also need to work on your glutes. The glutes and hamstrings operate synergistically to generate power, maintain balance, and provide stability during athletic and everyday activities.
When you stand, jump, or sprint, the hamstrings and glutes contract simultaneously to extend the hip joint, which propels your body forward or upward. The hamstrings are often viewed as the primary movers during hip extension, but the gluteal muscles, particularly the gluteus maximus, play a major role in stabilizing the pelvis and generating force.
Take romanian deadlifts for example, both hamstrings and glutes are highly active during the exercise. In deadlifts, the glutes assist in extending the hips and provide stability to ensure proper hip alignment, while shifting the focus on the hamstrings.
In exercises like the barbell hip thrust and glute bridge, the glutes take on the majority of the workload, but the hamstrings play a secondary role in supporting hip extension. Conversely, in exercises like the Nordic hamstring curl or lying leg curl, the hamstrings are the primary focus, but the glutes are still involved in stabilizing the hip and preventing excessive movement.
Strong glutes support the hamstrings by taking pressure off them during explosive movements, while well-developed hamstrings ensure that the glutes can generate force without the risk of injury.
Here’s a plan for women that will help you target your hamstrings:
And for men:
To develop strong, balanced hamstrings, it's essential to incorporate both hip extension and knee flexion exercises.
If you’re looking to target the hamstrings directly, avoid exercises like squats and leg presses, as they lack the necessary muscle stretch and tension. Instead, focus on movements like Romanian deadlifts, glute-ham raises, and lying leg curls to engage the hamstring muscles and maximize your results fully.
Remember: Effective hamstring training requires exercises that create a deep stretch and tension across the muscle, with both low and high-rep ranges to hit all fiber types.