Seated or Lying Leg Curls for Big Hamstrings?

The current trendy programming talk is about strength and resistance profiles, also whether the muscle is getting more tension when its short or when its long. This makes things seem complicated and must need an exercise science degree to pick up some weights. Is this all just nerd sales strategies or is there true weight to this level of detail? It can get a bit nuanced but in general training the muscle at full length tend to promote more growth. This week let’s look at a more recent paper specially on hamstring growth.

Study:
Greater Hamstrings Muscle Hypertrophy but Similar Damage Protection after Training at Long versus Short Muscle Lengths. Maeo et al 2020.

Purpose:
Whether seated or lying leg curls would produce greater hamstring hypertrophy?

Design:

  • 20 untrained (13 male, 7 female) trained for 12 weeks
  • Unilateral within subject design (one leg trained seated leg curl, one leg training lying leg curl)
  • 5 sets of 10 reps 2x per week; loads were progressively increased across the training block. 2-minute rest between sets

Results:

Seated Hamstring curls caused more hypertrophy of:

  • Semitendinosus
  • Semimembranosus
  • Long head of the biceps femoris

Lying leg curls cause more hypertrophy of:

  • Sartorius

Both exercise matched hypertrophy of:

  • Short head of bicep femoris
  • Gracilis

Interpretation:      This study further supports along with the rest of the body of literature that training at greater muscle lengths produces more growth. The semitendinosus, semimembranosus, and long head of the bicep femoris are all knee flexors and hip extensors so in the seated leg curl position the muscles are stretched to longer lengths, Think of the stretch you feel in your hams bending over to touch you shoes compared to when you stand up straight. The sartoris is longer in the hip and knee extended position. While the bicep short head only crosses at the knee and gracilis is about lengthened the same in either position. So, this study actually showed the degree of muscle length was predictive of the amount of hypertrophy that occurred. Keep in mind the sartoris and gracilis and not massive muscles in comparison to the main hamstring muscles.

Takeaway:      Well that’s it I am never doing lying leg curl again! Okay that is NOT the takeaway from this. We should still use a variety of movements for full development of a muscle, but when faced with the choice of having to make a pick between an exercise you might want to lean in favor of the one training at full muscle lengths.
     

How do I implement both? Personally, on my hamstring focused leg day I start the session with a seated leg curl, then on my quad focused leg session of the week I start with a lying leg curl. Just one way to use variety within your training to ensure we get full muscular development.

Stay tuned! Full J3 University will be launching soon to take your coaching and physique game to a higher level!


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Train Hard!

John Jewett MS RD IFBB Pro

Reference Maeo S, Meng H, Yuhang W, Sakurai H, Kusagawa Y, Sugiyama T, Kanehisa H, Isaka T. Greater Hamstrings Muscle Hypertrophy but Similar Damage Protection after Training at Long versus Short Muscle Lengths. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2020 Oct 1. doi: 10.1249/MSS.0000000000002523. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33009197.

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