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Nordic Hamstring Curls. What the heck are they and why am I hearing about them?
Simply put, Nordics are a knee dominant, hamstring strengthening exercise. They work by securing your ankles and using your own bodyweight to strengthen your hamstrings.
These can be met either with a ‘WTF face’, or a screwed up cringe face.
Let’s have a look at how they’re done —>
As you can see, they are extremely difficult. To control your body down, and then pull your whole bodyweight back up with nothing but your hamstrings is a feat in itself.
But you can get there too. Not without a bit of help though.
I have developed a FREE template so you can progressively work your way up to a Nordic curl. This program begins at a beginners level and gradually progresses difficulty and intensity so that you’re able to continue progressing and work your way to those infamous Nordic Curls.
“But why would I want to do that?”
I’m glad you asked.
1. They strengthen the Hamstrings like no other exercise. Using a lifting strategy of SUPRA-maximal loading (more than the muscles can lift), the you can expose the muscles to more loading than you usually would with like a hamstring curl machine or RDL.
2. They look cook AF! Check out this video of Dylan Shiel (then at the GWS Giants) now with Essendon doing a Nordic variation called the Razor curl. But for real, just like a pull-ups, push-ups or flagpole’s, doing bodyweight exercises just look good and test your ability to be able to lift your own weight against gravity.
Let’s have a quick look at hamstring strength and injury. One of the most common type of soft tissue injury in sports, not only in elite or professional athletes, but weekend warriors and social Steve’s and Suzan’s all over! Let’s break this down.
Now let’s go through hamstring injury physiology:
· You tear your hamstring, say it’s only a grade 1, 2 at the worst.
· Muscle fibres are torn, blood seeps out (bruising) and the macrophages and enzymes flood the injured site to clean the place up (redness and swelling).
· Then 24-48hrs (ish) after, once pain initial is managed, the muscles fibres start to repair itself. They do this my laying collagen fibres down on the injured site but instead of lying them down in the direction of the surrounding structures, they go all crossed and any kind of direction.
· Now the next week is important, because if you stay sedentary and immobile, those fibres with eventually harden and ‘set’ in that position, criss-crossed up. This is bad because this is the ‘calcified’ lump that many physio’s refer to after an injury and think they can just ‘rub’ it out with some massaging.
· So what we SHOULD do instead, is move, light active exercise (walking riding a bike etc.). This breaks down those collagen fibres that aren’t lying in the right direction and strengthens those that are lying in that direction of loading.
Skip forward another week and we’re now doing resistance exercises for the hamstrings. Progressively loading and progressing exercises further strengthening those fibres for the next 3-4 weeks and surrounding. You get to a point where the hamstring doesn’t even hurt anymore and you’re doing Nordic hamstring curls like a BOSS and hamstrings are feeling 100%.
You don’t need to be an experienced athlete to move through this program, I’d even recommend that athletes begin here also. You won’t get to attempt an unassisted Nordic curl until the final weeks. Before that, it’s about building capacity, strength and resilience before you try the Nordics. The program comes with links and instructions so you don’t have to stress about gym jargon.
If you want to build strong resilient hamstrings, see below.
If you know someone who might like it, share the blog and see below.
If you want to change up your current program with some spicy hamstring exercises, see below.
Finally, if you download it and do the program, tag me in your posts and stories @atp_performance_phys, let me know what you think and reach out if you have any questions.
PEACE.
TO RECEIVE THE PROGRAM, SIMPLY FOLLOW THE LINK, FILL IN YOUR INFO, DOWNLOAD THE PROGRAM