reckonerGlute ham raise
A hamstring curl where your body is the weight. You lock your feet into the glute ham bench, keep your hips straight, lower your torso forward, then curl yourself back up from the knees. It is hard, and it is one of the few ways to load the hamstrings heavily with no plates.
Curl up from the knees, hips stay straight.
- Pattern
- Knee isolation
- Trains
- Hamstrings, glutes
- Kit
- Glute ham developer
- Loading
- Your own bodyweight
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 sets of 10 to 15 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- Nothing to add, so the sets climb instead
- Skill
- Technical
- Recovery cost
- Moderate
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Knee
Muscles worked
How to do it
Set the foot plate and pad
Set the foot plate so your knees sit right behind the pad and your feet are locked under the rollers. The pad has to sit on your thighs above the knee, so the knee can bend over it. Start upright on your knees.
Straight line from knees to shoulders
Squeeze your glutes so your hips stay straight. The movement happens at the knee, not at the hip, which is what keeps the hamstrings doing the curl.
Lower slowly
Let your body tip forward from the knees under control until you are close to level with the floor. The slow way down is half the work.
Curl back up with the hamstrings
Pull your heels into the rollers and curl yourself back up to upright, still with the hips straight.
What goes wrong
Folding at the hips
Bending the hips makes the hard part easier, so it happens without a decision. It turns into a back extension and the hamstrings do less of the curl. Keep the line straight.
Knees on the pad instead of behind it
Kneeling on the pad feels more stable. With the pad under your kneecaps, every rep presses on them. Set it so the pad sits on your thighs above the knee.
Dropping instead of lowering
Dropping gets you to the bottom of a rep you cannot yet control, so it feels like a full rep. The way down is half the work. Lower slowly and push off the floor with your hands to get back up.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, run through the real engine. Nothing below was typed in: the prescription, the decision and the sentence beside it all come from the same code that writes your week.
| Week | Prescribed | What it did |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 x 10 | More reps 10 → 11 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 3 x 11 | More reps 11 → 12 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 3 x 12 | More reps 12 → 13 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 3 x 13 | More reps 13 → 14 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 5 | 3 x 14 | Deload 40% of sets offFive weeks of building, then one week lighter. About 40% of the sets come off. The load holds and your reps stay where you earned them, so you keep the strength and lose the fatigue. |
| 6 | 2 x 14 | More reps 14 → 15 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. The lighter week is over, so this is back to three sets. |
Real engine output, not an illustration. Every row was produced by running the engine itself when this page was generated.
The full rule, and why the reps move before the load does, is in how Reckoner decides to add weight.
Questions people ask
Glute ham raise or leg curl?
Both train the hamstrings by bending the knee. On a leg curl you pick the weight. On a glute ham raise your body is the weight, so it starts hard and gets harder by slowing down. In one trial a leg curl with the hips bent grew the hamstrings more than one with the hips straight1, so a seated leg curl alongside it is worth having.
How do I work up to a full rep?
Lower slowly under control and use your hands to push back up, then shorten the range you need help with over the weeks.
Will Reckoner put this in my plan?
It can, once you are past the beginner stage, when your gym has a glute ham bench. It is not on any gym preset, so tick it in your equipment checklist. Knee is recorded against it.
Similar movements
There is no load to ease on this lift, so Reckoner offers one of these the first time it stalls. Each of them has a page.
Sources
- Maeo and colleagues, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 2021. Greater Hamstrings Muscle Hypertrophy but Similar Damage Protection after Training at Long versus Short Muscle Lengths twenty adults training one leg with seated and the other with prone leg curls for twelve weeks, whole hamstring volume rising 14 per cent seated against 9 per cent prone