reckonerStanding cable leg curl
A hamstring curl on a low pulley, standing on one leg with a strap around the other ankle. It gives a gym with cables but no leg curl machine a way to train knee flexion. The thigh stays still and only the lower leg moves.
Curl the heel back, thigh stays still.
- Pattern
- Knee isolation
- Trains
- Hamstrings
- Kit
- Cable
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 sets of 10 to 15 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 2.5 kg once the top of the range is clean
- Skill
- Some technique
- Recovery cost
- Very low
Muscles worked
How to do it
Clip the strap and face the machine
Fasten an ankle strap around one ankle and clip it to a low pulley. Face the stack and hold the frame with both hands, so balance is not what ends the set.
Stand tall with hips square
Step back so the cable is taut. Keep your hips square to the machine and the working thigh in line with the standing one, because a thigh that moves turns the curl into a kickback.
Curl the heel back
Bend the knee and bring your heel toward your glutes. The thigh stays where it is, pointing at the floor.
Lower slowly, then switch
Straighten the leg under control. Finish every rep on one leg, then do the other, so each side gets the same set.
What goes wrong
Swinging the thigh back
Kicking the whole leg back moves more weight, so it feels strong. It becomes a glute kickback. Keep the knee pointing down and move only the lower leg.
Leaning into the frame
Leaning forward feels like bracing for a hard rep. The hips twist and help. Stand tall, hips square.
Short reps at the bottom
Stopping before the leg is straight keeps tension on and the reps quick. Letting the leg straighten fully is part of the rep. Lower all the way every time.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 10 kg, 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 at 10 kg | 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 at 10 kg | 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 at 10 kg | 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 at 10 kg | 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 at 10 kg | 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 at 10 kg | 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
Seated, lying or standing leg curl?
In a twelve week trial, the seated leg curl, done with the hips bent, grew the hamstrings more than the lying curl, done with the hips straight1. The standing cable curl is hips straight like the lying one, so prefer the seated machine when your gym has it.
Do squats train the hamstrings enough?
Not much. In a ten week trial, squats grew the thighs and glutes but left hamstring size unchanged2. A curl is how you train them directly.
Will Reckoner put this in my plan?
It can, in a gym with cables, including when you travel. It sits in the leg curl group, it is logged one leg at a time, and no restriction is recorded against it.
Similar movements
Reckoner eases the load first when this lift stalls, and offers one of these only if it stalls again after that. A lift already as light as your kit goes has no load left to ease, so the offer comes straight away. 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
- Kubo, Ikebukuro and Yata, European Journal of Applied Physiology, 2019. Effects of squat training with different depths on lower limb muscle volumes seventeen men over ten weeks of full or half squats, with hamstring volume not changing in either group