Hamstring workout: the hinge and the curl, at the gym and at home

The hamstrings are the muscles on the back of your thigh. Most of them cross two joints, the hip and the knee, so they have two jobs: they straighten the hip, as when you stand up out of a hinge, and they bend the knee, as in a leg curl. A hamstring workout that only does one of those leaves part of the muscle group undertrained.

This page covers why you need both kinds of exercise, a gym session, a home session with dumbbells, bands or no equipment, and how many sets a week. The two main lifts have their own pages: the Romanian deadlift for the hinge and the leg curl for the curl. The whole lower-body day is the leg day workout.

Two jobs, so two kinds of exercise

Squats don't cover them. In a nine-week trial, 34 untrained college-aged adults trained with either back squats or hip thrusts. Both grew the glutes, but the hamstrings showed little to no growth in either group.¹ They need their own exercises.

A hinge and a curl grow different parts. Two training trials point the same way:

• In a 12-week trial, 42 young men did either a weight-stack curl with the hips bent and the lowering phase stressed, the Nordic curl, or no training, 14 in each group. The hip-bent curl grew the hamstrings more overall, 18% against 11%. It mostly grew the muscles that also extend the hip, while the Nordic curl mostly grew the knee-bending muscles that don't cross the hip.²
• In 36 people new to lifting, split between Nordic curls, stiff-leg deadlifts and no training for nine weeks, the Nordic curl group grew the semitendinosus most (24%) and the stiff-leg deadlift group grew the semimembranosus most (11%). Whole-hamstring growth was similar, 11.4% and 7.0%.³

So the exercise you pick decides which hamstring muscles grow most. That's the reason to train both jobs every week, not to hunt for the single best exercise. Activity studies don't settle that either: in 12 weight-trained men, hamstring activity was highest in the Romanian deadlift and the glute-ham raise, ahead of the leg curl and the good morning,⁴ while in 15 trained women, activity in the biceps femoris, one of the hamstrings, was higher in the leg curl and the Nordic curl than in the Romanian deadlift.⁵ (The leg curl page has both studies.)

Seated or lying leg curl?

Seated, if you have the choice. In a 12-week trial, 20 healthy adults trained one leg on a seated leg curl and the other on a lying one. The seated leg's hamstrings grew more, 14% against 9%.⁶ Sitting bends the hip, which lengthens the hamstrings that cross it, and that seems to be why. The lying curl still worked, so use it if it's the machine your gym has. The leg curl covers the setup and the faults.

The gym hamstring workout

That's eight hard sets in about 25 minutes, on its own or after a squat on a lower-body day. The hinge goes first because it's the heaviest. Both of the main lifts work: in 32 young adults who trained twice a week for six weeks, a Romanian deadlift program that stressed the lowering phase and a Nordic curl program both grew the hamstrings by about 10%, with no difference between them.⁷ The Nordic is hard, so start with three or four slow lowerings, catch yourself with your hands, and push back up. No Nordic setup? A glute-ham raise or a second set of leg curls fills the slot, and a back extension can stand in for the hinge on a day the Romanian deadlift doesn't fit.

The hamstring workout at home

Do one exercise from each row, three sets each. Home loads are lighter, so take each set close to failure, a rep or two left at most. One leg at a time is how light dumbbells keep up: a 2025 meta-analysis of nine studies found no difference in muscle growth between one-limb and two-limb training.⁸ And a band is a fair stand-in for a machine: a review of eight studies found bands and tubing produced similar strength gains to machines and dumbbells for the lower body.⁹

How many sets, and how often

• Three sets of each exercise, stopping with a rep or two in reserve. (How to judge reps left.) The American College of Sports Medicine's 2026 position stand advises at least two sets per exercise.¹⁰
• Six to ten hard sets a week to start. The same stand found muscle growth was enhanced by ten or more sets per muscle group a week,¹⁰ so build toward that, split across one or two sessions.
• Twice a week if you train legs twice: one day led by the hinge and one by the curl, or both on both.
• Short on time? One hinge and one curl, two sets each, still covers both jobs.
• Add reps, then weight. When every set reaches the top of its range with reps to spare, add a little load. (Progressive overload covers how much.)

Common mistakes

• Counting on squats. In the trial above they grew the glutes and the front of the thigh, not the hamstrings. Add a hinge and a curl.
• Only one job. All curls or all hinges leaves part of the hamstrings undertrained, as the trials above show.
• Rounding on the hinge. The Romanian deadlift stops where your back can't stay in its position. The Romanian deadlift walks through depth.
• Short curls. Return until the knee is nearly straight; that's where the hamstrings are longest.
• Stuck on squat depth? That's a range question, not a hamstring-strength one: ankle mobility has a test for the ankle's part in it.
• Training through pain. Sharp pain is not soreness. Stop, and see a doctor or a physical therapist.

If you'd rather not plan it alone

Two exercises and three sets each is simple; fitting them around your squats, your other leg work and a week that keeps moving is the part a page can't do. Coaching is the version where your workouts are built around the days you actually have, and a weekly call looks at the week you just had and rebuilds the next one. Coaching to build muscle explains how that works, and here's how to apply. Otherwise: next leg day, add three sets of Romanian deadlifts and three of seated leg curls.