Exercise · Thigh

Nordic hamstring curl

Kneeling with your ankles anchored, you lower your torso toward the floor as slowly as you can, resisting the whole way with your hamstrings. It is the hardest exercise in this library and the most specific: Momentum's lower-body chart does not list the hamstrings as simply weak — it lists them as weak eccentrically, meaning weak at lengthening under load, which is what they are doing every time your foot swings forward before it lands. The system names eccentric load control failure as the movement failure behind muscle strains and force absorption and deceleration failure behind sports injuries. This trains the lowering, which is why the way down is the entire exercise.