Strength coaches and athletes alike recognize the need for training the lower half of the body. And unless you are strong enough to walk on your hands all day, the general public needs to acknowledge the importance of having strong legs. One thing we often forget, however, is the importance of balancing the hamstring to quad strength ratio.
The next time you around a female (or if you are a female) take a side view of the knee joint. Most likely, a woman standing in a straight leg position will be slightly to moderately hyper-extending her knee. The reason? Her quads are disproportionately stronger than her hamstrings. While this can happen with guys too, females are most at risk for having weaker hamstrings with strong quads. It not only looks kinda weird, this unmatched strength ratio can cause a number of problems.
Besides the obvious risk for pulling a hamstring, unequal quad to hamstring strength ratios can also lead to ACL tears. Anytime we land after a jump, the hamstring must engage to support the knee. If the hamstrings do not fire quickly enough, the ACL is in serious jeopardy, as jumping causes a change in direction that will be stopped by a landing. If the hamstring cannot contract the moment the feet hit the ground, the body from the knee up will continue in the direction of the jump while the feet will stay planted.
Why are there so many strength programs that concentrate so heavily on the quads and forget the hamstrings? Exercises such as squat, dead lift, and lunges are great leg lifts, but they are quad-dominate. Most programs incorporate hamstring curls, but what about romanian dead lifts, reverse hypers, and glute/ham raises?
Not that the hamstrings are completely left out of the first 3 lifts I mentioned. They are activated, mainly where they connect behind the butt, in all of those exercises. But if strength coaches, athletes, and the general public ignore the need to focus on hamstrings, more injuries will occur and results for overall speed and strength in the lower body will be less noticeable.
Take Away: When making a workout, have an equal number of quad-dominate lifts and hamstring-dominate lifts. For women, include an extra set on any given hamstring exercise.
Published under: Physique Training, Sports TrainingTags: acl injury • hamstring strength • injury prevention • Leg strength
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This post was written on the Monday, June 22nd, 2009 at 7:03 am and categorized under Physique Training, Sports Training. You can follow the ongoing discussion by subscribing to the RSS 2.0. You can leave a reply, or Trackback.
i was almost positive thst squats work primarily the glutes and hamstring not quads
Curlee,
Where the hamstring connects at the hip must contract at the top of the squat. However, it is a secondary mover in any lift that is a “push”, such as squat, deadlift, and leg press.
You are right in saying that the glutes are primarily involved - but the quads are as well.
The quads are universally understood (and rightly so) as the prime mover in the squat because they do most of the work in a squat.
In this movement, the first thing that SHOULD happen is the hips move back. Then a bend occurs at the hips and the knees. At the bottom of the squat, the glutes and quads are stretched, while the hamstring is contracted at the knee (which eliminates it from being the prime mover because it is contracted when the most active muscles in this lift are stretched). In order to move from the bottom of the squat to the top, the quads and glutes MUST contract (shorten). As the quads contract, they pull the knees from a bent to straightened position, and the quads (with some help from the top of the hamstring) pulls the hips from a bent to straightened position. This is how the squat works, which is why the quad and glute are the prime movers.
Hope this helps and makes sense. Feel free to reply if you have further questions. Thanks for your post.
…Uhm, I understand that the mass majority of women, including even elite female athletes, can be really stupid when it comes to weightlifting, especially concerning olympic-style weightlifting, (I pride myself as one of the few Normal-Girl s that have read multiple books on olympic style weightltraining, as much as it is in English) but I need to ask you to state why you find that more women have this disproportionate ratio, because you left the statement unexplained.