Front Leg Raises

Muscles worked

The muscles under tension are the hamstrings, which extend the hip and bend the knee, frequently at both joints in the same repetition.

A stretch loads them at the far end of the range they normally work in, so the position you hold is itself the resistance.

Every exercise for:Hamstrings

How this movement works

Force comes toward the body — you draw a limb, or your own bodyweight, in against whatever resists it. What changes between sessions is how far into the position you can get and hold, not how much is loading it.

It is filed under stretching, so the target is range of motion rather than force — a position you can settle into and breathe in, held long enough for the tissue to give.

What you need

No equipment at all. The resistance is your own bodyweight, so you progress by changing leverage, range or tempo rather than by adding plates — and you can do it anywhere.

Every exercise using:Body only

These train the hamstrings too, using equipment this one does not:

• Glute Ham Raisemachine
• Good Morningbarbell
• Hamstring-SMRfoam roll
• Kettlebell Dead Cleankettlebell
• Stiff-Legged Dumbbell Deadliftdumbbell

Difficulty

Listed at beginner level: the pattern is simple enough to pick up without coaching, and a position that goes wrong mid-set is obvious enough to correct on the next repetition.

Of the 86 hamstrings exercises in this database, 37 are listed at beginner level.