Standing Leg Curls

🎯 Hamstrings🏋️ MachineIsolation

How to do the standing leg curls

  1. Standing at a leg curl machine adjust the rear footpad so it is just above your ankle.
  2. Grasp the handles of the machine for support and draw your abs in.
  3. Raise your foot up towards your back slowly.
  4. Return to the starting position and chance legs.

Muscles worked

The prime movers are the hamstrings, which extend the hip and bend the knee, frequently at both joints in the same repetition.

Every exercise for:Hamstrings

How this movement works

Everything happens at one joint. That gives you direct control over where the tension sits; the trade-off is that the muscle gets no help, so the load that feels hard here is a fraction of what a multi-joint version of the pattern would take. Slow, complete repetitions beat heavy ones.

It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.

What you need

The machine fixes the path, removing the balance demand and letting you train close to failure without a spotter. The cost is the stabilising work a free weight would have made you do.

Every exercise using:Machine

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

Related exercises

Illustration: Everkinetic — CC BY-SA 4.0 — license. Modified versions are shared under the same license. Full attribution →

ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.