Leg Exercises You've (probably) Never Seen Before: Part 1

Cutting right to the chase: If you want to use the weight room to improve your triathlon, cycling, swimming, or running, you need to get off the leg press, leg extension, and hamstring curl. But what's wrong with the leg curl, Frey? My triathlon coach said it's great for training the hammies, and I am paying him 300$ per month! Two reasons why...

1) Running, cycling, and the swim kick all involve the simultaneous coordination of the glutes and the hamstrings. You never "isolate" the hamstrings in any motion, anywhere, other than the hamstring curl machine. So you need to train with smarter movements that train both the glutes and both functions of the hamstrings (knee flexion/hip extension).

2) You're traithlon coach is overpriced.

Enough of my rant, here's some nice exercises to work into your weight program:

1) Glute Ham Raise (GHR) - The video here is courtesy of elitefts.com, one of the greatest websites in the history of the internet. The coaching cue is to squeze the glutes, fire the hips forward, and try not to cry like a girl.



2) Natural Glute Ham Raise - If you're gym doesn't have a GHR apparatus (few commercial gyms do), you have two options for the GHR. You can kneel on the ground and have a friend hold your ankles, you can wedge your ankles under a dumbbell rack (as seen below):

Or, you can follow the setup that Tony Gentilcore shows here on your Lat Pulldown machine:

On the natural version, it's ok to give a little push off the ground at the bottom. Only the strongest athletes can do a natural glute ham raise without falling to the ground and pushing back up.

Stay Tuned... In the coming posts, I'll be showing you some more exciting exercises!