Nordic Hamstring Curl: Form, Evidence and a 5-Stage Progression

The Nordic hamstring curl is a bodyweight hamstring exercise. You kneel with your heels anchored, hold your body in a straight line from knees to head, and lower yourself toward the floor as slowly as you can, using your hamstrings as the brake. Most people catch themselves on their hands and push back up for months before they can pull themselves back without help. Start with one session of 2 sets of 5 slow negatives, then train it twice a week.

This guide covers what the exercise trains, how to set it up and do it at home, what the research actually shows about injury prevention, a five-stage progression to full reps, and the 13-week program used in a clinical trial.

What the Nordic curl trains

The Nordic curl is a knee flexion exercise done mostly eccentrically: the hamstrings lengthen while they resist. That is the hard part of the movement and the part the research focuses on.

Because the hips stay straight, the Nordic loads the hamstrings at the knee rather than through a hip hinge. That makes it a useful addition to bodyweight leg training, which is mostly squats and lunges, but it does not cover every job the hamstrings do.

The hamstrings cross both the hip and the knee. They are at their longest when the hip is bent and the knee straight, as in the late swing of a sprint. In a Nordic the hip never bends, so the muscle is never stretched from the hip end, and at the top of the rep, with the body upright, there is little load on it at all. That is the core of the argument in SimpliFaster’s “case against the Nordic curl”. It does not make the exercise useless, but it is why a hip-hinge exercise, such as a single-leg Romanian deadlift, belongs alongside it.

Setup: anchoring your heels at home

You need two things: padding under your knees and an anchor that will not move.

• Padding: a folded mat, a cushion or a doubled towel. You put real pressure through the kneecaps.
• Anchor options: a partner kneeling on or holding your lower calves, the underside of a heavy sofa, a loaded barbell on the floor, the base of a sturdy pull-up station, or a strap made for Nordic curls.

The anchor should press just above the ankle, not on the foot itself, so your heels cannot lift. Before your first rep, lean forward a few inches and check that nothing slides or tips. If you are buying gear, our calisthenics equipment guide covers what is worth it.

No safe anchor at all? Sliding leg curls (lying on your back, heels on a towel on a smooth floor, hips lifted, pulling the heels toward you) also train the hamstrings at the knee. They are a different, easier exercise, not a stage of the Nordic, so use them until you can set up a proper anchor.

How to do a Nordic hamstring curl

1. Kneel tall on the padding with your heels anchored and your knees about hip-width apart.
2. Make one line. Squeeze your glutes so your hips are fully straight, and brace your abs. Knees, hips, shoulders and head stay in line for the whole rep, the same rigid body line you build in the hollow body hold.
3. Lower slowly. Let your body tip forward from the knees, resisting with your hamstrings. Make the descent as long as you can.
4. Catch yourself on your hands, like the bottom of a push-up, when you can no longer control the fall. Keep your elbows soft.
5. Return. Push off the floor and let your hamstrings help pull you back up to kneeling. In the early stages the push does most of the work, and that is fine.

The rep that counts is the lowering. In the van der Horst trial (covered below), players lowered as slowly as possible until the chest touched the ground and used their hands to push back up, to keep the work on the eccentric part.

What the research shows

The Nordic is one of the most studied exercises in sports medicine, almost all of it in soccer. Here is how strong each common claim is.

The two biggest trials are useful context. Petersen and colleagues (2011) followed 942 Danish soccer players: the Nordic group had 3.8 acute hamstring injuries per 100 player-seasons against 13.1 in the control group. Van der Horst and colleagues (2015) randomized 40 Dutch amateur teams (579 male players); the Nordic group’s odds of a hamstring injury were 0.28 times the control group’s, and players completed 91% of the planned sessions.

In short: the Nordic reliably makes your hamstrings stronger at resisting a stretch, and it probably lowers the risk of hamstring strains in sports with sprinting. How much it lowers it, and whether that holds outside men’s soccer, is still debated. It is a good exercise to train, not a guarantee.

One finding matters for planning. In Presland 2018, strength gains held for at least four weeks after stopping, but the fascicle-length gains were gone within two. That study compared training with stopping completely; it did not test how little training keeps the gains. Petersen’s trial continued with one session a week through the season after the build-up.

Find your starting stage

After a warm-up, do three slow negatives with a hand catch, resting a minute between them, and count the seconds from the moment you start tipping until your hands touch the floor. Go by your shortest time of the three.

• Under 3 seconds, or you drop suddenly in the first half: start at stage 1.
• 3 to 5 seconds: start at stage 2.
• 6 seconds or more: start at stage 3.

You also need to kneel without knee pain. If kneeling on a cushion hurts, sort that out before loading the exercise.

The five-stage progression

The stage decides which version you do. The 13-week protocol in the next section decides how many sets and reps. Train with at least two days between sessions. Move up a stage when every rep of the first set of a session meets the target in the right-hand column with your hips straight.

Stage 1: Band-assisted negative. Anchor a resistance band high behind you, such as on a pull-up bar or door anchor, and loop it around your chest under the arms. The band stretches as you tip forward, so it helps most at the bottom, where the exercise is hardest. Use a thinner band as you get stronger, then retest without it.

Stage 2: Nordic negative with a hand catch. The exercise as done in the trials. Lower slowly, catch, push back up. Most of the first weeks are spent here.

Stage 3: Slow negative. The same movement, with the target raised to eight seconds. The extra time comes from controlling the bottom half, where you used to drop.

Stage 4: Fingertip push-off. Lower all the way to the catch, then push off the floor as lightly as you can and pull yourself up with your hamstrings. Over the weeks, shrink the push from palms to fingertips.

Stage 5: Full Nordic curl. Lower under control until your chest is near the floor, then pull yourself back to kneeling without your hands. Keep the reps low; three good ones beat ten sloppy ones.

To make the full Nordic harder, hold your arms overhead, which lengthens the lever. After that, hold a weight plate against your chest.

Sets and reps: the 13-week trial protocol

This is the program from the van der Horst (2015) trial in amateur soccer players: 25 sessions over 13 weeks, a five-week build-up followed by eight weeks of maintenance. Do every rep in your current stage’s version.

The trial used the stage 2 to 3 version, so that is the studied dose. Two adjustments for the other stages:

• Stage 1: the same numbers with the band. It is not the version that was tested, but the volume still builds up gradually.
• Stages 4 and 5: do as many reps of your stage’s version as you can with good form, then finish the set’s reps with stage 3 negatives.

In the trial, players who got hurt during the build-up restarted one week back from where they were once recovered, and players hurt in weeks 6 to 13 restarted from week 4. That is a sensible rule for any layoff.

After week 13, drop to one session a week with the week 6 to 13 sets and reps (10, 9, 8) in your current stage’s version, and keep moving up stages. That matches the once-a-week maintenance in Petersen’s trial, and the 2020 meta-analysis found lower-volume programs built eccentric strength as well as high-volume ones. No study has pinned down the true minimum, so do not stop altogether: in Presland 2018, fascicle gains were gone two weeks after training ended.

Common mistakes and how to fix them

Where it fits in a workout

Put Nordics early in a leg or lower-body session, after the warm-up and while the hamstrings are fresh:

1. Warm-up, including two easy negatives.
2. Nordic hamstring curls at your stage, 2 to 3 minutes rest between sets.
3. The rest of your calisthenics leg workout, plus hip work for the hamstrings: the single-leg hip bridges from that workout, or single-leg Romanian deadlifts.

The van der Horst trial had players do them right after regular training, before the cool-down. That works too, especially if you play a sport and would otherwise skip them.

In a push, pull, legs split, Nordics go on leg day. Avoid them the day before hard sprinting or a match. See rest and recovery for spreading hard work across the week.

Frequently asked questions

Can you do Nordic curls at home?

Yes. You need something soft under your knees and a way to pin your heels: a partner, a heavy sofa, a loaded barbell or a strap made for the exercise. Put the anchor just above the ankles, not on the feet, and check that it cannot slide or tip before your first rep.

Do Nordic curls prevent hamstring injuries?

Probably, but the evidence is weaker than the popular “halves your injury risk” line suggests. A 2019 meta-analysis found programs that include the Nordic cut hamstring injuries by about half, while a 2021 reanalysis that kept only trials randomizing to the Nordic itself found the effect inconclusive. Most of the data comes from male soccer players.

How many Nordic curls should I do?

Do one session in the first week, then two a week. Start with 2 sets of 5 slow negatives and build to 3 sets of 8 to 10 over five weeks, as in the 13-week trial protocol in this guide. Low-volume programs built similar strength in studies, so more reps are not automatically better.

Is the Nordic curl the same as the Nordic hamstring curl?

Yes. Nordic curl, Nordic hamstring curl and Nordic hamstring exercise (NHE, the name used in research) all mean the same movement: kneeling with the heels anchored and lowering the body forward under hamstring control.

Why are Nordic curls so hard?

Your hamstrings have to control most of your bodyweight on a long lever, from the knees to the head. The closer you get to the floor, the more leverage gravity has on that lever, which is why almost everyone drops the last part at first. That is normal: catch yourself on your hands and work on lowering more slowly.

How sore will I be after Nordic curls?

Expect real soreness in the first weeks, because the exercise is mostly eccentric. In the amateur soccer trial described in this guide, soreness was mainly reported in the first weeks of the program. Starting with low volume, as the protocol does, keeps it manageable.

Sources

• van Dyk N, Behan FP, Whiteley R. Including the Nordic hamstring exercise in injury prevention programmes halves the rate of hamstring injuries: a systematic review and meta-analysis of 8459 athletes. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2019.
• Impellizzeri FM, McCall A, van Smeden M. Why methods matter in a meta-analysis: a reappraisal showed inconclusive injury preventive effect of Nordic hamstring exercise. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 2021.
• Petersen J, Thorborg K, Nielsen MB, Budtz-Jørgensen E, Hölmich P. Preventive effect of eccentric training on acute hamstring injuries in men’s soccer: a cluster-randomized controlled trial. American Journal of Sports Medicine, 2011.
• van der Horst N, Smits DW, Petersen J, Goedhart EA, Backx FJ. The preventive effect of the Nordic hamstring exercise on hamstring injuries in amateur soccer players: a randomized controlled trial. American Journal of Sports Medicine, 2015.
• Cuthbert M, Ripley N, McMahon JJ, Evans M, Haff GG, Comfort P. The effect of Nordic hamstring exercise intervention volume on eccentric strength and muscle architecture adaptations: a systematic review and meta-analyses. Sports Medicine, 2020.
• Presland JD, Timmins RG, Bourne MN, Williams MD, Opar DA. The effect of Nordic hamstring exercise training volume on biceps femoris long head architectural adaptation. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 2018.
• Bourne MN, Duhig SJ, Timmins RG, et al. Impact of the Nordic hamstring and hip extension exercises on hamstring architecture and morphology: implications for injury prevention. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2017.
• Goss K. The case against the Nordic curl. SimpliFaster.