hamstring weakness

[Teh El Macho]

Sure. Its a single-leg Romanian deadlift. Text description and a couple of pictures here.

You can do them unweighted or with a bar, but start off light. It is a really good exercise for the hamstrings and lower back. It has also helped improve my balance.

The description of the exercise is quasi-fine but the picture of the guy doing it... me no likey. A romanian, be it with two legs or unilateral is such that when the hips are pushed backward, the knee begins to bend. When you have descended to the bottom of the movement, your knee should be bent as if you were doing a quater squat at miminum. The dude pictured in this article is doing them just like that: http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=473323

This pic shows it better:



If you really want to further workout your hamstring unilaterally, keep pushing the hips and flex the knee further until you torso gets close to touching your quadricep, with the knee flexed around hams parallel. Imagine the last pic with the knee further flexed, the hips further back and the torso closer to the quadricep.

If you don't bend the knee as you simultaneously punch your hips back, you are simply bending off the hip (or worse,the lower back), like a stiff-leg deadlift. Beyond a lengthening stretch of the hamstring, that's all you get when doing it as in the picture.

[TheRuss]

Thanks. I'm going to try them out tonight (conservatively-loaded barbell and bent knee).

Edit: It worked pretty well, although balance was definitely the limiting factor. I expect that to improve with practice.