Floor Glute-Ham Raise
Also works: Calves · Glutes
Kneel with your ankles pinned, then lower your whole body to the floor by opening the knees alone, hips locked straight. It is the hardest bodyweight hamstring movement there is: the hamstrings work at long lengths under an eccentric load most people cannot control, which is exactly why the return trip usually needs a push off the floor.
Own the movement
Set up first, then execute. Every cue below is something you can check on your next set.
Before the first rep
- Kneel on a pad or folded mat — the whole set runs on your kneecaps and a bare floor ends it early.
- Anchor your heels under something immovable: a loaded barbell, a lat pulldown pad, or a partner's hands pressing down on your ankles.
- Stack shoulders, hips and knees in one straight line and squeeze your glutes hard to lock the hips there.
- Set your hands ready in front of your chest, palms open, so you can catch the floor at any point.
- Decide before the set where you will catch yourself. Most people find that point far sooner than they expect.
Every rep
Breathing & tempo — Inhale at the top and brace the trunk, hold through the descent, exhale as you pull yourself back up. Three to five seconds down, as fast as you can manage on the way up.
Before you load it
- Always have your hands ready to catch the floor. Reps fail suddenly and without warning at this muscle length, and landing on your face is the standard beginner experience.
- Kneel on padding. Repeated sets on a hard floor irritate the kneecaps long before the hamstrings run out.
- Expect severe soreness for two to four days after your first session. Do two sets, not five, the first time.
Sets, reps & load
Where to start, and what to change when it stops being hard.
Bodyweight, and for most people that is already too much. Start by lowering only 30-45 degrees from upright under full control and pushing back from there. Progress by extending the range you can control, then by lengthening the eccentric to five seconds, then by removing the hand push on the way up. Adding external load is a long way off and rarely necessary.
What goes wrong
The errors that show up most often, and the cue that fixes each one.
Squeeze the glutes as if pinching a coin between them and hold that from the first rep. Film one set from the side: your hips, shoulders and knees should stay on one line the whole way down.
Count the descent out loud and aim for three seconds minimum. If you cannot, reduce the range — lower only as far as you can control, and extend that range across weeks.
Use the arms only to break through the bottom 20 centimetres, then take your hands off and finish under hamstring power. Track how far up you can go before you need the push and use that as the progress marker.
Use a barbell loaded with at least 60 kg, or have a partner press down on your Achilles rather than the top of the foot. A slipping anchor turns every rep into a guessing game.
Move it to the end of the session. The eccentric damage from this movement is unusually high and it will quietly wreck your main lifts for the next two or three days.
Why bother
Almost every hamstring exercise trains hip extension — deadlifts, good mornings, swings. This one trains the other job, knee flexion, and it does so with your body as the lever arm. By the time your torso is halfway to the floor the hamstrings are holding several times what a leg curl machine ever asks of them, at a muscle length where they are weakest.
The hip position is the whole exercise. If you let your hips fold, your torso falls forward as a counterweight and the hamstrings get a rest — it becomes a slow kneeling lean. Held straight, hips and shoulders on one line from knee to head, there is no escape route and the eccentric is brutal from the first inch.
Where it fits
After your main lower-body lift, not before it — this leaves hamstrings sore for days and you do not want that arriving mid-deadlift. Two to four sets of 3-6 controlled reps, once or twice a week. Eccentric-heavy hamstring work like this is the best-evidenced way to reduce hamstring strain risk in sprinting sports, so it earns its place even when the rep count looks trivial.
If this one isn't it
No kit, too hard, or too easy — here's where to go instead.
Same job, different kit
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Asked and answered
Why can I not do a single full rep?
Because almost nobody can. The unassisted version needs the hamstrings to raise your entire upper body from a long muscle length, which is a strength level well above what most trained lifters have. Use your hands off the floor, lower under control, and treat a full unassisted rep as a multi-month goal rather than a starting standard.
Is this the same as a Nordic curl?
Effectively yes — the two names describe the same movement, with the Nordic label more common in sports rehabilitation and the glute-ham raise name more common in gyms. The one distinction worth caring about is the machine version on a GHD bench, which supports your hips and lets you train both hip extension and knee flexion together.
Does it actually prevent hamstring injuries?
It has better evidence behind it than almost anything else in the gym. Programmes built around this kind of heavy eccentric knee-flexion work have repeatedly cut hamstring strain rates in sprinting and kicking sports. It is not magic and it does not replace sprint exposure, but the effect is real and it shows up at low weekly volumes.
Do I still need leg curls if I do these?
Not really, but they are a useful complement. A leg curl machine lets you load knee flexion accurately at the short end, which this movement barely touches. If you only have time for one, keep this — the long-length eccentric is the part that matters and no machine reproduces it well.