Nordic Curl: How to Do It, Muscles Worked and Progressions

The Nordic curl, also called the Nordic hamstring curl or the Russian curl, is a bodyweight hamstring exercise that looks almost too simple to be as brutal as it is. You kneel down, someone or something pins your heels to the floor, and you lower your torso forward as slowly as you can while keeping your body dead straight from knees to shoulders. That is the whole move. What makes it special is that it loads your hamstrings eccentrically, as they lengthen, which is the exact quality that fails when hamstrings tear. This guide covers how to do it, the muscles it works, why athletes swear by it, and the regressions that get you from "I can't do one" to a full controlled rep.

How to do a Nordic curl

You need something solid to anchor your heels and a padded surface for your knees. A partner kneeling on your calves works, but a loaded barbell, a heavy piece of furniture or a dedicated foot strap does the job just as well when you train alone.

1. Anchor your ankles. Kneel on a cushion, folded mat or the end of a bench, and fix your heels under something that will not move under load. Your feet should be pinned, not just resting.
2. Set your body. Squeeze your glutes, brace your abs and make a straight line from your knees through your hips to your shoulders. No bending at the waist. Your hips stay locked open the entire time.
3. Lower under control. Keeping that straight line, let your body tip forward toward the floor as slowly as you possibly can. Fight it the whole way down. The goal is to resist gravity, not to drop.
4. Catch and reset. When your hamstrings can no longer hold you, let your hands come out in front to catch you softly against the floor, like the bottom of a slow press-up.
5. Return to the top. Push off the floor with your hands just enough to take the strain, then pull with your hamstrings to bring yourself back to kneeling. Reset your brace and go again.

Muscles worked

The Nordic curl is a hamstring exercise first, but it asks a lot of the whole back of your body to hold that rigid line.

• Hamstrings. The biceps femoris, semitendinosus and semimembranosus down the back of your thigh are the stars. They contract hard while lengthening, which is the eccentric loading that builds both strength and muscle fibre length (systematic review on Nordic hamstring training and muscle architecture).
• Glutes. Your glutes keep your hips extended so your body stays straight. Let them switch off and the whole lift falls apart.
• Calves and lower back. Your calves help stabilise as your heels resist, and your spinal erectors work alongside your glutes to stop your torso caving forward at the hips.
• Core. Your abs brace hard to keep the line from knees to shoulders rigid, which is why a set of these lights up far more than just your legs.

If you want to build the rest of your posterior chain alongside these, pair Nordics with a hip hinge like the Romanian deadlift and a hip extension move like the hip thrust.

Why athletes do them

Hamstring strains are one of the most common and most stubborn injuries in running and field sport, and they love to come back. The Nordic curl earns its place because it targets the specific weakness behind most of those tears: poor eccentric strength in a lengthened position. Training programmes built around the Nordic hamstring exercise have been linked to large reductions in hamstring injury rates in footballers, though the size of that effect is debated and depends heavily on athletes actually sticking to the programme (reappraisal of the injury-prevention evidence).

Beyond injury resistance, it builds genuinely strong hamstrings without a machine or heavy weights, which makes it ideal for home training. The NHS recommends muscle-strengthening work covering all the major muscle groups, legs included, on at least two days a week, and a couple of sets of Nordics slots neatly into that.

Regressions: how to build up to a full rep

Almost nobody does a clean, full-range Nordic curl on their first attempt, and trying to force one is how you end up flat on your face. Work backward from the full move instead. Pick the hardest version you can control, and only progress when you own it.

Eccentric-only reps. Lower as slowly as you can, catch yourself on your hands, then push off the floor to stand back up rather than curling. This trains the lowering phase, which is where the strength and the protective effect live, without needing to curl your own bodyweight back up.

Hands-assisted reps. Do the same lower, but keep your hands ready in front and use them to feed in just enough help on the way down to control the range you cannot yet hold on your own. Take away a little hand help each week.

Band-assisted Nordics. Loop a resistance band across your chest and anchor it to something solid and high in front of you. The band pulls you upright, sharing the load so you can lower further under control. Move to a lighter band as you get stronger.

Partial-range Nordics. Set a bench, box or a couple of stacked steps in front of you and lower only until your hands or forehead meet it. Drop the surface lower over time to add range.

Common mistakes

Folding at the hips. By far the most common fault. Your bum drifts back, your hips bend, and your hamstrings get an easy ride. Keep glutes tight and hips locked open.

Dropping instead of lowering. The point is to resist. If you plummet and only slow down near the bottom, you are skipping the range that matters. Fight every inch, even if that means a tiny range to begin with.

Skipping knee padding. Kneeling bare on a hard floor is miserable and puts you off the exercise. Use a cushion, a folded yoga mat or a proper pad.

A weak anchor. If your heels lift because the thing holding them is too light, the exercise stops working and you can hurt yourself. Anchor to something that genuinely will not move.

Doing too many, too soon. These cause serious muscle soreness in the first couple of weeks. Start with two or three sets of a handful of reps, once or twice a week, and build slowly.

Sets and reps

Because Nordics are so demanding, you need fewer than you would think.

• Building strength and range: 2 to 3 sets of 3 to 6 controlled reps, once or twice a week. Quality beats quantity every time here.
• Eccentric-only progression: 3 sets of 4 to 6 slow lowers, focusing purely on making each descent longer and more controlled than the last.
• Maintenance for injury resistance: 2 sets of 4 to 5 reps, once a week, is enough to hold onto what you have built once your hamstrings are strong.

Rest a good 90 seconds to 2 minutes between sets. When you can lower all the way to the floor under full control and curl back up without your hips folding, you own the full Nordic curl, and you can start adding reps or a light weight held to your chest.

Recommended reads

1. Romanian deadlift: how to do it and muscles worked
2. Hip thrust: how to build stronger glutes
3. The best resistance bands in the UK
4. Hamstring exercises for stronger legs
5. The best yoga mat in the UK