Reverse Hyperextension
Trains the Hamstrings.
- Equipment
- A machine, a flat bench or an adjustable bench
- Mechanic
- Not recorded
- Force
- Pull
- Level
- Intermediate
How to do it
- Lie face down on a reverse hyperextension machine or across a high flat bench, with your hips at the edge and your legs hanging.
- Grip the handles or the sides of the bench firmly and let your legs hang straight down.
- Brace your stomach so the movement happens at the hips rather than the lower back.
- Raise both legs behind you by squeezing your glutes and hamstrings, until they are roughly in line with your torso.
- Pause briefly at the top, then lower under control back to hanging.
- Stop at horizontal rather than swinging higher into an arch.
Common mistakes
- Swinging the legs and using the momentum at the bottom. The rebound removes the hardest part and turns a strength movement into a pendulum.
- Going past horizontal into a lower-back arch. The glutes and hamstrings run out of hip extension around the point the legs reach the torso line, and going further comes from the spine.
- Gripping so loosely that the torso slides. If you are hanging on rather than anchored, the position cannot be held.
- Loading it heavily. This is a controlled movement at moderate load, and it is one of the few that loads hip extension with the torso fixed rather than the legs.