Four-time Mr Olympia champ and International Sports Hall of Fame inductee, Jay Cutler, is a trailblazer who has helped to elevate the bodybuilding industry and at 50-years-young is now training a new generation of rock-solid athletes through his teachings at fitness conventions and on social media where he has millions of followers.
In an Instagram post on June 8, 2024, Cutler shared his “Number One” exercise for hamstrings.
“This has always been my number one exercise,” shares Cutler. “In fact, when I lived in Massachusetts, okay, I lived in Worcester, and I end up choosing to go to a gym in Framingham, Mass, which is probably 25 minutes away when I had [a gym] like right next door to my house, just to use a seated leg curl, which at the time it was a Flex, it was called a Ham Tractor.”
Cutler may be known for his “Quad Stomp” on stage, but his success in bodybuilding hails from an all-encompassing journey to growing his legs. The hamstrings are comprised of the biceps femoris long head (bi-articular) and short head (mono-articular), semitendinosus (bi-articular) and the semimembranosus (bi-articular), and they assist with the movement of the hips and knees. Since the seated leg curl places stress on both our knees and hips, it makes this a great movement for targeting those muscles.
Studies have also shown that the seated leg curl provides greater hypertrophy than prone (front-lying) curls, making them excellent for building mass. “It’s always, always, always, if you ever follow my videos, its always the first movement I do,” explains Cutler. “Why? It just seems to target my hamstrings. I get a crazy pump after doing this one movement.”
The bodybuilding icon lays out his approach, explaining that he does three working sets and notes that he throws in one or two feeler sets beforehand, to get a gauge on the type of weight that he wants to use in the working sets. “I’m gonna focus on doing ten or twelve reps,” he says of each set. In the video, Cutlet starts with around 130 pounds in his first feeler set and shares why he sticks in the ten-to-twelve rep range. “So, whether it’s a warmup or a working set, I always still focus on about the same reps,” he explains. “The high reps; s**t, It doesn’t help anything. Everyone thinks you get cut up if you do more high reps. Misconception.”
