Standing Leg Curl Machine
The standing leg curl machine is a single-leg knee flexion, thigh braced against the pad and ankle under the roller, that isolates the hamstrings with the hip extended.
HAMSTRINGS · LOWER BODY
How it is executed
- Stand in the machine with one thigh against the pad and your working ankle hooked under the lever roller, gripping the handles for support.
- Keep your torso upright and your hips stable as you curl your heel up toward your glute, flexing only at the knee.
- Squeeze the hamstring hard at the top without swinging your hips.
- Lower the weight under control until your leg is nearly extended.
- Working one leg at a time lets you correct imbalances with strict form.
- Muscles worked
- Hamstrings
- Primary muscle
- Hamstrings
- Equipment
- Leg curl machine
- Movement pattern
- Lower body
- Difficulty
- Intermediate
- What it is for
- Hypertrophy
- Also known as
- Standing hamstring curl
Common mistakes
- Swinging the hip to help the weight up. If the pelvis moves, the knee flexion stops coming from the hamstring. Press the thigh into the pad and keep the hip still for the whole set.
- Placing the roller too high on the calf. The lever arm changes, the resistance feels different and the ankle ends up loaded. Set the roller just above the heel and line the machine axis up with your knee.
- Letting the leg drop on the way down. The eccentric is where the hamstring takes the most tension and where it is most vulnerable. Lower over two or three seconds with a load that lets you.
Frequently asked questions
- What muscles does the standing leg curl work?
- It works the hamstrings, meaning the biceps femoris, semitendinosus and semimembranosus, which flex the knee. The calves assist slightly at the start of the range, and the glute on the working side fires to keep the hip still. None of that differs from other leg curl versions; what changes is the hip position.
- What is the difference between the standing, lying and seated leg curl?
- The difference is the hip angle. Standing and lying, the hip is extended, so the hamstring works from a shorter length and the squeeze at the top feels strong. Seated, the hip is flexed, the muscle starts from a longer position and usually allows more load. The standing version adds that it is single-leg by design and exposes differences between legs.
- Can you do the standing leg curl on a cable if there is no machine?
- Yes. With an ankle strap hooked to a low cable, facing away from the column and holding onto something solid, the movement is the same: flex the knee and bring the heel toward the glute. The cable does not brace the thigh, so you have to keep the hip still on your own and the load will be lower. At home, a band anchored to a low point fills the same role.
- How many reps should you do on the standing leg curl?
- A common range for this variation is sets of 10 to 15 reps per leg, lowering over two or three seconds. Since it is one leg at a time, the weight is lower than on the lying machine and control matters more than load. Always start with the leg that feels weaker and match its rep count with the other one.
Routines that program it
Put it to work in Kaizer
Glossary and calculators
Double progressionDouble progression is the method where reps are increased inside a prescribed range first, and load only after.Warm-up setsWarm-up sets are the sets before the real work, with rising load and falling reps, that prepare the pattern and the nervous system for the target load.Barbell plate calculatorWhat plates to load on the bar
