Nordic Hamstring Curl: Jake Schuster on Smarter Eccentrics

Based on Episode 109 of the Just Fly Performance Podcast, a conversation between host Joel Smith and sport scientist Dr. Jake Schuster.

The nordic hamstring curl might be the most argued-about exercise in speed training: half the field treats it as mandatory hamstring insurance, and the other half avoids it entirely. Dr. Jake Schuster has little patience for either camp. A sport scientist and strength coach who has led physical preparation for a university sprints group and profiled elite athletes on force plates, Schuster keeps the goal in front of the tool: sprinters need eccentric hamstring work, and the nordic curl is one way among several to get it. In this episode he lays out who the nordic fits, what he uses when it does not, and how force-plate data shaped the rest of his training decisions.

Key Takeaways

• The nordic hamstring curl is a tool, not a requirement. If an athlete is genuinely averse to it, keep the eccentric stimulus and find another exercise.
• His favorite alternatives: single-leg reverse hypers (up with two legs, down with one) and manual partner eccentrics at varied knee angles.
• Eccentrics are cheap injury insurance. Schuster calls the eccentric-work-to-healthier-hamstrings chain one of the most obvious wins in a field with few certain answers.
• Watch how force is absorbed, not just produced. Concentric impulse and rate of power development were his go-to countermovement jump metrics on the force plates.
• Individualize in-season lifting. Some of his athletes thrived lifting heavy through the season; others needed a far lighter touch. The data kept surprising him.

Who the nordic hamstring curl fits, and who it does not

Schuster is no nordic skeptic. He rolls his eyes at blanket objections to the exercise as quickly as anyone. But a season of coaching real athletes taught him that forcing it on the wrong person costs more than it returns.

Some love Nordics. Some are just terrified of it. It’s not worth it if some athletes are just totally freaked out by them. Find another way, and definitely still train eccentrically, but find another way.

That framing matters. The non-negotiable is the eccentric stimulus for the hamstrings and posterior chain, not the specific exercise. An athlete who braces against every rep of a nordic curl is not adapting; he is surviving. For that athlete, Schuster swaps the tool and keeps the target.

Nordic hamstring curl alternatives that keep the eccentric stimulus

Two substitutes earn most of his volume. The first is the single-leg reverse hyper, loaded on the way down.

If you have a belt loop and you can put two feet in to raise it and one foot to lower it, I really like that one.

Raising with two legs and lowering with one biases the movement toward exactly the overloaded eccentric a nordic provides, without the knee-flexion position that scares some athletes off. The second is manual partner eccentrics for the hamstrings, done prone: the coach extends the athlete’s knee from 90 degrees, 45 degrees, or even 20 degrees while the athlete drives the heel down and resists through the range. Changing the starting angle changes which part of the curve gets overloaded, and it needs no equipment at all; he credits a version of it with helping a star high jumper. He also likes eccentric-focus squats and supine “yield catches” between benches for the same reason: they train the ability to absorb load, and they expose poor postural integrity immediately.

Why eccentric work is cheap hamstring insurance

Asked what actually keeps sprinters healthy, Schuster gave a short list: maximum-velocity exposure, motor control and context-specific running, and structural integrity built with isometrics and eccentric work. It is the eccentric piece he defends most bluntly, because the reasoning chain is short: longer muscle fascicles are associated with lower soft-tissue injury risk, and eccentric training lengthens fascicles.

In a field where we have so few answers, I’ve rarely seen anything as obvious and easy to address. Anyone who argues that is doing it for the sake of attention.

On the ever-popular project of fixing asymmetries, he is far more conservative. His testing showed high performers with meaningful left-right differences, and he would rather build stability around an asymmetry with postural-restoration principles than chase symmetry directly.

We could cause more damage or more injury risk by correcting muscular asymmetries than by leaving it alone.

What the countermovement jump told him

Schuster ran his group through regular countermovement jump testing on force plates, and the metrics he trusted speak to force absorption as much as force production: concentric impulse and relative rate of power development (RPD). The most instructive result was a 60-meter conference champion who looked like a pure strength athlete.

You’d think he’s probably not that powerful, he probably can’t translate that strength. Well, guess what? He had the best rated power development in the countermovement jump of any athlete in the university.

The lesson he took is task specificity: athletes can be extraordinary at their event without fitting the profile the textbook predicts, so test data should inform the plan rather than force athletes into boxes. His next frontier was the absorption side, cueing athletes from day one to accept force quietly and quickly at ground contact, where he believes much of sprint stiffness lives.

The force-velocity numbers behind a fast 100 meters

On the sprint-specific side, Schuster used standard horizontal force-velocity profiling and worked backwards from the demands of the event.

It’s not that difficult to figure out that if you want to break 10 seconds in the 100, you’re going to need to just about scratch 12 meters per second on your top end.

His university group got four sprinters over 11.5 meters per second with that reverse-engineering logic: define the target output, identify the missing ingredients, and train those. The profile does not replace coaching; it tells the coach which quality deserves the next block of attention.

In-season strength: every assumption out the window

Managing a full track season forced Schuster to individualize far more than he expected.

I found I had to throw every assumption out the window. Some of our skinniest athletes wanted to lift right before competition and knew they would feel better lifting heavy throughout the season. And some of our biggest and most powerful athletes, we had to be very, very careful with.

A few structures held across the group: everyone did quarter squats and concentric-only squats in the competitive phase, everyone shared the same isometric and single-leg work, and nobody was forced onto a competition lift that did not suit them; his squatters squatted, his deadlifters pulled, and it went fine. With strong male athletes he borrowed a marker from college football: once an athlete can comfortably rep around 2.2 times body weight in the squat, stop chasing strength, top it up occasionally, and spend the time on Olympic lifts and power. He also draws a sharp line between sports when planning the week: a rugby player two days after a match is physically beat up, while a track athlete after a meet is neuromuscularly fried, and the training week has to respect which of those two problems it is solving.

His skeptical take on velocity based training

Given his force-plate background, Schuster is more measured than most about velocity based training in the weight room. He grants it real uses: leaderboard motivation, and daily readiness or relative-intensity work with fine-tuned veterans.

If you only have two coaches for 40 athletes in the room and you’re spending half of your energy pulling strings out of boxes, you are not doing a service to your athletes.

The technology is not the problem; the opportunity cost is. For most groups he believes the basics, coached with full attention, beat a partially supervised room full of measurement devices. The same self-audit applies to every fashionable method a coach is tempted to add.

Are we doing stuff because some guy with a big name out there is doing it? Are we doing stuff because I’m going to feel exposed if it’s not in my program? Or are we doing stuff because it’s going to help our athletes? It’s not our job to look cool.

Frequently asked questions

Are nordic hamstring curls worth doing?
In Schuster’s view, yes, for athletes who tolerate them: they deliver the overloaded eccentric hamstring work tied to lower soft-tissue injury risk. But the exercise is a means, not the end; an athlete who fights every rep should get the same stimulus another way.

What are good nordic hamstring curl alternatives?
His favorites are single-leg reverse hypers (raise with two legs, lower with one) and manual partner eccentrics done prone at varied knee angles, plus eccentric-focus squats for the broader pattern. All preserve the eccentric overload without the position that puts some athletes off.

How do you prevent hamstring injuries in sprinters?
Schuster’s short list: regular exposure to maximum-velocity sprinting, motor control and context-specific running, and structural integrity built with isometrics and eccentric work. He treats eccentrics as the easiest, most defensible piece of that puzzle.

What does the countermovement jump measure?
On force plates, far more than jump height: Schuster leaned on concentric impulse and relative rate of power development, and paid increasing attention to how athletes absorb force, which he sees as a window into ground-contact stiffness.

Is velocity based training worth it?
Sometimes: for leaderboard-driven groups and for daily readiness work with experienced athletes. But if managing the devices costs the coach more attention than the athletes gain, Schuster says the basics coached well win.

About the authors

Dr. Jake Schuster is a sports performance coach, consultant, and sport scientist who has led physical preparation for the Florida State University sprints and hurdles groups, pursued doctoral work in New Zealand while working with New Zealand Rugby, and served as performance director at USA Field Hockey.

Joel Smith is the host of the Just Fly Performance Podcast and the founder of Just Fly Sports, a former collegiate strength and track and field coach focused on speed, power, and athletic development. Listen to the full episode with Dr. Jake Schuster on Just Fly Sports.