Work your hamstrings at the park!

You’re already good at working your quads with bodyweight exercises. Squat jumps, lunge jumps, bulgarian single leg squat, pistols, step jumps.

And you know how to work the upper body with no weights as well: If you’re at the park, you can do pullups on the monkey bars, dips on the hand rails, pushups with feet on step, body rows on monkey bars with feet on the ladder, flies on rails with feet suspended.

But how about the neglected hamstrings? What about them?!

Here’s a workout you can do in between your quad exercises to get you all wobbly-legged and sore the next day.

 

My daughter Devan demonstrates the Monkey Bar Leg Curls. She is a pretty fit 13 year old. She does cheer, dancing, and track. And after a rest/pause set of 3×10 she laughed and said, “Whoa dad. I really feel them in my legs!” I love that little girl! {single tear}

Notice her superior form! See how she keeps her arms straight! With this exercise, curl your legs, not your arms. If you bend your arms you’d be doing body rows which are damn good, but this is not that.

See how she curls her body? This is also working her abs a bit, similar to knee lifts or as I prefer to call them, “body curls”. But the emphasis is on her hamstrings. They are working hard to curl the legs and pull her body up.

Hold it at the top for 1 Mississippi, then come down SLOWLY! Like I’ve said many times on this site: Don’t just drop like a sack of—brown rice! Take 3 seconds to return to the bottom position. Then a quick 1 second lift.

Get it?

Do 10 reps, then rest while hanging in the bottom position for a count of 10, and do another set of 10 (or as many reps ’til failure). Rest another 10 seconds while hanging and do it one more time. Then come down and do a jumping or upper body exercise. Or you can rest 45 seconds instead of doing an in-between exercise.
3 rest/pause sets is one super set.
Do 3 of those sets for a total of 9.

We good?

Soon, I’ll post my complete PARK WORKOUT that I love so damn much. Whole body, baby!