Why You Need Nordic Curls

I hold the Guinness World Record for Nordic curls. People ask me about it regularly, and the conversation almost always goes the same way. They want to know the number. They want to know how I trained for it. They want to know what it felt like. And those are all fine questions. But the question I wish more people would ask is this: why does this exercise matter?

Because the truth is, I did not pursue the record because I wanted my name in a book. I pursued it because the Nordic curl is, in my professional opinion, one of the most important exercises most people have never heard of. And if holding a world record is what it takes to get people to pay attention to their hamstrings, then that is a trade I am happy to make.

What Is a Nordic Curl?

The setup is simple. You kneel on the ground. Someone holds your ankles, or you anchor them under something solid. Then you slowly lower your body forward, keeping your hips extended, controlling the descent with nothing but your hamstrings. When you can no longer hold it, you catch yourself with your hands and push back up to do it again.

If you have never tried one, let me set your expectations: most people cannot do a single controlled rep. Not because they are weak in any general sense, but because the Nordic curl demands eccentric hamstring strength at long muscle lengths. And that is precisely the kind of strength that most training programs neglect.

The Science of Eccentric Training

When your muscle lengthens under load, that is eccentric contraction. When it shortens, that is concentric. Most exercises emphasize the concentric phase. You curl the weight up. You press the bar overhead. You pull yourself to the bar. The lowering part is treated as an afterthought, something you do on the way to the next rep.

But research over the past two decades has made something clear: eccentric strength is not just important. It is foundational. It is the primary mechanism by which your muscles protect your joints. When you run, when you land from a jump, when you decelerate on a field or a court, it is eccentric strength that keeps your body from falling apart.

The hamstrings are particularly vulnerable. They cross two joints, the hip and the knee, which means they are constantly being asked to manage force across multiple planes of motion. Hamstring injuries are among the most common in sport, and the reinjury rate is staggering. Once you tear a hamstring, you are significantly more likely to tear it again.

The Nordic curl directly addresses this. By training the hamstrings eccentrically at long muscle lengths, you build resilience exactly where the muscle is most vulnerable. Multiple systematic reviews have shown that Nordic curl programs reduce hamstring injury rates by as much as 51%. In professional soccer, which has some of the highest hamstring injury rates of any sport, Nordic curl protocols have become standard practice.

My Journey to the Record

I started doing Nordic curls years before the record was on my radar. As a D1 athlete at Marquette, I dealt with enough injuries to develop a deep interest in injury prevention. When I began studying exercise science seriously, the Nordic curl kept appearing in the literature as one of the most effective interventions for hamstring health.

I added them to my own training first. Then to my clients' programs. I watched hamstring complaints drop. I watched athletes who had been dealing with recurring strains finally break the cycle. The exercise worked, consistently and reliably.

The world record attempt came later, and it was less about proving something to the world than it was about demonstrating a principle: that the exercises which matter most are rarely the ones that look impressive. Nobody films themselves doing Nordic curls for social media. There is no glamour in a controlled eccentric lowering. But the body does not care about glamour. It cares about being prepared for what life asks of it.

Why Most People Skip Them

Nordic curls are hard. Not hard in the way that makes you feel accomplished, like finishing a heavy deadlift. Hard in the way that makes you feel humbled. Most people, including people who consider themselves strong, will struggle with the most basic progression. And in a fitness culture that rewards visible effort and big numbers, an exercise that makes you feel like a beginner is not popular.

This is the pattern I see again and again, in the gym and in life. We gravitate toward the things that confirm our existing identity. If you think of yourself as strong, you do the exercises that let you demonstrate strength. The exercises that reveal weakness, the ones that show you where the gaps are, those get avoided. Not consciously. But consistently.

The body does not lie. It does not care about your identity as a strong person. It cares about whether the tissue can handle the load. And the hamstrings, trained properly through eccentric work, are the difference between an athlete who performs for decades and one who is constantly managing setbacks.

The Guinness World Record is a fact about me that people find interesting. But the real story is not about a number. It is about an exercise that most people ignore because it is unsexy, uncomfortable, and humbling. Those are exactly the qualities that make it essential.