Why lifting one way helps you lift another — even if your muscles don't get bigger
Minimal Role of Hamstring Hypertrophy in Strength Transfer Between Nordic Hamstring and Stiff-Leg Deadlift: A Blinded Randomized Controlled Trial
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
Strength transfer between NHE and SDL was nearly identical (10.7% vs. 20.7%) despite vastly different muscle growth patterns and p=0.06 (not statistically significant).
Common training wisdom says specificity matters—train the movement to get better at it. But here, training one movement made you stronger at the other, even though they use different joint actions (knee flexion vs. hip extension).
Practical Takeaways
If you're new to lifting, do both Nordic hamstring curls and stiff-leg deadlifts in the same training block to maximize hamstring strength across movements.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
Strength transfer between NHE and SDL was nearly identical (10.7% vs. 20.7%) despite vastly different muscle growth patterns and p=0.06 (not statistically significant).
Common training wisdom says specificity matters—train the movement to get better at it. But here, training one movement made you stronger at the other, even though they use different joint actions (knee flexion vs. hip extension).
Practical Takeaways
If you're new to lifting, do both Nordic hamstring curls and stiff-leg deadlifts in the same training block to maximize hamstring strength across movements.
Publication
Journal
Journal of strength and conditioning research
Year
2024
Authors
Titouan Morin, Valentin Doguet, Antoine Nordez, Arnault H. Caillet, L. Lacourpaille
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Claims (6)
In untrained individuals, compound movements can improve performance on isolation movements due to enhanced neuromuscular coordination, overriding the specificity principle; however, in trained individuals, strength gains are highly movement-specific.
Doing two different hamstring exercises—Nordic curls and stiff-leg deadlifts—makes you stronger at both, even if your muscles don’t grow the same way, meaning muscle growth isn’t what’s making you stronger in the other exercise.
In stiff-leg deadlifts, the size of the biceps femoris muscle (back of the thigh) seems to matter more for getting stronger at other exercises—unlike the other hamstring muscles.
Nordic curls make one part of your hamstring (semitendinosus) grow more, while stiff-leg deadlifts make another part (semimembranosus) grow more—so different exercises target different muscles in the same group.
Even when your hamstrings get bigger from training, that doesn’t really predict how much stronger you’ll get at the other exercise—so bigger muscles don’t mean much more strength in this case.