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
When you train your hamstrings with one exercise, you get stronger at a different one — even if your muscles don't grow much in the places you'd expect.
No biological mechanisms were identified in this study. This may be an epidemiological, observational, or survey-based study that reports associations rather than proposing causal biological pathways.
Systematic Reviews & Meta-Analyses
Max 100Randomized Controlled Trials
Max 90Cohort Studies
Max 72Case-Control Studies
Max 58Cross-Sectional Studies
Max 44Case Reports & Case Series
Max 30Expert Opinion & Narrative Reviews
Max 582 / 90
Evidence Score
Participants are randomly assigned to treatment or control groups, minimizing bias. Considered the gold standard for testing whether an intervention causes an effect.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
When you train your hamstrings with one exercise, you get stronger at a different one — even if your muscles don't grow much in the places you'd expect.
No biological mechanisms were identified in this study. This may be an epidemiological, observational, or survey-based study that reports associations rather than proposing causal biological pathways.
Systematic Reviews & Meta-Analyses
Max 100Randomized Controlled Trials
Max 90Cohort Studies
Max 72Case-Control Studies
Max 58Cross-Sectional Studies
Max 44Case Reports & Case Series
Max 30Expert Opinion & Narrative Reviews
Max 582 / 90
Evidence Score
Participants are randomly assigned to treatment or control groups, minimizing bias. Considered the gold standard for testing whether an intervention causes an effect.
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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.