Jay Cutler, a four-time Mr. Olympia champion and International Sports Hall of Fame inductee, is a pioneer who has helped shape the bodybuilding industry, and now at age 50, he is training a new generation of strong athletes through fitness competitions and his mentorship on social media, where he has millions of followers.
In a June 8, 2024 Instagram post, Cutler shared his “number one” hamstring exercise.
Jay Cutler’s hamstring exercises
“That was always my No. 1 exercise,” Cutler says. “In fact, when I lived in Massachusetts — I lived in Worcester — I ended up choosing to go to a gym in Framingham, Massachusetts, which was probably about 25 minutes away when I lived there. [a gym] There was a place right next to my house that I used to go to for seated leg curls, and back then it was called Flex and Hamtractor.”
Cutler said,Quad Stomp His success in building strong legs on stage is a result of a holistic approach to bodybuilding. The hamstrings are made up of the long (double-joint) and short (single-joint) heads of the biceps femoris, the semitendinosus (double-joint), and the semimembranosus (double-joint), which aid in hip and knee movement. Seated leg curls are a great movement to target these muscles because they put stress on both the knees and hips.
According to the study: Seated leg curls have been shown to be more effective at building muscle than prone curls, making them ideal for muscle building. “If you watch any of my videos, this is always the first move I do,” Cutler explains. “Why? It seems to target the hamstrings, and you’ll get a massive muscle pump from just one rep of this move.”
Sharing his approach, the bodybuilding icon mentions doing three sets of workouts and then doing one or two test sets beforehand to figure out what weight to use in the workout. “I’ll focus on 10 or 12 reps,” he says of each set. In the video, Catlett explains why he starts with about 130 pounds for his first test set and sticks to the 10-12 range. “Whether it’s a warmup or a workout, I always focus on roughly the same number of reps,” he explains. “High reps don’t do anything for me at all. People think that high reps are going to tone your muscles. That’s a misconception.”
For more bodybuilding tips from Jay Cutler, follow him on Instagram.
