glute-ham raises / nordic falls . . . equipment.

^^^ yup, that's the move. and exactly that is one of my options at home, thanks to the way my couch is.

problem with that set up is, if you look at that guy he's holding on with his calves and the balls of his feet. my couch lets me get under it to about the point of mid-foot but it's still not that great. you have to curl your toes like a ballerina once the pressure gets on. then the teeny little muscles in the sole of your foot become the limiting factor for something that's meant to be hamstring-focused, which isn't the best way to go imo.

it's an awesome exercise though.

livingleanlivingclean wrote: »

I've seen them done on a pull down machine. Kneel where you'd sit, facing out, with your feet under the pads your knees normally go under.

i kept eyeballing those pulldown machines and i can try it, but the bench is pretty narrow. i can keep the thighs clamped together (heh), but it's just a question of whether i'd have to turn out from the knee in order to get my feet meeting the pads. for my specific injury (tendinopathy of glute med and hamstring), i think going valgus like that is probably out as it may aggravate the tendon problem and won't let me get into the main hamstring muscle im' trying to hit anyway. but i'll have to look at the ones in teh rec centres and see how thick that pad-end column is.

i thought of trying the smith machine too. lowest peg, with enough weight on the bar to keep it stable. but regular plates raise it too high, so then i'd have to go fetch one of those step things and hope that sets the proportions just right . . . it's not that most of my own ideas wouldn't work. i'm just hoping to find something that won't call for four kinds of equipment and 20 minutes of fiddling around, just for the sake of a move i might hold for nothing more than a couple of seconds and 3x3 reps. i'm supposed to be doing this three times a day, so that's a pretty huge overhead especially in what's going to be a new-year-rush gym in a couple of weeks.

i think actually the simplest thing might be to chock up the frame of my bed after all

Lean59man wrote: »

Other options include the following...

Hamstrings: Leg curls, stiff legged deadlifts or pull-thru on a low lat machine.

For glutes and hamstrings do back squats.

those are great lifts, no question. but if you re-check my posts you'll see i mentioned an injury. so actually, the falls are my 'other options' for hamstring work. hopefully once things calm down i'll go back to the deadlifts and squats, but right now i'd rather remove my own spleen with jeffrey dahmer's spare saw.

jemhh wrote: »

I've often wondered the same--how to do these at home. Your post made me search for options that would work with what I have on hand. How about this?

oooo. that's what i've kept thinking of. i never thought just doing the brackets though. i could put that up against the wall if i needed some way to make sure that my feet were squared up. left foot turns in if it's left to itself, and that's probably part of what gave me this issue in the first place

edit: in fact i think if i can just find the right kind of bracket thingy, i might not even need the baseboard part of that. my couch weighs seven tons, so maybe all i need to do is get some major coat-hooks** to hook under the bottom part of the frame and then use the screw holes to attach a length of dowel or something in between them, across the 'top'. i don't mind banging up my couch a little in a good cause like physio.

** or just put the whole thing together with pvc pipe. i should call a plumber.

stanmann571 wrote: »

You should be able to use the Golds gym/perfect pullup doorway bar in situp mode.

i'll look into this one as well. thanks for everybody's ideas.

sgt1372 wrote: »

OP: If you lived anywhere near SF, I'd let you borrow (or buy) my GHR machine which I bought cheap on Craigslist and seldom use.

why don't you? you should!!! etc etc.

thanks for all the thoughts, people. i went to the boondocks today to visit my dad, who is 92 and still has most of his marbles, although there are days when he's not sure where he put some of them.

he was a backveldt civil engineer in his day, and he rigged just about anything he needed while he was building roads through the middle of various nowheres. so there's nothing he loves as much as tinkering, unless it's problem-solving. i explained my dilemma and demonstrated the move, and before i knew it he'd gone and gotten his screwdriver and taken down two of his personal coat hooks for me.

then he wandered off in the middle of me trying to demo the rest of the idea and came back with a pitch-perfect little length of pvc, pmuch exactly what i'd been looking for. i'll report back once i get off my lazy butt and find some cord to put it all together with.