The ULTIMATE Nordic Guide

Before we even get into the Why, let's establish that this exercise DOES have two major barriers:

1. Gyms don't normally have equipment for it.

2. It's a feat of strength few can naturally do.

that flows with this article, and shows my current compilation of Nordic solutions, in order of most user-friendly:

1. Actual Nordic Benches are made by Rogue, Titan, and Power-Lift.

2. A partner your weight or above INSTANTLY turns a regular bench into a Nordic Bench, though I wouldn't advise it on a flimsy and/or under-padded bench. You could even add yoga mats for more padding if your bench doesn't have enough padding.

3. A Nordic strap does the same as Solution #2, but without a partner! Depending on your strap, you may want to put a towel between you and the strap for maximum comfort. I came up with this concept about 2 years ago, and the ones I know of selling these so far are: @mr1nf1n1ty and @slantboardguy. Selling products is just not for me, because it would take away too much time from coaching and creating content to help people, which are my passions. Money is cool but not my passion, and going all-out to help people as a coach does enough to put food on my table, and meat on my hamstrings ;)

4. A Smith Machine loaded with weight, and with padded bar, makes for a great "partner"!

5A. Any totally immovable object can work, but due to height, may plantarflex (point down) your feet, which encourages calf cramping. This is a fruitless attempt by the calves to assist the hamstrings. However, as your hamstrings get stronger, your calves won't feel the need to help out, and you won't cramp anymore. A car is the most common immovable object.

5B. A dumbbell or other weight rack can work, but is scary because you have to ensure it's super stable and no dumbbells will fall.

5C. Stall bars are not common in US gyms, but in Europe are very common. They're also not very expensive if you want to build out a home gym. These come from gymnastics, so search gymnastic sites for the best deals. Rogue and others make metal ones, but that's not necessary for personal use.

5D. Ok, I'm not proud of this one. But yes even a dumpster works great for trashing your hamstrings (pun definitely intended).

6. This last one is interesting, because you don't necessarily want to be sweating and doing a workout in bed, but again if you have someone your size or bigger, you can do them right in bed (I've only been able to do this in Alissa's third trimester). I'd say this is most applicable for parents in coaching their young kids, actually. You can do it seated, or you can do it with the partner standing and holding down the heels, just as you saw in the version using a partner + bench.

Ok, those are my best up-to-date recommendations on where to set up, AND getting into this movement is as simple as elevating your hips! As you saw in the video, you can use household goods, half-Bosu balls, or thick pads. Just elevate, elevate, ELEVATE to your level!

Now let's get into the WHY, which is SO simple:

(Your hip extensors are primarily your glutes and lower back muscles)

(Your knee flexors are your hamstrings)

This results in TRUE eccentric training, meaning: training your maximum ability on the way DOWN of an exercise. For most areas, this requires considerable equipment and a lot of risk. For example on a bench press if you could do 250 pounds, and tried to fight down 300 pounds, you would produce a ton of adaptation! But you would need a partner, and it could be quite risky due to the amount of weight involved. With a Nordic, however: you only have your own body! Thus, it's so much safer yet still produces those MASSIVE amounts of force.

This is important for both performance and injury-prevention:

From a performance standpoint, you experience roughly 800 pounds of force when you run and then jump off one foot, and RIGHT at the point of impact is the question: can your eccentric knee flexion handle it?

If you can, then you keep pulling the ground and maximize your jump!

If you can't: you either get a "dead-leg" situation where your leg goes straight, rather cycling through the jump, or worse: you shift the pressure to the front of your knee, rather than using your hamstrings.

Even evidence concludes we need Nordics for ACL tear prevention. (<link to the study, just click)

And for the hamstrings themselves, even 4 weeks of Nordics reduces hamstring injury risk factors. Just imagine if these were done once per week as part of your exercise LIFESTYLE and they became EASY?

But any studies on Nordics have only been in terms of fighting on the way down and pushing back up with your hands. The way down IS half of the ATG-style Nordic, and the most important part, so why are we turning it into a full-motion up and down?

1. This activates more fast-twitch fibers in your hamstrings! The ATG-style Nordic is actually in the Olympic weightlifting family on the way UP: teaching your body to maximally recruit fast-twitch fibers.  It's like Olympic lifting for HORIZONTAL force (speed and one-foot jumping) as opposed to vertical force.

2. This immediately creates an observable TEST of your eccentric knee flexion strength vs. concentric knee flexion and hip extension strength. You should be able to control down what you can explode up. So if you find that you can explode up, but drop like a sack of potatoes on the way down, you instantly know your hamstrings and knee ligaments are at risk of injury vs. your ability to explode. Conversely, if you can fight down but CAN'T explode up, it means you have speed and jump gains in the tank, waiting for you to tap into! What's the goal?: BALANCE of difficulty both up and down...

3. And because you have the exact hip measure, you can PRECISELY measure that balance AND track progress. It is very hard to transform on an exercise that doesn't scale down for the lowest cases, and UP for the highest cases! By progressing to the Standard of 5 reps flat bench, you are in the upper 1% of bulletproofing for this area. But you can still go FURTHER, as shown in the video, by progressing to SINGLE-LEG Nordics. This represents the upper 1% OF THE 1%. Consider that it took me 3 years of dedicated work just to get myself to one flat Nordic, and now I can do single-leg. I think this represents how much gain any one body truly has, and that someone with average or even below-average genetics can still know what it's like to be a freak athlete!

Look, until I figured out the Nordic and got good at it, my SPEED and ONE-foot jumping were just piss-poor compared to my two-foot jumping. Speed and one-foot jumping are more horizontal, while two-foot jumping is more vertical. The Nordic bridges that gap, and is thus the finishing touch on the 4 direct knee Numbers.

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(More Horizontal)                                                    (More Vertical)

1. Find a yummy set-up where you feel comfortable.

2. Establish - WITHOUT EGO - your current level by elevating your hips as much as needed.

3. Always send your 5th set of 5 reps through the app for form coaching. The ATG-style Nordic is already programmed in for the Standards and World-Class programs. If you're on Knee Ability Zero, I do advise building that base before starting Nordics, since some of its other movements actually prep your knees and hamstrings for this one. However, if you really insist on trying it, and you're on Knee Ability Zero, you would do it prior to Step 7 in your Friday workout, and you could send in your form video right there in Step 7. We would totally understand and still coach your form!

4. Watch the gains roll in! Just don't forget that a "long" 12 weeks is the estimated amount of time to make a noticeable transformation on this exercise... WHILE THE REST OF THE POPULATION WILL SPEND

YEARS UNAWARE THAT THEIR KNEE FLEXION STRENGTH IS ONLY GOING DOWN. I.e.: patience is key on this exercise and, in the grand scheme of things, you WILL absolutely transform your knee flexion with lightning speed compared to traditional methods.

Yours in Transformation,

Ben

That is totally fine, in which case I have found the Single-Leg Back Extension is the best preparation exercise for it. Click here to watch it. Now consider this exercise is part of the 20 Standards, so you'll already be doing it, but you could skip Nordics and just focus on building up your Single-Leg Back Extension first. Back Extensions require equipment, but they're quite possibly THE cheapest piece of gym equipment, and I've found even the cheapest of them off Amazon to work great. Even if they seem wobbly, I've never had an issue with tipping, and have coached 250-300 pounders on the cheapest of back extension machines.

The reasoning behind using the Back Extension to prep for the Nordic is two-fold:

And while obvious, it should still be noted that you can begin the Back Extension with two legs, building up comfort and ability with two, before even approaching one. I advise building up to where you can do 20 in a row on two legs, with a full pause at the top and bottom of each rep, then beginning the process of working the Single-Leg version per the Standard sets and reps.

These are totally fine! But they do not come close to the amount of force on your knee flexion that ATG-style Nordics provide. It's kind of like comparing lat pulldowns to chin-ups: there is something magical about TRULY handling your own weight, with EXACT measurement and a target that factually adds up to world-class ability for the targeted area. You could absolutely use any knee flexion exercises in the beginning stages, but I've seen people plateau for years due to never progressing on the Nordic itself. I did tens of thousands of reps on all other forms of knee flexion and still dropped like a sack of potatoes on Nordics, because I never truly put enough adaptation into the area. But here's why, along with a solution for each that actually DOES work to some degree...

1. Leg Curls machines would come closest if you used TWO legs up but only ONE leg down: click here for a quick video of this. However, machines vary in difficulty, so I've seen many assume their knee flexion is super strong because they can hoist a lot of weight on a machine, only to find them drop like a sack of potatoes on the Nordic. The force doesn't get right behind the knee like the Nordic does, and also doesn't take your own body weight into account. But to reiterate: if I was going to do a machine Leg Curl, I would use two legs up, then FIGHT down, being sure to use more weight than I could actually lift up. This WOULD cause eccentric knee flexion adaptation and would likely contribute to Nordic progress. I suggest 5 sets of 3 reps per side, alternating sides to add in the power of cluster training, meaning: giving each leg a short break and thus being able to repeat a higher amount of weight. For this to work, you have to get up to a level of weight you CANNOT lift with one leg so that you truly overload your eccentric strength and TELL your body: "Hey, I want your eccentric knee flexion strength to go up!"

2. Glute-Ham Raises don't put the load right behind the knee, and it's far too difficult to establish the exact difficulty based on how far the pad is from you. Again, awesome general exercise, but it doesn't get the results in there RIGHT behind your knee like the ATG-style Nordic, and doesn't truly measure and force adaption to your ECCENTRIC knee flexion strength. If I WAS going to use a Glute-Ham Raise, I would do it with full range of motion at the bottom, allowing myself to build up momentum going into the knee flexion portion, and thus allowing sufficient load to overload your eccentric strength on the way down: click here for a quick video of this. In this case, I suggest 5 sets of 10 reps. I suggest higher reps in this exercise because it can be scary going heavy with weight involved.

3. Swiss Ball Leg Curls don't take your full body weight into account, since your upper body is supported. But again, I can't stress enough: I LOVE ALL FORMS OF KNEE FLEXION. My job is producing life-changing results, and I never got life-changing knee flexion results from anything but the Nordic. If I was personally going to use a Swiss Ball, I would use two legs up, and only one leg down, which might actually produce enough adaptation! It would not be as measurable and scalable long-term but could produce real gains short-term. Click here for a 2-up/1-down Swiss Ball Leg Curl video. I suggest 5 sets to burnout per side, whatever that number is for you. In this case, you will have to exhaust one side at a time, to make it difficult enough.