Anyone else got trouble with their hamstrings? Despite me getting fitter, my hamstrings are getting weaker.

Any ideas?

what do you mean weaker? more injury prone or less good at pedalling?

managed to tweak one of mine in a crash today. should probably have stretched more.

I reckon you mean shorter, not weaker

stretch more, as plums said

I bet they are getting tighter rather than weaker, do more stretching. I have always had tight ham's and have decided recently that I am going to fix it with loads of stretching, after 4 weeks of it my legs and lower back seem much more flexible except for on a morning when all of me creaks like an old man!!

No, they are most definitely getting weaker. Flexibility is not an issue.

well then you need to cross-train or improve your pedalling technique

try some swimming

How can you tell your hamstrings are getting weaker?

What activity leads you to believe that your hamstrings are weaker and against what measure?

Because I can lift half the weight with them than I used to be able to.

Your hamstrings are tendons/ligaments, so they don't get weaker or stronger in any sensible sense. If you can't lift as much it's a muscle problem, so work the muscles…

Eh?

By eh, I mean that the hamstrings refer to a group of 4 muscles: Biceps femorus – both, semitendonosus, and semimembranosus. So WTF are you talking about?

I'm saying that your hamstrings traditionally are thought of as the tendons that run behind the knee. I know they are really muscles, and I'm also saying that if you can't lift as much with said muscles, you need to work on them.

Crikey – I know what they are and how to fix them. If you read my question you'll see that I asked if anyone else had this problem.

Hamstrings have never been thought of as tendons.

The word ham originally referred to the fat and muscle behind the knee. String refers to tendons, and thus, the hamstrings are the string-like tendons felt on either side of the back of the knee.

I've always thought of them as tendons, rather than muscles.

To retain anything other than your natural strength the body has a use it or lose it function. If you are regularly lifting in terms of isolating your hams and your strength is diminishing then you're over training, not eating enough or you've got some pernicious muscle wasting disease and should spend your time enjoying the physicality you have left 😯

Have a look at photos of cyclists. With the exception of the track sprint meathead variety cyclists have crap hamstrings. Crikey doesn't even have hamstrings. He just has tendons!

Less cycling more deadlifts. Assuming you've been doing less deadlifts and more cycling recently of course.

1 leg squats, calf raises.

Would that be rocket science?