The only problem with the "pushing the upper back into the seat" cue is, that if you bend forward to get a better hamstring stretch, you lose the back pad contact on most machines, since most gyms don't have angle adjustment.
I have always done my leg curls as shown, but there seems to be a bit of a trend amongst the 'stretch fraternity' to do their seated leg curls bent over in order to lengthen the hamstrings even further at the starting position. This prevents the cue to push the body into the backpad. On some of the videos a large portion of their hamstrings are dangling off the end of the bench which obviously compromises their ability to generate force.
So if you are pushing the upper back into the seat, how would you go around doing that if you try to lean forward(to get better strech)? Those two seem contradictory.
I didn't quite get the emphasis on pushing the pad down on the stretch position and back on the bottom. Where is the pad supposed to be headed instead of those directions exactly? It's not a free weight, it moves through a predetermined ROM, pushing this or that way makes no difference as all you're doing anyway is pushing the pad where it goes.
Can you please elaborate how people are doing this exercise wrong? 😂 You’re making a 10 minute video for a non issue. Let me give you some advice on topics: Stop the biomechanic guru gig, give a free program so people can test/trust in your philosophy, and please use scholarly journals to back up your assertions.
If you don't press against the knee pad, your whole body will rise. If you don't hold on to the arm handles, your body will move forward. I think both of these kind of come naturally, and to keep it simple it's better not to focus too much of where the force is pushing at any moment, just go by the feel.
I enjoyed it because I go to a variety of gyms with different equipment (I travel a lot), so the biomechanics is very useful to understand how to optimize the feel.
