We thank Prof Li and Mr Syno for their interest in our paper. We agree that our study would have been more informative had it included an assessment of hip muscle activations but the correspondents’ call for a broader study fails to appreciate the goals of the current one (assessing hamstring activation) and the limitations encountered when undertaking time consuming and expensive research. For example, when embarking on this and the other studies that were part of our broader project (Bourne et al., 2017a, 2017b & 2017c) we had to consider the pressures placed on a PhD candidate (MB) for timely completion and the budget limitations which precluded scanning a larger volume of the lower limb. However, we do hope to assess hip muscle activation in future studies and we extend an invitation to Professor Li and Mr Syno to join us in that endeavour.