I can’t believe I’m saying this, but leg presses might actually be very beneficial for leg strength. Let me explain why. We know that the overhead press is the best upper body exercise for “real world” strength, beucase we are standing on our feet which involves core and leg stabilization. But I think everyone here agrees that if you want to increase your press you must bench, beucase of the heavier load it puts on our triceps and anterior delts compared to the overhead press. But if your training for general strength, you need to do both or else you don’t get the “real world” strength benefits of the overhead press. So can this be applied to the squat and leg press?As long as we’re still squatting, couldn’t the leg press have a very positive effect on our strength since more weight is used, just like the bench press? I hope I’m missing something beucase leg presses are so boring and lazy
Yes, leg presses are programmed in a couple of BBM templates.
Wait I just remembered that leg presses use Machines which takes away from the amount of force production as explained in Rips video “Barbell Vs Machines”. I guess there nice for a little extra hypertrophy which is probably why BBM uses them, not as a main strength builder. Thank goodness I hate leg presses.
How do leg presses “take away from force production”?
As explained in Rip’s video, using machines you don’t have to have “control” over the weight. When you use a barbell the, the fact that it could fall the the left, right, forward, etc, forces you to produce more force in your muscles. This can happen in a bench press, it can’t happen in a leg press.
Which is why a bench press is better than a smith machine bench press.
It actually increases force production because of the stability. As stability increases so does force production capability which allows you to move more weight which requires more force.
Bear Bryan, so why dont we Smith machine bench press instead of free weight barbell bench press?
Well, for one the smith machine locks you into a bar path that is not optimal. Also, you are recruiting more muscles to stabilize the bar when you’re using it freely. You are only looking at one aspect of a lift. Nobody is going to recommend replacing squats with leg presses because you are recruiting more muscle groups with squats. That doesn’t make leg presses useless though.
How do we measure force production?
Bobby, check the question about GHR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh_maiRHOPU
I don’t know how to measure force production. I agree with Bear Bryan that free weight barbell exercises should be the meat and potatoes beucase they recruit more muscle to stabilize the weight. But I understand now that leg presses can be a useful accessory lift. Thank guys, bye.
We are barbell coaches, and obviously agree that barbell exercises should form the foundation of a good strength training program.
But uncritically regurgitating ideas like “all machines are bad because they reduce force production” when you can quite obviously leg press way more than you can squat (which has utility in training), is what we’re trying to avoid here. Think harder.
Ok, thank you for the clarification Coach Baraki.
As an aside, my quads grew like crazy last time I included leg presses in my programming.