Leg presses have never been my favourite movement, i always do them after squats and i have always looked at them as my weakest movement. Anyhow i think the reason they have been so weak is because of the angle of my feet. I have always been leg pressing with my feet more in a plantar flexion angle. One week ago i decided to experiment a little and put the platform a bit lower so my feet were now more dorsi flexed. The result was incredible, big increase in poundage.
Another thing i have found with leg pressing is that i have to squeeze the bars on the sides really hard to get even more power, i see a lot of people using their hands to push their knees to spot themselves but when i do that i lose power big time. Another thing i do is to have my head well forward, if it is too far back i lose power yet again. If anyone knows a more technical explanation of why changing the angle of my ankles allows me to use more weight for leg pressing it would be greatly appreciated.
Having your feet in plantar flexion would be kind’ve like doing squats with a board under your heels…more stress on the quads with less contribution from other muscle groups so therefore less weight used. You remove the board on squats (or reposition your feet in the leg press) and now your probably getting more contribution from the hips and hamstrings. I am curious though why you would want to use the leg press as a power/max. strength exercise anyway?
I do know that putting your feet higher puts more stress on the hams and putting feet lower puts more stress on the quads. Thus, having your feet lower would bring out more power from your quads.
Thanks for the help guys.
Kelly i use a 4-6 rep range in virtually all exercises and all sets. I do 8-9 sets per workout and go to failure on all of them. So i treat leg presses same as other exercises.