I have always held a fundamental belief that all muscles respond the best for growth doing compound movements.
Its a compound exercise, the whole lower body is stimulated
Interesting discussion. I feel like I get zero hamstring stimulation or development from the leg press. Wide stance, equipped, sitting back squats when I was powerlifting were a totally different story. Those definitely felt like they hit my hammies. But when I switched to raw lifting and a narrower stance more like I would assume a bodybuilder might have used, my hamstrings didnāt feel like they were doing much at all when I was squatting.
Okay, today was leg day. Maybe my recall was off and it wasnāt my hamstrings I felt doing 60 reps in 2 minutes. To my memory doing the 60 reps, after 30 seconds my quads began to bun. By the end of 90 seconds the quad burn had subsided and my glutes and hamstrings began to burn the final 15 reps.
So today I changed from my normal (at this training cycle) 3 sets of 20 reps at about a 35 to 40 seconds pace to do 20 reps, to make the last set a 2 minutes set to do 20 reps. Each rep takes 6 seconds. 5 second negative followed by a very slight pause and then a positive as fast as I can. As I got to 90 seconds my glutes began to burn, followed a few seconds later by my hamstrings burning.
IMO, that is evidence that my hamstrings were involved in the movement.
Note: my patella tendon is not in good condition. I do all my leg pressing such that my knees do not extend over my toes. When I did squat that was also the case.
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I actually dont see many woman leg press anymore, they squat, deadlift, RDL, hip thrust / glute Bridge, lunge/split squat, wall sits, do these crab walks with resistance bands around theyre thighs, then i see some of them finnish up on isolation machines.
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I also pay a lot of attention to the women in the gym.
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Same. I have some absolute monsters that go to my gym. Multiple competitors. Dey bad
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Yes, Paul Carter is indeed in a 90 degree leg press position and a shoulder width high bar squat position. If you get your legs up high on the leg press or do a wide stance squat, youāre hitting hamstrings.
Youāre acting like thereās one way to do an exercise here. Sumo deadlifts are much more quads, and close stance deadlifts are mostly hams. Same can go for leg press positions and squat positions.
To answer your question, getting into a wide stance deep hip bend squat absolutely stretches your hamstrings and itās absolutely a hip hinge when you come back up top. On the other hand, squatting upright with lots of knee flexion is virtually all quads.
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Iām much stronger in the sumo deadlift, and that lead me to sumo stance on the belt squat, then wide stance on regular squats. I think thatās just where Iām strong. Iām usually feeling the quads, glutes and hamstrings during, but especially two days after the squats. I think wide stance fits my leverages, strong muscle groups or something because Iām a stronger with a wide stance on both movements.
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This is with oly shoes on, too - with flat shoes youād be hinged over more, and plenty of powerlifters donāt go anywhere near that level of knee flexion. Just to illustrate the point that āsquatā is a VERY general description of a movement pattern, and that the amount to which various muscles are involved in the movement can vary wildly depending on how it is performed.
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Is that you? I got the same shoes in black and red.
I donāt think if different muscles werenāt involved to different levels using different stances, that many people would vary so much on which position is strongest for them. Leverages explain that too, but I donāt think thatās the only factor.
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