Leg Pressing To Really Target The Quads

September 11th, 2013 by

Leg Pressing Tip.

Now if you’re one of these myopic, barbells-or-die zealots, who thing leg pressing is for sissies, well, this won’t help you, but for the rest of you …

I personally don’t leg press as my first (or heavy/low rep movement) as I don’t feel it’s ideally suited for this and thus I prefer to do a squat variation for that. However, I will often use the Leg Press as one of my intermediate movements on leg day. So in this context I am generally doing moderate to higher reps, shorter rest intervals and relatively slow eccentrics – all in the name of trying to maximize tension, build up fatigue in the muscle, stimulate sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, etc.

So it’s generally a heavy, strength-based movement (and loading parameters) to stimulate myofibrillar hypertrophy and then bodybuilding, bodybuilding, bodybuilding – more reps, shorter rests, longer TUTs, etc., to stimulate sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, etc.

So, the slight variation to how you leg press – once you find the right foot position on the platform, push from the BALLS of your feet. To ensure this, I want you to just SLIGHTLY lift your heels off the platform. And by slightly, I mean just enough to ensure focus is coming from the balls of the foot only. This might be like 1/2″ if even that. In addition to the shorter rests, higher reps, slower eccentrics, etc. focus on CONSTANT TENSION – piston like. Do not stop or rest at any point in the rep – slow down, power up, no pausing, repeat. This will be an exercise in “pain tolerance” as well, trust me.

But I can assure you, that slight adjustment to pushing off the front of your foot by very slightly raising your heels off the platform will significantly change the difficulty/tension of this movement and trash your quads. What you’ll likely feel is a tremendous amount of tension in the “lower quads” (yes there is no such thing as the lower quads, lol), vastus medialis, etc. This is good of course, since most of us need more development here to balance out our “turnip-looking” quads.

So to recap:

1. Moderate-to-high reps (the quads love volume and higher reps/longer time under tension).

2. Controlled eccentrics/strong concentrics.

3. Short rest intervals (45-60s – haha)

4. SLIGHTLY elevate the heels to ensure you are only pushing off the balls/front of your foot.

Try it. It will definitely be your new love/hate movement.