Leg Press - Use different foot positions to your advantage

The classic barbell squats in bodybuilder circles are well known as the queen of the exercises, and result in particularly ambitious athletes hone every nuance of the technique to avoid injury and maximize growth. Significantly, it is often these same athletes who place less importance elsewhere on a correct technique, which sometimes has consequences. One of these exercises is the leg Pressthat are as effective as the squat in terms of training stimulus. Nonetheless, many exercisers seem to care less about paying attention to the correct technique or foot position, as all that seems to matter is to put as many slices on the device as possible and toss them around with a loud crash. Anyone who does not pay attention to the positioning of their feet in this context, however, not only gives away growth potential, but sometimes also risks serious knee injuries. As a result, this article looks at how you can use the different foot positions to your advantage.

Why the positioning of your feet on the leg press does matter

Since your body is in a fairly stable position with the leg press, so you do not run the risk of getting out of balance and injuring yourself, you can experiment with foot positions and angles using the different leg presses, such as the Squats can not be implemented for comprehensible reasons. Basically, make sure that your feet are about a shoulder-width apart in the case of a normal training set, as they provide maximum knee stability, which significantly reduces the risk of injury, especially when using heavy loads. Based on this foundation, you can make some adjustments to increase weight on different areas of your thighs and thus train them specifically.

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What causes a high foot position?

If you position your knees in the upper third of the pressure plate, the angle at which your pelvis rotates inward increases, which also reduces the range of motion of your knees accordingly. What this means in practice is quick to explain, because this internal rotation leads to an increased stretching of the thigh back and the butt muscles during the negative movement phase, which in turn leads to a stronger contraction of the target muscles in the following positive movement phase. So if you're intent on teasing your butt and especially the leg biceps on Leg Presses, you should place your feet shoulder width in the top third of the plate. Nevertheless, the butt muscles in leg presses can not be addressed as specifically as is the case with the various squat variants.

What causes a low foot position?

While a high foot position increases the angle of the pelvic rotation, a position of the feet in the lower third of the pressure plate reduces the internal rotation of the pelvis, which also increases the range of motion of the knees. Obviously, this reduces the muscular activity of the thigh back and the butt muscles in favor of the significantly increased load, which thus rests on the quadriceps. So if you want to put the load focus on the quadriceps during this exercise, you should position your feet in the lower third of the pressure plate. At this point, caution is the mother of the porcelain box, because the focus on the quadriceps forced by an increased burden on the knee. Accordingly, it is important to be careful not to place your feet too low to avoid overload-related damage to the passive musculoskeletal system. In this regard, it makes sense, especially for athletes with existing knee injuries or recurring injury patterns, to be careful and choose a lower weight.

Further customization options

However, you can control not only the high or low positioning of your feet, but also their distance from each other. The farther apart your feet are, the more likely you are to focus on the adductor. The tighter the position, the greater the load on the abductors, that is, on the muscles located on the outside of the thighs. For load-sharing and injury-prevention purposes, you should only use this variation to shift the load focus with comparatively light weights, as your knees are in a sub-optimal position in terms of stability. Of course, the combination of different positional adjustments is possible. While it is quite veritable to vary the distance of the feet to each other, an unnatural external or even internal rotation of the feet is absolutely taboo. Regardless of how high or low you position your feet on the pressure plate, it is essential that they have only a minimum of external rotation of a few degrees.