🦵 Leg press – knee extensor or hip extensor? 🦵

Today we look at the leg press.

The device can be used in two different ways, on the one hand with dominant work of our knee extensors, i.e. the quadriceps muscle, and on the other hand with increased work of the hip extensors.

1️⃣ Knee extensor dominant:

Place your feet in the lower part of the plate. As you press up, you now additionally try to push your feet up to work against the frictional force between the plate and the soles of your feet. Due to the vector addition of load & friction, the load arm shifts away from the knee joint, requiring the knee extensors to work dominantly.

2️⃣ Hip extensor dominant:

In principle, you are now simply doing the opposite here. Place your feet in the upper part of the plate. Here you now try to push your feet down additionally in the push-up phase. This puts more load on the hip extensors, which thus have to do the greater part of the work.