Leg Press - Magnitude of Leg Press Lifts

Magnitude of Leg Press Lifts

Since the leg press stabilizes the lifter and moves weights in a direction that is not vertical, it is possible for strength trainers to press very heavy weights (compared to the weight used for other exercises). The actual effective weight on the legs on a typical 45 degree leg press machine is equal to sin(45°)*the loaded weight, for example a machine loaded with 450 pounds plus the sled (118 pounds in this example) is effectively 402 pounds of force on the legs. Bodybuilder Ronnie Coleman is featured in videos wherein he leg presses 2,300 pounds (1,043 kg) for a full eight repetitions. To compare, the world record for the squat is 992lbs (450kg) raw and 1,250lbs (568.18 kg) in a multiply squat suit.

An AskMen.com article states that it is not uncommon for men to leg press over 500 pounds (226 kg), with some men going over 1,000 pounds (454 kg) using a limited-range of motion. Former US Secretary of State and septuagenarian Madeleine Albright claims she is able to leg press in excess of 400 pounds (181 kg). However, a true leg press requires the full range of motion. Typically a person cannot do much more than double the weight of their standard one-repetition, full-range leg-press when attempting limited-range strength straining (e.g., if they can do 500 pounds full-range they could do no more than 1,000 pounds for limited range training).

Read more about this topic:  Leg Press

Famous quotes containing the words magnitude of, magnitude, leg, press and/or lifts:

    Although a man may lose a sense of his own importance when he is a mere unit among a busy throng, all utterly regardless of him, it by no means follows that he can dispossess himself, with equal facility, of a very strong sense of the importance and magnitude of his cares.
    Charles Dickens (1812–1870)

    Constancy has nothing virtuous in itself, independently of the pleasure it confers, and partakes of the temporizing spirit of vice in proportion as it endures tamely moral defects of magnitude in the object of its indiscreet choice.
    Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

    Farmers in overalls and wide-brimmed straw hats lounge about the store on hot summer days, when the most common sound is the thump-thump-thump of a hound’s leg on the floor as he scratches contentedly. Oldtime hunters say that fleas are a hound’s salvation: his constant twisting and clawing in pursuit of the tormentors keeps his joints supple.
    —Administration in the State of Arka, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    Whereas the comic confronts simply logical contradictions, the tragic confronts a moral predicament. Not minor matters of true and false but crucial questions of right and wrong, good and evil face the tragic character in a tragic situation.
    —Marie Collins Swabey. Comic Laughter, ch. 7, Yale University Press (1961)

    a strange being leans over her
    and lifts her chin firmly
    and gazes at her with executioner’s eyes.
    Anne Sexton (1928–1974)