It Looks Safe. It Isn’t.
You’ve seen it in every gym since the 1970s. You lie back, place your feet on a large plate, and press the weight away from you. It rose to popularity during the Arnold Schwarzenegger bodybuilding era and it’s still nearly everywhere today. On the surface, it looks like a safe way to strengthen your legs, especially with back pain, since your lower back is fully supported against the pad and nothing appears to be moving.
Wrong.
The Hidden Pressure Building in Your Spine
There is a lot happening in your lower back during a leg press, even if you can’t see it. The machine creates a massive, unnatural amount of pressure on the discs of the lower back, often while your spine is forced into flexion, the position where your knees come toward your chest and your lower back rounds.
That rounding dramatically increases pressure on your spinal discs. At first, it can actually feel good, almost like a stretch. But repeated pressure over time causes microtrauma in the discs that leads to pain or injury down the road. If you’re going to keep using the leg press, cut the weight in half of what you think you should use. But if you’re open to dropping it altogether, there are far better options.
A Painful Lesson, Learned Firsthand
I was once demonstrating the leg press to a Major League Baseball pitcher who was rehabbing his lower back and regularly used the machine in his strength program. I loaded a relatively light weight to show him exactly how most people perform the exercise, and midway through, I felt a familiar twinge in the same area of my back I had injured years earlier. Symptoms began radiating down my leg later that day. It took longer than I’d like to admit to fully recover from that one careless demonstration. I no longer demonstrate what not to do. I only demonstrate what to do.
Three Better Ways to Build Leg Strength
- Hex Bar Deadlift: Trains strength from the ground up instead of overloading the spine from the top down, keeping your center of gravity directly over your base of support.
- Step-Up Goblet Squat with a Kettlebell: Uses the weight as a counterbalance for a deep squat, giving you the sensation of depth people love about the leg press, without a sled pressing into your spine.
- Bulgarian Split Squat: A near-perfect substitute if you’ve been using the leg press one leg at a time, building unilateral strength, balance, and stability while supporting lower back rehab.
Statistically and clinically, the leg press is not the best choice for most people recovering from back pain, no matter how safe it looks.
Your Next Step
If your gym routine includes exercises that might be working against your recovery, it’s worth a second set of eyes.
Get a personalized review of your training and recovery plan at shawnrobek.com/consultation.
