I am doing lots of these right now as part of my rehab for broken tib-fib. Still at the 20 lb stage, will be a while before i get back to say 250 lbs.

I think the reason for 90 deg maximum is stress on the patellar tendons. Not a good idea to load those with a few hundred pounds and 75 degrees, as opposed to cycling where the maximum weight is your body weight.

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don't just do something..... sit there

Definitely not more than 90deg. Again, the reason is stress on the connective tissues. Part of the reason you can bend your knee 75deg at TDC is that your peak torque when cycling is a fraction of what it is when leg pressing.

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

When you're doing an all out sprint, and pulling down on the handlebars, your torque gets much higher.

Also look at rowers. They bend there knees much more than cyclists, and they will push off very hard when they pick up the pace.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXnKyJdA01w

Cough...didn't Rappstar used to be a competitive rower?

They say this because they're not exactly an expert.

Muscle development is dependent on a few factors, one of them being the ROM for the specific exercise. For a movement that involves knee/hip flexion, the muscles involved depend on how "deep" you go.

Concentric contraction of the glutes is not optimized at partial or parallel- it needs to be a full squat. VMO, lateralis, and bi-femoris will be developed at partial to parallel.

As others have stated, full squats will place more stress on the tendon: but as long as the load, form, recovery, and prior history of knee injury are addressed, there is no reason to not go full squat/press every time.

If you're going to strength train, strength train. If you're going to make it sport/tri specific, focus more on Oly/plyo movements.

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As you proably know already, olympic lifters bend their knees very deep when doing pwer cleans. They are applying several times their body weight to their knees. I would be interested in knowing what happens to them in the long term. Do they develop early osteoarthritis, or do they remain intact as they get older?

The question then, really, as much as the OP wanted to avoid it, is why do these exercises that place tremendous load on the knee in order to achieve the proper ROM rather than just doing sport-specific strengthening exercises on the bike (or even plyo or other olympic lifts). If you need to use a very light weight and high repetitions, would going out and doing 5-10 second sprints not be more effective. If you do standing sprints of 15 seconds at 120rpm, that is 30reps, which is similar to what you'd do for a low-weight, high-rep set (call that 15-20 reps). And it is totally sport specific. I don't see that trying to replicate full ROM for cycling is useful on a leg press, especially when hip-angle, etc. are all drastically different. You don't need identical ROM to strengthen connective tissues and build muscle, which is all that lifting should be used for, if you actually believe it should be used at all. Trying to exactly mimic your cycling movement on a leg press is just foolish.

For the record, rowers generate roughly the same peak power as a cyclist (I could bump up against 900w on the erg, and can get 1100 or so on the bike). Cadence is roughly half. So peak torque for a rower would be double that of a cyclist, which is still WAY below what you'd do leg pressing, unless you were doing so little weight that you'd be better off just doing power intervals on the bike.

If you want more than 90deg of ROM, do the exercises on your bike...

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

So what do you suggest? Make the range of motion from 170 to 180 a la Pat Roertson?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSDpzwjBZKY

I suggest that if you are going to do weight training, you adopt a traditional weight training program (squats to 90deg, etc.). Otherwise, just do plyos and on-the-bike strength training.

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

Traditional? Can't get much more traditional than olympic lifting. Their training involves doing front squats deeper than 90 degrees

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2By02E4-QU

You asked "Optimal leg press angle." Had you asked optimal front squat angle, my answer would have been different, since most people, especially people who are not serious lifters, cannot front squat a lot of weight, since just balancing the bar is very tough. Getting below parrallel with a front squat is much easier, I guess it is just the way your body moves with the load there. And the weight, as compared with a leg press, is vastly lower. If you can front squat anywhere close to what you can leg press, I'd be very suprised.

In that video you post, though, I would not say that the lifter is going below parrallel thigh. Because you are balanced differently than with a normal squat, you get more than 90deg of bend, but your thigh is not going below parrallel to the ground. You'll also notice that he's squatting what looks like 185 (looks like a 45 and 25 on each side), which is much lower than what you'd leg press. At least, if leg pressing 185 for any reasonable number of reps is a workout, that's a problem...

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

I took it as the OP already saying he was going to lift, and he was asking about partial/full ROM. Glute development is a large component of any sport, much less tri. My point was if you're going to lift, might as well do it correctly and do a full range of motion.

With your reps on the bike vs. reps in the gym- I agree 100%. And it is foolish to try and mimic a cycling movement with the leg press.

My point with the plyo/oly was more of the neuro adaptation that can be beneficial. People can't train the acceleration component in a gym with typical circuit or total body workouts. I figured if the OP was going to be in the gym anyways, they might as well try to get the most out of it.

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Totally spot on- personnally, I feel people shouldn't even attempt a back squat unless they can lift their body weight in a front squat.

I believe the weights were a 35 and 25, but it doesn't matter though- his knees were all over the place on those reps, which means the weight was probably a little too much for him. But if this lifter was at all interested in going below parrallel, they'd be in the cage instead of the squat rack.

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http://www.reathcon.com

I believe that you brought up the suggestion of doing squats at 90 deg


I a gree that it wasn;t the best example of a front squat. Look at the power clean on this video, It invoves doing a front squat with about 3x the body weight:

http://www.youtube.com/...e=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3E_LHqaNMQ.

http://www.youtube.com/...e=related&search=

Here's a picture:

http://www.weights.demon.co.uk/yne/jerk2.jpg

Did you look at the pat robertson video I posted earlier? If you use a more obtuse angle, something like 160 or 170 deg, you can do a ton of weight. But what does all that vertical compression do to your knees?

Here's what I don't understand. I said "...you adopt a traditional weight training program (squats to 90deg, etc.)." So far you've responded with a video of a front squat (which is a FRONT squat, not a PARRALLEL squat, which is what people are referring to when they say just "squat.") and power clean. By it's very definition, a parrellel squat will put your knees at basically a 90deg bend (so that your thighs are parrellel to the floor, hence the name). I did not say do-a-Pat-Robertson-2-degree-ROM-leg-press. I did not say 90deg for cleans or front squats. You asked a simple question, "optimal leg press angle," and I said 90deg, which is roughly equivalent to a parrallel squat. So I don't understand what the point of all these other videos are. Are there exercises out there in which you go beyond 90deg of knee bend? Yes. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you should leg press that way. As I said, front squats tend to be much lighter weight than what people leg press and cleans generally are as well. A guy who can clean 3x his body weight is going to leg press a ton more weight than that. Cleans are also explosive lifts, so you aren't doing high rep counts. Leg press is not an explosive lift. Honestly, I don't really care what you do in the gym, and if you are somehow looking for justification to leg press at 75deg of knee bend, then go ahead. But I'll stand by original assessment - if you want to truly target the ROM you have on the bike, do the exercises on the bike; otherwise, you are unnecessarily compromising your knees. If you want to believe that doing deep-bend leg press and power cleans is the way to faster cycling, be my guest...

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

It's not so much a vertical compression, but a dislocation component naturally found in the knee joint and excacerbated under extreme loads.

For power lifting as well, the different phases of an olympic lift require you to not exactly "lift/push/pull" the weight throughout the entire movment, but rather begin movement, and as the weight moves, move your body around the weight. In the case of the snatch, after first pull, the upward momentum of the barbell allows the lifter to move their body under the weight before the catch. With extreme weight (i.e.- too much for "health"), the athlete must very often full squat in order to catch the weight, thus the need for extreme angles.

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http://www.reathcon.com

Well since you brought it up, I'll tell you what my approach is.

When doing the regular gym leg press (Cybex) I probably go down to about 90 deg. I don't carry a protractor to measure the exact angle. I might do a warm up set with a much lighter weight in which I may go a bit lower than 90.

I also do leg press at home on the C2 DYNO. Much smoother than a weight loaded system. Again, warm ups at slightly less than 90, and regular sets at about 90 deg.

http://www.concept2.co.uk/...hp?exercise=legpress

Regarding "justification to leg press at 75deg.." That would be inconsistent with an open discussion, which involves suspending judgment until we look at all the angles.

Another issue to consider is that the Rotorcranks and the q-rings minimize the torgue at the more acute angles, making it less necessary to develop strength at that ROM.