 Question is from Moitz 121. Moitz. I know squats are best for leg development, but if you had to choose between the leg press and the hack squat, which one is better? Oh God, not even close. You know what? Leg press. You know what? I'm just kidding. I tell you what though. Oh God. No, you're not making the case. No, no, no, no. Hear me out. All right, here we go. I want to make this exciting. You know, in the 90s, I'd say 80s, 90s, and maybe early 2000s, the leg press was one of the number one mass building exercises for the lower body for bodybuilders. So bodybuilders would always put leg press near the top. Hack squat was always two or three notches below. And believe it or not, hack squats was considered to be more of a shaping exercise by bodybuilders back in the day. Now I can see where I could argue that, right? One of the benefits of bodybuilding and focus, they're so heavily focused on hypertrophy and the pump that the leg press lends itself well for that reason. I mean, try going to failure every time you hack squat or you barbell squat. You're fucking damn near folding yourself into two and potentially risking a lot of injury a lot of times. And so it's just not feasible to be training to failure and drop setting like crazy on a hack squat and a barbell squat. But a leg press, I mean, you could be taxed like crazy, get under there and all the way to the very last rep and you're not gonna probably hurt your low back, you're not gonna hurt your neck, you're not gonna hurt your hips. There's not a lot of risk for chasing that failure. It's also the load, right? So I'm talking about a hack squat on a sled, not the hack squat that we'll do with a barbell, right? So when you're doing a hack squat on a sled, think about the amount of weight that you can load on it. Now think about the amount of weight that you can load on a leg press. And both of them are relatively similar. Like a hack squat typically is on a higher angle. So it's gonna be harder to push with a hack squat because a leg press is typically at what, 45 degrees. Hack squat probably closer to, it's definitely not 45 degrees a little higher. But with a leg press still, you can load a ton of weight. And I think it's the fact that you can load that much weight might be why they tended to pick that one as a mass builder. When I lift it- It's a smaller range of motion. That's the other thing though too, right? It seems it's a much shorter range of motion. You're not getting that full- If you go further, it's really detrimental. I mean, you're in a bad position with your hips and your lower back. If you're trying to get even further into your chest. Yeah, I'm glad you said that. The leg press used to be, people used to think that was a safe, one of the safest leg exercises you could do. That's actually one where I've seen people hurt their back. I've seen people hurt their back bad on those things. Well, cause they load it up. They load it up so heavy, cause you ain't frivolously. Yeah, you ain't loading that much up on a barbell squat cause it's gonna fold you up, right? So I, if you were to talk to like our friends like Brett Contreras or Eugene, like, I mean, they would for sure, I mean, they make the case that a hack squat is superior to a barbell back squat many times. So the value of a hack squat, I think is incredible because you get similar benefits as you do with the barbell squat. You just don't quite have as much of the instability because you're on a sled and a machine, but you can load it and make it hard as fuck and you can go deep all the way down just like you would do an astagrass squat. So to me, it's not even close to which one is better for overall leg development. I think the hack squat is, although I leg pressed a lot early on. And I actually, the way I leg pressed though, I always single leg leg press. Yeah, now you're a big advocate for that. I am a huge on that for a couple of reasons. One, I don't have to be an asshole and load 40 plates on there, right? Because I can leg press the shit with just about anybody. Like I can leg press, single leg press, I can load, I've loaded up to six plates on each side. So imagine if I was doing both legs, you easily can do double. Right, it's not that hard to get up there. But what I love about the single leg is it does force a little instability. So I have to like stabilize my knee so my knee doesn't cave and flex in like that. I don't have to load the plates up as much. I feel like it's a little more comfortable for me to go deeper in my range of motion. It's not rotating your low back so much. Yeah, so I'm a big fan of single leg press. I haven't done both feet on the leg press in a long, long time. It feels like lifting weights in a recliner to me. It's fucking lazy, I think it's worthless. I feel like I'll do it for like, building volume and stuff for my legs, but other than that, I can't justify it. It's like a legit. That's what it's good. It's great for that, right? The volume builder, it's a great way to do drop sets. It's a great way to, it's a great tool. Okay, I know we're hammering on it a little bit, but it is a great tool. Out of the leg machines, it's one of the better ones. Right, yeah. You have to say it right. Yeah, yeah, you can make that case. There's not a lot of great leg extensions. It's gonna give you more development than a leg extension. That's for sure. For a leg girl. That's for sure. It's gonna give you a lot more than that or an adductor adductor. I like what you said about the single leg version because when you're doing a single leg version, typically, what's the other leg doing, Adam? Do you have it down, down below you? Yeah, it fits right underneath the machine. So when you're doing that, because one leg is down, it's anchoring your hips nicely and preventing them from doing the rotating up at the top that can cause some leg prop, excuse me, low back issues with the leg press, right? Because that's where the back issues happen is when people are leg pressing both legs, it pushes them down, they get that pelvic tilt at the bottom, and then you get the hurt discs or whatever in the low back. The stress all goes right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm telling you, if you read bodybuilding magazines in the 90s and bodybuilders were talking about their favorite mass builders for legs, and I know, because I read them all, leg press. Leg press was always number one. And my original leg routines were leg press, hack squat, leg extension, leg curl was my staple. And that was it. And I do wanna end this or close this loop on this by saying that one of the things that we always talk about on this show that, you know, especially in an argument like this where we can kind of make the case back and forth, which one has more value. You know which one was gonna have the greatest value is the one you never do, right? So if you hack squat every single time and you're really good at hack squatting, because that's your kind of go-to or because some other fucking fitness professionals that it's better, it's superior, well, it's no longer superior when you've got adapted to it and you've been doing it for six months plus consistently, you know what's gonna be great for you? The leg press. Yeah. Because you never do it. And the same thing is true if you always leg press. So you gotta remember that the novelty piece with the body is so important when we're trying to adapt and change, when you're trying to get, if you wanna get good at just leg pressing or good at just hack squatting, then you stick with it over and over for as long as you can until you get great at it. But if you're looking for leg development and we're trying to build legs, build our muscle, then one of the best things you can do is do the one that you haven't been doing the most consistent. Yeah, such an excellent point. And then also, I wanna add this, this always cracks me up. Do them both. Why can't you just do them both? You know what I mean? So we do this either or all the time, like, oh, which one's better? I better not fucking do them both. Right, I mean, that's my point. It's like, you know, run one for a four, six week, you know, cycle, and then after- Switch to the other one. Yeah, then switch the other one for four to six weeks. You'll get the best of both worlds.