Originally Posted by
Brian Ratliff
Since it's now fall and racing season is a long way away, I'm bumping this. It's a good read. I'm getting into the weight room three times a week these days and getting a good dose of deadlifts and squats, but after a little while, I'm going to start incorporating those single leg, ballistic leg presses described above for power. I don't have the time to learn olympic lifting.
There are many ways to do this. For 2 seasons, all I did was leg press (sub for squat), single leg press (sub for squat), and explosive single leg press (sub for power clean). It worked.
I asked my friend (she's a doctor of physical therapy) of how high-weight leg press compared to high-weight squatting in terms of risk of injury. She said that I was simply trading the risk of hurting my spinal discs for the risk of hurting my pelvis (I'm sure she said some medical term, but I can't recall).
So, for me, it was 6 one way, and 1/2 dozen the other way.
I've heard from 2nd hand account of two Olympic, Elite World Champ sprinters on the same national team, 1 uses leg press and the other uses squat.
I really like the idea of both the back squat and the dual/single leg presses for different reasons. Back squat for the added core strength and the single leg presses due to the fact that we engage legs individually when cycling.