Ask yourself,
In what realworld movement, do you Sit down and push with your legs?
I can only think of a clutch in a car.
Leave the leg press for the bodybuilders
The sitting down part seems pretty irrelevant really, compressing my legs towards my chest and then pushing them away is basically a sprint start?
Without travelling further, the gym I have access to only has smith machines and dumbells. And I’m sure I read somewhere that squatting in smith machines was bad for your knees?
Or could I just swap the leg press for smith squats?
Goblet Squats?
I could do those, but I’d be the first person to admit my upper body probably isn’t capable of holding a heavy enough weight to get anywhere near a weight that would challenge my legs sufficiently.
It’s like night n day.
As an athlete, the leg press is useless.
A small analagy for you, mechanically, a Car moves, on it’s wheels, the wheels turn, the car moves.
However, making the wheels stronger, bigger and more capable won’t make the car Faster.
What will, is the engine.
Doing Leg press, is like working on the wheels of the car, and ignoring the motor/suspension/gear box etc.
Doing exercises that enable everything to get strong, esp the engine and suspension. Suspension = posture.
Look at race horses - skinny legs, HUGE hips/core/torso
Just a thought.
See Carmelita Jeter on the 45 degree squat press (starting at about 8 minutes):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eegrRneL6_k
See Jet doing nothing but a bunch of general strengthening exercises with John Smith standing right there. The first time I saw this, with a whopping 2 plates on each side of the 45 degree, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. But the real point is it doesn’t matter. She is still the fastest woman alive, and I think its fair to say that she didn’t get there due to the specificity of her weight program.
Now repeat after me Charlie’s mantra:
Weights are General
Weights are Secondary
Weights follow track
As Charlie pointed out on this forum multiple times, all you really need is a push, a pull, and a squat.
As lkh noted I just don’t think weights are so important that you must squat or clean, etc.
James has had numerous athletes perform leg press, lunge or step up, and some continued doing a squat.
Michael Johnson did some kind of leg press/squat machine. Bolt does leg press, one of his training partners squats.
I wonder how many NFL receivers and dbs actually perform a free barbell squat with any regularity during their careers.
All successful.
Jetter isnt doing leg presses for a strength workout, thats pretty obvious.
Just general pumping, flushing after the other work she did.
I think their gym work is before their track work in most cases.
I don’t think gym work will directly make you faster anyway. I would keep it general at the moment with circuits etc and when the season ends, you may assess things again.
Having done very little in the way of weights during pretty much my entire athletic career I’m not going to rush to add them in now, I just want to make sure that on the occasions I do find myself in a gym I’m doing the right stuff. Especially with my warm weather training trip coming up soon I’ll have access to proper Olympic weights so I also wanted to know what exercises and what weight I should be doing for those sessions.
But I won’t be losing any sleep if I can’t get in the gym on a regular basis this season 
Perhaps do explosive mediball throws instead?
Instead of the leg press? I’m assuming you mean the ones where you sort of squat down and then throw it backwards over your head then?
I assume he does yes, works well on creating a good powerful extension and activating the posterior.
At this stage, I would just add a fairly light ATG squat, light to mid deadlifts (not heavy as this may strain your hamstrings if not strong enough) and a nice easy bench press / incline bench
In addition would look at “core” elements, that will keep your legs swinging. (Kinda prehab) weighted drinking birds, hip thrusts, reverse step lunges.
That overhead med ball throw is quite often incorporated into the medball sessions we do at training, and I can say right now there is no way I have space for that in the gym. lol
But really if I’m doing it at training anyway I don’t need to go out of my way to do it at the gym too.
What are drinking birds by the way? Google couldn’t help me on that one.
Sorry single leg straight leg deadlifts
http://jessiewong.ca/blog/single-leg-deadlift-aka-drinking-bird-exercise
If you have any kind of weakness you will find it with that, I get my guys to hold a 20kg plate out in front, this works core, flexibility and will strengthen the hammy eccentrically real nice
Reply single leg deadlift.
Be careful of scheduling speed work after such a workload.
I’ve deadlifted 260kg and found that single leg deadlifts can be more taxing.
Im thinking, you’re only a month from outdoors, forget weights.
Do instead explosive mediball instead of weights.
Squat - throw
Jump - squat - throw
Behind head throw
Roll back - throw
Add in slow push ups (different angles)
Chin ups And bodyweight rows.
Maybe some lunges etc.
Do all this outdoors.
It’ll not make you overlly tight.
Yet will give you a solid start before starting weights next season or once this season ends.
I totally agree.
Secondly I noticed in the other thread that you did a gym session last saturday instead of your usual sprint session. Hopefully that was a one time deal. Sacrificing sprint workouts in order to fit in your gym work would be a serious mistake.
I’m not in any mad panic to start doing weight right now, as you guys have said it’s close to outdoor season and whatever I’m doing seems to be working in one way or another.
I’ll make sure I do extra med ball and pylometrics to try to boost my explosive power a bit. I can always go down the track and do bounds over hurdles between sessions.
And that was a one off martijn, I only went to the gym because I missed the track session. And I would always preference the Saturday sessions over the gym as they are normally more speed orientated so I need to make sure I’m doing those ones!
I would argue that you wont improve your explosive power if you are not improving your ability to produce force eg max strength. For me squats followed by a posterior chain exercise twice a week after your speed work will provide a different stimulus and benefit your power. i would go 2-3 x 5-6 squats followed by RDL 2-3 6-8 this wouldnt take too long and best bang for buxh imo