Pre fatiguing the thighs in the absence of a good leg extension?

Hey all, first post here.

I've recently resumed training after a 14 month hiatus. My current situation means that I have to train at a commercial gym (my personal gym is in storage owing to a growing family).

Now the reason for my post. Their leg extension is totally inadequate in my opinion. There is no good resistance for the first quarter of the movement, then you get hit with all of the weight right up to the top, then the resistance feels totally uneven again on the way down. You would only have a good negative for like a quarter of the movement again. For these reasons I refuse to use it because the resistance just feels uneven and horrible leaving the muscle unloaded for part of the movement, and overloaded on another part.

I have only trained legs at this gym once. I opted for doing one set of squats to failure then went immediately to the leg press without rest, and when the positive set was concluded I added 50 kilos to the press and continued with negative reps.

Obviously this is a compound chased immediately with another compound. The set actually felt very good. It was demanding, the weight was well up on both exercises from when I trained legs last maybe 6 weeks or more before.

Does anybody here have any comments on training the thighs in this fashion in the absence of a good leg extension?

T Knuckles,

I can say I have not used the leg extension in like a year and I just perform squats and deadlifts. I have not lost any size in my quads at all but I can say that I have increased very well with the overload that I can put on them by just performing a straights set of Squats with warm-ups. Another thing you can try is doing a front squats supersetted with the back squat as a compound/compound pre-exhaust set. The front squat is very quad dominant meaning performing a squat this way takes much of the secondary movers like glutes, low back, hip, and hamstrings out of the movement so they stay fresh so when you move to the back squat they can push your quads even further into growth.

Hope this makes sense and helps you,

Daron
The Heavy Duty HITman

Thanks Daron, yes it makes sense.

If I had access to one I'd really like to try doing a set of Trap Bar deadlifts then straight to back sqauts without a rest. I've read the trap bar works the hips and quads very hard.

I haven't used one yet. If I'm lucky my gym order one if I ask.