Hello,

I'm new to the site and thought I might as well ask about something that has been bugging me for a while as I have grown to fully embrace lifting as I have gone to college. I see from many fitness youtubers and others that I have personally spoken to who swear that the leg extension machine, among other leg machines including even the leg press, are detrimental overall due to their fixed range of motion. As I have started to lift more religiously I have started to notice some slight pain in my back as I leg press, and I really don't put anything more than four to five plates on, rather focusing on form. Usually these videos or conversations end with the person claiming that exercises such as squats, deadlifts, and lunges are good alternatives...which is all well and good except for for the fact that those three lifts alone aren't quite enough to truly flesh out as long a leg workout as I would like. So i guess my question is what are some good alternatives to leg pressing, and other machines that have been decreed as "detrimental"? Hahaha sorry for the long winded post, have been watching many of your videos for quite a while now and this leg workout predicamant has been bugging me for a while. Finally, I thought I might include my standard leg workout, (I deadlift on back day):

Back Squat: Four sets (First two sets for 8 reps, second two sets for 6 reps)

Smith machine lunges: 3 sets of 8 reps

Smith Squat holds: 3 sets of 8 reps

Leg press: 3 sets of 8-10 reps

Three way hack machine calf raises: 3 sets of 8 reps for each way

Again, sorry for the long string of questions! Any help with my leg workout would be greatly appreciated!- Matt

First off I just want to say I don't think the leg press or leg extensions are detrimental exercises. I'll post a video below about leg extensions. For the leg press, if you're getting a sore back, it's probably from letting your butt lift off the pad as you do the eccentric portion of the movement, causing some rounding in your lower back.

However, you also don't NEED to include those exercises in your workout routine. Having 3 exercises is actually more than enough if you just do more sets of them. I see you're doing 3 sets per exercise (I'll link another video below you can watch about that), and 13 sets total. If you did 6 sets of squats and 6 sets of lunges, you would almost match that routine already 😊 

But other movements you can do are Romanian deadlifts for the hamstrings, and front squats, goblet squats or barbell hack squats for your quads, as well as dumbbell or barbell walking lunges for a bit of everything, and barbell glute bridges or barbell hip thrusts for your glutes.

Lots of movements you can do with just free weights!