i get it every movement ain’t for every body, quite literally…barbell bench pressing having long arms definitely isn’t advantageous but in order to be a lil’ more comfortable & somewhat competent with it as a lift i just make peace with the idea i’m probably never going to be that good at it but it does have benefits that make it worthwhile still.
similarly barbell squats have so much roi on the body globally because of the balance, coordination, & stability it requires of the whole system that it’s worth it, even at partial ranges of motion and/or with not that much weight, especially if you can do them without pain
the ‘problem’ with leg press is that, especially if you are even reasonably active (and even this isn’t really required) the machine(s) generally makes it quite easy to load up, given those are our largest muscle groups & as such not that challenging as a movement, especially if done mindlessly (those leg press fail vids are brutal
).
that said you can take advantage of the machine
by overloading way more (using more weight than you can lift, carefully & responsibly of course, it’s just kinda annoying & tedious to rack, lower, unrack, lift, re-rack on those machines with the plates) &/or slowly controlling the eccentric (lowering/stretch) portion of it, which is supposed to be really good for growth/hypertrophy (but not necessarily good for being twitchy as the time under tension in this case would likely fry those type 2a & 2x fibers) you can use lighter weights w/low reps on the concentric portion to be/focus on being explosive…
as a related aside, if you are really trying to grow, your diet & fitness regimen is going to make this extremely difficult for you…some folk can be active, still do cardio, lift, wrassle, fast, maintain leanness, be twitchy, & still grow but you should probably assume that’s not you
, most will have to make a few trade offs to send the proper signals to the body…doing all the activity while routinely fasting could be telling your body you’re in feast or famine mode in which case it might want to store fat (and definitely not add any expensive new muscle) and make one more susceptible to binging food…
maybe i’ve been doing it wrong because i’ve never liked working out so much that i could ever get to the point of hurling…so many people take it as a badge of honor tho…my co-worker was just telling me this, she be smashing the preworkout too; she one those ‘fighting demons’ types tho