Legs · Machine
Leg Extension
The leg extension is a machine movement in which the seated lifter straightens the knees against a padded lever to raise a selected weight.
How is the leg extension performed?
The lifter sits in the machine with the back against the pad and the shins behind a padded roller set just above the ankles. The knees are straightened until the legs are extended in front, then the weight is lowered under control back to the starting position. The hips stay in the seat throughout, so the movement happens at the knee alone.
What does the leg extension train?
The leg extension isolates the quadriceps, with no contribution from the hips, the trunk or the other leg muscles. That isolation is both its use and its limit: it loads the quadriceps directly in a way a squat cannot, but it trains none of the coordination or trunk strength that make a squat a measure of overall strength.
How does orcatrain score the leg extension?
Log the weight selected on the stack. Machine stacks and lever ratios differ between manufacturers, so treat the number as a consistent basis for your own progress rather than a load comparable across gyms. Scored on its own; not part of the headline total.
Every scored set is turned into an estimated one-rep max, and that estimate is scored with the DOTS coefficient against your bodyweight and sex — so a set is comparable with your own past work and with lifters of a different size. Sets above ten repetitions are recorded but not scored: the estimate is a curve fit that stops being honest past that point, so orcatrain returns nothing rather than a confident guess. Weights are stored in kilograms.
Track your progress on Leg Extension.
Movement names and groupings come from Strength Level, where you can also see their strength standards for this movement. DOTS is computed by orcatrain itself.