Squts are better then Leg press.
This is 100% bro science..
I cant find a double blind placebo study to say otherwise...
What do we do now? Abandon squats?
From a muscle building point of view?
There probably is no more validity in squats over leg presses. Especially given that whole 'squats make your whole body grow' has been dubunked over and other.
Or you could also look at the studys on squats vs leg presses showing greater activation and activity it just about every single muscle fibre in the lower body. Funnily, squats work the quads harder than leg presses.
Although in reality the hormonal response isn't that important, you will easily find it is greater in squats than leg presses.
You could also look at the countless studies correlating squat to vertical jump and running speed, and the studies that attempted to find this for the leg press.
I also value my health and being injury free. So i'm not going to be risking my back health to load up a leg press any time soon.
I also haven't mentioned the closed chain vs open chain issues or practical ones, such as monitoring depth on lp or the fact that a lot of people end up out maxing a leg press by 17.
Nobody has to squat by any means, but to say that there is no reason (scientifically, biomechanically or through Haitian Voodoo) that it is more effective in research is ridiculous.