Before you start droning on about how the leg press doesn't transfer to sports performance and how it doesn't build strength, let's draw some distinctions here.
There's a difference between strength and hypertrophy. There are plenty of guys who look perfectly average who can hoist enormous amounts of weight, relatively speaking. And there are also a fair share of muscular guys who have trouble opening the occasional pickle jar.
Strength is largely a manifestation of nervous system efficiency. The more muscle fibers you can recruit and how fast you can recruit them translates to the amount of stuff you can forklift off the ground.
Hypertrophy, on the other muscular hand, is largely a combination of increased muscle glycogen, protein synthesis, increased myofibril size, and hormonal milieu. Coaxing your muscles to grow involves an entirely different recipe than making them stronger.
That being said, the almighty squat is a great strength-building exercise, but it isn't necessarily the best muscle-building exercise. True, plenty of lifters would argue that point vociferously, but most of them are short-legged Hobbit-like fellows who need a stepstool to climb onto their high horse.
Leg presses, however, are an excellent tool for making the quads grow, but again, they're not that great for building overall strength.
Leg presses are a much better muscle builder for the following reasons:
Here's a particularly effective way to do leg presses:
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