I'm a 17 year old girl, I weigh about 160 lbs (5'10''), as of 3 years ago I was leg pressing 250 lbs. But since then I have had ACL surgery (hamstring graft), I now only press 160 lbs. I am an athlete, I do MMA and I am a competitive black belt in Tae Kwon Do. How much should I ideally be pressing?
Not considering your injury as a fighter you shouldn't be trying to go too high and get muscle bound legs. If you can press 700 you might have a tree-trunk of a leg and it will be rooted to the floor like one. You want fast twitch in the smaller muscles to be able to have control over your legs for both kicking and supporting yourself. I don't think leg press is the best option either. It isolates the quads for aesthetic purposes. You'll look nice but you won't have the full cascade of muscles to have a great kick and you can end up imbalanced real quick too. You want to find more integrative movements that let you use you whole body or at least your whole leg cascade. As for the surgery, I can't speak much about it but I'd say listen to your doctor. If he says balls to the wall, go for it. But if he says you need to work in slowly or never go over a certain weight, listen to him. You might be able to kick the hell out of everyone but you're still a weak little child if you can't trust someone or take the advice of someone who inherently knows better.
