Why the extra mass work for the upper body but not for the lower body? I understand DeFranco condones the addition of a repetition lower body day, however, why was the repetition lower body day not important enough to be added to the original program?
And, assuming this program is used for athletes, why no RFD work at all?
I am not sure if you read his article in full so therefore I am not going to assume you did or did not. He states in his article that his athletes could not recover from a fourth workout during the week simply because of their skills and sports practice and sprinting. Anyway, there is “mass building” in the leg workout he presents. Working up to a three to five rep max provides volume when done over 6 to 8 sets. He has stated this over and over. Second of all, set and rep protocols in this workout such as 3x8-15, 4x6-10, and 3x60 seconds are traditional hypertrophy protocols anyway. He has written about a fourth day for legs and I follow this program religiously for the past 6 weeks. Look in the search engine and on his site in his Ask Joe section.
In short it is this:
Unilateral leg exercise: 3x15
Two hamstring/posterior chain exercises: 3-4x10-15
Weak muscle group of choice: 3 to 5 sets
Because of speed work days. Sprinting is can be used in place of DE legs. Sprinting is RFD. You can get by doing speed work only once a week. Any more than twice a week is overkill due to extreme stress on CNS on top of strength training sessions. Joe Kenn’s Tier system is modified westside program utilizing 3 days (M-W-F) working full body. It’d look like this:
monday
AM1 - Linear speed
AM2 - strength training
1st tier -ME Total (triple extenstion like oly lift)
2nd tier -DE Lower
3rd tier - Volume Upper
4th tier - moblity total
5th tier - monlity lower
tuesday - GPP/conditioning
wed - strength training (ME lower)
1st - ME lower
2nd - DE upper
3rd - Volume total
4th - moblity lower
5th - moblity upper
thursday - GPP/Conditioning
friday
AM1 - linear speed
AM2 - strength training session (ME Upper)
1st - ME upper
2nd - DE Total (triple ext like power snatch)
3rd - Volume Lower
4th - moblity upper
5th - moblity total.
There are more stuff that I haven’t included but that’s what it basically looks like. It’s purely for athletes, not powerlifter, bodybuilder or oly lifters.