Joe DeFranco!

My brother and I went to Joe’s facility yesterday to meet with him and talk about training plans for the summer. He came across very knowledgeable and his energy and enthusiasm for strength training is undeniable. My brother is not a big fan of the weight room and doesn’t like strength coaches in general because he thinks they’re unnecessarily overwhelming. He walked out of this meeting with Joe very happy and extremely excited about his summer training. And even though my brother occasionally works with a kicking coach at home, Joe recommended someone as well whom my bro will be contacting.

Bottom line…Joe is someone I would recommend without hesitation. His passion comes across immediately when you talk to him. When my brother comes home for the summer, I will post updates to let everyone know how his training is progressing.

Thanks for the update. It’ll be interesting to see how it goes. Everything I’ve heard has been good.

3/16/2004 - Danny Hastings

Jim, coach X or 62,

Guys, I read this site and Defranco’s site religiously. Defrancos training is very westside-based, yet he does some things differently. I recently heard him on a audio interview talk about substituting dynamic effort days with repitition days for athletes who lack muscle mass. He says that he does anywhere from 15-40 rep sets for 3 sets with the core lift on this day. This is in conjunction with max effort days. On max effort day these athletes perform a 5RM instead of 1RM. He states that his main focus for younger/underweight athletes is to increase the cross-sectional area of the muscle. His main focus ISN’T to only hypertrophy the type IIB fibers. Can these young athletes get explosive without dynamic days? What do you guys think of this rationale? Is he onto something or full of sh*t?
Thanks,
Danny

Danny,

Speed is the first thing lost, and should be the first thing taught! Why substitute, just prescribe and maintain hypertrophy (GPP work) as one of his desired training effects along with speed. I understand his rationale, but if he truly understood the Conjugate Sequence System this would never be an issue. Charlie Francis has stated on numerous occasions, “The rush to get things done leads to uncertainity down the road.” This is exactly the path DeFranco has deceided to follow.

In other words, when he left Martin Rooney and went off on his own - he fucked up!


Would love to see his volumes,
62

examples of the screw ups? Pec tears or pathetic combine 40s? Let’s get concrete here.

Don’t ask me, ask eliteefs guys. I’m just showing you what they said about Joe, that’s all. Actually, it doesn’t make sense what Joe is doing since you can still add mass while doing DE bench.You just simply do RM afterward or whatever. It’s like telling sprinters that they can’t do any type of sprinting untill they add mass to the lower body first. I’m sure first thing they’ll find out when they return to sprinting, they lost some speed! It’s so easy to lose speed and takes more effort to get the speed back to where they were before.

why don’t you just email him and ask him for his explanation of why he does this? i’m not positive, but i’m pretty sure he doesn’t use this method for an extended period of time.

and he left the parisi school and martin because he felt he was getting away from working with high school, college and pro athletes and getting into more of a managerial role.

btw, check out the post that dave just made today…here is a quote, “Maybe Joe did not make this point clear in his article but I will tell you he is the real deal and that they may have been some false assumptions made. Joe is new to writing and I am sure will make this point clear is future articles.”

I think Joe is referring to young high school athletes. When a guy comes to you at 130 lbs and says he wants to play football you need to add some mass. The dynamic effort method is strength-speed. Meaning it is heavily reliant on maximal strength. To build up the maximal strength you’re going to need to build up cross-sectional area quick. The added cross section will help prevent injury also. If the athlete is dedicated at all his speed training will come from actual sprinting as well as skill training and the hypertrophy stimulated gains will be converted into sport-specific gains.

Also, at some level the athlete and his parents want some visible results fast. They may be paying a lot of money to have a private coach for their kid. Adding 15 pounds of mass in two months is a great way to gain the athlete’s confidence and show that you know what you’re doing. And let’s get real. That kid needs to add 30 pounds of lean mass per year in order to get to be seriously competetive in DI college football (the kind that gets you a full ride).

Not defending Joe. Just showing what may be his way of thinking.

I think it makes sense to have someone doing hypertrophy work over speed strength stuff if they can only squat 150 or weigh 150. Would it make sense to have them doing speed squats w/ 65? They get their speed training on the field.

sure they do dell dell, but speed squats with 50% bodyweight can get some cross section work…and if you don’t have training on the field (off season or doo doo facilities) then what do you do?

You could answer that better than me. What would you do?

I just don’t think 8x2 w/ light weight every 30 seconds is going to do much for cross-sectional. LA, yes.

Off-season not on the field? What? Always can find a HS Track or park…

how about the parisi school? i remember on the old forum a lot of people said they werent doing anything special, but every year they have the top performers at the nfl combine and on top of that they arent getting the supposed first rounders, they are getting unknown seniors and turning them into studs. i know they follow a westside template, but thats about all i know. any thoughts on martin rooney & parisi?

I think that not doing anything special is what it’s all about. People want to latch onto ideas that are new and fresh and go crazy with them. The reality is the proof of the pudding is in the details and depth to which you go into each component. Charlie’s sprint training isn’t anything special, but the way he does it due to his vast depth of knowledge is what produces world class results.

I think I am qualified to speak on this, since i trained w/ bill Parisi himself, before he had any of his facilities. WhenI first worked w/ Bill, I came to him as a 175 lb freshman running a 5.75 second 40 yard dash. Within 2 years, I was a 196 lb Junior running a 4.68. I thought Bill was a great coach, a terrific motivator, and a good guy. Now however, I don’t know what is going on over there now, but I here a lot of kids complaining about the instructors, and a lot of people are saying the routines seem to have a very “one size fits all” type of feeling. Now, I’m not trying to put anyone down, I’m just repeating something I’ve heard.

As far as Joe D. is concerned, I think his thinking is pretty much this. Let’s say you have a young athlete, coming to you. You teach him how to squat… and his form is not quite perfect yet. Are you going to try and make him do speed reps at his very next workout? Or are you going to do something that will reinforce proper technique and form.

As far as what everyone is saying about what both of these groups have done w/ combine athletes, it is rather simple. Look at the caliber of athlete that is walking throught their doors. Yes, their results are great, but don’t you think other coaches like Charlie or Don Abrams could produce similar results? I do.

Thanks mike. What kinds of stuff did you do? Lifting progressions, periodization, etc.

I think the Parisi school and the combine prep are sort of separate. If you look at their website, it seems pretty clear the general program caters to the soccer mom type who have tons of cash to spend on their kids. They don’t have the same trainer every time, etc. Looks like they’re raking in tons of $$$

The combine program seems more individual and is pretty damn impressive. For the last few years they’ve produced some of the top times and jumps even though they’re not working with any better athletes than the tons of other combine “experts”…Don’t know of many others that are at least publically claiming that kind of results.

Martin Rooney is releasing a series of videos on elitefts, so that should make some of what they do more accessible.

the parisi school uses a westside variation…nothing that new or innovative but they get results. even if they have top caliber athletes coming in, they are constantly getting great results at the combine. the numbers speak for themself.

i will email martin and see what he says.

This is it…what is the secret is that making an name for yourself should be on results and not “systems” or “schemes” or “templates”. I listened to what Bill had to say it was not bad but nothing in depth…Maybe Martin and friends are not doing anything special…perhaps the leave the balance vewdoo boards and tubes to the “movement monkeys”. Some asked me what style of training I used years ago…I said I am a brown belt in everything and have no style. What ever my foe is I use a “martial art” to combat the problem. If you are a snake I become a mongoose…if you are a tiger I am a dragon…if you are a rat I am a crane…

The point is that you should know laws and options…not systems and cool exercises. Today after track practice I looked at my choas…I have 50 sprinters/hurdlers and some of them throw, vault, and jump…Your going to use a westside template for their lifts? It snowed here in boston and the track is not an option (dell dell). And even if a “park” (dell dell again) was available two miles west I can’t be two places at once or stuff 50 runners in my toyota like a clown car.

Some of us will get a state of the art performance center and have mondo surfaces, field turf, bumber plates, recovery areas, smoothie bars, and maybe some massage dude named “William”. Most of us don’t have that option and so we must deal with the cards from the sports gods deck. Here is what I am dealing with today.

Case study: I am at a new school and rival of my former team. I must get 50 speed athletes to train under me alone…just me and 50 boys and girls. Now not everyone will be as self aware as Kransnayfluer. She was an athlete I liked working with last year but those days are gone and I must work with less polished athletes. Here is what we did the first three days.

Day one: No indoor track just snow piled 6 inches up. What do we have?

Two hallways with carpet. 3:15-4pm warm-ups and warm-downs. Weight room orientation.

Day two: More white stuff…starts with kids looking for 90 degrees and doing scramble up stuff

Core work/yoga/post workout stretching

Day three: Flying 10m side by side with me looking like a traffic cop trying to make sure softball doesn’t broadside us since the hallway is a four way intersection.

Core and strength circuit

Tempo push ups till form stutters, same with bw squats and single leg work (till compensation). This gets a little general work but screens the weight trainers from the bodyweight people. I can now see who can be in the weight room for friday and who should be doing bw stuff.

Now here comes the insanity…I must deal with custodians trying to do their job cleaning the school, teach a state champ while working with the 4’8" freshman boy who looks 9 years old.

What shocks me is all the training places have all the interns coaching while the gurus spin sell parents into buying packages while trying to schedule a seminar series…I see cookie cutter programs with a 10-20:1 ratio of athletes to coaches. You see dynamic warm-ups followed by speed sessions followed by plyos followed by lifts three days a week. Everyone does the same thing and moms and dads see very little besides 5 pounds of “bulk” or tendon overload. This happens because it makes money…quality coaching is more one to one and is expensive. To heat or cool a facility will cost 10 dollars a square foot per day. Add that up and you need kids…

Train the pros like royalty and use their autographed photos to get “Martha and Stan” to drop 1500 on 10 week program every other day with Mike Intern. What can you do with a PRO during an offseason? Most are month or two and many athletes have families and can’t make a trek to Seattle. End result they work with the big guy at golds gym and do some bodybuilding work.

If you get the state champ wrestler he will get a good workout and be on your brochure and things are groovy. HS athletes need more then a 3 X week power hour and I see only a few people getting results.

What’s in Seattle?

what’s in seattle?

Shoot! I blew it…Seattle is the home of the secret german training facility with metro-sexual dynamic methodics.

Subconsciously I had your training needs on my mind and your reply on training was right on.

Yes… top athletes from around the world, including current world record holders and gold medalists, are gathered at my house in the suburbs of Seattle to train with me at my hypergravity facility (ok… it’s my garage). Via intense scientific investigation I have measured upper body improvements in strength of 120% in 5 sessions via my WoH method (Walking on Hands).

Haha, I forgot it actually snows up there. You have tough conditions, so if you succeed, it’s even more impressive…

I thought the secret facility was in Mesa…WoH…haha