Lower B

Time: about 50 minutes.

#Notes

Hack squat or leg press can go to true failure — that is the point of using a machine here rather than a second barbell squat day. The stability is handled, so the set ends when the muscle ends, not when your bracing does.

Hip thrust for glutes. It is the most horizontally-oriented loaded hip extension available, and it loads peak contraction where the squat loads the stretch. The two are complements, not alternatives.

Seated leg curl again. Hamstrings get direct work twice a week because the RDL trains hip extension and the curl trains knee flexion, and the hamstrings do both. Neither substitutes for the other.

Leg extension at 15–20 here, versus 12–15 on Lower A. Higher reps at the second exposure of the week, because the quads have already taken a heavy compound and the joint stress of heavy extensions twice weekly adds up without adding stimulus.

Seated calf raise trains soleus — knee bent takes gastrocnemius out. Soleus is largely slow-twitch and responds to higher reps, which is why the range is 10–15 rather than 8–12.

#The lower-body volume question

Five exercises, 16 sets, but they are not all hitting the same thing. Quads get 6 direct sets (hack squat, extension), hamstrings 3, glutes 3, calves 4.

Per muscle that is inside the 3–4 sets per session the program prescribes. Lower body sessions look bigger than upper because legs contain more independently-trainable muscle, not because the dose is higher.