Full Body Training: Exhaustion or Exhilaration?

When training with full-body workouts, a couple of options are best when designing your workout program. First, you can use a "heavy-light-medium" system of training—a lot of the full-body workouts here at Integral Strength reflect this option. Or, second, you can use a system of training where none of the workouts are "all-out"—rather, each workout is more of a "practice session" for the various exercises. In this second option, the workout sessions aren't necessarily not hard, but they are not "intense" either. You stop each set a couple reps shy of failure, and you never do so much work that you can't train the muscle group—or the lift—48 hours later.
Bradley Steiner's Tips
Years ago in IronMan magazine, sandwiched between all of the glossy pictures of steroid-bloated bodybuilders and the various pics of semi-nude (though admittedly beautiful) women, there was real training advice. Bill Starr had monthly columns that, once you read a few dozen of them, allowed you to become a semi-expert in the field of real training. Stuart McRobert had articles that were all pretty darn good—the advice was practical, no-nonsense stuff. I had articles that, not to be too self-promotional, weren't half-bad. And, of course, there were also plenty of articles on full-body, basic workouts from a number of other writers/trainers who peddled such practical wisdom as what was found once-upon-a-time in the "golden age" of bodybuilding yore. Amidst all of this, Bradley Steiner wrote a column—not to mention quite a few additional articles—for decades in the magazine. And his advice was as bare bones as it came: nothing but the basics, full-body workouts only, limited amount of sets and reps, keep it simple—that sort of stuff.
Steiner's workouts would fit in the second category of full-body workouts discussed above. In one of his articles in the mid '90s, he had this to say about the "indicators" that reveal whether or not one is training correctly:

You feel comfortably and pleasantly tired when your workout session is done. You feel as if your mind and body have been renewed.
You feel energetic—not as if you have the strength to train again, but as if you'd do it again if you could.
You feel positive about your training. You're deeply satisfied with the session you've just finished.
You're buoyant, almost high, about an hour later.
You're relaxed when it's time to go to bed. You sleep deeply and well, and you feel good when you wake the next morning.
You feel absolutely super on the day following a good workout.
When you train right, you enjoy it.
When you train correctly, you find that you make steady progress.
And, finally, you feel exhilarated, not exhausted—and that's a good way to feel.

Steiner's advice, obviously, is still sound as ever today.

Marvin Eder’s Mass-Building Methods

The Many and Varied Mass-Building Methods of Power Bodybuilding’s G.O.A.T. Eder as he appeared in my article "Full Body Workouts" for IronMan magazine. In many ways, the essay you are now reading is the one that has had the “longest time coming.” I have no clue why it has taken me this long to write an article specifically on Marvin Eder, especially considering the fact that I have long considered him the greatest bodybuilder cum strength athlete of all friggin’ time . In fact, over 20 years ago, I wrote this in the pages of IronMan magazine: In my opinion, the greatest all-around bodybuilder, powerlifter and strength athlete ever to walk the planet, Eder had 19-inch arms at a bodyweight of 198. He could bench 510, squat 550 for 10 reps and do a barbell press with 365. He was reported to have achieved the amazing feat of cranking out 1,000 dips in only 17 minutes. Imagine doing a dip a second for 17 minutes. As Gene Mozee once put ...

The 1-5 Program

Develop Mass and Power with This Unique Wave Loading Method In my recent article “ Skill Training as Size Building ,” I introduced the concept (on the blog, at least) of the “90% rule.” I believe it’s one of the most effective ways to make consistent gains in the gym, whether you’re after strength, strength with a size side-effect, or hypertrophy alone. Basically, the method involves doing the majority of your sets in a workout with 90% of a certain rep range. This doesn’t mean 90%, necessarily, of your 1-rep max, though it most certainly would if you were to do multiple sets of singles—as we will be doing in this program. In our previous article, the workout programs I suggested utilized 90% of one’s 5-rep max and 90% of a 10-rep maximum using “cluster sets.” If you want to know more about what those programs look like, then, please, read that article. Also, it wouldn’t hurt, if you haven’t done s...

High-Frequency Grease-the-Groove Training - The Intuitive Approach

In my essay “ Basic Lifting, Instinctive Training ,” I mentioned the approach to training that—in the words of the great Bradley Steiner—the “mature muscle man” should take. Steiner recommended that the seasoned lifter should know beforehand what exercises he would do in a workout, and what days he would train, but not use a pre-determined number of sets and reps for the workout. Rather, you should let how you feel once you begin your workout decide what you do in the training session. And, in my recent article “ Skill Training as Size Building ,” I wrote about the training perspective of approaching your lifting sessions as a skill to be developed rather than a “war” to be waged against your muscles—or a “battle” or an “onslaught” or whatever pseudo-military campaign term that modern bodybuilders like to use when discussing muscle-group training. I also suggested that one of the best ways to do this is to uti...

C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

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