C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  Bradley J. Steiner, author of the original "Rugged Size and Strength Split Routine"      In the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, Bradley J. Steiner was the voice of (what he called) “sane, sensible” barbell training.   His workouts were full-body programs done 3 times per week, utilizing a limited number of big “bang-for-your-buck” movements such as squats, deadlifts, barbell rows, bench presses, overhead presses, barbell curls and the like.   They were intended for the average, drug-free lifter who didn’t have the luxury of living at Muscle Beach in Venice, California and training all day, but worked a full-time job, had a wife and kids—you know, a “regular” life—but still wanted to build a strong, impressive physique that could move some heavy iron and turn heads at the local swimming hole.      He wrote prolifically for (primarily) IronMan magazine up until the early years of this century.   When I started writing for IronMan i...

  5 Tips to Turn an Easy Strength Program into a Mass Building Regimen      As regular readers know, I’m a fan of high-frequency training (HFT, for short).   In particular, I regularly promote easystrength and (what I call) easy muscle training programs.      Easy strength regimens are, you guessed it, strength programs, but ones built around frequent training, low reps, and fairly low volume in general.   I would argue that easy strength methods are hands down the most underutilized form of strength-building in the entire training world.      Easy muscle programs are similar to their easy strength cousins in that they utilize HFT but couple it with relatively low intensity (“intensity” here referring to how it’s utilized in strength training—as a % of one-rep max) and high reps.   Neither method of training is “hard”—in fact, you should always leave the gym feeling decidedly better than when you ...

  Some Slightly Rambling Thoughts, Musings, and Reflections on How One Should Train (and How I Train)      The other day I received a question from a reader who asked how I really train.  He said that, since I write about a lot of different training methods, he wanted to know how I actually trained.  He wanted to know this because he was confused about how he should train.  He said that he read a lot of the articles here on the blog, but he was confused because I seemed to recommend so many different training methods, and it left him a little bit bewildered and conflicted over the correct training methods for him—those weren’t his exact words, but I’m just paraphrasing in my own vernacular.      I have received questions such as this one before.  I even wrote an article over ten years ago entitled “My Training Philosophy” because of the confusion about the various lifting methodologies I recommend, but I figure...