C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  A Bill Starr-Inspired Program for Advanced Strength and Power Athletes      One of my favorite programs for strength athletes is the heavy-light-medium program as it was designed by Bill Starr.  I’ve written about the HLM system aplenty over the years—including my recent 7-part series on how to train with it.  (Consider this an unofficial Part 8.)  Once you’ve used it for a lengthy period of time, it’s wise to add an extra session so that you are training more than just 3 days a week.  This is exactly what Starr himself recommended.  He utilized a heavy-light-light-medium system for this extra day of training.  If you’ve been training Monday (heavy), Wednesday (light), and Friday (medium) then you move to an extra light day on Tuesday, one with an even lower workload than the Wednesday workout.  I have recommended that exact plan myself.  However, as the years have gone by and I have trained more and more lifters, ...

Extra Workouts for Improving Recovery, Enhancing Performance, and Maximizing Gains      When lifters think about workouts, it’s usually either lifting or bust.   It’s either hard and heavy barbell and dumbbell sessions or nothing.   But it shouldn’t be this way.   No matter how “hardcore” of a lifter or bodybuilder you are—perhaps you’re one of those guys that thinks anything over 5 reps is “cardio,” as I once certainly did—you need to do some stuff other than just heavy weight training.   The truth is that the more serious you are about lifting, even more do you need to take advantage of non-lifting workouts.   These extra sessions might very well be the difference between gaining another 10 pounds of muscle or not, or between winning your powerlifting meet or just coming in 2 nd place.   When it comes to being your very best, it is the little things that matter.      I first started lifting as a teenager, more...