C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

A (Relatively) High-Volume 2-Exercise-Per-Muscle Group Program for Gaining Muscle      As I was typing away on my latest article for the blog, I needed a break.  I typically write in sort of creative “bursts.”  I’ll sit down at my “writing nook” with my laptop in hand and hammer away vociferously in periods of 30 minutes or so.  Once I feel as if I’m losing inspiration or the words just aren’t flowing as harmoniously as they could from my mind to my fingers, I’ll get up and do some household chores or walk around my wilderness property with my dogs for 10 to 15 minutes until the inspiration, once again, returns to me.  About once a day, I also take a break to check my emails, too.  And this morning, I received a question from a reader that I thought might not only interest other readers but would be a good idea for an article in its own right.  Hence, what you’re now reading on whatever-the-heck device you utilize to read my ramblin...

Gain Slabs of Muscle, Make an Undersized Bodypart Grow Massive, or Improve Your Strength on a Specific Lift with High-Frequency Specialization Workouts      Sometimes it’s a good idea to specialize on a muscle group that is lagging behind your other bodyparts or to follow a specialization program for a specific exercise that you really want to get stronger on.  If you’re struggling to gain weight in general, it can also help to follow a “squat and pull” specialization program, as heavy leg and back work is often what is needed to produce big-time mass gains.      High-frequency training combined with high-volume workouts can be great for quick gains in muscle size or strength as long as you don’t try to do the workouts for the entirety of your body..  The key is to increase the frequency and the volume on a certain muscle group, maybe two, or a specific lift while also reducing the work on the remainder of your muscles. ...

A Golden Era-Inspired High-Volume Mass-Building Program but with a Twist      Since I started working on my recent series on the training methods and workouts of the golden era bodybuilding legends, I’ve had a lot of old-school routines, ideas, and plans running through my mind.  Those thoughts led me to write the program here.  This is a routine that uses some of the golden era methods but does so in a way that will better allow the bodybuilder to recover while still taking advantage of the various benefits with higher-frequency, high-volume training.      If you’ve read at least a couple of the articles in my on-going series—I have two more still to go—then you realize by now, if you didn’t beforehand, that most of the old-school bodybuilders, particularly those from the 1970s, favored training antagonistic bodyparts in the same workout session.  These days, many bodybuilders favor training just one muscle group at a wo...