C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

How to Build Muscle and Achieve the Physique You Want with High-Volume, High-Frequency Training      After penning my article on my son Garrett’s high-volume, high-frequency training, I had a couple of emails asking if I could write a program or explain in more detail what a workout routine would look like using his methods.  This is my response.      You don’t need to read that article first, but I’m not going to re-iterate the 6 “training types” that are contained within it.  So, here’s a LINK if you wish to read that one first and get your mind on better muscle-building “footing” as to what is being discussed in this article.      The workout routine I will suggest, and explain, here uses a high-volume, moderate (to high) frequency, and low-intensity methodology.  “Intensity” in this case is used as it is by strength and power athletes, but not typically bodybuilders, as a percentage of your 1...

  A.K.A: Kenji in the Twilight My dogs Kiko and Kenji (left to right).  The reason for their picture at the start of this essay will make sense shortly. Conversations on Integral Bodybuilding Part One: A Somewhat Rambling Introduction to Integral Hypertrophy Training      I was tired.  I had spent the last hour cutting grass, running my weed eater, planting Asian lilies, and watering my gardens.  I was hot and sweaty, too.  If I still drank, I would have popped open a cold beer—porters and stouts were always my favorite—but I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol in over a year.  I have a disease that robbed me of that particular joy, so I settled on a bottle of refrigerated mineral water.  It was refreshing, and what my body needed, anyway.      The sun was setting.  Twilight was upon the land.  The last vestiges of orange sunlight slipped through the canopy of trees at the edge of the rolling hi...

Some Tips and Suggestions for Programming High-Frequency Workouts      High-frequency training (HFT) is one of the best “styles” of training that a lifter can utilize.  I think this is especially true for natural lifters, those of us who don’t use any kind of performance-enhancement drug(s).  Even though I don’t think the drug-free trainee can find a better program, HFT is just about the least used method among most gym-goers, perhaps almost unknown, even, among the casual trainee.  Most lifters focus on routines with varying degrees of either volume or intensity, with frequency as more of an afterthought.  I would say that, by and large, lifters use a high, medium, or low volume program coupled with some “level” of intensity to balance with the volume, and then frequency is the last factor that is considered.  Whatever the program, the general “plan” is that the lifter trains again whenever they are no longer sore from a prior sessi...