C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

Balancing Life, Work, and Lifting      In 1998, I was heavily invested in powerlifting.  I loved it.  I was dead-set on being one of the strongest powerlifters in the world.  I was willing to do whatever required of me, training wise, to achieve that goal.  At the time, I was also writing a lot for Ironman magazine and MuscleMag International , two of the largest and most popular bodybuilding magazines of the day.  I had an article in one of them, sometimes both, almost every month back then.  But it wasn’t enough to pay the bills.  And powerlifting, like a lot of underground, niche sports, didn’t pay anything.  Nope.  It was, in fact, quite the opposite.  It cost money—payments to enter meets, along with travel and food costs associated with them, not to mention the money I poured into nutrition, training gear, and, at that time, setting up my own garage gym replete with everything a world-class strength athle...

In my recent post dealing with building a home gym (and designing home gym workouts), I ended with a discussion of effective workouts using nothing other than a barbell.  And then I gave some brief tips for "getting creative" with your workouts.  One of the things I mentioned was combining your barbell exercises with bodyweight movements, but I didn't go into any detail.  In my next post on building a home gym, and the training that goes along with it, I will discuss workouts incorporating a bench and some dumbbells.  But the more I thought about it, the more I decided I needed to write a post - and, in fact, the subject is worthy of multiple posts - dealing exclusively with bodyweight movements combined with basic barbell (and dumbbell) exercises. George Hackenschmidt was a turn-of-the-century (19th to 20th) strongman who built almost all of his strength with nothing other than a barbell and bodyweight movements. These workout ideas are effective for both home gym t...

Home Workouts for Mass, Power, Strength, and Muscular Development! PART ONE: Just the Basic Barbell C.S.: Here is a photo I took of my home gym this past weekend. For well over a decade, I trained at a commercial gym.  When I wanted to take my powerlifting training seriously, however, in the late '90s, I decided it was time to trade in the commercial gym for a good home gym.  This is probably the opposite of what most people do, as many lifters will begin training at home on a basic weight set, then decide to acquire a gym membership once they "get serious" with lifting.  But I relished the idea of creating a good, dungeoness home gym free of the distractions on offer at any commercial gym. In this article (and the ones that will follow) I will offer some tips, tricks, and advice for creating a home gym conducive to hardcore mass and power training, and provide some ideas of the training you can do at each stage of your home gym's development. Getting Started To start...