C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  How to Build Mass, Strength, and Power Without Squats Tips, Advice, and Programs      On October 20th, I posted a Q&A article with my answers to a few questions that I had received lately.  One of the questions asked: Could one design a strength-building, mass-gaining program without the use of squats?  The question came from the fact that I have, over and over throughout the years, pushed the squat as the king of all exercises.  On top of that, I have, in fact, written more than once that if you don’t do heavy squats, you can all but forget about building prodigious amounts of muscle mass and strength.  However, I also pointed out that I thought it is possible to build strength and power without the almighty squat if you include enough other big, compound lifts that work the entirety of the body, especially lifts that work the back and the legs.  This essay will include, in much more detail, what I think such programs sh...

A 3 Days Per Week, “Moderate Strength” Program for Size and Power      Last week, I published a Q&A article based on a few questions that I had been asked in the preceding weeks.  One of the questions asked was if it was possible to do an “easy strength” program just 3 days per week.  I answered the question in the best way that I could—if you want to read my answer in full, then, well, read that article—but the more that I thought about it in the days since, the more I think that one of my answers might just be the way to set up a full-body program for 3 days per week of training.  I suggested that it might work for a 3 day program if you simply bumped up your total volume to around 15 reps per lift.  In this article, I want to outline in much more detail what this might look like and how you can use it to get the most out of a 3 day per week, full-body program.      In many ways, this shouldn’t really be thou...