C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

                     While doing research for my last article, I was re-reading Bradley Steiner’s original “Rugged Size and Strength” essay (from 1972) and came across this bit of advice: “Do not attempt to set up a pre-planned schedule of either sets or reps.”  That may not seem like much—it’s the kind of “basic” advice that’s easily overlooked—but there is wisdom in it, minimal as it may seem at first glance.      Depending on the workout program and the lifting population it’s aiming for, that quote could be either good or bad.  It’s not good advice for a beginner’s program, any beginner’s program.  It’s not good advice for intermediate or advanced lifters, either, who are attempting a new workout program or a new “style” of lifting that they haven’t utilized before.  For instance, if you’ve been training for the past decade on a bodybuilding workout consi...

  Some Slightly Rambling Thoughts, Musings, and Reflections on How One Should Train (and How I Train)      The other day I received a question from a reader who asked how I really train.  He said that, since I write about a lot of different training methods, he wanted to know how I actually trained.  He wanted to know this because he was confused about how he should train.  He said that he read a lot of the articles here on the blog, but he was confused because I seemed to recommend so many different training methods, and it left him a little bit bewildered and conflicted over the correct training methods for him—those weren’t his exact words, but I’m just paraphrasing in my own vernacular.      I have received questions such as this one before.  I even wrote an article over ten years ago entitled “My Training Philosophy” because of the confusion about the various lifting methodologies I recommend, but I figure...

  Simple, Easy-to-Follow Programs for Unleashing Size and Strength Gains     While working on the next installment of my series on HFT yesterday, I received an email from a reader who was a little confused—perhaps more than a little confused would be more appropriate—about how he should set up his workout program.  And, as with a lot of questions that I get asked and are then turned into an essay or article, I thought it would be good to write an article about some easy and simple workout plans that are also quite productive—the same kind of workouts that I suggested to this young man.      Periodically, I receive these sorts of emails from readers who are confused over some of my recommendations.  After all, I do write about various forms of training and lifting.  They are often different because, for one, different people respond well to different forms of training, and, two, different lifters have different goals....