C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

 For this latest installment of my semi-regular "Fundamentals" series (inspired by the great IronMan  writer of my youth, Bradley Steiner), I thought it would be a fitting time to discuss a few of the fundamental lessons  that I've learned from lifting, lessons I sure-as-hell wish I'd known when I was first starting out.  So here goes... Matthew Sloan builds his muscle mass through "consistent" training! Lesson #1: Consistency Trumps Everything      The first lesson here is the one that most people intuitively "know" to be correct.  If you want to gain plenty of muscle mass, get stronger, lose bodyfat, or whatever-your-goals, it's not going to happen without consistency.      In other words, showing up  isn't just "half" the battle; it's the foundation that underlies everything else.      Now, since this is the one lesson here that is naturally intuitive, how come folks don't have more success at, well, anything involved w

 I have - on and off since my youth - practiced zazen.  But the sort of zazen that I was introduced to as a young man in the Isshin-Ryu dojo of my formative years was (as I have said before elsewhere on this blog) decidedly of a Soto-style nature.  Specifically, it was what is known in Zen as shikantaza , often translated as just sitting.  But "just sitting" can be a lot harder than it sounds. The following is from Japanese-American monk-priest Sokuzan, in a new book of his entitled "108 Meditation Instructions."  I admit to knowing very little about Sokuzan, despite typically being familiar with the American-Buddhist "scene", but what he has to say here has a depth to it that you don't typically encounter in American Zen. Enjoy! Kodo Sawaki sitting in Zazen Why do this kind of meditation (shikantaza) rather than shine or thaktong or samatha and vipassana?  Why not do creation/completion practices or deity yoga visualizations?  Or mantras?  Why not do

 A.K.A: Intermittent Fasting Ain't Nothin' New! Wallace D. Wattles was a popular early New Thought writer I was reading through a book this morning from one of the early New Thought writers in American history - and one of the lesser known ones:  Wallace D. Wattles.  In 1910, three of his "prosperity" books were published.  (And I don't think they were called "prosperity" but rather "New Thought" since the word New Thought had been in usage already  by 1910.)  The three books were entitled, "The Science of Getting Rich," "The Science of Being Well," and "The Science of Being Great."  Of the three, the "Science of Getting Rich" was his most popular, and you can find quite a few copies/versions available from different book dealers. But the book I was reading this morning was The Science of Being Well .  I wanted to share a few quotes from it with you, and to show you how intermittent fasting really is  not

  The Way of the Samurai Selections and Commentaries from Yamamoto Tsunetomo's  Hagakure , the Classic Exposition on Zen and the Japanese Warrior Code of Bushido courtesy of Wikimedia Part Two: Become as One Who is Permanently Dead "I have found that Bushido means to die.  It means that when one chooses between life and death, one will quickly choose the side of death.  There is nothing else to consider.  One simply makes up one's mind and pushes ahead...  When one has to choose between life and death, there is no time to worry whether one's objective has been achieved.  All of us prefer to live, so we can always find a reason to stay alive.  If one lives as one intends to die, it is cowardice... If one dies when one intended to live, it might be regarded as a vain death or as craziness, but one will not incur any shame.  This is to be a real man of Bushido.  If every morning and every evening one dies anew, one will become as one permanently dead.  Thus will one obtai

  The Way of the Samurai Selections and Commentaries from Yamamoto Tsunetomo's Hagakure , the Classic Exposition on Zen and the Japanese Warrior Code of Bushido Portrait of Yamamoto Tsunetomo I. Everything is in the Present Moment "There is nothing outside of the present moment.  Life is nothing but a series of moments following one after another.  If one becomes aware of this fact, there is no reason to be in a hurry and no reason to be searching around for anything.  All one has to do is hold to the present moment and get on with life.  Yet everyone lets the moment slip from their grasp, believing that there is something else over and above the present moment and hunting all around for it, losing their awareness of the here and now.  It takes a lot of practice to learn to hold continually to the present moment and to not let it slip.  However, once one has found this realm, even if one cannot remain in it constantly, it is already the real thing.  If one has truly understood

 A.K.A.: Intermittent Fasting: A Personal History Hugh Jackman used intermittent fasting to get shredded  for the X-Men movie "Days of Future Past" (seen here in this scene from the film). I'm going to go ahead and say it (or write it, in this case), even if there's an ever so slight possibility that I might be wrong: I was one of the first serious lifters in this country to experiment with intermittent fasting for competition.  How can I make such a bold statement, especially considering the fact that every single athlete, bodybuilder, lifter, etc. on planet friggin' Earth  has at least heard  of intermittent fasting, and knows something about what it is even if they don't practice it/utilize it?  I say it with some degree  of confidence because I did it in the '90s, while getting ready for a powerlifting meet, and, I'll add, I had no clue whatsoever that what I was doing would go on to be called "intermittent fasting".  And that's becau

 In February of this year, I published a post entitled "Winter Bulk Building" where I outlined the program that my son Matthew started on Thanksgiving of last year in order to gain a lot of mass.  In a few months, he went from around 210 pounds to just over 250 pounds - I believe it was 251, to be precise.  That was the point when I wrote the bulk-building piece. Fast forward to Thanksgiving of this year, and I thought I would give an update on my son's training, and how he went from being "bulky" to being an outright natural  mass monster.  Now he is a little over 260 pounds, but he didn't just gain 10 pounds of muscle since my last post on his training, he also reduced his bodyfat, and there is a noticeable difference in his "look" now as opposed to then.  Here are a couple of pics that I took of him yesterday while he was training arms in my garage gym: Matthew Sloan performs dumbbell triceps extensions with a pair of 80s for sets of 12 to 15 re