C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  Essays and Thoughts on the "Dokkodo" Part Four Do Not, Under Any Circumstance, Depend on a Partial Feeling Sasaki Kojiro (right) engages Miyamoto Musashi on the shores of Ganryū Island (courtesy of Wikimedia). The 3rd maxim of Musashi's final masterwork is one of my favorites.  And, yes, I understand that in Zen you should not "pick and choose".  For instance, the 3rd patriarch of Zen is often quoted as having said, "the great Way is not difficult for those who do not pick and choose... if you wish to see the Way then do not hold opinions for - or against - anything."  That quote aside, this one is still one of my favorites. On with the commentary... We rarely make poor decisions - in life, in the dojo, in the gym - when we are decisive.  Even then, if our decisive actions do  fail, we will not regret what has been done.  For in holding nothing back, we have nothing to regret! In his book No Fear Zen: Discovering Balance in an Unbalanced World , Rosh

  Essays and Thoughts on the "Dokkodo" Part Three Do Not Seek Pleasure for its Own Sake Miyamoto Musashi in his prime, wielding two bokken; woodblock print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (courtesy of Wikimedia) The 2nd maxim of Musashi's Dokkodo  is "do not seek pleasure for its own sake."  When I first read the Dokkodo  many years ago, this one struck me as a little odd, or I probably thought it was too "outdated" - a maxim from ancient Japan that didn't apply to us today in the modern world.  But I couldn't have been more wrong. First off, don't try to make this maxim - or the others that follow - more or less than what they are.  Most of these - as with all teachings from a Wisdom Tradition - have both the "surface" meaning, and that which is "below the surface", so to speak. On it's "surface", this maxim is fairly simple and straightforward.  When you seek pleasure for the sake of pleasure alone , you WILL run in

You are lukewarm, and I shall spit you out. - Revelation  A couple of weeks ago, I published a post on the "one-lift-per-day" program, but I'm pretty sure that I ended up ranting about how most of the workout-world seems to prefer over-complicated and easy (a two-punch combination that is NEVER going to produce appreciable gains in, well, any-damn-thing) instead of simple but HARD workout programs !  And since the more I think about it, the less annoyed I get, and the more just plain baffled I become, I thought I'd write about some "simple NOT easy" workout tips/tricks/ideas or whatnot that YOU can put to use and achieve some awesome results. Bill Pearl understood that MASS was built with the basics and heavy-as-hell weights. You see, I'm baffled more than annoyed at this point because even though results don't come from "easy" programs (there IS an exception to this rule, but it entails VERY frequent workouts and more attention to detail,

 Every week, I receive emails from folks who count their calories, know the exact percentage of macronutrients they are consuming, weigh their food, and train with apps full of charts, graphs, and whatever other things  those apps track.  They also keep meticulous journals, and can tell you the exact repetition tempo performed for all of their machine work at the gym.  I only mention this because just yesterday - while I was relaxing at home, drinking a Coors light, and grilling out for Juneteenth - I checked my email, only to see that I had received an email from a reader who explained to me he is having trouble getting "psyched up" for his workouts - despite taking a pre-workout pill, wearing his state-of-the-art lycra pants and mesh "cooling" tank top, along with his brand new, brand name workout shoes.  So he wanted to know what I did pre-workout to prepare for my training sessions, and what I wear.  I told him I try to remember to wear some shorts, and then I d

Essays and Thoughts on the "Dokkodo" Part Two Accept Everything Just the Way it is Miyamoto Musashi kills a shark fish (Yamazame) in the mountains across the border of Echizen Province , by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (public domain) The very first "principle" of the Dokkodo is to "accept everything just the way it is."  But what does this mean for the warrior, and why did Musashi place so much emphasis on it?  For he must  have placed emphasis on it, otherwise it would not have been the first principle of his last work. Many years ago - as in MANY years ago; I was a teenager - my sensei told this anecdote one day at the end of class.   After a couple of hours of hard training, we sat down to do zazen.   This is paraphrasing, but he told us: “The glass is not half full.   And the glass is not half empty.   It simply is what it is.   Because if it’s half-full, then it’s ALSO half-empty, which means that it’s also neither half-full nor half-empty.   It is simply half

Essays and Thoughts on The Dokkodo Part One C.S.'s Note: I hope you enjoy the essays that follow in this series.  These essays are really the seed of a book idea I've had brewing for some time.  I have been apprehensive in starting it as a book, seeing the odd "niche" that it abides in might find it hard for it to get picked up by a publisher.  But niche as it MAY be, I finally decided that it would work best as a series of essays on Integral Strength, and we'll just see what happens from here. Contemporaneous painting of Musashi from the Edo Period (courtesy Wikimedia)       Terao Maganojo gazed at the dojo ahead of him.  Over the past decade - when he retired from one of his many successful duels - he always came here to refine his technique, to improve his speed, to perfect his timing, and to learn the history of the sword school in which he practiced.  But most of all, he came to spend time at the foot of his master.        All of that was coming to an end. 

 This morning, I checked my email - as I routinely do most mornings - and found an interesting question from a young man who wanted to increase his overhead pressing strength.  It was "interesting" in the sense that this young lifter says he has made great gains in the squat from using the classic 20-rep breathing squats regimen as espoused by Randall Strossen in his generally awesome and perennial bestseller Super Squats .  It was also "interesting" because this is the 3rd time  that I have seen (or heard) this question asked - or at least questions incredibly similar to this one.  The first time I saw it was when I was perusing some of my Uncle Kirk's old IronMan magazines  from the '60s and '70s that he kept in one his sheds on his ranch in East Texas.  (Speaking of my Uncle Kirk - who can still deadlift over 400lbs at 70 years young - I need to write a series of articles/posts on "Tales from East Texas Powerbuilders", where I can introduce