C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  In Autumn When the Leaves Fall and the Sandbag is Carried        “What should be sad in the falling of spent leaves, of leaves that have decked themselves in bridal hues to keep a tryst with death?  The leaves are glad enough.  They spiral down from their parent twigs, and golden and red they are, to carpet the loam of which they must become a part.  If wind drives over them they are blithe to dance in the hazy sunshine of autumn.  The leaves are not saddened by this most natural of fates.  In death is found rebirth, and the tree lives.  Nothing is lost in nature, nothing wasted.  These leaves shall, in a manner of speaking, break from their waxen buds again or come back to us as flowers… Yet the spent leaves sadden us, and the bare boughs touch our hearts.  Something or somebody is going away, unseen, silent, wistful, and on a certain morning we shall wake to know a loss, to feel an absence.” ~Ben Hur Lampman, writing in the Portland “Oregonian,” 1925      My favorite seasons for li

                4 Tips for Serious Lifters Loaded Carries - one of the 4 tips for serious lifters      I have been lifting weights since, I think, 1986 or ‘87, when, for either my 13th or 14th birthday, my father bought me one of those cement-filled, plastic DP weight sets replete with a flimsy bench.  I’ve come a long way since then - in other words, I’ve gotten friggin’ old - but I’ve never stopped lifting, and I’ve seen a LOT of different exercises, workout routines, and training programs (some good, most not) done by a lot of different people.  In other words, in 36 (maybe 37) years of training - and paying attention - I’ve seen damn near anything and everything you can think of in the lifting world.  And so I’m also pretty sure that in another 36 (or 37) years, the following tips will be just as good then as they are now. Consistency Trumps Everything       “It doesn’t matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop.” ~Confucius      One thing that the above paragraph tells y

   The  One-Lift-A-Day Powerlifting Program      I received quite a lot of positive feedback for my last essay on “One-Exercise-Per-Workout” programs for building a combination of strength, power, and muscle mass.  I also mentioned in that essay that my original intention was to write something longer that included a powerlifting-specific program, but since the essay was already at around 2K words, I thought it was long enough to stop where I did.  However, I’ve had a couple emails asking questions about what a powerlifting program would look like, so here’s my answer.      Before you read, study, and consider applying these powerlifting-centric programs to your workouts, my first advice is to make sure you read Part One .  It lays out the benefits and the reasons why you would want to follow such a program in the first place.  I will probably touch upon some of the same things here that I did in that first essay, but I have no plan here to be thorough in that regard, except when it c