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Full-Body Big & Strong

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...

Tommy Kono’s Insights

  Strength-Building and Mind-Power Secrets from the 20th Century’s Greatest Weightlifter/Bodybuilder      I love old-school bodybuilders.  If you’ve scoured this site, or have been a long-time reader, you’re probably aware of that.  My most popular articles at Integral Strength are almost all “classic bodybuilding” pieces.      Old-school bodybuilders—especially before the ‘70s—were a different breed.  Like bodybuilders today, they trained for aesthetics and to have a pleasing physique, but they also trained for strength and power, for flexibility, on various “odd” lifts, and for all-around athleticism.  They were, essentially, one part bodybuilder, one part weightlifter, and one part gymnast.  But a few stood out above all others.  One of those was, without a doubt, the great Tommy Kono.  Superlatives such as “great” are heaped upon a lot of old-time lifters, but with Kono it’s no hyperbole....