C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

The Mass-Building, Split Training Ultimate! Creating the Ultimate “Split” Workout Program Within the last few weeks I’ve been receiving e-mails that go something like this: “Okay, Sloan, I get it! Full-body workouts are perfectly capable of building muscle mass—hell, they might even be the best muscle building workouts!—but the problem is this: I don’t enjoy full-body workouts . So... if you were to design a split workout program for someone, what would it look like?” Before we go any further, let me say this: I am not “opposed” to split training programs. I just think for the average lifter/bodybuilder who has limited time to lift weights—and also doesn’t mind a little something called effort —full-body workouts are the best way to go. However, I also understand that there are a lot of serious lifters who love following split workout programs. And—since you’re not going to stick with a workout program that you don’t enjoy doing (not for long, at...

What follows is the unedited version of my last article that was in Planet Muscle magazine. I love PM —it looks great, Everson includes plenty of articles with varying opinions—but when my "Alien Mass" article appeared in it, I was a little disappointed (and not just because Josh Bryant's name was attached it to). PM had changed some of the content to make it more "bodybuilding magazine friendly." What follows is the original draft that I wrote. Enjoy. Alien Mass 9 Keys for Out-of-this-World Muscle Growth The movie “Plan 9 From Outer Space” is generally considered the worst movie of all time. That’s saying something when you consider just how many bad movies have come out even in the past year. Well, while “Plan 9” might be a disaster of epic proportions, in this article I’m prepared to unleash my own “Plan 9” alien mass attack—to allow you to grow epic proportions of muscle mass. Here are 9 keys for outrageous, out-of-th...

Every so often I come across an article that I wholeheartedly agree with. The following article, from T-Nation , is one such piece. This one's written by a guy named Jackson Yee—who I've never heard of—but if this article is any indication of his training philosophy, then I'm sure I will enjoy other stuff that he writes. What he says about full-body workouts is especially true. Although it's been many years ago—as in back in the mid '90s for me—I went through something similar when I switched from one-bodypart-per-week training to full body sessions. Check it out: Morphing From Blobby Bodybuilder to Bad Ass by Jackson Yee For 20 years I was obsessed with getting big. I was a bag of bones when I graduated from high school and didn't even break 100 pounds. I was tired of looking like a skeleton, so I put all my effort into developing as much muscle mass as possible. I was fully dedicated to transferring my skinny five-foot-four frame into a meathead. With hard ...

First off, the good news: I have an article in the latest issue of Planet Muscle magazine entitled "9 Keys for Alien Mass." The bad news: Josh Bryant is listed as the author, and not me. Oh, well; it was an honest mistake by Everson and crew. Anyway, check out the article; it's more "bodybuilding" than some of my other articles, which means that you will probably enjoy it either more or less than the others.

First off —for those of you who enjoy reading my blog—forgive me for my lack of posts. I have been inundated as of late with work (I have a regular job, and have had to rotate shifts recently—which really blows!) and with family obligations (both of my sons play football, so I have multiple practices—and games—to attend). So, when I have had time to write, I have been working on articles. On top of that, add in the fact that I try to fit in 3 to 4 workouts per week, and, well, this blog just kind of took a back seat. Hopefully, however, I can fit in at least 3 or 4 posts per month from now. So—with that out of the way—on with this latest post... High Frequency Training That Works Most of you know that I have long been a proponent of high-frequency training. While I don't think that it has to be performed all the time—and there are certainly other ways to train—I do think that it's one of the more effective forms of training. For instance, I would say that a prop...

Only recently—as in the past six months or so—have I started paying attention to the bodybuilding coach Scott Abel. He's been around for a long time—I first became familiar with his name some 15 years ago when he had some articles about him (probably articles written by Greg Zulak) in MuscleMag International. And although I was somewhat familiar with his training concepts—I seem to recall that his "innervation training" was the first thing I heard about—I never really thought that he had anything revolutionary. As with a lot of things in life, it turns out that I was dead wrong about him. Abel might just be the best bodybuilding coach out there. Now, when you first read his training programs, you probably won't think that—not until you understand all of the nuances and details that his programs entail; nuances and details that I am really just starting to grasp. So, by all means, I would encourage anyone interested in bodybuilding to immerse yourself in studying—a...

For the latest "Best of the Web" entry, I've selected an article from Christian Thibaudeau. Thibaudeau is a strength/bodybuilding coach who has written a ton of article for T-Nation. A lot of his articles are really good—as far as methods for building muscles mass goes, I would say that he's the most integral of all bodybuilding writers; he selects from various methods and incorporates them into a syncretic whole without just coming up with some wild mish-mash of training protocols that simply don't work. This article—"4 Hot Topics from the Beast"—is my favorite of his T-Nation articles. 4 Hot Topics from The Beast by Christian Thibaudeau 1. Train Hard, Recover Harder I've said it time and time again: The more you train without exceeding your capacity to recover, the more you'll grow and the stronger you'll get. I'll go one step further and say that most people don't train hard enough to progress past the beginning of the intermedi...

For my second entry in this "best of the web" series, I've selected one of my own articles. I wrote this one for the Dragon Door website. I have chosen this entry not necessarily because it's the best of all of my articles, but because it's probably the one article that more lifters need to read. And they need to read it because they need to give its suggestions a try. If you're not squatting and deadlifting at least double your bodyweight, and bench pressing at least 1 & 1/2 times your bodyweight; and if you're not comparably strong on a lot of other lifts, then you have no business using multiple-split training, or using bands and chains, or using steroids, or—well, let's just say you have no business doing any of the nonsense a lot of (so-called) lifters do. You save all of that stuff until after you've laid a very good foundation of basic training. And I have no doubt that the workout in this article is the best foundation that you can...

For a while now, I've been wanting to do a "best of" series where I post links to what I consider to be some of the best web posts/articles that you can find on the internet. Lately, I've been very busy writing articles, and so my posts here on my blog have taken a bit of a back seat to the rest of my writing. But since I've found time tonight to sit down and actually do something here, I thought it would be a good time to start this "best of" series. My first pick comes from Carl McColman's delightful mystical Christian blog Anamchara: The Website of Unknowing . The post is entitled "Christian Mysticism of the Future" and its my favorite of all of Carl's posts. (And he's written quite a lot.) By the way, after you've read this, be sure to check out the rest of his site. His last few blog posts alone are wonderful reading. Christian Mysticism of the Future One of my gripes with Phyllis Tickle’s book The Great Emergence is t...

I haven't lifted weights in almost a week. My sons and I took a trip to the mountains of Tennessee for a few days. We arrived back this afternoon. After taking it easy at my house for a spell, we decided it was time they return to their mother—she was missing them, after all. And I was DYING to hit the weights again. Once my children were safely returned, and their mother and I said our cordial goodbyes, I headed over to the "wrecking gym" where I train. Only to find, much to my chagrin, that the garage was more than just a little bit infested with... fleas. Must be this sweltering Alabama heat—I know summer has just arrived, but it seems like every day for the last month the heat index has been over 110 degrees. Could be all the dogs that hang out around the gym. Well, whatever it is, tomorrow it will be time to spray the pesky critters. (Yes, yes, I'm aware that the fleas are—technically speaking—a "sentient being", but I'm afraid they're st...

To fail or not to fail... that is the question. We're talking training to failure, of course. On one side of the spectrum, you have strength coaches such as Chad Waterbury and Charles Staley (and I suppose myself in recent years) who seem to never recommend training to failure. On the other side of the spectrum, you have the great strength coach Charles Poliquin, and bodybuilding writers/trainers such as Steve Holman, Eric Broser (and whoever the hell invented that Doggcrapp—yes, that's the actual name of the training system for those of you who don't know— crap) who seem to always recommend training to failure. The million dollar question: Who's right? I think the answer is both—as long as certain criteria are adhered to for the most part. I haven't always felt that way. If you read my early writing for Iron Man magazine and MuscleMag International —I used to write quite a bit for those magazines 10 to 15 years ago—then you would have assumed I was a training...