C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

The Other Kind of Hardgainer [1]      I think a majority of lifters—even ones who have been training a long time and should know better—mistakenly believe that there are two kinds of training in the lifting world today.  First off, you have your “high volume” training.  It’s not necessarily that there’s anything wrong with this kind of training, or so the train of thought goes, but this kind of training—multiple sets per bodypart, multiple days per week of training, fairly high reps, and going for “the pump”—is for those lifters and bodybuilders who respond well to this kind of thing, usually thought to be “genetically elite” men.  The majority of lifters, or so the line of thought continues, would do well with more infrequent training, but an infrequent training that is combined with minimalist training performed all-out!   In the bodybuilding world, the second line of thought was most espoused by Mike Mentzer and the rest of his ill-begotten ilk. [2]   For instance, when I f

     In past articles/posts, I have discussed the benefits of bodyweight-only – and bodyweight-primary – strength training.  Since I first started blogging about bodyweight training few years ago, I have received many emails from readers who are interested in this stuff.  The readers usually want one of two things.  One, they just want to tell me how much they have been enjoying bodyweight strength training, and they want to offer their two cents on how effective/ enjoyable this kind of training has been for them.  (I love reading these kind of e-mails because, first, it inspires me, and, second, it means I don’t have to reply to some of the odd-ball questions I occasionally get asked.)  Two, they want to know exactly what kind of program they should be following.  It is to this second set of questioners that this post is addressed – well, sort of .  You see, I think it’s important for people to learn to think for themselves.  When you learn to think for yourself in regards to train

The 30-Rep Program      A word of note before you read this article: This workout has nothing in common with my “30-Rep Workout” post from several months ago.  That was more about a suggestive way to occasionally train.  This is about an in-depth “program” meant to be used for the long haul.      Dan John’s “ 40 Day Program ” has long enamored me.  I have used it once “to the T”, and I have used slight variations of it at other times over the last two or three years.  The reason that I haven’t used it more often—and the reason that I think most lifters don’t use it, even if they know about it—is because I (and they) find it, well, a bit boring on the one hand, and I think if done incorrectly it can lead to overtraining one’s movement pattern.  In the first, it can be boring because you are doing the exact same exercises for the same number of total reps each and every time that you train.  In the second, it can potentially overtrain your movement pattern if you choose exerci

Vegan Muscle Building      I spend about half of every year as a vegan.   In other words, for about half of the year I never eat meat or any form of dairy—milk, eggs, cheese, butter, etc.   I don’t do this because I necessarily feel it’s the healthiest way to eat—although I must admit that my blood pressure, cholesterol levels, triglycerides do improve while eating this way—or because I think it’s a good way to build muscle.   I do it for religious reasons.   A few years ago, I converted to Orthodox Christianity.   Part of being Orthodox is living an ascetical life, and that ascetical life includes “fasting”, i.e. abstaining from meat and dairy.   Orthodox do this on every Wednesday and Friday throughout the entire year as well as 40 days before Christmas (the Nativity fast, sometimes called Advent), 40 days before Easter (Lent), and there are a few other fasts of a few weeks duration scattered here and there throughout the liturgical calendar—Dormition fast, Apostles’ fast, t

      This is a second part in a series on (what I call) Texas Volume Training.  It would serve you well to read the first article before starting this one.  The program presented here is strictly for powerlifters (or lifters who want to spend some time building their powerlifts) who are interested in building muscle – whether it’s purely for ascetical reasons or whether it’s because they are interested in moving up a weight class.      The program presented here is not for lifters who need to stay in the same weight class or who are trying to drop bodyweight.  (To be honest, the original article on Texas Volume Training isn’t for this class of people, either.  The volume is just too high, making it well-nigh impossible to not gain some amount of muscle.)      What follows is much of the original article (including the “template” from the first article) with a lot of additional commentary for changing up the program so that you are adding muscle.      First, let’s look at the “t