C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

     What follows is the original, "uncut" version of an article of mine that was published a few months ago in Planet Muscle magazine.  This is a form of training that I enjoy occasionally doing.  If you're the kind of lifter that actually enjoys more Crossfit-style training—as opposed to the more conventional training I typically recommend—this should be right up your alley. Strongman Muscle Using Strongman-style Training for Maximum Muscle Gains      Watch the “World’s Strongest Man” competition and you’ll see some of the most massively muscled men on the planet.  And they didn’t get that way by training like your average bodybuilder.  They got big, strong, and muscular by training on core lifts (squats, deadlifts, overhead presses, etc.) and utilizing a lot of odd lifts such as the farmer’s walk, log presses, sand-bag carries, and the tire flip—to name just a few.      Most of you reading this will probably never compete in a strongman competition, bu

     Simplicity can be a virtuous thing.  For some reason, in our current age, we want to make things decidedly not simple.  Perhaps this is because our lives are not simple – we have made them more and more complex by a stream of never-ending texts, instant messages, YouTube videos, music streaming, and the general need to always feel as if we need to be doing something.  I might add, however, without us actually doing anything, since we are more slothful and gluttonous – not to mention pear-shaped; especially the younger generation – than ever before.      Life should not be that way.  We were built for simplicity – in fact, the only way to enter into the complexity of things is to purposefully simplify.  If for instance, you want to enter the depths of your consciousness, the very depths of your being , you don’t do so by anything so complex as various ascetic feats of standing on your head or other odd yogic poses, or by flailing yourself in a medieval manner; you do so by t

Revisiting the 20-Rep Squat Program Your 2014 Mass Gaining Protocol! “Trust me, if you do an honest 20 rep program, at some point Jesus will talk to you. On the last day of the program, he asked if he could work in.”- Mark Rippetoe      For many of you, it’s time to get started on your New Year’s resolution. [1]   And it could be that—for some of you, at least—your resolution is a simple one: to get as big and strong as possible in the shortest amount of time.  If that’s the case, then this article is written solely for you.      In years past, there was one routine, and one routine only, that was seen as the holy grail of mass-building protocols: the 20-rep squat program.  I first read about this program more than 20 years ago in the pages of Iron Man magazine, and then in the pages of Randall Strossen’s book “Super Squats”, which I devoured in one sitting upon receiving it in the mail.  But the nucleus of the program goes back almost 80 years ago, to the 1930s, when Mar