C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

This may be a bit of an odd post.  It's basically whatever is simply swirling around in my head at the moment.  I will try my best to make sense of it.  Not for me.  It makes sense for me, however abstract it might be.  But for you. I've often felt that what makes us good, makes us bad, as well.  Let me explain... A Saint Who Wasn't When I was accepted into the Orthodox Church (or, as the Orthodox refer to it, the One Holy, Catholic, and Orthodox Church), baptized, and then chrismated, I took Saint Christopher as my patron Saint.  It made sense to me, since my parents had given me the name Christopher (after the very same saint, Christopher the Christ-Bearer).  (They also gave me two other middle names, one of them being Stuart, for those of you who actually give a damn.  Hence, the name C.S.)  But Christopher is not the saint I would have originally chosen.  No, that honor would have gone to Saint David, or the Prophet Davi...

Pat Casey: King of all Powerlifters The massive Pat Casey performing shoulder presses. When I first fell in love with powerlifting - and power training in general - in the mid '90s, I immediately had a few heroes.  Some of the early 19th century strongmen such as George Hackenschmidt, Arthur Saxon, and Louis Cyr were all fascinating to me.  As was my favorite power bodybuilder of all time, Marvin Eder ,and then, of course, there were guys like Bill Kazmaier, Don Reinhoudt, and Bruce Wilhelm.  But, once I discovered him, Pat Casey might have - just might have - been my favorite. Several different things fascinated me about Casey.  First, was his strength (obviously).  He was ahead of his time when it came to the bench press and the squat.  Second, was his physique.  He looked as if he could - at any time - strip some fat and step onto the bodybuilding stage. And third was his training.  And it was this 3rd thing that I think I loved the...

Q&A for the Month of October I have decided to do something slightly different starting with this month. Over the last couple of weeks - since I switched over to my new email address - I've received multiple emails.  Not exactly an entire plethora, don't get me wrong, but enough that it's been hard - or, at least, very time consuming - to answer them all.  And, so, I'm afraid that I simply haven't answered some that I otherwise would have - I apologize, right now, if yours is one that I haven't answered as of yet. Several of the emails, however, while not being exactly  the same, are at least in the same ballpark.  Which got me to thinking: Why don't I return to writing a regular Q&A column (something I've attempted in the past).  If this is successful, and if it gets enough views (some of my posts, depending on popularity, get decidedly more views than others), then I will continue to do this sometime around the first of each month. I...

Bill Pearl is, without a doubt, in my top two or three list of "greatest bodybuilders of all time."  In my opinion, he was the first bodybuilder to look truly massive while in competition shape, not to mention massive in all of the photos that you saw in the magazines. Pearl was before my time.  But maybe that's why I hold him in such high regard. A lot of the bodybuilders and lifters that guys these days consider to be "old-timers" aren't old-timers to me.  Hell, I'm considered an old-timer by many. And maybe that's why he's always been so mythic to me. I can still remember (sometime in the late '80s) thumbing through a stack of old Iron Man  magazines that my uncle had kept from the '60s and the '70s.  Many of the bodybuilders I first came across in those pages were impressive, no doubt.  But THEN I came across Bill Pearl. Bill Pearl as I remember seeing him for the first time Everything was large on Pearl - his chest, ...

Once again - as usual, it seems - it has been too long since I last posted here, but why I had a moment, I wanted to give a brief update: If you are trying to email me at my old email address - cssloan@me.com - please don't! Please direct all your questions, comments, or info you may have for me at csintegralstrength@gmail.com. I love  getting email, and answering questions, or reading how I may have inspired or made a difference in your lifting lives.  I will no longer be able to receive email at my old address, so make sure you send all of your stuff to my new one. Keep the email coming!

Dr. Kevin Fast is a 54-year old priest who once pulled a plane weighing 188 tons—a then world-record. There are several different methods, workout programs, and tricks of the trade you can use to build an impressive amount of strength.  Most of them I've written about here on my blog, so it's not that hard to find a good method or program to use.  When you factor in not just this blog, but the rest of the good blogs and sites that are available these days, well, you have a plethora of methods at your disposal. Maybe too many. The problem is not in finding the right program, but in finding the right program for you. The gist of this article is going to be about methods of strength training for the older athlete—along with an example program—but the methods employed could also be used for the younger athlete, as well, especially one who develops strength well on lower-volume programs (this would typically be larger athletes) or one who has a 9-to-5 job that is es...

It's been almost six months since my last post.  Three months ago, if I am honest, I didn't think I would be sitting here now, typing these words. I thought I would be dead. I am not going to get into all of the details - not yet, anyway.  I will save all of that for another post, when I am feeling more of a combination of elegiac and poetic, and when I think I'm ready to write about my declining health, and how it has affected my life in ways - often, amazingly - better, but bitter, as well, than I imagined such declining health could.   But my health has caused some real problems.  Until only a few weeks ago, I haven't been able to write, and I haven't been able to do the one thing I almost  love more than anything else I do on this green Earth of God's: lift weights. But I am writing again. And I am lifting again. Hopefully my health will continue to improve even more, which means even more writing and more lifting.  Often, the more I lift, t...

C.S.'s Note: The following is a training program that Jared Smith and I have had in the works for some time.  It's Jared's brainchild.  He came to me with an article that outlined the program.  I made a few tweaks here-and-there, added some notes on classic bodybuilders, and what you are reading here is the end result. In honor and promotion of our new program, the template here at Integral Strength has changed—as you may have noticed—to a more ghoulish and ghastly image. If you have any questions or comments regarding the program, please post them in the "comments" section instead of emailing me.  That way, Jared can reply as well. And just why are we calling this program "Cemetery Circuit Training"?  Read on, discover, and (hopefully) enjoy! Cemetery Circuit Training Pump-Inducing, Hellish Training for Muscle Building Heaven! C.S. Sloan and Jared Smith      Most of us who have attempted to build muscle for a signi...