C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

Here's an article that I wrote around 10 years ago for IronMan Magazine .  At one time, I had a link to the original article on IronMan's  website, but that link doesn't work anymore, so I removed the old post.  But, anyway, here's the article in its entirety: Dorian Yates performed some pretty "insane" workouts in his day. Mass Insanity Stuck in a rut?  Need something different from the run-of-the-mill training program you've been doing for the past several months?  Sometimes in order to keep the gains coming -- or to bust out of the rut you're stuck in -- you have to get a little crazy. Enter mass insanity .  On the following pages, I'm going to outline several training programs that I guarantee you haven't been doing lately. In fact, it could be that you've never attempted -- or even thought of attempting them.   I'm including four different plans. Variety is a crucial component of making continuous ga...

Don Howorth's Formula for Wide, Massive Shoulders Vintage picture of Don Howorth in competition shape. I can't remember the first time I laid eyes on Howorth's massive physique with those absolutely friggin' awesomely shaped "cannonball" shoulders of his, but it was probably sometime in the late '80s and early '90s, when I read about him in either IronMan Magazine  or MuscleMag International .  IronMan  had regular "Mass from the Past" articles written by Gene Mozee that had a couple of articles about Howorth's training*, and he was also mentioned fairly regularly in Vince Gironda's column for MuscleMag  not to mention in some of the articles of Greg Zulak for the same publication. There is no doubt that genetics played a big role in just how fantastic Howorth's delts looked, but to claim Howorth's results were just because of genetics or anabolic steroids - as I've read claimed on some internet forums - is a l...

     I wrote the original "Path of the Spiritual Martial Artist" over 10 years ago for Taekwondo Times Magazine .  About a year later, it was also one of the first articles I published here at Integral Strength.  But a lot can change in 10 years - at least, on a personal note.  Although my view of Zen, martial arts, and Buddhism has not  changed in the past decade, my maturing  of it has  changed.  After all, one of the foundational views of Buddhism is impermanence, which means that everything - and I do mean everything  - is constantly in flux, and, therefore, constantly changing.  So I thought that it might be a good time to review this original Integral Strength article, and make changes where I see that changes need to be made.  I hope you find it informative, whether or not your love is martial arts, Eastern philosophy and spirituality, or both!      (By the way, I looked everywhere for the Taekwondo ...

 For many bodybuilders older than myself, John Grimek is often considered the greatest bodybuilder of all time.  I personally am unsure as to whether or not that is true - I tend to have Bill Pearl in the Numero Uno spot on that particular list.  But perhaps if I was a little bit older, and had been exposed more to Grimek in all of the bodybuilding magazines, I would feel different.  See, here's the thing: if you came of bodybuilding age in the late '80s, early '90s (which I did), then you read a lot about the legend of Grimek or you "heard" his name bantered about by a lot of the top pros, especially the pro and amateurs who themselves "came of age" in the '70s, but you never actually saw that much of Grimek in the magazines, other than occasional "blast from the past" pictures in Ironman Magazine .  But, whether or not he's in the #1 spot really doesn't matter that much to me because he is definitely in my top 5 - which one of ...