C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  I thought, for the sake of a few e-mails that I have received recently, that I would do a "back-to-the-basics" series of posts covering most of what you need to know if you're just getting started in a serious weight training program.  Now, this could also be for you if you have been training for a considerable amount of time (6 months or longer),and haven't made any real gains. Let us begin with workout frequency. If you're just beginning - or if you don't have much muscle or strength as of now - then almost always begin your muscle-building career with a 3-days-per-week, full-body program.  In fact, you could spend your training lifetime using a 3-days-per-week program and do just fine. Clancy Ross spent his career using a 3-days-per-week, full-body program!* Most lifters enjoy using a Monday, Wednesday, Friday routine, just so they can take weekends off, but any three non-consecutive days are fine.  The one complaint I sometimes hear about that is that a ...

Matthew Sloan trains very high-frequency and is rarely sore!   Your workouts should not make you very sore.  It sounds odd, I know, especially when someone first hears it.  But it's true. I'm rarely, if ever, truly "sore" after any of my workouts nowadays.  I sometimes have a small soreness the next day, but it's more a feeling of tightness, a "good soreness", if there is such a thing, that is usually from a new exercise the day before, or doing an old exercise in a new way. I shouldn't be sore, but you  shouldn't be sore, either.  If you are, you are doing it wrong.  Don't worry if you're now angry with me, since it could be that you have been doing workouts wrong your whole life, especially if you're now trying to remember a time when you were not  sore from a workout. Let's say that your max squat for 10 repetitions is 225 lbs.  And let's say you do those 10-all out reps in a workout on Monday.  Even with one set, you are g...