C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

In my recent post dealing with building a home gym (and designing home gym workouts), I ended with a discussion of effective workouts using nothing other than a barbell.  And then I gave some brief tips for "getting creative" with your workouts.  One of the things I mentioned was combining your barbell exercises with bodyweight movements, but I didn't go into any detail.  In my next post on building a home gym, and the training that goes along with it, I will discuss workouts incorporating a bench and some dumbbells.  But the more I thought about it, the more I decided I needed to write a post - and, in fact, the subject is worthy of multiple posts - dealing exclusively with bodyweight movements combined with basic barbell (and dumbbell) exercises. George Hackenschmidt was a turn-of-the-century (19th to 20th) strongman who built almost all of his strength with nothing other than a barbell and bodyweight movements. These workout ideas are effective for both home gym t...

Essays and Thoughts on  The Dokkodo Part Twelve In All Things, Have No Preferences Picture of the 3rd Patriarch of Zen, Seng T'san, whose famous work, Hsin Hsin Ming ("Inscription of Faith in Mind," S hinjinmei  in Japanese), is strikingly similar to some of the musings of the Dokkodo .  Musashi was clearly influenced by Seng T'san's work, wittingly or not. ( Picture is in the Public Domain ) Here, at the midpoint of the work, Musashi seems to return to a musing that is very close to his first one, to accept everything as it is .  In order to accept life and reality as it truly is, you must also "have no preferences."  I believe Musashi did this in order for the reader (which would have been Terao Maganojo at first, but Musashi knew it would be passed on to students under Maganojo, and to future generations), to stay focused on the overall  meaning of the text, and of following the Way  in general. Although the samurais at Musashi's time - and throug...

  Essays and Thoughts on  The Dokkodo Part Eleven Do Not Allow Yourself to be Guided by Feelings of Lust or Love The Dokkodo in its original handwriting. (Courtesy of Wikimedia) The further along we get in the Dokkodo, and the more we realize how different  was the view of the ancient budoka compared with the mind and thought of the modern martial practitioner.  Here, we find a maxim that seems more harsh than all the others that came before it, cold even.  In our society (or I should write "societies" - for this goes for the East as well as the West), we are taught that romantic love is to be prized.  In fact, there are many whose entire life revolves around acquiring romantic love. But love is fickle.  And fickleness is not a feeling that the serious martial practitioner can rely upon.  Upon this very subject, Roshi Richard Collins has this to say, " We have all perhaps made unwise decisions in our lives based on what we thought were the dictate...

Home Workouts for Mass, Power, Strength, and Muscular Development! PART ONE: Just the Basic Barbell C.S.: Here is a photo I took of my home gym this past weekend. For well over a decade, I trained at a commercial gym.  When I wanted to take my powerlifting training seriously, however, in the late '90s, I decided it was time to trade in the commercial gym for a good home gym.  This is probably the opposite of what most people do, as many lifters will begin training at home on a basic weight set, then decide to acquire a gym membership once they "get serious" with lifting.  But I relished the idea of creating a good, dungeoness home gym free of the distractions on offer at any commercial gym. In this article (and the ones that will follow) I will offer some tips, tricks, and advice for creating a home gym conducive to hardcore mass and power training, and provide some ideas of the training you can do at each stage of your home gym's development. Getting Started To start...

 A couple of months ago, I wrote the first part of this series on SERIOUS strength and power training for martial artists and other "combat" athletes.  When I wrote that first piece, I expected to write the second part within a week, and I should have already finished the series.  But life has plans of its own sometimes.  A few days after I wrote Part One, a dear friend of mine since my childhood died unexpectedly.  It has been very hard on me and my family, and is the reason the only thing I have even "felt" like writing since that time was my continued series on The Dokkodo .  But I finally sat down at my computer this morning, and realized that I really  want to begin writing again.  And writing more than I had previously been doing.  When death intrudes upon your life, it can often spur you to concentrate on the things that do matter in life, the things that are important to you, and  the things that you want to leave behind you when...

  Essays and Thoughts on  The Dokkodo Part Ten Resentment and Complaint are Appropriate Neither for Oneself or for Others "Clouds gather around the Enso."  The clouds represent fleeting thoughts.  The enso represents the stable, grounded mind of the Budoka. Have you ever been around a co-worker or an acquaintance who seemed to whine or complain almost all of the time?   I had an acquaintance years ago - a fellow budoka  - who trained with me at the karate dojo of my youth.  He was the kind of guy who others in the dojo didn't want to be around because he made everything  about himself.  If he hadn't achieved something, anything, then it simply wasn't his fault.  It was the fault of society, the situation in which he was raised, the fact that his genetics could have been better - the list could go on and on. There is nothing worse than this sort of pettiness. Success has nothing to do with the support you receive, or don't, not ultim...

 Essays and Thoughts on The Dokkodo Part Nine Never Allow Yourself to be Saddened by a Separation 16th century painting of Musashi (public domain) Another translation that I like of this musing is David K. Groff's that reads, "On whatever the path, do not be sad about parting ways."  If you are following a "way," then you must be prepared for the fact - inevitable some might say - that you will have to separate yourself from others who are not following the same path that you are embarked upon. When one first reads/hears a maxim such as this one or one similar, our initial reaction is to recoil from it.  We - as a human race - love our attachments!  Not only are we saddened by a separation, but we never want to be separated in the first place.  Of course it's natural for us to feel saddened upon separation, right? We are attached to many things other than just people.  Some of these attachments are subtle and we might not even be aware of what it is we are ...

  Essays and Thoughts on  The Dokkodo Part Eight Never Be Jealous Musashi using two swords (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons) O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-ey’d monster, which doth mock The meat it feeds on.   -Shakespeare (from Othello) If you have done Zen practice for any lengthy period of time, then you are probably aware of many of the negative emotions that you  struggle with - or ones that you don't.  These emotions can come upon you when you are sitting on the cushion meditating.  They can come upon you when you are in the dojo (or dojang) training.  And, of course, they can even come upon you in the most mundane times, such as when you are in the checkout line at the grocery store, or when you are stuck in heavy traffic, or when you are busy cleaning your home.  In other words, negative emotions seem to always  be there, lurking just beneath the surface no matter the situation.  Of course, you can also have ...

  Years ago, when I was a regular columnist for Ironman Magazine , I wrote an article in which I said, "bodybuilding has ruined strength training in America."  I'm pretty sure that I got more hate mail from that ONE article than all my others put together, and I wrote a LOT  of articles for Ironman  in the '90s and the early years of this century, so that's saying something.  But I stand by that statement.  Now, you may ask yourself, why am I beginning an article on strength training for martial artists  with an anecdote I wrote for a bodybuilding magazine that most martial artists are never going to read?  And the reason is simple: bodybuilding has also ruined martial arts strength training  in America.  Why?  Most martial artists who take up weight training in this country are greatly influenced by bodybuilding-style training , whether they know it or not, the kind of training that relies on multiple sets of multiple reps in order...

  Essays and Thoughts on  The Dokkodo Part Seven Do Not Regret What Has Been Done Woodblock print by the artist Ichiyusai Kuniyoshi of a man holding a mirror to Musashi in order to get a better look at the swordsman.  Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (digital. id. jpd 01793) Often, regret is nothing more than a way of "holding on," of our inability to truly let go .  In this way, you can see how this maxim relates to our previous one of being "detached from the desire" for worldly things.  Our regret, when looked at from this perspective, is something that we are actually attached to .  We don't want  to let go of our past.  And so we don't! Our regrets - as with many other things - are nothing more than our attachment to the past.  We think, we ruminate, we worry about what we might have done different.  And so we stay stuck in a past that only exists in our mind, or in our thoughts , to be a little more precise.  For we could...