C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  Living in the Now? On Zen, Mindfulness, Budo, and the Depths of TRUE Practice      Zen has become part of our lexicon in the modern English language.  I don’t believe this is a “good” thing.  If you ask the average American about Zen, they’re not going to be knowledgeable on the subject.  They tend to equate Zen with calm or “being peaceful” or something such as that.  Zen is often used the most as an adjective or an adverb.  “Sensei is the most Zen dude,” a young martial practitioner may say of his teacher.  Or a surfer might say that his “ride was very Zen.”      That is not Zen.      If someone is a little more knowledgeable on the subject of Zen, they may equate it with mindfulness or “living in the present moment?”  But is that correct?  And for the martial artist, or the Zen practitioner reading this, should that even be the goal?      What do people mean, anyway, when they talk of “living in the now” or even “ being now”?  In many ways, it is the intention that matters.  Do

  Minimum Training Time?  No Problem.  Follow this 2-Days-Per-Week Program for Maximal Mass and Strength A young Ken Leistner.  This program—with its basic, brief, but hard  tenets—would have probably made the late Dr. Ken proud.      My sons came to visit me this past weekend.  When they do this, they sometimes train with me in my garage gym, and sometimes they go to the commercial gym they train at instead.  So this past weekend, we somehow got on the subject of "what people know" at a commercial gym.  Keep in mind that I haven't trained at a commercial gym in a long  time.  I think the last time that I had a gym membership of any sort was in 2009, when I was going through a divorce, and had to move all of my weights—a quite extensive garage gym—to a storage facility.  Until I could find a new garage for my weights, I trained at a commercial gym for about six months.  But that wasn't your "average" gym, since it was a haven for powerlifters, arm wrestlers,

     How to Start a High-Frequency, High-Volume, Low-Intensity Training Program for Building Muscle Mass The Godfather of Fitness, Jack LaLanne (seen here in his younger days), trained in almost the exact manner as the workouts below, albeit with quite a lot MORE volume.      This morning, after getting frustrated with a chapter of a book that I'm currently writing, I decided to check my email, see if I had any questions to answer from readers, and just generally get my mind on something else.  It was perfect timing.  I had just received an email from a reader who finished reading my last post on manipulating the three training variables , and was interested in starting a high-frequency training (we will simply refer to it as "HFT" for the remainder of this essay) regimen with the sole intent of building muscle mass, but really didn't know where to start.  Since I have a feeling that other readers may have similar questions—and since writing stuff other than my book(s

  Manipulating the Three Variables to Achieve Your Physique Goals Herman Goerner used the form of "high-frequency, high-intensity" programs outlined below in order to perform a one-hand deadlift with 730-pounds! If you are not properly manipulating the three variables of volume, frequency, and intensity, you are not going to see results from your training.  I don't care if you are trying to win a powerlifting contest or a figure competition, whether you are trying to get as massive as possible, or lose as much body fat as you possibly can in a short amount of time; if you are not regulating and programming these 3 variables in your training, you will not  achieve your goals. I have remarked before, in paraphrasing the late, great "Iron Guru" Vince Gironda, "Are you on a training program or are you just working out?"  And to be on a training program proper  is to ensure that you are regulating your volume, frequency, and intensity in the appropriate man

 The Mostly True Exploits and Tales of Bodybuilding, Powerlifting, and Other Strength Sports Across the South, from Texas to Alabama I wrote the original article (the inspiration for this piece) a little earlier than the time of this picture, where I squatted in the mid 500s at a bodyweight of 173 (around 20 years ago). Chapter One: The Mississippi Power Parable      From the first time I read "Powerlifting Basics: Texas Style" by Paul Kelso, and ever since I was enamored by the "fiction-style" articles of Bill Starr—of which he wrote plenty—I have wanted to write a book along mostly those same lines.      The seed of this began with an article I wrote in 2001 for IronMan Magazine  entitled "The Power Parable."  In the end, I began to write different "styles" of articles and got away from what you will read here.      The following is sort of a "redux" of that initial article.  Since I wrote this 22 years ago, the setting is in the late