C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  Some Slightly Rambling Thoughts, Musings, and Reflections on How One Should Train (and How I Train)      The other day I received a question from a reader who asked how I really train.  He said that, since I write about a lot of different training methods, he wanted to know how I actually trained.  He wanted to know this because he was confused about how he should train.  He said that he read a lot of the articles here on the blog, but he was confused because I seemed to recommend so many different training methods, and it left him a little bit bewildered and conflicted over the correct training methods for him—those weren’t his exact words, but I’m just paraphrasing in my own vernacular.      I have received questions such as this one before.  I even wrote an article over ten years ago entitled “My Training Philosophy” because of the confusion about the various lifting methodologies I recommend, but I figure it’s about time to write something such as that again.  My training philo

A Mass and Power Program for the Natural Lifter      This morning, I was reading some old muscle magazines—I have hundreds of them boxed in my attic—when I came across an article by Don “Ripper” Ross entitled, aptly for this essay, “Power Bodybuilding.”  I’m always looking for inspiration for new training programs, and this article gave the idea for the program you’re now reading.      Ross’s program was a 6-days-per-week routine where you trained chest and arms on days 1 and 4, back and shoulders on days 2 and 5, and, finally, legs on days 3 and 6.  I really like a lot of the training programs that Ross created—this one included—but I do think it had too much overall volume at each session for that many training days.  Each day contained between 8 and 10 exercises in his program.  Ross was the kind of guy that thrived on hard work and a lot of volume (oh, and a lot of anabolics).  This program keeps some of Ross’s principles—heavy training, multiple sets for each lift, low reps—and k

  Some Thoughts, Tips, and Ideas on the Standard Basics of Eating and Training      I often extol other lifters to “get back to the basics,” when it comes to both training and eating.  Sometimes you’re stuck in a rut and need to get back to the basics.  Maybe you haven’t seen any gains in either size or strength—whatever it is that you’re trying to gain—and so you need to get back to the basics.  Or maybe you’ve been following too many convoluted multi-exercise, multi-angle routines and need to get back to the basic barbell movements.      Anytime I get confused about my own training, I do the same thing.  It’s what everyone needs to do on occasion; get back to the basics of simple, but not necessarily easy, methods of training and eating.       Seems pretty common sense, which it is, but I realized something else the other day when I was having a conversation with a young man: not everyone understands what the basics actually are.      It happened this way: A few days ago, I was che