C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

A Double-Split Program for Weekend Strength Warriors      A good portion of the material I write on my blog is precipitated by questions I receive in emails.  Of course, a lot of the questions that I get have been covered in my various essays and articles, so I don’t write additional material about those questions.  This morning, however, I received a question that I thought might deserve its own essay since there might be other readers in a similar situation.  To paraphrase, the questioner asked me if it would be a good idea to use a “double-split” (where you train twice in one day) on the weekends since he has plenty of time to train on Saturday and Sunday but little time for training during the week.  His plan is to get 4 training sessions in on the weekend, then try to fit one more workout in during the week.  After a few emails back and forth to understand his training history, I told him that, yes, I do think it’s a good idea, especially if he can get one full-body workout in the

  A Unique Training Split for Size, Strength, Muscle Mass, AND the Look of Power      As humans—and as lifters—we tend to be creatures of habit.  In many ways, this is good.  If we want to be skilled at something, anything really, we need to make a habit of practicing it, practicing it well , and practicing it often.  If you want to make good gains—in strength training, mass-building, or a combination of both—you must be consistent first and foremost.  But, as lifters, it can sometimes actually hinder us, or, at the very least, not allow us to take full advantage of different training strategies.  Because, since we are creatures of habit, we create a habit of training the same way for each of our muscle groups or for all of our lifts.  Sometimes, however, it might help to take an almost counterintuitive approach to training.  And that’s exactly what this program is.  (In fact, I suppose that I could have titled it “The Counterintuitive Power-Mass Variation Program” but, as that’s word

  How to Gain 50 Pounds of Muscle! Part 3: Bill Pearl’s Advanced Mass-Training      This is the 3rd part of my Classic Bodybuilding series based on an article that the great Gene Mozee wrote for IronMan magazine in 1992.  The first part covered the “Golden 6” training program of Arnold Schwarzenegger.  If you’re a beginner, or if you need to get “back-to-the-basics,” then I would start there.  The second part that I posted a few days ago was another full-body program based on Larry Scott’s Gironda-inspired mass-building techniques.  I would advise reading those pieces first.  And definitely don’t just leap into the training program presented here without a couple years at the minimum of (mostly) full-body workouts.      Bill Pearl has long been one of my favorite bodybuilders.  In another piece I wrote last year, I mentioned that I believe Pearl to be one of the 5 greatest bodybuilders of all time.  I won’t get into as much detail about Pearl here.  If you’re interested in knowing m