C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

A Hybrid High-Frequency Regimen for Natural Mass-Building      I have long been a fan of high-frequency training (HFT) and other methods of lifting that go against the stream of most modern training.   This is especially true of strictly muscle-building methods.   Perhaps it’s hubris on my part to think that I know better than bodybuilders lifting in today’s gyms, but I think there are better methods for the natural bodybuilder than what is currently used by the vast majority of lifters (at least in the West—bodybuilders in East Europe are another story).      Infrequent training simply isn’t a good method for the majority of lifters if their goal is to gain muscle mass.  And by “majority” I mean  natural  lifters.  Steroids change the equation—and change it  big time .  Anabolic steroid use is often cited as the reason why bodybuilders from the ‘70s, ‘80s, and early ‘90s (before Dorian ...

       Before we get started here, I want to apologize for the delay in posts.  I have been working on, and formatting, my e-books so that I can start selling paperback versions of the same books.  Be on the lookout for those in the next week or two.  With that out of the way...       I have a semi-regular, semi-ongoing series which I have titled “Real Bodybuilding.”   The first installment—which I never, by the way, planned on being the first in a series of training articles—was some scribblings and thoughts on how old-school, real bodybuilders actually trained before the advent of large doses of various anabolic steroids in bodybuilding (which changed everything).   And after writing that one, there was enough interest in the topics discussed that I thought some follow-up articles and essays were in order.      Before we go any further, here are the links to the past installments.   Reading th...

  It’s About More Than Just Resting and Recuperating      In my last essay on “Plateau Busters,” I mentioned briefly the importance of proper recovery when your progress has stalled.   But recovery is important all the time.   If you do it “right,” then you won’t have too much stalled progress in the first place.      Part of the issue with recovery methods, at least in the West, is that too much emphasis on training is placed around volume, intensity, and “rest and recuperation.”   The prevailing understanding for most lifters—and I don’t want to generalize, but I believe this to be true—is that recovery will take care of itself if you train hard and then give your body plenty of time to “rest and grow.”   While that has some truth to it, I won’t deny, it’s not the whole picture.   Or, at least, it shouldn’t be.      I wish lifters would think more along the lines of proper programming . ...

  A.K.A. The Total Variety Regimen Old-School Advice for Breaking Through Progress Barriers (With a Little Help from Classic Bodybuilder and Writer Gene Mozee)        “Athletes in every sport suffer through periods of retrograde progress—plateaus, or slumps, during which they lose their edge and don’t play up to par.   Major league baseball players can’t get a hit, golfers can’t make a putt, basketball players can’t buy a basket, and quarterbacks can’t find a receiver with a pass.   Such is the nature of slumps.” [1]      So begins the legendary bodybuilding trainer and writer Gene Mozee in an article he penned for IronMan entitled “Plateau Busters: Punching Through the Progress Barrier” in the November, ’91 issue of that magazine.      I came across this article today while going through a box of magazines that I dragged out of my attic a week or so ago when researching my last essay on John Fa...