Classic Bodybuilding Articles and Essays

2-Way Training Splits for Mass & Power

The Best Two-Way Training Splits for Inducing Hypertrophy and Unleashing Impressive Gains in Strength I’m fond of full-body workouts. In fact, if you’re new to training, and you stumbled upon this essay as you scoured the internet looking for the best split program to make you massive—not to mention massively strong—then understand that you’re better off utilizing full-body workouts. At least at the start. Eventually, you will want to move on to a split program of some sort, however. Now, please don’t get me wrong (I mean, really, don’t), you could spend your entire training life doing nothing other than full-body workouts —whether they’re high-frequency “easy strength” programs, or heavy/light/medium programs, or just “basic” 3 day a week programs where all of the training is “ moderate ”—and never need anything else. But eventually you’ll want to use some split programs, even if it’s just occasionally, and even if it’s don...

Bill Starr’s Midlife Muscle Builder

Advice from Bill Starr (and Myself) for the Midlife Bodybuilders and Lifters Last week, I overdid it. I should know better. Actually, I do know better. But, like all former elite athletes I’ve ever met with decades of training under their lifting belts, there are workouts and weeks when I decide to do a little too much—train too heavy, do cardio that is way too intense—if nothing than to see if I can still handle it. Kinda stupid, I know. But I still do it. And every time that I do this, reality comes crashing back down to earth and I know I need to settle into a kinder, gentler training routine. How do I know I overdid it? Because I hurt like hell in my joints and pretty much want to take a nap all day long instead of staring at this computer screen and writing the very thing that you’re now reading. If you’re in your 40s and 50s, and have trained for a considerable amo...

Marvin Eder’s Mass-Building Methods

The Many and Varied Mass-Building Methods of Power Bodybuilding’s G.O.A.T. Eder as he appeared in my article "Full Body Workouts" for IronMan magazine. In many ways, the essay you are now reading is the one that has had the “longest time coming.” I have no clue why it has taken me this long to write an article specifically on Marvin Eder, especially considering the fact that I have long considered him the greatest bodybuilder cum strength athlete of all friggin’ time . In fact, over 20 years ago, I wrote this in the pages of IronMan magazine: In my opinion, the greatest all-around bodybuilder, powerlifter and strength athlete ever to walk the planet, Eder had 19-inch arms at a bodyweight of 198. He could bench 510, squat 550 for 10 reps and do a barbell press with 365. He was reported to have achieved the amazing feat of cranking out 1,000 dips in only 17 minutes. Imagine doing a dip a second for 17 minutes. As Gene Mozee once put ...

C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

Search This Blog