C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

Some Thoughts and Ideas on Designing a Workout Plan Made for You      I’ve mentioned in other essays that what makes training so unique and ultimately rewarding—though also downright frustrating for many, though I ain’t one of ‘em and proud of it, despite “pride goeth before the fall” and all that—is that training itself is unique to you .  What builds muscle—sometimes a whole heapin’, heckuva lot of muscle—for one person in spades doesn’t do jack-squat for another lifter.  If that guy you know who grows huge arms with 2 heavy, super-intense sets and a workout that lasts a grand total of 15 minutes done twice per week attempted a high-volume, 15-20 sets per muscle regimen, he’d make near-zero gains.  But if my buddy Mac, who thrives off 25 sets per bodypart workouts, tried the Heavy Duty dude’s system, he’d shrivel up worse than Charles Atlas’s scrawny beach geek who got sand kicked in his face and his gal taken away from him by the muscle-bound j...

Musings on Lifting, Life, and the Reasons for Training (with a few workouts thrown in for good measure)      Why do you train?  It’s a question you must ask yourself and it’s a question that only you can answer.  To help you with the question, I can only tell you why I train.  But to do that, we have to go back to the past a little bit.  Why did I train?  What got me started in the first place?  What kept me going?  Why do I train now and why will I continue to train long into the future?      I started training when I was pretty young, around 13 years old.  It might have been 14.  I’m not really sure, though 13 sounds about right.  It would have been in ‘86 or ‘87, when my father bought me one of those cement-filled DP weight sets for either my birthday or Christmas.  I think it was my birthday, because I remember first training in the summer, and I was born in May.  My siste...