C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

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...

Variations and Alternatives to the Classic 5x5 Methods of Training      Of all training methods and workout routines out there, I think it’s safe to say that 5x5 training is one of the most popular and most widely used by a lot of lifters, especially those seeking a combination of both size and strength.  It’s not the most popular training method, I'm not saying that.  I bet if you walk into most commercial gyms anywhere in America (perhaps the world) you’ll find that the majority of trainees use somewhere between 3 and 4 sets of 8 to 12 reps more than anything else.  Nonetheless, 5x5 training is hugely popular.      There are two ways that most lifters utilize 5x5 training.  You can either do 5 progressively heavier sets of 5 reps or you can do 5 straight sets of 5 reps, using the same weight at each set.  The former works better for full-body workouts performed 3 days per week.  The latter tends to be ...