C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  On Programming, Variety, and Making Gains!      The other day, Jason, a lifting friend of mine, called me on the phone.  He needed some advice for breaking out of the rut he was in.  Jason’s one of those guys that’s always into “powerbuilding.”  He wants to look like a bodybuilder, but also wants to have impressive strength.  He said that several months ago he had started on one of those “briefer-is-better” programs—the kind of program that would have made Ken Leistner proud—and got some of the best results he’s ever had in just a matter of a few weeks, but then it all ground to a sudden halt.  After explaining to me what he had been doing, and some of the adjustments he’d made but to no avail, he was almost at his wit’s end.  “I just don’t know what I’m doin’ wrong,” he said.  To which I replied, “It ain’t what you’re doin’.  It’s what you’ve done.”      “Huh?” he replied in turn, bemusingly.  I then took my time to explain to him what I believe had happened, and some easy ways tha

  Some Random Thoughts (like Really Random) on Nutritional Concepts That May, or May Not, Work       C.S.’s note: As I wrote above, what follows is very random.  I had read about Suzanne Somers’ recent death, and it made me think about something I don’t typically write about: nutrition.  Take what follows with a slight grain of salt…      Suzanne Somers died this past week just short of her 77th birthday.  If you were a kid in the ‘70s and early ‘80s (like me), then you remember well her character Chrissy from the tv sitcom “Three’s Company.”  In fact, if you were a young boy in the ‘70s and early ‘80s (once again, like me), then there’s a good chance that your love of all things female boiled down to the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, any one of Charlie’s Angels , Linda Carter as Wonder Woman , and, finally, Somers as Chrissy Snow.  But don’t worry, this isn’t an essay where I go on and on about the first “loves” of my young male life.  No, Somers' death got me thinking about somet

A.K.A: The Wildest and Craziest Muscle-Building, Fat-Burning Diet the World has Ever Seen! That's Right—EVER! Off and on, over the course of the past decade or so, I have thought repeatedly about writing what you are now staring at on your computer (or phone) screen.  But for some reason, I could just never bring myself to do it.  Maybe if I would have decided to write it as a sort of "museum piece," an essay from my favorite decade of bodybuilding (that I personally trained during) where I looked at Stewart's dietary principles from a more critical angle, well, perhaps then I would  have written this several years ago.  For the longest time, my "It Came from the '90s" essays were the most popular posts on this blog, only recently overtaken by all of my "Classic Bodybuilding" articles.  But the thing is this : I actually agree with most of what Stewart says here, and I agreed with it the first time I read this bit of (what others would call) in