C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

     If you don't know already, I'm really not a fan of what is commonly called "H.I.T." training, and I'm REALLY not a fan of Mike Mentzer.  However, this doesn't mean that I have a problem with H.I.T. training as it was initially conceived.  What follows is a post I did around ten years ago that I thought would be good to re-post as a Thursday Throwback, especially since I have noticed a small resurgence of interest in Mentzer. REAL H.I.T.   Make  Real  Gains with Brief, Intense Workout Programs The back of Dorian Yates, probably the best-built  ALL TIME of any H.I.T. proponent.       For years now, high intensity training (commonly referred to as H.I.T.) has been one of the most controversial training methods in the bodybuilding world.    The proponents of H.I.T. seem to think that it’s the only method capable of truly transforming the “average”, drug-free bodybuilder.    On the other side you have proponents of  volume  workouts (one such proponent has bee

Home Workouts for Mass, Power, Strength, and Muscular Development! PART ONE: Just the Basic Barbell C.S.: Here is a photo I took of my home gym this past weekend. For well over a decade, I trained at a commercial gym.  When I wanted to take my powerlifting training seriously, however, in the late '90s, I decided it was time to trade in the commercial gym for a good home gym.  This is probably the opposite of what most people do, as many lifters will begin training at home on a basic weight set, then decide to acquire a gym membership once they "get serious" with lifting.  But I relished the idea of creating a good, dungeoness home gym free of the distractions on offer at any commercial gym. In this article (and the ones that will follow) I will offer some tips, tricks, and advice for creating a home gym conducive to hardcore mass and power training, and provide some ideas of the training you can do at each stage of your home gym's development. Getting Started To start

  It never fails. It's an utter truth. And no matter how many times we remind ourselves NOT to do it, we do it anyway. So what is "it"?  IT  is our natural tendency to want to make things more complex; it's our natural tendency to slide away  from the simple, and to look for things of more complexity; it is our urge - no matter how many times we tell ourselves that it's going to be different - to NOT  do the basic training that we should  be doing! The "original" power-builder  Pat Casey built his mass and strength using the basics! Why do we do this?  The primary reason is probably nothing more than human nature.  We convince ourselves that we will get better results if only  we do more - more exercises, more sets and reps, more days of training, multiple exercises-per-bodypart, endless variations of different exercises... the list seems to go on and on. I suppose before going much further, I should add a caveat: variation  and volume  are both importan