C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

Can a Lifter Really Train Using Instinct Alone? My Slightly Rambling Thoughts on the Subject      Ever since I first picked up a bodybuilding magazine sometime in the mid to late ‘80s, I’ve read about so-called instinctive training.  Even then (as there are now) there were debates over whether or not one could train “instinctively.”  A lot of bodybuilders, once they became advanced enough, seemed to naturally incline toward instinctive training.  Vic Richards—perhaps bodybuilding’s first true “mass monster”—trained in what seemed to be an entirely haphazard manner, but he simply called it instinctive training.  He would show up at the gym, have absolutely nothing planned, then did whatever he thought felt “right” when he hit the weights.  On the opposite side of that, you had Mike Mentzer , and others who took a more “scientific” approach to training (or at least thought they did—there might be more science to what we call instinctive training than was understood back then), who swore

     Before you even begin this post, let me warn you: it may be one of the most rambling things I’ve written.   This is primarily because I’m not sure if I know exactly what the hell I’m going to say—which has never exactly stopped me in the past, mind you—but I do have several things on my mind as of late.   (Add to the fact that I’ve not written too much in the last few weeks, and so I knew I needed to get something on my blog.)      It all started a few days ago when my friend Josh texted me—I hate texting, but I must admit that it has become a pretty good way to communicate with friends who live several states away—and wanted to know if I remembered the book “Big Beyond Belief” from the mid to late ‘90s, and wanted to know what I thought/think about it.   Did I remember it?   Heck, yeah, I remembered it, I proceeded to tell him.   Hell, I shelled out a hefty $50 for the thing, at a time when I had little money to begin with!   (Keep in mind that this was before