C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

How and Why Planned “Overtraining” is a Key to More Size and Strength      At some point, “overtraining” became a bad word in the world of strength training and muscle building.  Basically, or so the thinking goes, one of the keys to making continuous progress is ensuring that you never overtrain.  Many of the greatest strength athletes, not to mention strength coaches, of all time, however, thought that not only is overtraining not bad, but that it’s also a necessity once the lifter reaches a certain level.      My original strength mentor was the late and great strength coach Bill Starr.  Starr wrote several articles on the need for overtraining.  He believed that, in order to make continuous progress, you must do “too much” for a certain period of time—the so-called “overtraining” period—before backing off after that.  It was during this “de-load” period when the athlete makes the most gains, but those gain...

A Simple 3-Days-Per-Week, H/L/M Bodyweight Regimen      I received an email the other day asking me if I was going to write another part of my Bodyweight Training and Beyond series.  I wrote Part 3 of that series back in January, and mentioned at the end of it that I would soon do a 4th part.  I have yet to do so, however.  I have a tendency to get on “kicks” where I cover a certain topic for several different essays or for weeks on end before moving on to something else, and I haven’t written that much on bodyweight training of late.  I wrote back to the reader that, yes, I do plan on writing another part to that series, maybe even several.  I’ve made quite a few notes on isometric training along with “dynamic tension” that I plan on including in the next part.  The reader also had a request.  He asked if I had a suggestion for how to design a 3-days-a-week workout using only one’s bodyweight.  He has a chinning bar a...