C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

A Bill Starr-Inspired Method for Making Consistent Progress      When many lifters think of Bill Starr (assuming they even know who he was), they often think of his 5x5 heavy-light-medium system , a system of training that I have used at times, and have often touted, over almost the entirety of my lifting and writing career.  You can probably do a brief, cursory search right now on “Bill Starr training program” or something similar, and you will, in all likelihood, find more than a few training plans, and almost all of them—or so I would bet a hefty sum—will outline a week or two of training using 5 sets of 5 reps.  But if you take the time to read a lot of the training articles that Starr actually wrote—he penned hundreds, if not thousands, of articles for almost all of the major bodybuilding magazines and training journals during his lifetime—you would find that there was a lot more to his system of training than what he is typically known for....

       I read a lot.  And I re-read a lot of books that I like, especially in the fields that I’m particularly interested in, such as strength training, budo, and philosophy (of all types, Christian and pagan, western and eastern).  Today I was reading Pavel and Dan John’s book “Easy Strength.”  I’ve read this book a couple of times, but thought I’d return to it today, thinking it might give me some quotes I could include in my ongoing HFT series, when I came upon, well, this quote of Pavel’s: “There is nothing wrong with a split if you’re not using it as an excuse to have a bis and tris day.  Ben Johnson lifted six times a week: three for the upper body and three for the lower body.  He cut down to four days when felt the need to back off.  I like Charles Poliquin’s weekly strength plan for fighters: 5 days of lifting a week, only two exercises per workout.”      First, I don’t think it’s necessarily ...