C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  It’s About More Than Just Resting and Recuperating      In my last essay on “Plateau Busters,” I mentioned briefly the importance of proper recovery when your progress has stalled.   But recovery is important all the time.   If you do it “right,” then you won’t have too much stalled progress in the first place.      Part of the issue with recovery methods, at least in the West, is that too much emphasis on training is placed around volume, intensity, and “rest and recuperation.”   The prevailing understanding for most lifters—and I don’t want to generalize, but I believe this to be true—is that recovery will take care of itself if you train hard and then give your body plenty of time to “rest and grow.”   While that has some truth to it, I won’t deny, it’s not the whole picture.   Or, at least, it shouldn’t be.      I wish lifters would think more along the lines of proper programming . ...

How to Design a “Hybrid” Easy Strength Program      If you have read even an inkling of my writings—especially over the last 20 years—you know that I’m a fan of high-frequency training (HFT).   Now, I must admit that this wasn’t always the case.   If you read my early articles for IronMan magazine—from, say, 1994 to the end of that decade/century—I often recommended infrequent training done for relatively “high-intensity” and (fairly) low volume.   But my views on training frequency, volume, and intensity shifted when I started powerlifting seriously in the late ‘90s and began to use the more frequent training regimens from (predominately) Eastern Europe and the heavy/light/medium system of Bill Starr.   Before trying these regimens, I often had trouble gaining muscle and just weight in general.   While using these methods, however, I had trouble not gaining weight even when I didn’t want to!      Not everyone will...

    Heavy/Light/Medium Training Part 5: An H/L/M Miscellany – On Variation and Advanced Options      This is the 5 th part of our ongoing series on heavy, light, and medium training based on the coaching of the (always) great strength writer extraordinaire Bill Starr.   If you haven’t done so, then please read the other parts before reading this.   If you don’t read them, then the rest of this essay may be a bit confusing—unless, of course, you are already familiar with Starr’s methodology, in which case you can just jump right in here.   When I presented parts 2 through 4, I mentioned that you at least needed to have read part 1 before reading any of those, though it wasn’t necessary to read the other parts aside from the 1st.   With this essay, it’s good to read part 1 and be familiar with the other parts.   This article will discuss bits from all of the previous installments and assumes a working knowledge of those pieces. ...

  Instinctive Mass-Building with Dave Draper’s “Freestyle” Workouts      It’s usually called instinctive training. It’s often referred to as “auto-regulation” these days.   Dave Draper called it freestyle training .      Draper, the “Blonde Bomber,” for those of you who don’t know, was a Golden Age bodybuilder of the highest caliber, but not necessarily just for his physique.   His physique was fantastic, don’t get me wrong (one of the best of that era), but Dave himself was a bit of an iconoclast.   He thought outside of the box, had some unique training perspectives, and was, to boot, a gifted writer.   It may have had something to do with the fact that he was a creative .      Lifters and bodybuilders of all sorts train for all sorts of reasons.   For some, training is a creative expression they undertake for the same reasons that other artists take up particular crafts.   These train...

  How to Utilize Light Workouts for More Strength, Power, Mass, and All-Around Athleticism      When it comes to “things that confuse the average lifter,” I think it’s possible that the light-day concept takes the cake.   A lot of lifters either never train with light days or they don’t know how to properly utilize and implement them.   In this essay, I would like to explain the correct implementation of light days—this information can be used by a variety of lifters, whether you’re a powerlifter, a bodybuilder, a competitive athlete, a fighter, or just an all-around fitness enthusiast.   Most of the ideas that will be presented here are not my own, I must admit, but are culled from the wisdom of strength coaches or bodybuilding writers (from bygone eras) such as Bill Starr, Tommy Suggs, Bradley Steiner, and John McCallum.   (It must also be noted that there is a decided “Russian” influence on my lifting philosophy, as well—not just here bu...