C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  The Arm Training Secrets of an Old-School Bodybuilding Legend   Columbu in his heyday      “The average person who wants to see how well built or strong you are will inevitably say, ‘Make a muscle.’   Such folks aren’t interested in your lat spread, huge pecs, or rippling abdominals.   They want to see you roll up your sleeve and display a bulging biceps.   It’s the main attribute that sets you apart from the average man or athlete and identifies you as a muscle man!” ~Franco Columbu [1]        As I was searching for an article of mine in an old Iron Man magazine, rummaging through my many issues, I happen to come across the article “Franco Columbu’s Mighty, Massive Arms” by Gene Mozee.   It was in his regular feature “Mass from the Past” from the ‘90s that always outlined the training regimens of many of the “old-school” bodybuilders from the ‘70s or before.   Truth is, they were invariably just...

Franco shows off his massive chest muscles in his prime Franco Columbu was one of the greatest bodybuilders of all time. He's also one that I have hesitated writing about simply because I was never a big fan. I have no real clue why that is/was! When I was younger, and first getting into bodybuilding in the late '80s, he should have been one of my heroes. I was smaller in stature than most lifters/bodybuilders in the gym - just like Franco - and I was also a lot stronger than most bodybuilders that I trained with, even from a young age - just like Franco! Maybe it was the look of his physique, or the fact that I always loved the other bodybuilders in that quasi/pseudo-documentary "Pumping Iron" better than he. Oh, well, whatever the reasons were, I definitely missed out on using some of Franco's awesome training advice, which I have come to appreciate more as I've aged and matured, and (hopefully) grown in wisdom. If you do a cursory search on the web fo...