C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  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 Classic Bodybuilders Gained Mass, Sculpted Their Physiques, and Achieved Fantastic Condition!          Ever since I first picked up a muscle magazine in the 1980s, I have loved the old-school, classic bodybuilders from the decades that came before me.   I realize that I’m old enough that even my training heyday of the ‘90s is now considered “old-school,” which, if I’m being entirely honest, seems quite odd to me.   However, when I think of old-school, I think of the “silver era” of bodybuilding (roughly the ‘40s and ‘50s) along with the “golden age” of bodybuilding (‘60s and ‘70s).      I still love those eras.   I love writing about those eras.   I love reading about those eras.   I love the training from those eras.      I think that the training wisdom from those bygone days of bodybuilding glory has a lot to offer the modern bodybuilder, especially the drug-free o...

       Ken Waller is probably most well-known from the “documentary” Pumping Iron.  Although Pumping Iron primarily focused on Arnold’s rivalry with Ferrigno in the Mr. Olympia competition, the other main “story” of the pseudo-doc revolved around the rivalry of Waller and (fellow Mr. Universe competitor) Mike Katz.  Waller was sort of portrayed as the “villain” in the Universe competition to the more “All-American” Katz.  The problem is that the storyline was set up by the filmmakers, and none of it was actually true.  Katz and Waller were, in truth, actually good friends.      I still love Pumping Iron to this day, but I really wish I would have known that the Waller and Katz story was fabricated when I was a teenager.  Because before watching Pumping Iron, I liked Waller.  Afterwards, not so much.  Sometime in the late ‘90s, I discovered the truth (or “untruth,” I suppose) about Pumping Iron, and...

  How to Gain 50 Pounds of Muscle! Part 3: Bill Pearl’s Advanced Mass-Training      This is the 3rd part of my Classic Bodybuilding series based on an article that the great Gene Mozee wrote for IronMan magazine in 1992.  The first part covered the “Golden 6” training program of Arnold Schwarzenegger.  If you’re a beginner, or if you need to get “back-to-the-basics,” then I would start there.  The second part that I posted a few days ago was another full-body program based on Larry Scott’s Gironda-inspired mass-building techniques.  I would advise reading those pieces first.  And definitely don’t just leap into the training program presented here without a couple years at the minimum of (mostly) full-body workouts.      Bill Pearl has long been one of my favorite bodybuilders.  In another piece I wrote last year, I mentioned that I believe Pearl to be one of the 5 greatest bodybuilders of all time....