C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  Hard Training for the Modern Budoka Mas Oyama seen practicing misogi  as a form of shugyo , or ascetic training. Real training is difficult.  It takes constant effort.  It requires self-reflection and a selfless approach to training.  One must train with no thought whatsoever of pain and suffering.  Students have to push themselves to rise above such distractors.  This is shugyo. ~Walther G. Von Krenner 1 In budo, one of the most important terms is “shugyo.”  It’s often translated as “ascetic training” or even just “discipline.”  But these words don’t bely its depth. In “religious” Zen it’s not a word that is often used (if ever).  However, in Budo Zen —the term I prefer for Zen as it was practiced by samurai, bugeisha, and budoka down through the centuries—it is used, as budoka who are also zennists understand its power and significance for budo. Before we get into shugyo proper, I would like to briefly discuss this difference betwe...

  The "Secret" of Success A student once asked Jigoro Kano, “What is the secret of Judo?” Kano replied, “Never stop training.” Kano’s quote is so pithy and simple—as wisdom truly should be—that we may not realize the depth of attainment behind the words.  We also tend to outright dismiss quotes such as this as something so obvious that we already know it.  At least, we think we know it.  But do we?  When I first read it, for instance, my initial reaction was to tell myself inwardly, “well, of course you can’t stop training.” I began martial arts training when I was 9 years old.  So by the time I was 15, I (like most teenagers) was pretty sure that I was a world-renowned expert on, well, just about everything .  (But, especially, martial arts!)  And if I had read the quote back then—and I may have, but I don’t remember it—I would have taken it to mean “train every single day” or to “train as often as you possibly can.” Never stop training, fro...

 Building Mass and Power/Strength with HFT + Dumbbells Combo The great Reg Park overhead pressing a pair of dumbbells In my last post, I outlined a brief, basic, (somewhat) hard full-body, 3-days-per-week program using ONLY dumbbells.  For this post, I'd like to outline a  high-frequency training (HFT for short, hereafter) program using primarily  dumbbells to build mass, power, and strength. The MASS is going to come about on this program from the sheer amount of total work performed in the course of the week.  When a lot of lifters -at least the ones I've worked with over the years - first take up HFT, they typically complain because it doesn't seem as if they are doing enough at each workout, or they don't think that they are training enough.  But the sheer frequency of the workout program really does add up .  After several weeks on the program, when most of the lifters I've worked with begin putting on muscle at a rate they hadn't been doing befor...

Martial Arts Training In the first part of this series, I had a brief overview on much of what I want to discuss for the remainder of these posts. For this post, I want to discuss on training as it relates almost specifically to the martial arts, although you will quickly notice that it can’t help but “spill out” into the other two. The Bushido of Training Several years back, I wrote a post that focused on “The Lifter’s Bushido.”  Here is the quote that I used then by the samurai Yamaoku Tesshu: “In order to learn about the Way, forget about self and awaken to the truth… Exerting self is a mistake… We should not say “myself” — in truth there is no such thing… When there is no thought of self, true Bushido develops.”  I have often thought of lifting as a form of Budo, and my gym as the dojo.  (This is one reason that I enjoy lifting at home, in my garage dungeon gym.  It is not commercial, and, therefore, becomes more of a dojo than anything comme...

"Technical knowledge is not enough.  One must transcend technique so that the art becomes artless art, growing out of the unconscious."  -Daisetzu Suzuki When the founder of Kyokushin Karate-Do (one of the primary arts that I trained in as a young man), Masutatsu Oyama, came off the mountain (it was a very literal, and at the same time, figurative, mountain), he defeated all in the martial world who came within his path in the dojo, felling almost every opponent he met in a quick, effortless manner.  The tales of Oyama has become the stuff of legend.  Even though his exploits are recent in the history of martial arts, it's still hard to tell what exactly is fact and what has already faded into myth.  But one thing is for certain: Oyama's mountain-top training was the difference between him and those who he dismantled so quickly. Oyama's training was founded upon three integrated aspects, combining martial arts practice, zazen, and hard, physical training (...

Can One Be Both a Martial Artist and a Bodybuilder?      Both of my sons have recently taken more of an interest in martial arts—or, perhaps, I should say, just "fighting" in general.  My oldest son, Matthew, who writes regularly enough here, has gotten pretty serious about his martial arts training, with plenty of bag work, sparring, and conditioning, with a fairly high workload to boot.  (If you are going to take anything serious, then your work load should  be high, by the way.  As in the above caption from the great Masutatsu Oyama—one must "train more than one sleeps".  That is Mas Oyama in the picture.)      Yesterday, as we were finishing a sparring session, he remarked, "I just don't think I can do it."  And he seemed rather frustrated when he said it.      "What can't you do?" I asked.  I generally don't like comments that are in the "negative" from my offspring.      "I can't ...

"I f someone asked me what a human being ought to devote the maximum of his life to, I would answer: training. Train more than you sleep." —Masutatsu Oyama (founder of Kyokushin Karate-Do)