C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

A Hybrid High-Frequency Training Program for a Combination of Size and Strength      For more than 20 years, I have preached the benefits of high-frequency training (HFT) programs.  First in the pages of some of the major bodybuilding magazines, such as IronMan magazine and Planet Muscle , and then on the blog when I started it in 2009.  For the most part, the training I recommended was for strength first, with size, if it occurred, as more of a side-effect of the strength and power training.  And for more than a decade, one of my favorite ways to use HFT is through so-called easy strength methods.  However, I have in the last couple years proposed the theory of using an “easy muscle” approach, where you largely keep the “tenets” of easy strength but do it for higher repetitions, with the sole goal of hypertrophy.      I’m not alone in thinking that this might be a good method for many seeking gains in muscle mass....

It Came from the ‘90s: The Anabolic Diet      Today, I sat down at my computer to write the second-part in my Denis Du Breuil “rules of bulk-building” when something I was writing (about the benefits of carbohydrates) made me think—for some odd reason—about Mauro Di Pasquale’s “anabolic diet”, a diet I had great success with in the mid ‘90s.   One of my training partners had even better success with it—I remember it vividly because it was the first time that I witnessed someone get bigger while staying very lean.   (These days, bodybuilders tend to know better.   But back then, the over-riding philosophy was that you bulked up as big as possible in the off-season—gaining a combination of fat, water, and muscle—and then got really lean starting 12 to 16 weeks out from a competition—or the summer, if you didn’t compete.   Of course, “over-riding philosophy” didn’t mean that everyone did it—there were some bodybuilders sounding the t...