C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  Strength-Building and Mind-Power Secrets from the 20th Century’s Greatest Weightlifter/Bodybuilder      I love old-school bodybuilders.  If you’ve scoured this site, or have been a long-time reader, you’re probably aware of that.  My most popular articles at Integral Strength are almost all “classic bodybuilding” pieces.      Old-school bodybuilders—especially before the ‘70s—were a different breed.  Like bodybuilders today, they trained for aesthetics and to have a pleasing physique, but they also trained for strength and power, for flexibility, on various “odd” lifts, and for all-around athleticism.  They were, essentially, one part bodybuilder, one part weightlifter, and one part gymnast.  But a few stood out above all others.  One of those was, without a doubt, the great Tommy Kono.  Superlatives such as “great” are heaped upon a lot of old-time lifters, but with Kono it’s no hyperbole....

  …but Moderate Most of the Time The great Tommy Kono, the inspiration for this essay Programming Made Simple      The legendary Tommy Kono—an Olympic gold-medalist in weightlifting and Mr. Universe; you don’t see that any-damn-more—believed in following the “American” system of weight training.  In the ‘60s (Tommy won the gold medal at the Olympics in ‘52 and ‘56; the silver medal at the ‘60 Games) he believed that too many American lifters were attempting to follow the Soviet-style (also used by the Cubans) that involved meticulously planning exactly what one was going to lift each day, and using a high-volume of training with multiple auxiliary movements (think of this as similar to Westside “conjugate” training today) or lifters of that era were following the Bulgarian style of heavy, daily maximal training.  And by the “American” system of training, Kono meant following simple, basic workout programs that rotated between hard, easy, and mo...

  The Summer Olympics - delayed as they might be due to the Coronavirus pandemic - are upon us.  And with their advent comes Olympic Weightlifting.  And  some seriously awesome lifting.  AND  some seriously awesome physiques (especially the Chinese - Wow!). Lu Xiaozun of China has a great physique, along with being a world-class lifter (photo courtesy of https://luxiaojunbarbell.com/) Of all the competitive lifting and training I've done, I have never competed in Olympic weightlifting, but I do believe Olympic lifting, or at least the "quick lifts", have a place in everyone's lifting regimen.  As much as I may not be a fan of Crossfit training (due to its emphasis on higher repetitions and it's lack of programming - at least at the local levels), I do appreciate that Crossfit has made the quick lifts popular even among the average gym rat. Now, the average gym rat might also  decide that there's no reason to do Olympic-style lifting because t...