C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

Extra Workouts for Improving Recovery, Enhancing Performance, and Maximizing Gains      When lifters think about workouts, it’s usually either lifting or bust.   It’s either hard and heavy barbell and dumbbell sessions or nothing.   But it shouldn’t be this way.   No matter how “hardcore” of a lifter or bodybuilder you are—perhaps you’re one of those guys that thinks anything over 5 reps is “cardio,” as I once certainly did—you need to do some stuff other than just heavy weight training.   The truth is that the more serious you are about lifting, even more do you need to take advantage of non-lifting workouts.   These extra sessions might very well be the difference between gaining another 10 pounds of muscle or not, or between winning your powerlifting meet or just coming in 2 nd place.   When it comes to being your very best, it is the little things that matter.      I first started lifting as a teenager, more...

  A Modified Westside Program for Natural and Raw Powerlifters      Recently, my youngest son Garret wanted to start back powerlifting.  He had spent the last year or so doing more “bodybuilding” type training, so I came up with a program that was essentially a “hybrid” Westside method in order to improve his speed and his low-rep strength, both of which can be “compromised” from doing standard hypertrophy workouts for a lengthy period.  After coming up with the program’s outline, and discussing it with him, I decided that it would probably make a good article.  Hence, the article you’re now reading.      This program combines the speed day or dynamic effort method, most commonly associated with Westside, with a more standard strength method found (typically) in Russian and other east European programs.  I will explain the training days first, then give you an outline of the program.  After that, I will giv...

      I am currently working on some writing projects that are still keeping me away from the blog.  I hope to get back to more regular writing in a week or two.  Until then, I thought today - being Thursday and all - would be a good time for another "Throwback" article.      This was published in 2003 in IronMan Magazine .   I actually got some "hate" from disgruntled readers after it was published, probably dealing with the fact that it doesn't paint "bodybuilding" in a very good light from a strictly "strength and power" perspective.  Since I wrote this over 20 years ago, I would probably change at least a couple of points if I was to re-write it, and I would change some of the "terminology" to fit in with recent advances in strength training.  Also, reading it again made me realize that I write better now than I did then (and not so hyperbolically), but I decided to just re-post it as originally written.  This way, it ...