C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

A Simple 3-Days-Per-Week, H/L/M Bodyweight Regimen      I received an email the other day asking me if I was going to write another part of my Bodyweight Training and Beyond series.  I wrote Part 3 of that series back in January, and mentioned at the end of it that I would soon do a 4th part.  I have yet to do so, however.  I have a tendency to get on “kicks” where I cover a certain topic for several different essays or for weeks on end before moving on to something else, and I haven’t written that much on bodyweight training of late.  I wrote back to the reader that, yes, I do plan on writing another part to that series, maybe even several.  I’ve made quite a few notes on isometric training along with “dynamic tension” that I plan on including in the next part.  The reader also had a request.  He asked if I had a suggestion for how to design a 3-days-a-week workout using only one’s bodyweight.  He has a chinning bar a...

  A Simple Method for Using Bodyweight Workouts as a Form of Muscle Building      After writing my last bodyweight training article— Bodyweight Training and Beyond: Lessons Learned from Martial Arts —I started making some more notes for Part 4.  However, while I was doing that, I was thinking about trainees who might want a simple way to use bodyweight workouts to build muscle.  So, I’m writing this piece as sort of an “in between” essay before I finish Part 4 of my Bodyweight Training and Beyond series.      The method discussed here is good for you if you want to use bodyweight training as your primary method of hypertrophy.  This is not an article for elite athletes, who might need more strength, speed, power, or a combination of those 3.  It’s also not for you if you’re already well-versed in bodyweight training and are already capable of highly voluminous, intense bodyweight sessions.  However, if you a...

A Not-Thought-Of, Often Not-Used Benefit of Bodyweight Workouts and/or Home Training      There are some real benefits to bodyweight training.  You don’t need a gym membership.  You can train no matter where you are or at any time, day or night, since you take your “gym” with you at all times.  You can train more often—a real plus in my book—since you don’t have to make that trip to the gym that might prevent you from otherwise training.  You can train more as in more days per week or more workouts per day.  Doing double-split, or even triple-split, daily workouts are viable for the same reason.  It’s just hard for most people with any kind of “normal” life—family, spouse, kids, job—to make it to the gym more than once per day.  You also don’t have to wait in line for equipment or put up with any of the other annoyances I always found when training in a commercial gym.      Most of the benefits of bodyw...

  High-Volume, High-Frequency Bodyweight-Centric Workouts for Transforming Your Physique Part One: Bodyweight Training and Nothing But      If you are going to achieve good results no matter your goals—be it strength, hypertrophy, or a combination of the two; whether you want to be “lean and mean” or big as a house—then you must learn to balance the 3 training variables of volume, frequency, and intensity.  (Intensity in this article, unless otherwise noted, will be how it is used in strength training circles—as a percentage of your one-rep maximum, not as the manner it's used in bodybuilding vernacular, which is how “hard” you train.)  As I have often explained, two of the variables need to be high—or, at least, one high and the 2nd one moderate—and the remaining variable needs to be low.  The exception to this is if all of the variables are moderate in a program.  Because of this stance, it means I have never believed that there is o...