C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

On Plain, Simple, but Effective Workouts and Progressive Training Programs       Zhazhou asked Nanquan, “What is the Way?”      Nanquan said, “Ordinary mind is the Way.”      “Just watch children playing.  Eat vegetable soup instead of duck stew” ~Matsuo Basho (the most famous haiku poet of Edo-era Japan; this was his advice to poets)      When in pursuit of our goals from resistance training—whether it’s size, strength, both, or just aesthetics—it’s only natural to look toward what you want to achieve down the road.  That is, after all, the reason that you are training to begin with.  You want to achieve.  You are in pursuit of mass and power.  Maybe you don’t want to just achieve but you want to excel.  But when we are constantly focused on the future, we take ourselves away from the now , the present moment where we are actually lifting.   ...

A Workout Program and Some Training Ideas for Those Who Want It All      In my last article on using the 3 to 5 method with split workouts, I outlined the Russian rules of training.  3 to 5 training is one of the methods that you can use when training with the sub-maximal effort method, or what is commonly known as “grease the groove” training.      I have talked to many lifters who have told me that they understand the reasons why grease-the-groove training and other Russian methods work .  They’ve also told me that they’ve gotten good results from that kind of training.  But there’s a problem.  When they do those kinds of workouts, they often miss using harder or higher-volume routines, or a combination of both.  They often ask me if there’s a way that they can do both.  To which I reply, “yes.”      Most grease-the-groove workouts produce gains by ensuring that all of the workout...

Musings on Lifting, Life, and the Reasons for Training (with a few workouts thrown in for good measure)      Why do you train?  It’s a question you must ask yourself and it’s a question that only you can answer.  To help you with the question, I can only tell you why I train.  But to do that, we have to go back to the past a little bit.  Why did I train?  What got me started in the first place?  What kept me going?  Why do I train now and why will I continue to train long into the future?      I started training when I was pretty young, around 13 years old.  It might have been 14.  I’m not really sure, though 13 sounds about right.  It would have been in ‘86 or ‘87, when my father bought me one of those cement-filled DP weight sets for either my birthday or Christmas.  I think it was my birthday, because I remember first training in the summer, and I was born in May.  My siste...