C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

 The Mostly True Exploits and Tales of Bodybuilding, Powerlifting, and Other Strength Sports Across the South, from Texas to Alabama I wrote the original article (the inspiration for this piece) a little earlier than the time of this picture, where I squatted in the mid 500s at a bodyweight of 173 (around 20 years ago). Chapter One: The Mississippi Power Parable      From the first time I read "Powerlifting Basics: Texas Style" by Paul Kelso, and ever since I was enamored by the "fiction-style" articles of Bill Starr—of which he wrote plenty—I have wanted to write a book along mostly those same lines.      The seed of this began with an article I wrote in 2001 for IronMan Magazine  entitled "The Power Parable."  In the end, I began to write different "styles" of articles and got away from what you will read here.      The following is sort of a "redux" of that initial article.  Since I wrote this 22 years ago, the setting is in the late

     Simplicity can be a virtuous thing.  For some reason, in our current age, we want to make things decidedly not simple.  Perhaps this is because our lives are not simple – we have made them more and more complex by a stream of never-ending texts, instant messages, YouTube videos, music streaming, and the general need to always feel as if we need to be doing something.  I might add, however, without us actually doing anything, since we are more slothful and gluttonous – not to mention pear-shaped; especially the younger generation – than ever before.      Life should not be that way.  We were built for simplicity – in fact, the only way to enter into the complexity of things is to purposefully simplify.  If for instance, you want to enter the depths of your consciousness, the very depths of your being , you don’t do so by anything so complex as various ascetic feats of standing on your head or other odd yogic poses, or by flailing yourself in a medieval manner; you do so by t