C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

A Bill Starr-Inspired Method for Making Consistent Progress      When many lifters think of Bill Starr (assuming they even know who he was), they often think of his 5x5 heavy-light-medium system , a system of training that I have used at times, and have often touted, over almost the entirety of my lifting and writing career.  You can probably do a brief, cursory search right now on “Bill Starr training program” or something similar, and you will, in all likelihood, find more than a few training plans, and almost all of them—or so I would bet a hefty sum—will outline a week or two of training using 5 sets of 5 reps.  But if you take the time to read a lot of the training articles that Starr actually wrote—he penned hundreds, if not thousands, of articles for almost all of the major bodybuilding magazines and training journals during his lifetime—you would find that there was a lot more to his system of training than what he is typically known for.  This is not the essay to get into al

  A Hepburn-Inspired High-Frequency Strength Program      In April, I wrote an article entitled “ Size AND Strength: The Best Way to Train for Both .”  In it, I outlined a few Hepburn inspired routines based on the power/mass methods of the great Canadian strongman and world-champion weightlifter Doug Hepburn.  The methods in that article—as the title portends—are all about building a combination of size and strength, as most lifters who are trying to achieve both often go about it incorrectly.  The program here is going to be a bit different.  This is a program geared strictly toward getting the lifter as strong as possible on a few, select lifts.      The program I’ve designed here is based on another one of Hepburn’s methods.  Although Hepburn would often combine this particular strength and power method with multiple sets of “pump” work once finished with the strength sets, this program foregoes the pump work in favor of a pure strength-building workout.  This will allow you to ut

 For this week's "Thursday Throwback" I have selected an article that I originally wrote for Planet Muscle Magazine  around 15 years ago.  What is interesting is that the article as I wrote it for PM was essentially a "redux" of an article I wrote in the late '90s for MuscleMag International  when I competed regularly in powerlifting - and bench press-only - competitions.  Jeff Everson - the publisher and editor of Planet Muscle  - actually sent me a "clipping" of my original MuscleMag  article, and asked me if I could re-write it, and make enough changes that it was different from my original (and therefore wouldn't violate any copyright laws).  And the funny thing - for me, at least - is that I could hardly even remember writing that original article.  Anyway, the article itself as it appeared in PM is still great, I think (I am a little prejudice since I did write the thing), for anyone that is looking to build his/her bench press but doesn&