C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

Old-School Workout Methods for Achieving Your Training Goals      I admit that I’m not up on anything new in the world of strength training and bodybuilding.  I couldn’t tell you a single thing about any modern bodybuilder or strength athlete or any new methods of training.  I guess that’s a bit of a personality fault on my part considering the subjects I write about.  However, it’s been my view for as long as I can remember that there really isn’t anything new under the mass-building sun.      To be honest, there isn’t anything new in, well, anything .  There is more stuff that is forgotten than is discovered.  And even when something new is “discovered,” it’s more often than not simply something that had been lost.      I take this view in almost any subject that I love, whether it’s strength training, martial arts, or even philosophy and theology.  I am a classical theist , after ...

The Need for Variation and Opposing Strategies      When I write about topics like the need for balance in your training or the importance of “reasonable” workouts or anything of a similar bent, they don’t get a whole lot of views.  Of course, if I write something like “The Greatest Mass Building Workout of All Time” or anything with a degree of hyperbole in the title, I get thousands of views.  Nonetheless, certain subjects need to be written about, this one included.  Besides, here is where you actually learn the information needed—assuming you apply it—to achieve your goals.       Balance isn’t a “sexy” topic.  Most lifters probably understand it’s true.  You’ve no doubt been told since you were a little kid, assuming you had responsible parenting, to eat a “balanced diet” or to live a “balanced lifestyle.”  The problem, or at least one of the problems, is that there are different opinions on what exac...

  A.K.A: Kenji in the Twilight My dogs Kiko and Kenji (left to right).  The reason for their picture at the start of this essay will make sense shortly. Conversations on Integral Bodybuilding Part One: A Somewhat Rambling Introduction to Integral Hypertrophy Training      I was tired.  I had spent the last hour cutting grass, running my weed eater, planting Asian lilies, and watering my gardens.  I was hot and sweaty, too.  If I still drank, I would have popped open a cold beer—porters and stouts were always my favorite—but I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol in over a year.  I have a disease that robbed me of that particular joy, so I settled on a bottle of refrigerated mineral water.  It was refreshing, and what my body needed, anyway.      The sun was setting.  Twilight was upon the land.  The last vestiges of orange sunlight slipped through the canopy of trees at the edge of the rolling hi...