C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

Now that 2024 is behind us, I thought I would do a "Top 10" post for the start of 2025.  Many of you may be knee-deep at the moment in trying to achieve some of your New Year's resolutions - assuming you haven't quit already😏.  Well, if getting big and/or strong  is at the top of your list of resolutions, perhaps some of the following essays and articles from last year might help. The following were the top 10  most read  posts from 2024: The Look of Power Size AND Strength: The Best Way to Train for Both Easy Muscle Classic Bodybuilding: How to Gain 50 Pounds of Muscle, Part One (and if you find Part One interesting, make sure you check out Parts Two and Three ) Long, Hard, or Frequent Training The High-Frequency Training Manifesto Old-School, Full-Body Mass Building Power Bodybuilding The Full-Body Big Barbell 5 Program And the #1 most read post... Marvin Eder's Mass-Building Methods

  Designing Your Own Workout Program Part One: Full-Body Workouts      I thought it would be a good idea to do a series on how to design your own workout program.  How much interest there is in this first piece will determine how many entries total that I do in the series.  We will start with full-body workouts, since that is where everyone needs to begin their training journey.  If you’ve been following any “pre-designed” workouts—even if it’s one of my own here on the blog—you should also start your own programming design with full-body workouts.  And they are, of course, a great way to get “back-to-the-basics” of training no matter how long you’ve been working out, so this essay is also a good read for any of you “bro split” folks out there who have been doing one-bodypart-a-day workouts (or something similar) for no telling how long.      Following a workout program is essential to attaining the goals and res...

Slow and Steady Wins the Hypertrophy Race An “Easy” One-Exercise-Per-Bodypart Muscle-Building Program      Part of effective programming—whether you’re trying to build muscle, gain strength, or a combination of both—is learning how to balance volume, frequency, and intensity.  I often write that you must have two of the factors high —or one high and the other moderate—and the remaining factor must be low.  If you’re going to train with a lot of volume and intensity, then your frequency must be low (the standard method of training these days).  If you’re going to train using a high-frequency program—of which I am admittedly and unabashedly a fan—then you need to keep either your volume or your intensity low.  And so on and so forth.  But you can also do a program where all of the factors are moderate .  The program I want to present here takes this latter approach.      I have actually wanted to write about t...

  Whether You’re After Strength, Size, or Looking to Get Shredded, You MUST Follow These 6 Keys to Progress      Many lifters become frustrated because they can’t seem to make consistent progress.  It doesn’t matter what their goals may be, either, whether they want to get massive, build incredible strength, or just lose some bodyfat.  In this essay, we will look at what I believe are some of the major keys to ensuring you progress consistently, regardless of your specific goal.      Before we get around to these keys, let me say one thing that sometimes gets missed when pursuing a lifting/bodybuilding goal: gains are rarely, if ever, linear.  The truth is that gains are almost always non-linear.  There do seem to be a small segment of trainees who achieve linearity in their progress, but they are always the exception rather than the rule.  You see this misunderstanding most notably among the general populat...