C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

How to Gain Upper Body Mass AND Build a Big Bench Press      I received an email question a couple days ago that went something like this: “Hey, C.S.  I know you’ve probably written some articles about it already, but what is your advice right now for someone who wants to increase his bench press and build a lot of upper body muscle at the same time?  I’ve struggled to both increase my bench press weights and gain muscle, so I could use some advice.  Thanks a bunch!” (Emphasis added is mine.)      Well, my questioner is correct.  I do have a number of articles that I’ve already written on building a big bench press and I have a lot of articles for anyone who is looking to gain a lot of upper body muscle, but I figured, you know, what the heck, there’s no reason that I can’t write another one.  Also, I would have to assume that there are still a lot of modern gym-goers who train for just those goals.  I me...

Use This Training Concept for Better Athletic Performance and/or New Gains in Size and Strength      In my article The Fighter’s Physique , I mentioned the benefit of “weaving” together one’s strength training with one’s fighting art in the same session.  While proper strength training improves athletic performance, martial arts or otherwise, it will have even more benefits when both the strength training and the sport one competes in are performed simultaneously.      This concept is nothing new.  The idea was originally “created” by German strength coach Peter Tschiene in the 1980s, though I have a feeling that other athletes going back decades—or perhaps even centuries—were already using the method, even if Tschiene coined the term “mixed training” and was the first to widely promote it.  Monks at the Shaolin Temple were combining resistance training—bodyweight calisthenics, isometric holds, and lifting stone locks (ca...

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.   ...