C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

Training Design for the “All-Around” Lifter      The popularity—or lack thereof—of many of my articles often surprises me.  Sometimes I will write an essay that I think will be a real hit—I spend several days crafting and honing it, giving it plenty of thought and time—only to find that it never really “takes off” or gets many reads.  On the flip side of that, I will occasionally write a piece in a flash of inspiration, giving hardly any thought to it but just allow my writing muse to take me where it will.  I also, quite often, don’t think that those works will be very popular, only to find that they get way more reads than many of my others.  My last article “ High-Frequency Grease-the-Groove Training - The Intuitive Approach ,” is a case in point.  I wrote it very quickly, in only a few hours, shortly after I came up with the idea while on a morning hike with my dogs Kenji and Kiko.  I was unsure if it would garner interest, but...

Develop Mass and Power with This Unique Wave Loading Method      In my recent article “ Skill Training as Size Building ,” I introduced the concept (on the blog, at least) of the “90% rule.”  I believe it’s one of the most effective ways to make consistent gains in the gym, whether you’re after strength, strength with a size side-effect, or hypertrophy alone.  Basically, the method involves doing the majority of your sets in a workout with 90% of a certain rep range.  This doesn’t mean 90%, necessarily, of your 1-rep max, though it most certainly would if you were to do multiple sets of singles—as we will be doing in this program.      In our previous article, the workout programs I suggested utilized 90% of one’s 5-rep max and 90% of a 10-rep maximum using “cluster sets.”  If you want to know more about what those programs look like, then, please, read that article.  Also, it wouldn’t hurt, if you haven’t done s...