C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

                     While doing research for my last article, I was re-reading Bradley Steiner’s original “Rugged Size and Strength” essay (from 1972) and came across this bit of advice: “Do not attempt to set up a pre-planned schedule of either sets or reps.”  That may not seem like much—it’s the kind of “basic” advice that’s easily overlooked—but there is wisdom in it, minimal as it may seem at first glance.      Depending on the workout program and the lifting population it’s aiming for, that quote could be either good or bad.  It’s not good advice for a beginner’s program, any beginner’s program.  It’s not good advice for intermediate or advanced lifters, either, who are attempting a new workout program or a new “style” of lifting that they haven’t utilized before.  For instance, if you’ve been training for the past decade on a bodybuilding workout consi...

     It’s important to program your workouts.   For many lifters, this can seem daunting—though it shouldn’t be—because they’re accustomed to just “working out.”   Programming your workouts, however, doesn’t have to be complicated.   In fact, it can be quite simple.      I like to recommend easy-to-follow routines where the title of the program pretty much explains the workouts contained within.   My 30-Rep Program is an example.   With it, you do 30 reps total for the entire session.   Sure, you must still understand the program’s parameters—as you ought to with all good routines—but once you do, it’s easy to follow and easy to program.      Another good example is the 3-to-5 workout .   The title of program basically gives away the whole thing.   You train 3 to 5 days each week.   You utilize 3 to 5 exercises at each session.   You do 3 to 5 sets of 3 to 5 reps on eac...

       I received a question the other day via email.   It was succinct and to the point—and, when first received, I thought a bit generic.   “What’s the easiest way to gain mass fast?”   I get quite a bit of questions, and they are usually more in depth.   Most of them, truth be told, are the opposite of this question.   I find that a good many lifters have too many questions, usually because they overthink things too much or they are somehow searching for the “perfect” workout program (which doesn’t exist, by the way).   In the case of this questioner, I responded with a small litany of “the usual” advice for someone in need of quick mass gains: full-body workouts, compound movements, high-frequency training, the “big 4,” plenty of calories, lots of protein… yada, yada, yada.      Then last night, while I was watching one of those cozy little British murder mysteries on PBS and trying my absolute best to not...

Some Ready Made (yet Do-it-Yourself) Size and Strength Programs      In the 5 th grade, way back in 1983, I was obsessed with “Choose Your Own Adventure” books.   If you were a kid in the ‘80s, you may very well have experienced this obsession yourself.   According to Wikipedia, between the years ‘79 and ‘98, the books sold 250 million+ copies, so apparently it was, in the words of Ron Burgundy, sort of a big deal.   In fact, until I started reading muscle magazines voraciously starting around ’86, I’m pretty sure that the extent of my reading was comprised of Choose Your Own Adventure books, Conan the Barbarian novels, and various-assorted comic books.   (My favorite comic book series at one point was “Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters,” so take that TMNT.)      Choose Your Own Adventure books, if you’re not familiar, were exactly what they sound like: books where you, the reader, decided what happened to the m...