C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

An 8-Week Program for Monstrous Mass and Power Gains      Over the years, I have often received the following question from a reader (though it comes in various guises): “If you could only do one exercise for the rest of your life, what would it be?”  I understand the question.  Or, at least, I understand where the question comes from.  Readers simply want to know what exercise I deem the best.      The truth is that I never really answer that question.  Mainly because I just don’t understand it. On what planet would I live where I could only do one exercise?  But as said, I do understand the rationale for the question in the first place.  And the answer I usually give is something along the lines of this: “Well, I don’t know about one exercise, but if I could only do a handful, they would be these (fill-in-the-blank).”  And the truth is, if I’m being quite honest, that I don’t always give the same ex...

A Mass and Power Program for the Natural Lifter      This morning, I was reading some old muscle magazines—I have hundreds of them boxed in my attic—when I came across an article by Don “Ripper” Ross entitled, aptly for this essay, “Power Bodybuilding.”  I’m always looking for inspiration for new training programs, and this article gave the idea for the program you’re now reading.      Ross’s program was a 6-days-per-week routine where you trained chest and arms on days 1 and 4, back and shoulders on days 2 and 5, and, finally, legs on days 3 and 6.  I really like a lot of the training programs that Ross created—this one included—but I do think it had too much overall volume at each session for that many training days.  Each day contained between 8 and 10 exercises in his program.  Ross was the kind of guy that thrived on hard work and a lot of volume (oh, and a lot of anabolics).  This program keeps some of Ros...

       I first tried using high-set, low-rep training sometime in the early to mid ‘90s.  At the time, I was bodybuilding and not powerlifting, and had just started writing for some of the major bodybuilding magazines, but I still had plenty to learn.  Don’t get me wrong.  I had done some low-rep training, especially for a few sets at the end of a workout, but I had never done low rep training exclusively using really high sets.  At one point, however, I read an arm training article by Greg Zulak, where he mentioned that it was beneficial to do 15 to 20 sets of 2 to 3 reps on occasion.  Now, to be honest, I can’t remember the exact article—I tried to find it in my attic full of old magazines while this essay was churning around in my mind, but to no avail.  Anyway, after reading it, my workout partner Dusty and I decided to see how that kind of workout felt.  We had been training at the time with a lot of sets, but also a...