C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  Get Strong, Massive, and Powerful with this Minimalist Program      Yesterday, I received an email from a reader with a simple question.  He asked what I thought was the best program for building strength and mass—this is one of the questions that I have received fairly regularly over the years.  He said that, after reading the many workout programs that I have on offer here at Integral Strength , he wasn’t sure which one he should select or what kind of program “style” in general was the best, and he said that, to be honest, all of the various programs I write about left him more than a little bit confused.  I told him, first, that there is no one program that reigns supreme over all others.  There are, in fact, a handful of programs that would be great depending on the lifter.  When selecting a program you must take into account several factors, including lifting history, age, job occupation (a construction worker needs a diff...

  A Total-Body, High-Frequency Training Program for Building Strength, Gaining Mass, and Conditioning Your Body      As regular readers of this blog, and my writing in general, probably know, I’m a big fan of high-frequency training (HFT for short).  I believe that HFT is the best form of lifting for the vast majority of trainees, especially the natural lifter.  Here at Integral Strength , I have a wide range of different HFT programs, from my popular 30-Rep Program (along with quite a few other easy strength regimens) to the 3-to-5 Method to Bill Starr-style H-L-M workouts to John McCallum’s High-Protein, High-Set Program —and everything in between.  In fact, most of my training programs fall under the umbrella of HFT.      Although it’s not always the case, HFT is usually combined with full-body workouts.  Many times, this is out of necessity.  If, for instance, you want to use a HFT program but you ...

                     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...