C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

A Golden Era-Inspired High-Volume Mass-Building Program but with a Twist      Since I started working on my recent series on the training methods and workouts of the golden era bodybuilding legends, I’ve had a lot of old-school routines, ideas, and plans running through my mind.  Those thoughts led me to write the program here.  This is a routine that uses some of the golden era methods but does so in a way that will better allow the bodybuilder to recover while still taking advantage of the various benefits with higher-frequency, high-volume training.      If you’ve read at least a couple of the articles in my on-going series—I have two more still to go—then you realize by now, if you didn’t beforehand, that most of the old-school bodybuilders, particularly those from the 1970s, favored training antagonistic bodyparts in the same workout session.  These days, many bodybuilders favor training just one muscle group at a wo...

Double Split Training for Quick Hypertrophy Gains      If there is one form of training that is more controversial than any other, it just might be the idea of “double-split” training, where you do two workouts in a single training day.  Popular among pro bodybuilders from the ‘70s up through the ‘90s, it was usually viewed as a form of training that could only be performed by the genetically few “easy gainers.”  It was used by Arnold, and many others, in the ‘70s, and was the favorite training system of many European bodybuilders in the ‘90s.  Arnold utilized it to work different muscle groups at the morning and evening sessions.  Bodybuilders like Francis Benfatto, who possessed one of the most aesthetically pleasing physiques of all time in the ‘90s, used it to train the same muscles at both the A.M. and P.M. sessions—the common way that it is still used among East European bodybuilders.      It’s also oft-used by...

Q: Hey, Sloan.  In your last essay on “the rule of 3,” you showed the current 3-way split that you are using.  Why do you train chest, back, and shoulders on one of the days and biceps and triceps alone on another?  Why not use a push/pull/legs split or chest/back on one day and shoulders/bis/tris on another?  It just seems like an odd choice, but I guess you have your reasons? A: Yes, I do have my reasons.  For one, and this would only apply to anyone else in my “predicament,” I have a well-developed chest, a large back, and good shoulders but my arms have always been my biggest weak area.  I have long, ape-like arms with a very wide and broad back.  I could stop training entirely and my back would still be big.  So, for me, it makes sense.  My lats will even grow from training my chest.  For instance, when I was a kid and was training in martial arts before I ever picked up a barbell, we would do a lot of push-ups to begin class—regula...