C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

       I read a lot.  And I re-read a lot of books that I like, especially in the fields that I’m particularly interested in, such as strength training, budo, and philosophy (of all types, Christian and pagan, western and eastern).  Today I was reading Pavel and Dan John’s book “Easy Strength.”  I’ve read this book a couple of times, but thought I’d return to it today, thinking it might give me some quotes I could include in my ongoing HFT series, when I came upon, well, this quote of Pavel’s: “There is nothing wrong with a split if you’re not using it as an excuse to have a bis and tris day.  Ben Johnson lifted six times a week: three for the upper body and three for the lower body.  He cut down to four days when felt the need to back off.  I like Charles Poliquin’s weekly strength plan for fighters: 5 days of lifting a week, only two exercises per workout.”      First, I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to have an “arms only” day; I’ve written a few of them in different magazines,

  Simple, Easy-to-Follow Programs for Unleashing Size and Strength Gains     While working on the next installment of my series on HFT yesterday, I received an email from a reader who was a little confused—perhaps more than a little confused would be more appropriate—about how he should set up his workout program.  And, as with a lot of questions that I get asked and are then turned into an essay or article, I thought it would be good to write an article about some easy and simple workout plans that are also quite productive—the same kind of workouts that I suggested to this young man.      Periodically, I receive these sorts of emails from readers who are confused over some of my recommendations.  After all, I do write about various forms of training and lifting.  They are often different because, for one, different people respond well to different forms of training, and, two, different lifters have different goals.  Your goal(s), how you respond to training, your training history, y

  The High-Frequency Training Manifesto Part Two: More Tips and Ideas for Designing and Implementing a High-Frequency “Easy Strength” Training Program      If you haven’t done so, please read Part One first, especially if you’re at all unfamiliar with HFT or what is meant here by “easy strength.”  The remainder of this essay simply picks up where Part One left off.      Throughout the more than 30 years I’ve worked as a writer for different bodybuilding/strength training magazines, I have been asked by hundreds of different people if I would look at their programs and make suggestions for improvement.  It doesn’t surprise me now, but years ago I was a little bit surprised that the majority of questioners were guys who trained in their home gym.  But in a way those questions really helped how I designed—and still design—programs, by cutting out a lot of the fluff and allowing the lifter to do only a few things, but do those few things really well.  (That’s another big benefit of HFT in