C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  The Two Keys to Mass-Building, Strength-Training Success      The other day, in my essay on the “ 2 principles of strength training ,” I outlined what I believe are the two most important principles for continued results in strength training or muscle-building (or a combination of the two).   In many ways, those two principles revolve around staying consistent and injecting variety into your programs.   So, here, I want to present some thoughts on much the same concept but frame it in a slightly different manner to touch upon varied aspects of proper programming.   I’m going to call these the “two keys to success” and they are: 1.       You must be consistent. 2.       You must inject variety into your program.      Consistency is the key for continued success, make no bones about it.   This is true no matter your goal.   You must train consistently to impro...

Muscle-Building Tips and Advice for the Natural Bodybuilder      In my last essay on how to gain mass fast, I mentioned that the secret just might be getting stronger on a handful of exercises.   (This essay, I suppose, is just an extension of that last one.)   In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think that I’m right.   If you’re a natural bodybuilder, then the one thing more important than any other is to get strong on a dozen or so exercises, with your strength-focus in roughly the 5 to 10 rep range.      One approach is to achieve this is to focus on movements over muscles .   In other words, instead of going to the gym and “obliterating” or “destroying” (why do bodybuilders always seem to use military-sounding jargon for a lot of their training) your quad muscles with endless sets of leg extensions, leg presses, and machine whatever, how about just trying to get stronger on the squat?   Same goes for the...

  Simple, Easy-to-Implement Strategies for More Size and Strength        If the titles of workout articles are any indication, America doesn’t know how to train.   I can’t speak for other countries, since I haven’t lived anywhere else.   In the past, I have spent some time in Asia for work, and if my visits there were any indication, then I don’t think the rest of the world trains much better.   So I guess there’s that.      Now, if you know anything at all about proper training, and if you walked into any gym anywhere in America, you’d probably come to the same conclusion—that Americans simply don’t know how to train—so why am I singling out the titles of English-language workout articles?   The reason is simple.   Almost every single article I have seen lately—to a friggin’ tee—has almost the exact same title, and it goes something like this: “I did (fill-in-the-blank) for (fill-in-the-number of days...

 My book "Ultimate Mass and Power: A Collection of Training Programs for Getting Massively Big and Incredibly Strong" is now available to purchase in a paperback edition.  (Click on the link to purchase.) Here's a description of the book: Are you looking for massive muscles? Monstrous strength gains? How about a combination of both? There seems to be quite a bit of confusion out there—whether it’s on the internet or at the gym—about how to train for BOTH hypertrophy and serious strength gains. The first problem seems to be that some folks just don’t know how to do either. Guys go to the gym to “get big” but then spend most of their time attempting to max out on a lift. Or, conversely, a guy wants to be massively strong but spends too much of his time training for a pump or doing a lot of repetitions. The training programs contained in this book will clear up this confusion. Herein you will find 16 different articles—each article replete with different programs—that offer...