C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  A.K.A. The Total Variety Regimen Old-School Advice for Breaking Through Progress Barriers (With a Little Help from Classic Bodybuilder and Writer Gene Mozee)        “Athletes in every sport suffer through periods of retrograde progress—plateaus, or slumps, during which they lose their edge and don’t play up to par.   Major league baseball players can’t get a hit, golfers can’t make a putt, basketball players can’t buy a basket, and quarterbacks can’t find a receiver with a pass.   Such is the nature of slumps.” [1]      So begins the legendary bodybuilding trainer and writer Gene Mozee in an article he penned for IronMan entitled “Plateau Busters: Punching Through the Progress Barrier” in the November, ’91 issue of that magazine.      I came across this article today while going through a box of magazines that I dragged out of my attic a week or so ago when researching my last essay on John Fa...

  Old-School Mass Building for New-Age Muscle Gains John Farbotnik as he appeared on Strength & Health  magazine      At times, when I need inspiration for an article or just for my personal training, I scour my attic and the boxes upon boxes (upon boxes) of all the old muscle magazines that I own.   I don’t think I’ve thrown out an issue of a single bodybuilding rag I ever purchased.   Anyway, this morning I stumbled upon an article by Gene Mozee, published in the April ’92 issue of IronMan magazine, that I had completely forgotten about, but, once my memory was properly jogged, I remembered using, and had pretty good results.   Perhaps I had forgotten about this article because it was so similar to other programs Mozee wrote, which I used more than this particular one.      The article in question is titled “No Frills Mass.”   It details the mass-building program that Mozee received from the old-school body...

  Instinctive Mass-Building with Dave Draper’s “Freestyle” Workouts      It’s usually called instinctive training. It’s often referred to as “auto-regulation” these days.   Dave Draper called it freestyle training .      Draper, the “Blonde Bomber,” for those of you who don’t know, was a Golden Age bodybuilder of the highest caliber, but not necessarily just for his physique.   His physique was fantastic, don’t get me wrong (one of the best of that era), but Dave himself was a bit of an iconoclast.   He thought outside of the box, had some unique training perspectives, and was, to boot, a gifted writer.   It may have had something to do with the fact that he was a creative .      Lifters and bodybuilders of all sorts train for all sorts of reasons.   For some, training is a creative expression they undertake for the same reasons that other artists take up particular crafts.   These train...

       I may give the impression at times that I’m not a fan of split workouts.  That’s not true, of course.  I have a lot of split programs here on the blog—in fact, I’ve probably written considerably more split workout programs than full-body ones over the course of my writing career.  But it’s also true that I do have a certain disdain, and don’t try to hide it, for “modern” workout splits.  Programs where you train only one bodypart at each session, and take off a week between training sessions for individual bodyparts, pretty much drives me crazy.  And, of course, yes, I’m obviously a fan of full-body workouts.  Not only are they highly effective, but they’re probably the  best form of training for the “average” gym-goer, allowing you to train your muscles frequently (always a plus in my book), while also minimizing the amount of time that you have to go to the gym each week.  You just can’t beat workouts like th...