C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  Heavy/Light/Medium Training Part 4: Building a Massive Back and Monstrous Pulling Strength      This is the 4 th part of our ongoing series on heavy, light, and medium training inspired by the methods of one of the greatest strength coaches to ever walk the planet, Bill Starr.   Once this series is finished, I hope that it will include everything one needs to know in order to train using this methodology.   If you haven’t done so already, or if this is the first article in the series that you’ve stumbled across, please take your time to read the other articles.   At the very least, you need to read the first part before continuing here.   It lays the foundation that the other articles are based upon, and the rest of the articles assume a working knowledge of that one.   So, here’s the links to the past essays in this series: Part One: How to design an H/L/M program Part Two: Upper body training Part Three: How to build a mas...

...And Watch Your Strength Explode! C.S. pulling over 500 pounds almost 20 years ago. A few weeks ago, in another "Thursday Throwback," I posted an article I wrote for Planet Muscle magazine on "Building a Bigger Bench." Since there was quite a bit of interest in that particular article, I thought I would post another powerlifting article that I wrote on training your deadlift. This is, specifically, on how to train for your body type - that's right, different programs work better for different lifters. This article originally appeared in "Dragon Door" online magazine in 2008. And if you're struggling at all with your deadlift, I promise, this is just what the powerlifting gods ordered... The other day I was reading an article by a well-known strength coach when he mentioned that Olympic weightlifting coach Anatoly Bondarchuk believed there were three different kinds of athletes—those who responded best to volume, those who responded best to in...

   The Mostly True Exploits and Tales of Bodybuilding, Powerlifting, and Other Strength Sports Across the South, from Texas to Alabama Chapter Two: Pulling Big A.K.A. The One in Texas with Deadliftin’, Tire-Flippin’ and Tobacco-Spittin’ Setting: East Texas, 2004      “Texas ain’t so bad,” Bubba said, about the time that we pulled up to the gate of my Uncle Kirk’s ranch in East Texas.  For Bubba, this was tantamount to a revelation.  Since we had left Mississippi, he hadn’t said a whole lot of good stuff about my home state.      “You changin’ your tune?” I asked, as we both got out of my truck.  I walked over to the gate to swing it open.  Bubba walked to the back of the truck, and the cooler full of ice-cold beer.      “Nah, Texas is too flat,” Bubba replied, as he cracked open a Budweiser.  “I’m just sayin’ that it ain’t so bad—it’s got some good-lookin’ gals, for instance....