C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

   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.  But it needs hills.  And trees.  The only trees I seen so far are around ponds and lakes.”      I was ready to

The Best Leg Workout You’ve Never Tried!      Two things work the best when it comes to moving massive amounts of weight, and/or gaining massive amounts of muscle: Simple work, combined with hard work.   Nothing else is going to cut it.      As Mark Rippetoe once remarked, “the most valuable lessons of the weight room: a simple, hard program works best, and that you get out of your training – and your life – exactly what you put into it.”      I could never have said it better myself.      I also have a good feeling that a whole lot of lifters know that simple, hard work is absolutely the best way to train for building slabs of muscle that is also capable of hefting ponderous poundages, but they don’t do it.   And I think they don’t do it for a couple of reasons.   First, either they’re lazy and/or have convinced themselves that fancier programs that don’t require hard work—brutally simple hard work—work just as well.   Or, second, sometimes they just want to do som