C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

     Sometimes the best workouts for building muscle mass look almost easy to the casual trainee or observer.  Too many times, lifters equate how hard you train at each workout to the results that are produced.  But it just doesn’t work this way in reality.  Some of the biggest, strongest lifters and bodybuilders I’ve known looked as if they were taking it easy in their workouts.  When I first witnessed this as a young man in the gyms of the early ‘90s, I chalked it up to “genetics.”  After all, I was told in many of the magazines from that era that, if you were a “hardgainer,” you needed to train with brief but incredibly hard workout sessions.  But with many years of training—and training others—under my belt, I just don’t think that’s the case.  Now, don’t get me wrong (I mean, really don’t get me wrong), there are definitely times when you should train hard and push it in the gym.  But the majority of the time, belie...

Slow and Steady Wins the Hypertrophy Race An “Easy” One-Exercise-Per-Bodypart Muscle-Building Program      Part of effective programming—whether you’re trying to build muscle, gain strength, or a combination of both—is learning how to balance volume, frequency, and intensity.  I often write that you must have two of the factors high —or one high and the other moderate—and the remaining factor must be low.  If you’re going to train with a lot of volume and intensity, then your frequency must be low (the standard method of training these days).  If you’re going to train using a high-frequency program—of which I am admittedly and unabashedly a fan—then you need to keep either your volume or your intensity low.  And so on and so forth.  But you can also do a program where all of the factors are moderate .  The program I want to present here takes this latter approach.      I have actually wanted to write about t...

  Are High-Frequency, High-Rep Programs Good for Building Muscle? READ ON AND FIND OUT!      With some of my recent writings—specifically, my article for DragonDoor on “ The 30-Rep Program ” and my “Powerlifting with the 3 to 5 Method” here on the blog—I have written quite a bit about what is generally referred to as easy strength methods of training.  For that reason, I suppose, I received an email from a reader today asking if I ever recommend, or have utilized, high-frequency training programs that also use high-repetition training.  He then asked me if I did use them, what would such programs look like?      This essay is my answer.      First off—and let’s just cover this briefly in case you’re not familiar with easy strength methods—easy strength refers to high-frequency training done with minimal sets and reps but with fairly high intensity .  Now, intensity is used here as it is b...