C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

A Hybrid High-Frequency Training Program for a Combination of Size and Strength      For more than 20 years, I have preached the benefits of high-frequency training (HFT) programs.  First in the pages of some of the major bodybuilding magazines, such as IronMan magazine and Planet Muscle , and then on the blog when I started it in 2009.  For the most part, the training I recommended was for strength first, with size, if it occurred, as more of a side-effect of the strength and power training.  And for more than a decade, one of my favorite ways to use HFT is through so-called easy strength methods.  However, I have in the last couple years proposed the theory of using an “easy muscle” approach, where you largely keep the “tenets” of easy strength but do it for higher repetitions, with the sole goal of hypertrophy.      I’m not alone in thinking that this might be a good method for many seeking gains in muscle mass....

Some Thoughts on Attaining Your Training Goals      It won’t be long—about a month and a half—and the gyms will be filled with new members, intent to get in shape or lose weight as part of their New Year’s resolutions.  They’ll probably quit sometime in February.      I have long believed that the reason for this—well, outside of the fact that it’s not something they really want to do in the first place—is because the approach they take, at least here in America, is wrong.  We live in a culture—at least, a gym culture; I suppose this applies to other areas, too—that is all or nothing .  You either train all-out, balls-to-the-wall, foot-to-the-floor (use whatever pithy little slogans you can think of) or you don’t train at all.  And to get in shape, it’s not just weights, either.  Nope, you gotta start running 5 miles a day, and throwing a medicine ball against a wall hundreds of times in a session, then battling...