C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  Read On and Learn One of THE Keys for Becoming Strong and Powerful      In multiple articles, essays, and training programs that I’ve created, I’ve repeatedly mentioned the concept “same but different.”  It’s one of the most important concepts if you plan on getting brutally strong on a lift, any lift.  It’s so simple that—like a lot of simple things—its power is often overlooked.  But if you want to achieve your physique goals—not just strength and power but hypertrophy, as well—you need to put the principle into practice.      A couple things are key for continually increasing your strength.  First, you need variety.  As I’m fond of saying, or writing about in this case, everything works… for about 8 weeks.  Somewhere around that 8 week mark, most lifters need to make some changes.  If you’ve been at this training thing for awhile, then you probably should make changes long before even 8 weeks...

A 3 Days Per Week, “Moderate Strength” Program for Size and Power      Last week, I published a Q&A article based on a few questions that I had been asked in the preceding weeks.  One of the questions asked was if it was possible to do an “easy strength” program just 3 days per week.  I answered the question in the best way that I could—if you want to read my answer in full, then, well, read that article—but the more that I thought about it in the days since, the more I think that one of my answers might just be the way to set up a full-body program for 3 days per week of training.  I suggested that it might work for a 3 day program if you simply bumped up your total volume to around 15 reps per lift.  In this article, I want to outline in much more detail what this might look like and how you can use it to get the most out of a 3 day per week, full-body program.      In many ways, this shouldn’t really be thou...

       Here is a random selection of questions that I received via email the last several weeks.  I figured these might be of interest to some readers. Question: Is it possible to do an easy strength program only 3 days each week and get good results? Answer: Maybe.  It depends.  (This might annoy some of my readers, but, to be honest, the answer to a lot of questions is it depends .)      Now, first off, if you don’t know what “easy strength” is, the standard recommendations for an easy strength program goes something like this: 1.      Train with full-body workouts using a limited number of basic barbell, dumbbell, or kettlebell lifts such as squats, bench presses, overhead presses, chins, dips, curls, cleans, snatches, or deadlifts. 2.      Lift 5 to 6 days per week. 3.      On average, keep your reps per set in the 1-5 range.  Doubles and triples are probably the p...