C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  For fans of Bill Starr - or if you've never heard of him but are  interested in one of the greatest strength training systems ever created - my new book "The Strongest Shall Always Survive: Lifting Lessons from an Iron Legend" is now available in paperback! You can purchase a copy from Amazon today.  Here is the link: The Strongest Shall Always Survive For anyone interested in an e-book version, look for it by next week, at the latest. If you want to know more about ALL of my books available for purchase, then go to the My Books page of the blog.

More Tips, Advice, and Program Suggestions for Winter Bulk-Building      After writing my last two articles on bulk and power training—the 1st on Hugh Cassidy’s training and the second on another, similar winter bulk building program—I figured that was it.  I mean, not as if I’m done writing or need to take a break from hacking away at my laptop.  No, I just mean that I thought that was it when it came to advice for cold weather bulk building.  I have a few other articles that I am already about a ⅓ of the way through at the moment—the 4th part of my "bodyweight and beyond” series, an essay on “pain”, and another one on Bill Starr’s advice for tailoring workout programs for your own needs and goals, along with a few others, in addition to outlines and notes for around 20 more—so I had every intention this morning of finishing up one of those assorted pieces.  But then I received an email.      A reader messaged me....

The 5x10 Workout Program      The longer that I have been training and working with other lifters, the more that I believe that simple, though not necessarily easy, programs are the best methods to use.  I think this is the case for the majority of lifters.  There are times when this is not so, but that’s usually for either elite athletes or programs for strength athletes at the top of powerlifting or Olympic weightlifting.      In my last article on different ways that you can incorporate heavy, light, and medium workouts into your training, I mentioned a few ways that this can be done.  One of them is to keep your weights the same at each workout session but rotate the sets and/or reps.  This is in direct contradiction to the most popular method of H-L-M, Bill Starr’s 5x5 training, where you keep the sets and reps the same (5x5) but rotate the amount of weight used on the lifts.  The program here uses the firs...

     When a lot of lifters consider “heavy, light, medium” training, if they even consider it at all, they probably think about Bill Starr and his “5x5” programs.  If you read this blog, then that’s probably especially so.  But maybe not.  After all, I have, on a few occasions, mentioned using the methodology for programs outside of Starr’s routines.  And, here’s the thing, that’s exactly how I want you to think about it.  Starr’s system is great.  I love it.  I write about it.  I will continue to love it and write about it.  But the truth is that it can be applied to all training programs, not just Starr’s.      It really comes down to using it as a way to manage load cycling , which I have written about in several articles and essays of late.  Load cycling is prevalent in almost all strength programs that have come out of Russia and other former “Soviet bloc” nations.  Probably t...

       In my previous article, I presented a basic program, for building both mass and strength, that demonstrated how you can best utilize load cycling.  The premise is simple, but it’s the key to making consistent gains.  You start with a lighter load and do workouts where you are not taking any of your sets to failure, or approaching failure, really.  Then, you increase the load from week to week until you reach the point that you are approaching failure.  When you reach that point in the program, you back off again and repeat.  This method has been used by various strength athletes—powerlifters, Olympic lifters, and the like—for decades in order to produce consistent gains.      In this essay, I want to look at some varied ways to make this principle work.  We’ll also look at some different programs.      This principle is more important than most lifters realize.  It’...