C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  My son Garrett Sloan trains, eats, and looks  like a warrior.      One of the problems I often see in strength-training/muscle-building circles is an emphasis on aesthetics over performance.  Aesthetics can be “tricky” and even misleading if you only go by the “mirror” instead of what you are actually doing in your workouts.  So—you might now be asking—how should you approach your training, not to mention your diet, if the emphasis is on performance instead of mere aesthetics?  What follows are a few thoughts on exactly that. Train the Movement or Train the Muscle? Go By the Mirror or Go By the Weight on the Bar?      This is one of the “arguments” that you will often hear/read about, and one that can sometimes become heatedly debated.  Some bodybuilders, for instance, will argue that you should train the muscle, and not so much the movement.  They will talk about feeling the muscle, and about how you should leave your “ego at the door,” and the like.  They’re definitely not wrong

  One time world's strongest man, Doug Hepburn, used methods very similar to the ones listed in this article.      Years ago, as in the previous century, when the internet was in its inception, I wrote regular articles for most of the major bodybuilding magazines.  At the time, there wasn’t much good information available on the internet—oh, there were a couple of sites here and there, but even when you could access them, they could take as long as hours to upload; you know, “dial up”—and so most lifters still got their information from the monthly bodybuilding and powerlifting rags.      Before Facebook (or even MySpace), and the advent of other social media sites, the primary thing that the internet was used for was email.  I sent my articles to the different magazines via the “traditional” method of mailing them through actual mail, the post office.  And if any readers wanted to ask me a question before email was a “thing,” they had to actually write me a letter.  So I thought

 The 10x5 Method: 10 Sets of 5 Reps for Massive Growth AND Strength & Power "If you get a pump while training with heavy weights, you will get big."*  -Pavel Tsatsouline The great Pat Casey was a firm believer in exactly the kind of training discussed here. The above quote by Russian strength training guru Pavel Tsatsouline sums up what is often called the energetic theory of muscle growth .  This theory, in more detail than the aforementioned quote, means that - in order to grow a sufficient amount of muscle mass AND strength - you need to have both fatigue and tension present in your training regimen.  But therein lies the problem.  Fatigue best happens through a high volume of training - multiple sets of high reps, or very few sets of high repetition training taken to total momentary muscular failure are great ways to develop fatigue, and also an ideal way for some  lifters to build plenty of muscle.  But it sucks at building absolute strength.  The converse is true

 Every week, I receive emails from folks who count their calories, know the exact percentage of macronutrients they are consuming, weigh their food, and train with apps full of charts, graphs, and whatever other things  those apps track.  They also keep meticulous journals, and can tell you the exact repetition tempo performed for all of their machine work at the gym.  I only mention this because just yesterday - while I was relaxing at home, drinking a Coors light, and grilling out for Juneteenth - I checked my email, only to see that I had received an email from a reader who explained to me he is having trouble getting "psyched up" for his workouts - despite taking a pre-workout pill, wearing his state-of-the-art lycra pants and mesh "cooling" tank top, along with his brand new, brand name workout shoes.  So he wanted to know what I did pre-workout to prepare for my training sessions, and what I wear.  I told him I try to remember to wear some shorts, and then I d