C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

Lessons in Strength and Muscle Building from Russian Weightlifting and Powerlifting Methods      Ever since I wrote my essay The Bulgarian Way back in May of this year, I have had what you are now reading in my mind.  That article—I recommend reading it if you haven’t already—was on the lessons bodybuilders and lifters can learn from the methods of the Bulgarian weightlifters.  When I first started training back in the ‘80s, Bulgarian training was an almost mythical form of training.  We had heard about it, or read a little about it, but we actually knew very little.  When the “Serious Growth” manuals started appearing in advertisements in various bodybuilding magazines—particularly “Serious Growth 3: Big Beyond Belief”—purporting to explain how bodybuilders could use the methods of Bulgarian strength training in pursuit of hypertrophy, a willing and gullible bodybuilding public gobbled it up.  For those who are/were actually “in the kn...

Simple Methods to Improve Your Workouts and Obtain Better Results      Over the years, one of my most popular articles has been my “ Train Long, Not Hard ” feature that I wrote for Testosterone Nation around the beginning of this century.  The title comes from a saying of Arthur Jones, the creator of Nautilus equipment and the father of so-called “high-intensity training” and the whole one-set-to-complete-momentary-muscular-failure approach to workouts.  He and Mike Mentzer are responsible for brain-washing an entire generation of lifters and quite possibly ruining real strength training, at least here in America—though I’ll save my ramblings on that for another essay or you can read my article on REAL High-Intensity Training .  Anyway, his saying goes like this: “You can either train long or you can train hard, but you can’t do both.”  Jones, quite obviously, believed that “train hard” was the answer to that conundrum.  In my article...

Approach Your Lifting as a Skill and Craft to be Honed      There is a certain science to lifting.  I won’t deny that.  But if we only approach training from a “science based” perspective, we won’t see the whole picture.  We’ll also miss out on what makes lifting one of life’s true joys.      Lifters who approach training as an art learn more than just how to build strength, power, and muscle mass.  A lifter whose art form is lifting itself learns about his body, particularly what kind of training works for him alone, but he also learns about life and all that lifting has to offer outside of just physical transformation.      How does one go about the art of training?  For the remainder of this essay, we will see what this might look like.      To start with, just as with any craft, you need a plan that focuses on the essence of the craft.  Begin with a bas...