C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  An “Easy” Full-Body Muscle-Building Program      I have written quite a bit over the past year on high-frequency training.  I have a semi-regular, ongoing series discussing how to use HFT for various goals—general strength, powerlifting, fat loss, and whatnot.  Although I have written some about it—such as this post from last May—I would like to do a few different essays on HFT for hypertrophy .      The program I’ve designed for this article has its roots in the full-body workout programs of the old-time bodybuilders from the ‘30s and early ‘40s where they used, primarily, full-body workouts performed 3x per week and multiple exercises for a limited number of sets per exercise—often no more than 1 set per movement, sometimes 2 at the most .  In fact, it wasn’t until the likes of Clancy Ross and Leo Stern—who trained with each other in the military—that bodybuilders started utilizing 3 or 4 sets per exercise in t...

Two Training Challenges for Busting Through Plateaus and Forcing New Gains      For a program to be successful, it must regulate the variables of volume, intensity, and frequency.  Generally—and this is not an absolute; there are exceptions—two of the variables should be high (or one high and the other moderate) and the other variable must be low.  The reason I believe many “bro splits” are popular is because they are easy to program.  Many gym-goers these days, for instance, like to train one-bodypart-per-week and train with a lot of sets, a lot of intensity, but with very low frequency.  Although this approach most certainly can work for a lot of lifters, I don’t think it’s the most optimal way to train.      If you’ve read any of the material that I’ve written on this blog and in articles elsewhere, you will know that I’m a fan of high-frequency training.  And I typically recommend a lot of high-frequency, hi...