C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  An Eder-Inspired High-Set, Low-Rep Program      After writing my last essay on the great Marvin Eder, I thought more and more about his Olympic lifting program (which is featured in that essay).  Of all the programs that he did, and recommended to others, I think that program might be his most effective for lifters after a combination of raw power and muscle mass.  I also think for the average gym-goer, however, it would probably be a bit “too much.”  So with that in mind I created a sorta kinder, gentler version that will be more effective for the vast majority of readers.      I would encourage you to read my Eder article, but if you don’t, then just know this: Eder was fond of high-set, low-rep workouts, especially when training for Olympic lifting, but combined his lifting workouts with bodybuilding workouts to create—what we would probably now call—a “hybrid” system of training.  The program below uses this approach, but gives an extra arm-only workout session to allow you to re

Chuck Sipes was a legendary "classical" bodybuilder who used ladder training to great success.      Some lifters struggle, believe it or not, with getting enough volume in their workouts.  And it doesn’t really matter whether it’s high-frequency, high-volume workouts or high-intensity, high-volume workouts.  A lot of the time the reason for this is because of fatigue .  For lack of a better term, the lifter “gasses out” too early in the workout from doing too much at one time.  To counteract this, a lifter needs a way to manage fatigue .  This is where “ladder training” comes in.      When doing more voluminous workouts, I love ladder training.  Let’s look at a few different methods of ladders, and how to plug the methods into a particular workout scheme. The Up/Down Method      The first method we’ll look at is what I call the “traditional” up/down method of ladders.  This is where you start with one repetition and add a repetition with each successive set.  Once you reach

 For some reason, by FAR the most "hits" on any of my pages here at Integral Strength are for one of my oldest posts, one that I wrote in 2009 when I first started this blog entitled "Old Time Mass Tactics: One-Exercise-Per-Bodypart Training."  You can read it here if you're interested: https://cssloanstrength.blogspot.com/2009/05/old-time-mass-tactics-one-exercise-per.html Even though I wrote that piece when I was 35 - and I'm now 48 - I do think that it still "stands on it's own", and so I wouldn't change much, if anything, about it.  However, my views HAVE changed a little since that time, primarily when it comes to older lifters because, well, I'm  an older lifter now, and when you're in your upper 40s (or older) you probably  shouldn't train the way you did when you were in your early to mid 30s.  For instance, when I was in my early 30s, I was the strongest I had ever been in my entire life.  I could squat and deadlift (in