C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

 My book Ultimate Mass and Power Essays in now available for purchase in paperback. (Click on link to purchase) This book is a follow-up to my first book in this series, "Ultimate Mass and Power." That book is primarily a collection of different training programs to help you get incredibly strong and massively big. This book is concerned with the same topics - building massive amounts of strength, power, and hypertrophy - but is a collection of essays instead of programs. Oh, there are some programs thrown in here and there. But this is for anyone who wants to be informed and (hopefully) entertained with some of my thoughts and ideas when it comes to building the ULTIMATE in Mass and Power. If you enjoy reading the likes of "old school" writers such as Bill Starr, Bradley Steiner, and John McCallum, or modern-day writers such as Dan John or Pavel, this collection of essays should be right up your alley.

    Heavy/Light/Medium Training Part One: The Basics of Program Design      This past week, I received an email from a reader asking if I would write an article on how to design a heavy, light, medium program.   It was a bit serendipitous, as I had been gathering together some of my past articles on just that very subject with the intention of putting together an e-book entitled “The Heavy, Light, Medium Manifesto” (or something such as that; I’m a little “iffy” on the title at the moment).   You see, April of this year will be 10 years since Starr-man (as Bill Starr was sometimes affectionately known) left for that grand weightlifting gym in the sky.   And I have been thinking that what better way to honor the man than to put together a book covering every aspect of his lifting wisdom that I can think of.   His heavy, light, medium system had the single greatest impact on my personal training than any other method.   ...

  Designing Your Own Workout Program Part One: Full-Body Workouts      I thought it would be a good idea to do a series on how to design your own workout program.  How much interest there is in this first piece will determine how many entries total that I do in the series.  We will start with full-body workouts, since that is where everyone needs to begin their training journey.  If you’ve been following any “pre-designed” workouts—even if it’s one of my own here on the blog—you should also start your own programming design with full-body workouts.  And they are, of course, a great way to get “back-to-the-basics” of training no matter how long you’ve been working out, so this essay is also a good read for any of you “bro split” folks out there who have been doing one-bodypart-a-day workouts (or something similar) for no telling how long.      Following a workout program is essential to attaining the goals and res...