C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  A.K.A: Kenji in the Twilight My dogs Kiko and Kenji (left to right).  The reason for their picture at the start of this essay will make sense shortly. Conversations on Integral Bodybuilding Part One: A Somewhat Rambling Introduction to Integral Hypertrophy Training      I was tired.  I had spent the last hour cutting grass, running my weed eater, planting Asian lilies, and watering my gardens.  I was hot and sweaty, too.  If I still drank, I would have popped open a cold beer—porters and stouts were always my favorite—but I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol in over a year.  I have a disease that robbed me of that particular joy, so I settled on a bottle of refrigerated mineral water.  It was refreshing, and what my body needed, anyway.      The sun was setting.  Twilight was upon the land.  The last vestiges of orange sunlight slipped through the canopy of trees at the edge of the rolling hi...

Balancing Life, Work, and Lifting      In 1998, I was heavily invested in powerlifting.  I loved it.  I was dead-set on being one of the strongest powerlifters in the world.  I was willing to do whatever required of me, training wise, to achieve that goal.  At the time, I was also writing a lot for Ironman magazine and MuscleMag International , two of the largest and most popular bodybuilding magazines of the day.  I had an article in one of them, sometimes both, almost every month back then.  But it wasn’t enough to pay the bills.  And powerlifting, like a lot of underground, niche sports, didn’t pay anything.  Nope.  It was, in fact, quite the opposite.  It cost money—payments to enter meets, along with travel and food costs associated with them, not to mention the money I poured into nutrition, training gear, and, at that time, setting up my own garage gym replete with everything a world-class strength athle...