When I started this blog several years ago, it was with the intention of making it an “integral” blog – hence the name “Integral Strength”. At the time, I was quite enamored with Eastern philosophy – Buddhism in particular, having practiced strains of both Theravada and Zen for some time – and so I thought it would be a great way to combine my love of lifting weights and philosophy, not to mention martial arts – a passion of mine that has existed since childhood – into one website. Add into the fact that I was also reading quite a bit from the “integral” philosopher Ken Wilber at the time – some of my earliest posts that you can still find on here attest to this – and you can see why I thought that Integral Strength would be such a cool, not to mention accurate, name. (Let me say this right off the bat, however: I don’t care much for Wilber or his philosophy any more. I think it is, on the whole, quite reductionist, and actually has many of ...
Essays on Old-School Strength Training, Classic Bodybuilding, Traditional Martial Arts, and Budo Philosophy