C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  Build the Ultimate Combination of Mass and Strength with this Unique High-Set, Low-rep Method of Training The late, great Anthony Ditillo utilized programs very similar to what is written here.  If he were with us today, he'd probably give this one a thumbs up and say, "Ditillo approved!" Some of my favorite programs for building muscle mass involve the use of high-sets and low-reps.  In fact, when I first started this blog 14 years ago, one of the very FIRST questions I was asked by a reader was whether or not I had a “favorite” method of training.  At first, I think I was going to “cop out” and tell him some crap such as, “the best workout is the one you’re not doing” kind of thing.  But then I decided that, hell, honesty is always the best policy, and so I told him the truth: my FAVORITE approach to training was the high-set, low-rep method, specifically using anywhere between 10 to 20 sets of 1 to 5 reps. Fourteen years later is that still the case?  Yes, and no.  I

An Old-School Technique for Breaking a Mass-Building Plateau      I can remember rather vividly my first plateau in muscle-building.  It was 1991, and I was only seventeen years old, but I had also been training hard for a couple of years prior to this.  (I started training at the age of 15, when my father bought me my first weight training set—a DP bench, and about 120 pounds of weight from the local Sears.  By the time I was 16, I started training at a commercial gym.  It was located adjacent to the dojo where I practiced Karate-Do consistently 4 to 5 days per week.)      At the time, I used a full-body routine, where I would train 2 or 3 days per week, focusing on the basics such as squats, bench presses, chins, barbell curls, and whatnot.  (To be honest—as ashamed as I am to admit it—I didn't discover the efficacy of deadlifts and the "quick lifts"—power cleans, power snatches, et al—until several years later.)  For the most part, it was a 3-days-per-week routine,

The 30-Rep Program      A word of note before you read this article: This workout has nothing in common with my “30-Rep Workout” post from several months ago.  That was more about a suggestive way to occasionally train.  This is about an in-depth “program” meant to be used for the long haul.      Dan John’s “ 40 Day Program ” has long enamored me.  I have used it once “to the T”, and I have used slight variations of it at other times over the last two or three years.  The reason that I haven’t used it more often—and the reason that I think most lifters don’t use it, even if they know about it—is because I (and they) find it, well, a bit boring on the one hand, and I think if done incorrectly it can lead to overtraining one’s movement pattern.  In the first, it can be boring because you are doing the exact same exercises for the same number of total reps each and every time that you train.  In the second, it can potentially overtrain your movement pattern if you choose exerci

Hybrid Leg Training 21 st Century Bodybuilding for Awesome Leg Growth      I love training legs—always have, always will.  I love it because it’s what separates the men from the boys.  I love it because it creates a euphoric pump (when doing bodybuilding workouts, at least) that can’t be “beat” by the pump that’s achieved in any other sort of training.  I love it because leg training will add muscle everywhere .      About twenty years ago, I attended a seminar with Tom Platz.  He was back in awesome shape at the time, and when I saw him, he had just finished doing some photo shoots with several of the top magazines—namely Iron Man and MuscleMag International .  (I wrote for both of those magazines back then, which made it even cooler, and the rumor mill was saying that Platz was going to get back into competition—Masters Olympia, or something of the sort.  He never did compete, but he still looked unbelievable at his age—huge, shredded, vascular; in a word: freaky!)  An

      This is a first of a series of articles that will focus on what I call “hybrid training.”  Unlike some – but not all of the material – on this blog, this series will focus on specifically on bodybuilding .  And by “bodybuilding,” I simply mean the kind of training that I believe most guys (and gals) are interested in: building shapely muscle, adding muscle mass, keeping their bodyfat relatively low.  I other words: looking good. Hybrid Chest Training Bodybuilding for the 21 st Century and Beyond      “ Hybrid - a composite of mixed origin.  Complex, composite - a conceptual whole made up of complicated and related parts.”      There was a time when bodybuilders trained in one, and only one, fashion.  Of course, in the early days – the “Golden Age” if you will, the age of Steve Reeves, the age of the original “Muscle Beach”, the age when bodybuilders engaged in “physical development” – this wasn’t the case.  In those days, the men who roamed the sands of southern Calif