C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

I talked to my Uncle Kirk tonight. He lives in Texas. He stands about an inch taller than me—he's 5'7". He weighs about 10 pounds heavier than I do—he's 200 lbs or so. He's also 58 years old, and built like the proverbial brick shit-house. He also trains in a barn—squat rack, a bench press, a few barbells, lots of dumbbells, and a whole crap-load of weights—with a few guys who are probably 30 years younger than him. He's been training since his teens, can bench press in the mid-300s, and can deadlift around 500 pounds—not as strong as he once was, but all-in-all still a pretty strong S.O.B. He calls me to talk training, and we just like to keep each other updated as to the kind of progress we're making and the kind of workouts we're performing. "What'd you do tonight?" I asked. "A 10 sets workout," he replied. I know that my Uncle doesn't use a "split" routine—never has—so I was

Over the past year, two of my workout programs seem to be the most popular—at least, I get asked the most questions about these two programs. The first program would be my "Mass Construction" program. The Mass Construction routine is ideal for anyone who needs to pack on as much muscle as possible in a relatively short amount of time. However, I think that the second program—what I call "High-Frequency Focus Training"—has the most potential. It's not just a workout program, but rather it's a system of training with a lot of potential—and by this I mean that it is a template that you follow, but it allows for plenty of variety, hence its potential . What follows in this post is the basic program—with a beginner routine and an advanced routine. After this post, I'm going to add some others that deal with specialization while on the HFFT system, since that's the area where a lot of questions get asked. High Frequency Focus Training Sometim

The "O" Word: The Often Misunderstood, Always Talked About Issue of Overtraining The Barbarian Brothers—those crazy bastions of strength and muscle mass that I often admired in my teenage years—once said: "There is no such thing as overtraining, only undereating." (Or something along that similar vein; could be that I slightly misquoted.) The Barbarians were often derided for that statement. The argument against their statement would go something like this: "It's easy for them to say such a thing. They are genetically predisposed mutants of muscle-building who are on butt-loads of anabolic steroids, HGH, and no-telling what else." I don't think the Barbarians were exactly dead on in their assessment—don't get me wrong—but they did have a point. Proper training—hard, heavy training in their cases—and diet are the keys to success. Overtraining, in their minds, was just something that was entirely overdone by the magazines and all of the n