C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

Muscle-Building Tips and Advice for the Natural Bodybuilder      In my last essay on how to gain mass fast, I mentioned that the secret just might be getting stronger on a handful of exercises.   (This essay, I suppose, is just an extension of that last one.)   In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think that I’m right.   If you’re a natural bodybuilder, then the one thing more important than any other is to get strong on a dozen or so exercises, with your strength-focus in roughly the 5 to 10 rep range.      One approach is to achieve this is to focus on movements over muscles .   In other words, instead of going to the gym and “obliterating” or “destroying” (why do bodybuilders always seem to use military-sounding jargon for a lot of their training) your quad muscles with endless sets of leg extensions, leg presses, and machine whatever, how about just trying to get stronger on the squat?   Same goes for the...

A Hybrid High-Frequency Regimen for Natural Mass-Building      I have long been a fan of high-frequency training (HFT) and other methods of lifting that go against the stream of most modern training.   This is especially true of strictly muscle-building methods.   Perhaps it’s hubris on my part to think that I know better than bodybuilders lifting in today’s gyms, but I think there are better methods for the natural bodybuilder than what is currently used by the vast majority of lifters (at least in the West—bodybuilders in East Europe are another story).      Infrequent training simply isn’t a good method for the majority of lifters if their goal is to gain muscle mass.  And by “majority” I mean  natural  lifters.  Steroids change the equation—and change it  big time .  Anabolic steroid use is often cited as the reason why bodybuilders from the ‘70s, ‘80s, and early ‘90s (before Dorian ...

  Hypertrophy Training that WORKS for the Natural Lifter      In my recent essay “ The Game Changers ,” I wrote this about high-frequency training: “Although it (HFT) is more mainstream now, I suppose, it’s still the kind of lesser-known of training methods, at least among the general population.  And even among lifters who do know about it, it’s still often dismissed because it’s not how competitive bodybuilders train.  It’s also certainly not how pro bodybuilders—i.e. drug users—train.  But that’s the thing.  It’s dismissed because it’s not attempted by enough drug-free bodybuilders.  Something tells me that if anabolic steroids never existed, it might be the #1 method of lifting among everyone—powerlifters, Olympic lifters, and bodybuilders.”  For some reason today, I thought about that sentence—there are always thoughts about my training and writing swirling around in my head; it can be a bit annoying—and then it made me ...