C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

The Truth About the Dietary Regimens of a Couple of Bodybuilding Legends!      When you think of intermittent fasting, you don’t usually associate it with the classic bodybuilders of the past.  For the longest time, I certainly didn’t.  Turns out, however, that I was more than just a little bit wrong.      I have written elsewhere that I think I can safely say, without much in the way of trepidation, that I was one of the first lifters I know of who tried intermittent fasting more than 25 years ago .  In fact, I first read about it in the late ‘90s, when Ori Hofmekler—who was actually, at the time, editor of Penthouse magazine of all things—published articles on his “Warrior Diet” in the online magazine T-Nation .  I didn’t refer to it as intermittent fasting—I don’t think that term had caught on yet—but simply told other lifters that I was going to try this (insanely sounding) Warrior Diet in order to lose enough w...

How Old-Time Lifters and Bodybuilders SLOWLY Worked Up to Using Split Workouts - How They Utilized Them and How YOU Should Use Them Bill Pearl was one of the greatest bodybuilders who ever lived, and he rarely used anything more than a "2-way" split program.      If you’re new to training, always start with full-body workouts.      I say this because I see WAY too many split workout programs being recommended on the internet for “average” or even “beginner” trainees.  I write “trainees” because I understand that these guys aren’t lifters per se, and the kind of results they are after are probably not what the average reader of my blog is after.  None-the-less, I have a feeling that the majority of lifters that read my blog probably do a lot of split workouts, too, where you just might be better off performing a full-body program instead.      Now—and I must make myself crystal clear on this point—spl...

  Old School Lifting, Training, and Eating are Still the Most Optimal Methods and Don’t Listen to Anyone Who Tells You Otherwise! Marvin Eder, my favorite old school bodybuilder/strength athlete.      I like “old school” things.      I train at a dojo in the town that I live in that is the only old school dojo I could find.  The others around aren’t really dojos but are what are commonly called “McDojos”—they cater to the masses, and are a great after-school activity for your kid, or for your Grandma who wants to “get in shape.”  The dojo that I practice at often has to mop the blood off the floor after class, and is run by a 70-year old, 5’4” black man who can still whip men twice his size and half his age.  He runs it like a dictatorship, as any good dojo must be run.  So, yeah, it’s old school , and I like old school things.      I go to a Slavic-style Orthodox Church.  It’s as ...

  The Old-School High-Set, Low-Rep Arm Building Secrets of the Great Bill Pearl! A young Pearl flexes his peaked biceps.  At the time, he would have used a method similar—if not the same—as what is written here. The other day, in my post on "Ageless Bodybuilding for the Young," I made a brief mention on how a young Bill Pearl trained.  And, although I have done a couple of Pearl pieces in the past, I thought this might be a good time to look at his arm training "secrets" since I think Pearl had something unique to offer the muscle-building world—and still does to this day.  (Just a brief mention that Pearl will also be instrumental in explaining some of the details in my Ageless Bodybuilding System in a future post.  Pearl, in fact, had a very  unique way of training as he got older that I believe a limited number of people are actually aware of.  But I got the scoop!  And  I digress—back to this post...) A lot of what I am going to write her...

The Upper Arm Training of "The Myth" Sergio Oliva's massive upper arm development Sergio Oliva is, I believe, the greatest outright bodybuilder of all time. Here at Integral Strength, he gets the distinction of being the only bodybuilder (I think, at least😏) that I've featured now for a second time in a "Classic Bodybuilding" piece. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Oliva—for most, he really needs no introduction, but I would still recommend that you read this—then check out my previous post/essay on his mass-gaining methods entitled, "The Legendary Mass-Building Method and Workouts of 'The Myth' - and the Story Behind Them." And there's no reason to rehash the same stuff I wrote there, but, just for an introduction to this article, here is what I wrote on "The Myth": Early Career Sergio was born and raised in Cuba, and he got his start in Olympic weightlifting where he totaled almost 1,000 pounds in the Middle Hea...