C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  Some Training Ideas for Outdoor Fall Lifting Using Loaded Carries and Odd Lifts      I have written before that my favorite time of the year to train is the Fall season.  In fact, last year, around this exact same time, I wrote a piece on Fall training that was mainly centered around sandbag workouts.  In this essay, I want to do something a little different by giving you some different and varied training ideas for outdoor lifting using loaded carries and other “odd” lifts.      For the first time this year, it’s starting to get a little cool here in central Alabama where I live.  And when coolness sets in, I like to take some training implements and objects from my garage to the yard, where I can lift, carry, drag, flip, or push them in assorted ways.      Last night, after completing a full-body workout consisting of front squats, kettlebell cleans, bench presses, chins, and barbell curls—a pretty good workout in itself—I decided to do something that my girlfriend, Kandy, called

  In Autumn When the Leaves Fall and the Sandbag is Carried        “What should be sad in the falling of spent leaves, of leaves that have decked themselves in bridal hues to keep a tryst with death?  The leaves are glad enough.  They spiral down from their parent twigs, and golden and red they are, to carpet the loam of which they must become a part.  If wind drives over them they are blithe to dance in the hazy sunshine of autumn.  The leaves are not saddened by this most natural of fates.  In death is found rebirth, and the tree lives.  Nothing is lost in nature, nothing wasted.  These leaves shall, in a manner of speaking, break from their waxen buds again or come back to us as flowers… Yet the spent leaves sadden us, and the bare boughs touch our hearts.  Something or somebody is going away, unseen, silent, wistful, and on a certain morning we shall wake to know a loss, to feel an absence.” ~Ben Hur Lampman, writing in the Portland “Oregonian,” 1925      My favorite seasons for li

Home Workouts for Mass, Power, Strength, and Muscular Development! PART ONE: Just the Basic Barbell C.S.: Here is a photo I took of my home gym this past weekend. For well over a decade, I trained at a commercial gym.  When I wanted to take my powerlifting training seriously, however, in the late '90s, I decided it was time to trade in the commercial gym for a good home gym.  This is probably the opposite of what most people do, as many lifters will begin training at home on a basic weight set, then decide to acquire a gym membership once they "get serious" with lifting.  But I relished the idea of creating a good, dungeoness home gym free of the distractions on offer at any commercial gym. In this article (and the ones that will follow) I will offer some tips, tricks, and advice for creating a home gym conducive to hardcore mass and power training, and provide some ideas of the training you can do at each stage of your home gym's development. Getting Started To start