C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  Read On and Discover the 5 “Musts” of All Good Training Programs      If you want to make gains in training—be it mass gains, getting as strong as humanly possible, or you simply want to look good in a pair of swimming trunks or a bikini—then there are several universal features to a training program that all lifters should be doing.  If you include these elements in your training then you will get good results no matter your goals.      It doesn’t matter if you train with high-intensity and low volume or vice versa, whether you train every day of the week or can only make it to the gym a couple times per week, whether you train with high reps, low reps, or something in between, every successful training program should include the following elements.  Here are the 5 musts of all good workout programs: #1: You MUST Squat      I wrote this in a separate essay over 10 years ago:   ...

  Designing Your Own Workout Program Part One: Full-Body Workouts      I thought it would be a good idea to do a series on how to design your own workout program.  How much interest there is in this first piece will determine how many entries total that I do in the series.  We will start with full-body workouts, since that is where everyone needs to begin their training journey.  If you’ve been following any “pre-designed” workouts—even if it’s one of my own here on the blog—you should also start your own programming design with full-body workouts.  And they are, of course, a great way to get “back-to-the-basics” of training no matter how long you’ve been working out, so this essay is also a good read for any of you “bro split” folks out there who have been doing one-bodypart-a-day workouts (or something similar) for no telling how long.      Following a workout program is essential to attaining the goals and res...

       When a lot of lifters or bodybuilders first take up “briefer-is-better” workout programs such as H.I.T., the “Heavy Duty” programs of Mike Mentzer, or the strength-oriented training programs of Dr. Ken Leistner, they are often surprised at how much hypertrophy or strength gains they make in such a relatively short period of time.  This is especially true if they've been “killing it” in the gym beforehand with much more voluminous, frequent training programs.  But then the gains stop, and the lifter just can’t quite figure out what went wrong.      One problem—and this might just be the problem that plagues the average gym-goer—is the thinking that it is the workout that produces results.  I often refer to this as the erroneous belief of letting the means (the workouts themselves) justify the ends (the results seeking to be obtained) .  You see this approach in things such as “cardio classes” or “workout...