C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

The Classic Bodybuilding Approach to Cycling Workloads, Developing Work Capacity, and High-Frequency Training      I’ve been lifting since the mid ‘80s, when my father bought me one of those old, shaky DP weight sets for, I think, my 13th birthday.  If you are my age or older, you know well the kind of set I’m talking about, with weights made of plastic, gray in color, and filled with cement.  Many a young man got their start in iron from just such a set.  It was about all you could find down at the local Sears & Roebuck department store.  The bench was flimsy as all get-out, the weights not that long-lasting, but, honestly, it got the job done.  In many ways, it was all I (or others) needed.  You could do deadlifts and cleans, overhead presses and curls, not to mention all the bench pressing your pre-pubescent heart desired.  Like all other young teenagers, I wanted a big chest and biceps, so I did entirely too much benchi...

     I write a lot about lifting because I think a lot about lifting.  I am a writer after all.  Sometimes I even write about writing.  When you’re a writer, that’s what you do.  You write.  Anyway, I was thinking earlier about why I write about lifting and why in the world I continue to write about it, even when I’ve penned around 800 articles at this point, but who’s counting?  No one but me.      I think I’ve written more articles, essays, and musings this past year than I have in any other year of my life.  That’s saying something since I’ve been writing training articles since 1993, when I sold my first articles to IronMan magazine and MuscleMag International .  Earlier this year, at some point, I remember briefly thinking something along the lines of, “What if I run out of ideas to write about?  Maybe I should slow this thing down.”  But then I realized that it’s not possible....

  Strength-Building and Mind-Power Secrets from the 20th Century’s Greatest Weightlifter/Bodybuilder      I love old-school bodybuilders.  If you’ve scoured this site, or have been a long-time reader, you’re probably aware of that.  My most popular articles at Integral Strength are almost all “classic bodybuilding” pieces.      Old-school bodybuilders—especially before the ‘70s—were a different breed.  Like bodybuilders today, they trained for aesthetics and to have a pleasing physique, but they also trained for strength and power, for flexibility, on various “odd” lifts, and for all-around athleticism.  They were, essentially, one part bodybuilder, one part weightlifter, and one part gymnast.  But a few stood out above all others.  One of those was, without a doubt, the great Tommy Kono.  Superlatives such as “great” are heaped upon a lot of old-time lifters, but with Kono it’s no hyperbole....