C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

The Ultimate Workout Routine for Getting Massively Big and Incredibly Strong?      In my previous essay Go Heavy or Go Home , I discussed some ways to train using Pavel Tsatsouline’s seven “Russian rules” of training.  This article will be, in many ways, just a continuation of that one.  I’d recommend reading it first, but you don’t have to.  That article contained a few workout suggestions using Pavel’s 7 maxims.  In this one, I want to propose a workout that I believe is the ultimate for building a combination of size and strength.  This routine isn’t for beginners.  You need to be at the “intermediate” stage before even attempting this routine.  So, you’ve been warned.  If you attempt this without having the work capacity to handle it, it’ll be too much.  At the very least , spend about 3 months doing one of the workouts in the prior essay before moving on to this one.      This routine u...

     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....

       Recently, there has been some renewed interest in my Texas Volume Training program that I wrote a little over a decade ago, based on the amount of views my original post has had of late and based on some emails I have received the last several months.  With that in mind, I thought it was time that I did a new post on this form of training.  What follows in this essay is an amalgam of a couple of my earlier articles on Texas Volume Training, and some insights I’ve garnered from lifters that have used it in the years since I first created it.      First off, TVT is a powerlifting program.  And though this might sound as if it’s hyperbole, and though I might obviously be biased since I came up with it, I think it’s one of the best programs anyone could ever use for powerlifting, but you have to be advanced enough to handle the amount of workload involved.  Also it’s not a program for people who only want so...