C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  How Squats Can Change Your Life! “Happiness is different from pleasure.  Happiness has something to do with struggling, enduring, accomplishing.”   -Dr. George Sheehan I have been reading a lot lately.  Not that I haven’t always read a lot, mind you, so I guess it would be more appropriate to say that I have been reading a lot more lately.  Which you can strike up a little bit to the slightly increased free time I have on my hands.  You see, I have been doing some really hard martial arts training a few days a week, including a session or two of sparring every week, which always takes its toll on you (at my age and with my injuries), and I simply haven’t been able to lift weights as frequently, nor even as intensely, as usual.  Which means (long story short) that I have had more time to read on my hands. As I was perusing one of the local online “marketplaces”, I came across a book with a most interesting title: How Squats Can Change Your Life!   At first, I thought, well, that’s an

Make Fantastic Gains by Using the 3 to 5 Method to Specialize on the Bodypart of your Choosing! Here I am finishing off an old-school garage gym workout with some good ol' farmers walks. For those of you unfamiliar with the "3 to 5 Method" of training that I have touted more than a few times on Integral Strength, the gist of it is this: Train 3 to 5 days per week Utilize 3 to 5 exercises at each workout Perform 3 to 5 sets of each exercise Perform 3 to 5 reps on each set The 3 to 5 method of training is typically used along with a full-body workout.  As anyone who has done a fair amount of reading on this blog probably could have guessed, I would recommend using the "Big 4" while employing 3 to 5 training: Squat something heavy every week Press something heavy overhead every week Pull something heavy off the ground every week Drag or carry something heavy for either time or distance every week It all adds up to a week of workouts that might look something such a

One of the Greatest There Ever Was... and Ever Will Be May His Memory be Eternal (a.k.a. "Bill Starr-style Advanced Squat Training")      I've been away from the internet, and lifting in general, for too long over the last couple of months.  Generally, of course, lack of internet-perusing is, decidedly, not a bad thing.  But in this case, I failed to read the news that Bill Starr died about two months ago.      If you haven't read much of my material, then you may not know that one of my greatest influences in lifting has always been Bill Starr.      There was no one like him.  No one.  Period.      This is what I had to say in a post a few years ago:       For those of you who don't know—and most of you who have read my training articles  do  know—my primary inspiration in training and writing has always been Bill Starr.  Perhaps nowadays people—powerlifters, strength athletes, readers of the major bodybuilding magazines—think that Starr is too &quo

High Frequency Training for Strength and Power, Part Three Building the Squat      A few months ago, I began to write a series of articles on high-frequency training specifically aimed at building strength and power.  It really began even before that, with a post I did on Anthony Ditillo-inspired training, and then before that a post written by Ditillo himself (from an old issue of the once great Iron Man magazine from the ‘70s).  Before you continue reading this article, it would probably behoove you to read the first two posts on HFT for strength and power, and the posts on Ditillo training.      And, now, on with this post:      Squat training lends itself specifically well to high-frequency training.  Or, as the Russians would say (or, perhaps, this is just a quote from someone who was fond of Russian-style training): “If you want to squat more, you have to squat more!”  Unlike some of the other lifts—bench presses somewhat, deadlifts decidedly more pointedly—you can