C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  A.K.A.: The Pork Chop Diet vs the Steak and Beer Diet! Or How to Eat What You Want and STILL Build Muscle and Stay Lean (or Get Lean) and Some Other (Possibly) Slightly More Nonsensical Stuff Mariusz Pudzianowski was a strongman that ate TONS of highly processed food, and was still jacked. (photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)      Last month, I wrote a piece on nutrient timing/combining, and how this is a possible route to building muscle, burning body fat, and just staying in all-around good shape.  This is essentially just more of the same, with some of the thoughts flowing through my incessant mind stream—sometimes it seems more like a river—of different ideas and views on the subject, or similar subjects, as that post a month ago, most of it precipitated by a clip I saw from a Joe Rogan podcast.  (That’s one of the problems with being a writer.  Some people might think that being a writer is “nice” or something that they might want to do, but if you’re really a writer one of th

      I have not been able to write quite as much on the blog as usual of late.  I also write full-time for a media company, and sometimes it causes me to get a little behind in the stuff that I really love to write about; hardcore strength and power, traditional budo, etc.  Anyway, I should have some more "regular" articles published here in the next couple weeks, and, until then, I thought it would be good to do another "Thursday Throwback."      This is an article I wrote for Planet Muscle  around ten years ago.  I think it's a good article, and, in fact, I thought it would be more popular than it was/is.  You can find quite a bit of my training programs out there on the internet - my "high-frequency focus training" is rather popular, for instance - but you don't see this program anywhere.  Credit Jeff Everson - who I miss dearly every time I think of my time writing for PM - for running a lot of my programs in the pages of his rag.  Believe it

  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

...Enter Phase 3 of Integral Strength      It has been too long since last I published an entry here at Integral Strength—the end of February to be precise.  Before that, I think things were rolling along.  I always tried to publish quality material, not just from myself, but from my son, and from Jared "JD" Smith.  And I think the last year has seen some of the best material since I first started this blog—primarily as an outlet for my writings that many of the magazines wouldn't touch—perhaps some of the most informative training articles you will find anywhere on the internet.      But something happened to me a few days after our last entry, at the beginning of March: I was rushed to the emergency room.  I had lost all control of my arms, my legs, and my ability to speak. As I was being transported to the hospital in the ambulance, I thought I was going to lose consciousness.  And I thought, if I did, then my life had come to its end.      I was prepared

     What follows is the original, "uncut" version of an article of mine that was published a few months ago in Planet Muscle magazine.  This is a form of training that I enjoy occasionally doing.  If you're the kind of lifter that actually enjoys more Crossfit-style training—as opposed to the more conventional training I typically recommend—this should be right up your alley. Strongman Muscle Using Strongman-style Training for Maximum Muscle Gains      Watch the “World’s Strongest Man” competition and you’ll see some of the most massively muscled men on the planet.  And they didn’t get that way by training like your average bodybuilder.  They got big, strong, and muscular by training on core lifts (squats, deadlifts, overhead presses, etc.) and utilizing a lot of odd lifts such as the farmer’s walk, log presses, sand-bag carries, and the tire flip—to name just a few.      Most of you reading this will probably never compete in a strongman competition, bu