C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

       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...

      This is a second part in a series on (what I call) Texas Volume Training.  It would serve you well to read the first article before starting this one.  The program presented here is strictly for powerlifters (or lifters who want to spend some time building their powerlifts) who are interested in building muscle – whether it’s purely for ascetical reasons or whether it’s because they are interested in moving up a weight class.      The program presented here is not for lifters who need to stay in the same weight class or who are trying to drop bodyweight.  (To be honest, the original article on Texas Volume Training isn’t for this class of people, either.  The volume is just too high, making it well-nigh impossible to not gain some amount of muscle.)      What follows is much of the original article (including the “template” from the first article) with a lot of additional commentary for changing up the...

Texas Volume Training Is This the Ultimate Powerlifting Program?      After years of powerlifting – although I haven’t competed in almost a decade, I still train the powerlifts hard and often work with powerlifters who need to boost their totals – I have come to the following conclusions about training for the intermediate to advanced lifter: [1] Matthew Sloan squatting      Most lifters can increase their squats the most by using a fairly high amount of volume, and frequent training.  2 days per week should be the minimum amount of squatting, while most will get even better results by at least 3 days per week.  Recently, some lifters have been experimenting with taking a more “Bulgarian” approach, and squatting almost every day, and getting good results (Nick Horton’s programs over at “The Iron Samurai” would be good examples of this kind of training).  Also, programs such as the “Smolov squat routine” have worked wond...