C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

 Happiness Sucks and the Zen Way to Contentment C.S. sitting on his zabuton as he prepares for meditation I once read of a study dealing with music and happiness.  The study had two groups of participants listen to a composition of classical music.  The first group was told to simply listen to the music.  The second group was told to listen to the music and to try to have the music cultivate a sense of happiness within them while listening.  Afterwards, both groups were asked how happy listening to the music made them feel.  Interestingly, it was the first group that said they felt really happy while listening to the music.  The sense of simple bare attention, without attempting to alter the atmosphere through "being" happy, was enough to create happiness without effort. We live in a culture - and this is especially true if you're like me and deal with the "health and wellness" community - that is in the middle of a "happiness boom".  But the trut...

  Nothing Special: Everyday Zen and the Art of Lifting In her seminal book, 'Nothing Special: Living Zen' by Charlotte Joko Beck, Beck writes, "Beyond the meditation cushion, where do you ultimately find the profound clarity, presence, and simple joy of Zen? Where it has always been - in everyday life, whether it's raising our kids, working in the office, or even cleaning the house." Or, I might add, in the simple joy and surrender of lifting weights. There's nothing special about lifting weights, not really.  It's a very simple exercise.  Pick weights up, put weights down, repeat - that's about it.  Of course, its the sheer simplicity and very Zen-like nature of lifting that does  make it special, and therein lies its true worth.  And after doing it for a length of time, it simply becomes something that one does, but also something that one cannot but  do. Some posts ago, I wrote something very similar to this on the Zen-like practice of lifting weigh...

  Throughout the course of my lifting career, I've tried quite a few programs, putting them to the test where the "rubber meats the road" so to speak: the gym.  I've had some misses (Mentzer-style H.I.T. training would be a good example) and I've definitely had surprising successes, such as Sheiko-style training programs, which - when I looked at them on paper - I thought there was no way in hell his programs would work.  But, much to my surprise, I got stronger (and bigger while eating hardly anything) on a Sheiko program. Matthew Sloan warming up for a big deadlift session. I've often had success, too, with programs that are wildly diverse.  I built a lot of muscle mass with one-bodypart-per-week programs when I was much younger - more than 25 years ago!  And I've built an impressive amount of strength using very high-frequency training.  When I squatted and deadlifted well over triple my bodyweight in competition, I used HFT - Sheiko, Smolov, and my own...

Slovenian powerlifter Erni Gregorčič at Worlds 2014 in Sydney, Australia The other day, I received an email from a reader who wanted to know if I still felt the same way about strength training - specifically Russian strength training, for some reason - as I did years ago.  He asked this, he said, because I hadn't published very much on the subject in the last couple of years.  I replied that, of course, I still feel the same way about the efficacy of strength and power programs that I recommended 10 years ago as I do today. There really is nothing new under the strength and power building sun. With that being said, for those of you new to Russian-style training, here are the "rules" of Russian-style training as recommended by strength guru Pavel Tsatsouline*: 1. You must lift heavy. 2. You must limit your reps to five. 3. You must avoid muscular failure. 4. You must cycle your loads. 5. You must stay tight.  Tension is power. 6. You must treat your strength as a ski...

Entering Deeply into Practice Bodhidharma (a.k.a. Da Mo), first patriarch of Zen*       “ While you are continuing this practice, week after week, year after year, your experience will become deeper and deeper, and your experience will cover everything you do in your everyday life.  The most important thing is to forget all gaining ideas, all dualistic ideas.  In other words, just practice zazen in a certain posture.  Do not think about anything.  Just remain on your cushion without expecting anything.  Then eventually you will resume your own true nature.  That is to say, your own true nature resumes itself. ” Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind      In a past blog entry on Zen, martial arts, and building muscle mass, I made a brief mention of entering deeply into practice .  But what does this mean, to “enter deeply into practice”?  First, and for some odd reason this seems to be a poi...

Three "Rapid Fire"* Routines for Mind-Blowing Arm Growth Garrett Sloan builds his muscular arms with various programs When I started bodybuilding—as I may have mentioned elsewhere on this blog—the first programs that I followed were ones in the "briefer-is-better for massive growth" vein of '80s and '90s training articles.  This sort of training was personified by the Mentzer brothers in the '70s and early '80s, and before that was brought to the world primarily through Arthur Jones (who was the person the Mentzer brothers, Mike and Ray, received their inspiration from in the first place).  And if, like me, you read a lot of Ironman magazine  in the '80s and '90s, then you know that the Mentzers and Jones were influential with other Ironman  writers such as Steve Holman, John Little, Stuart Robert, and Richard Winett.  (Not to mention Bradley Steiner, even though Steiner wasn't really interested in "HIT" training, but was ju...

A.K.A: Building Muscle and Strength Under Lockdown and Self-Isolation If you're anything like me (and I have a good feeling that many of you are), you haven't left the house in a couple days.  And I have a good feeling, you may even be reading this blog entry because you're surfing the internet a little more than usual in self-isolation/lockdown/quarantine mode - whichever one better suits your situation - in hopes of finding some ways to continue your gains (or at least not bring them to a grinding halt) while you have no way to make it to the gym.  But if you're also like me (and this where I also have a good feeling that many of you are decidedly not  like me), you have a full gym at your disposal in the confines of your garage, replete with squat rack, deadlift and Oly-lifting platform, a bad-ass Forza bench, a good 1,500 lbs of free weights, not to mention various other bands, chains, benches, and other assorted goodies such as sleds and sandbags.  Ok...