C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

 This morning, I checked my email - as I routinely do most mornings - and found an interesting question from a young man who wanted to increase his overhead pressing strength.  It was "interesting" in the sense that this young lifter says he has made great gains in the squat from using the classic 20-rep breathing squats regimen as espoused by Randall Strossen in his generally awesome and perennial bestseller Super Squats .  It was also "interesting" because this is the 3rd time  that I have seen (or heard) this question asked - or at least questions incredibly similar to this one.  The first time I saw it was when I was perusing some of my Uncle Kirk's old IronMan magazines  from the '60s and '70s that he kept in one his sheds on his ranch in East Texas.  (Speaking of my Uncle Kirk - who can still deadlift over 400lbs at 70 years young - I need to write a series of articles/posts on "Tales from East Texas Powerbuilders", where I can introduce...

 For some reason, by FAR the most "hits" on any of my pages here at Integral Strength are for one of my oldest posts, one that I wrote in 2009 when I first started this blog entitled "Old Time Mass Tactics: One-Exercise-Per-Bodypart Training."  You can read it here if you're interested: https://cssloanstrength.blogspot.com/2009/05/old-time-mass-tactics-one-exercise-per.html Even though I wrote that piece when I was 35 - and I'm now 48 - I do think that it still "stands on it's own", and so I wouldn't change much, if anything, about it.  However, my views HAVE changed a little since that time, primarily when it comes to older lifters because, well, I'm  an older lifter now, and when you're in your upper 40s (or older) you probably  shouldn't train the way you did when you were in your early to mid 30s.  For instance, when I was in my early 30s, I was the strongest I had ever been in my entire life.  I could squat and deadlift (in...

  It never fails. It's an utter truth. And no matter how many times we remind ourselves NOT to do it, we do it anyway. So what is "it"?  IT  is our natural tendency to want to make things more complex; it's our natural tendency to slide away  from the simple, and to look for things of more complexity; it is our urge - no matter how many times we tell ourselves that it's going to be different - to NOT  do the basic training that we should  be doing! The "original" power-builder  Pat Casey built his mass and strength using the basics! Why do we do this?  The primary reason is probably nothing more than human nature.  We convince ourselves that we will get better results if only  we do more - more exercises, more sets and reps, more days of training, multiple exercises-per-bodypart, endless variations of different exercises... the list seems to go on and on. I suppose before going much further, I should add a caveat: variation  and vol...

Read on and discover the REAL connection between Zen and the martial arts! Taisen Deshimaru - the great Soto Zen monk of the 20th century - clearly taught that there was a correlation between martial arts and Zen.      There has long been a debate over how much, if any, influence Zen has had on the martial arts.  There has also been interest over the years as to whether or not mutual exchanges occurred between the various martial arts and the various Buddhist philosophies of silent/seated meditation - i.e.: Zen.  Zen is the Japanese translation of the Chinese "Chan", itself a translation of the Indian/Sanskrit word "Dhyana", which simply means "seated meditation" in English.  I write "philosophies" (plural) of Buddhist meditation because there are many "Zens".  Not only is Zen known as Chan in China, but it's also practiced as "Seon" in Korea, and "Thien" in Vietnam.  (Probably the most popular Zen monk in the wo...

 For this latest installment of my semi-regular "Fundamentals" series (inspired by the great IronMan  writer of my youth, Bradley Steiner), I thought it would be a fitting time to discuss a few of the fundamental lessons  that I've learned from lifting, lessons I sure-as-hell wish I'd known when I was first starting out.  So here goes... Matthew Sloan builds his muscle mass through "consistent" training! Lesson #1: Consistency Trumps Everything      The first lesson here is the one that most people intuitively "know" to be correct.  If you want to gain plenty of muscle mass, get stronger, lose bodyfat, or whatever-your-goals, it's not going to happen without consistency.      In other words, showing up  isn't just "half" the battle; it's the foundation that underlies everything else.      Now, since this is the one lesson here that is naturally intuitive, how come folks don't have more success at, well, anything ...

 I have - on and off since my youth - practiced zazen.  But the sort of zazen that I was introduced to as a young man in the Isshin-Ryu dojo of my formative years was (as I have said before elsewhere on this blog) decidedly of a Soto-style nature.  Specifically, it was what is known in Zen as shikantaza , often translated as just sitting.  But "just sitting" can be a lot harder than it sounds. The following is from Japanese-American monk-priest Sokuzan, in a new book of his entitled "108 Meditation Instructions."  I admit to knowing very little about Sokuzan, despite typically being familiar with the American-Buddhist "scene", but what he has to say here has a depth to it that you don't typically encounter in American Zen. Enjoy! Kodo Sawaki sitting in Zazen Why do this kind of meditation (shikantaza) rather than shine or thaktong or samatha and vipassana?  Why not do creation/completion practices or deity yoga visualizations?  Or mantras?  Why no...

 A.K.A: Intermittent Fasting Ain't Nothin' New! Wallace D. Wattles was a popular early New Thought writer I was reading through a book this morning from one of the early New Thought writers in American history - and one of the lesser known ones:  Wallace D. Wattles.  In 1910, three of his "prosperity" books were published.  (And I don't think they were called "prosperity" but rather "New Thought" since the word New Thought had been in usage already  by 1910.)  The three books were entitled, "The Science of Getting Rich," "The Science of Being Well," and "The Science of Being Great."  Of the three, the "Science of Getting Rich" was his most popular, and you can find quite a few copies/versions available from different book dealers. But the book I was reading this morning was The Science of Being Well .  I wanted to share a few quotes from it with you, and to show you how intermittent fasting really is  not...