C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  Heavy/Light/Medium Training Part Two: Bill Starr’s Secrets for Upper Body Bulk and Power +How to Move to a 4 Days a Week Program        This is, as the title indicates, the 2 nd part of our new, ongoing series on heavy, light, and medium training .   If you haven’t read it, then please go to Part One first before diving into this one.   This essay assumes an understanding of everything discussed in the first part.        Here, we will cover upper body training, and more specifically how to build your upper body pressing strength.   I’ll give you the great Bill Starr’s advice along with some of my personal insights.      I was never a strong presser, either on the bench press or on the overhead press.   The most I ever bench pressed in competition was just over 350 pounds in the 181-pound class.   Sure, that’s not bad for the average gym-goer—and, yes, I did win some local be...

  How Classic Bodybuilders Gained Mass, Sculpted Their Physiques, and Achieved Fantastic Condition!          Ever since I first picked up a muscle magazine in the 1980s, I have loved the old-school, classic bodybuilders from the decades that came before me.   I realize that I’m old enough that even my training heyday of the ‘90s is now considered “old-school,” which, if I’m being entirely honest, seems quite odd to me.   However, when I think of old-school, I think of the “silver era” of bodybuilding (roughly the ‘40s and ‘50s) along with the “golden age” of bodybuilding (‘60s and ‘70s).      I still love those eras.   I love writing about those eras.   I love reading about those eras.   I love the training from those eras.      I think that the training wisdom from those bygone days of bodybuilding glory has a lot to offer the modern bodybuilder, especially the drug-free o...

    Heavy/Light/Medium Training Part One: The Basics of Program Design      This past week, I received an email from a reader asking if I would write an article on how to design a heavy, light, medium program.   It was a bit serendipitous, as I had been gathering together some of my past articles on just that very subject with the intention of putting together an e-book entitled “The Heavy, Light, Medium Manifesto” (or something such as that; I’m a little “iffy” on the title at the moment).   You see, April of this year will be 10 years since Starr-man (as Bill Starr was sometimes affectionately known) left for that grand weightlifting gym in the sky.   And I have been thinking that what better way to honor the man than to put together a book covering every aspect of his lifting wisdom that I can think of.   His heavy, light, medium system had the single greatest impact on my personal training than any other method.   ...

High-Frequency Training Parameters and Programming Ideas      Yesterday, I was sitting in my garage gym—pen and paper in hand as I jotted down some different article ideas—watching my son Garrett go through a lower body session when I told him the title for this article.   I thought “Train Easy, Repeat Often” was a pretty good title.   I originally intended it to simply be the title for a workout program.      Then Garrett said, “Okay, but how easy and how often?”      I stroked my beard as I began to mull over his question and the wheels began turning in my mind.   “Good point,” I replied.   “Maybe that’s what the article should be about.   I could still outline some workout programs, but I could mainly just explain how much you should train based on how frequent you want to lift.”      Garrett gave me a thumbs up, then returned to his sumo deficit deadlifts.   I doubt ...