Today’s episode features legendary strength, fitness, and track coach Dan John. Dan John may have had the single greatest impact on me than any other strength writer, and has decades of experience in education, coaching, and writing. Dan has run an incredibly successful high school throws program, in addition to his strength training accolades. One of the things I feel Dan has to offer that many miss is his holistic teaching style. His education in arenas outside of the sports performance field, and his ability to connect the dots and communicate it clearly is something I’ve routinely taken great value from.
Getting stronger and being a better athlete, especially in the modern digital age can be highly confusing. There are so many training programs to choose from, as well as a strong desire to collect what one likes and toss it in the weekly workload. Dan’s work has often been a hedge against that desire, and I generally find that more minimalistic programs tend to be less stressful to create, as well as easier to monitor, implement and get focus and quality from in athletes. In reading Dan’s work (particularly Easy Strength), one can see that a simple solution that took a lot of life experience to get to is the best practice.
Today, Dan John delivers the best 70 minutes of strength and performance knowledge and wisdom you’ll get a chance to listen to for a while. For today’s show, Dan talks about how to simplify a program and cut out the unneccesary, the “Easy Strength” philosophy, and how to take it into track coaching events, the history and effectiveness of loaded carries, ownership, and effectiveness of lousy training facilities and a lack of equipment, high rep strength training, and the effect of coaching in the digital age.
Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.
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Key Points
- Thoughts on simplicity in a program
- How long athletes should be in the weight room
- Areas of modern strength programs that could be done without
- The “Easy Strength” philosophy, and how that can carry into the throwing events
- Weightroom circuits and the mixed method for throwing
- How Dan John started integrating loaded carries into his program
- The process by which Dan learned “same but different”, and how he has simply implemented it in training
- Thoughts on high rep strength training
- How the internet has affected learning in sports performance
Dan John Quotes
“It’s simple, but not easy”
“I rarely see a workout that can’t be simplified”
“Most of the time, I agree with what we found out in the 1980’s, over 45 minutes (in the weightroom) is a waste”
“You do tissue work in your dormroom, not in my weightroom”
“How much money can you make on selling sleep, and water and fasting?”
“I call them the four F’s, fitness, finance, food and relationships. All the lessons you learn in any of those areas are true anywhere”
“The school I was most successful at, we didn’t have a field or ring to throw on”
“You don’t think it at first, but you are lucky long term when you don’t have all the bells and whistles”
“I’m almost to the point where saying loaded carries should be the foundation of strength training”
“I believe that 1 out of 5 workouts should be “tonic””
“If you are not born to squat, I would never suggest doing less than 10 reps in the squat”
About Dan John
Dan John has spent his life with one foot in the world of lifting and throwing, and the other foot in academia. An All-American discus thrower, Dan has also competed at the highest levels of Olympic lifting, Highland Games and the Weight Pentathlon, an event in which he holds the American record.
Dan spends his work life blending weekly workshops and lectures with full-time writing, and is also an online religious studies instructor for Columbia College of Missouri. As a Fulbright Scholar, he toured the Middle East exploring the foundations of religious education systems. Dan is also a Senior Lecturer for St Mary’s University, Twickenham, London.
His books, on weightlifting, include Intervention, Never Let Go, Mass Made Simple and Easy Strength, written with Pavel Tsatsouline as well as From Dad, To Grad. He and Josh Hillis co-authored “Fat Loss Happens on Monday.”
In 2015, Dan wrote Can You Go? on his approach to assessments and basic training. In addition, Before We Go, another compilation akin to Never Let Go became an Amazon Bestseller.
In early 2017, Dan’s book, Now What?, his approach to Performance and dealing with “life,” became a Bestseller on Amazon. Hardstyle Kettlebell Challenge became available in September 2017, too.
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