Tension, goals and strength: lessons from coach Dan John

This is session number 61 of the Performance Place Sports Care Podcast. The hittiestness of that foot will haunt me forever. Welcome to the Performance Place Sports Care Podcast, where you can learn about sports injury theory, rehab, diagnosis, and how to understand the doctor lingo you didn't understand at your appointment. And now, your host, Dr. Sebastian Gonzales. Hey everybody, it's Dr. Sebastian Gonzales again with the Performance Place Sports Care Podcast. And that was a reference from Mr. Deeds, which is an Adam Sandler movie. It's one of my favorite. I think you're starting to realize what types of movies I like.

But yeah, I'm not a big fan of the new Adam Sandler movies, but I gave him a chance on Netflix there. But he's got some good stuff. So if you haven't seen it, it's amazing. So today we're going to have on an excellent guest, okay? He is a big name guest. It's Dan John. Dan John is a world-renowned strength coach. He has lots of books, and I will link to some of them in the show notes as well. And we will reference some of the concepts through the discussion here into the show notes for those e-books. Because mainly, I mean, we only got about an hour or 15 to go through this. And this is one of the longer podcasts that I've had, but there was so much good information I didn't want us to stop.

So what we're trying to do in this one is, I thought I would have him on mainly because we as healthcare providers and fitness professionals sometimes have a little bit of trouble getting people to understand the reason they need strength, the reason why they need to do certain exercises, the reason why we need to intervene a little bit. So with Dan John, we went a little bit into why strength is important, why tension is important, how to make exercise safe. And I think the interesting part was that we spent the first 30 minutes, we didn't even talk about really an exercise much at all, more so the philosophy of how to get people to realize that they need to add this stuff in and how to change them, how to change their mind, how to kind of mold them into someone who will receive and excel with their training program.

So Dan John is going to help us out with all that stuff. So if you're a fitness professional, if you're a doctor, a PT, a chiropractor, or anyone who wants to share with their patient, their client, or their friend, kind of an intervention and show them that there's another way to live to how to decrease morbidities or comorbidities that people die of and how to just feel overall good. This is going to be a great podcast for that. So without any further ado, let's have on Dan John. All right, everyone, here's Dan John. Dan John, say hi. Hello, how are you? Excellent, great. I'm really glad to have you on.

I've been thinking about having you on for a while, actually. So you were walking your dog earlier. Yeah, I tried to, today I front squatted and then did some mobility work. And no one showed up at the gym today, which broke my heart. And so I took my dog for a walk. And then when you called, it was like, yeah, I can get home. So it's good, though. He's a happy puppy and we're ready to go. Do you bring him to the gym, too? The gym is my garage. He is a part of, he loves it. Actually, he spends time. He likes everybody who shows up. If we start a video, he always gets right in the middle of it.

He's a pound puppy who's just found a home with us. His name is Sirius Black, and he's just a marvelous little guy. Did he come with that name, or are you a Harry Potter fan? A Harry Potter fan, my friend, yeah. He's a big black dog who is just full of love, and it makes sense. All right, so I thought I would have you on today because I actually had Stuart McGill on as well on a different podcast. He's such a good guy. He's amazing. Like, I actually, I was a little intimidated, honestly, in the podcast because I thought he's a smart dude. Yeah. So I'm a little intimidated with you having you on, too, but I know you're a great guy as well.

But I thought today, just like with him, I went down the route of what would Stuart McGill tell your person with back pain to really explain it away and get them to make the right steps in life, right? Sure. So I wanted to have you do the same thing for doctors, PTs, trainers who are having people really resistant of building strength and just kind of hitting all the reasons why. So sound good to you today? Well, let's just start off with the most obvious problem of all, is that when you say strength training to me, I hear this. When the patient hears strength training, they hear that. And until you deal with this issue, we could start with Ludwig Wittgenstein and go through Wittgenstein logic, but that doesn't work because let's go to, so instead, let's go to theology and simplify it as much as I can.

Is that okay, Seb? Sounds perfect. There's a word in theology. It's how you look at a symbol or a word or whatever. It's called steno. It is a word that has one meaning. And then the other would be tensive. That's a word that would have multiple meanings. A tensive symbol, for example, would be a full moon at the start of the film. It could be moonstruck or it could be a werewolf movie. You don't have enough information yet. So full moons easily can represent Dracula, werewolves, but it also can just as easily be a romantic movie. So you just need, but it does represent something. You just need a little bit more word.

Now, a steno symbol is something you can't even, you can't even really recognize because it only has one meaning. The best example I, well, there's two great examples, the word gay and the word bad. The word gay, a hundred years ago, meant happy. In 2017, it has a different singular meaning. Whereas if you call it mom and dad, they say, how are you doing? And you respond, I'm gay, the conversation changes, you know, um, the word bad. When I was young for a movie meant bad. It said, don't go see it. Then it was bad, which meant good. And to the point that even in 2017 or so, you're still going to struggle when someone says the movie in writing anyway, the movie is bad.

It's become a tensive symbol. If you fall. Yeah. Here's my point. When you say weightlifting, when you say weight training, when you say strength work, there is now a center symbol for it that came in the year 1975 with the book, Arnold, the education of bodybuilder. When people hear strength training, what they hear is Mr. Olympia, Mr. Universe, those, uh, physiques, uh, that kind of thing. They don't hear getting stronger anymore. I, and this has been tough for me. I work with this all the time. I'll be at a workshop and someone raised their hand and go, why do you like burpees? And I'm like, I don't like or dislike the invention of Royal Burpee by the guy, the guy who invented burpee.

His name was Royal Burpee. True story. So, uh, I don't, uh, I don't dislike his invention. There's just not a strength training. Yeah. You get really tired. What, what are you talking about? You follow the question problem here, right there. So, it's like when I'm at a, uh, uh, uh, at a party and someone comes up and says, Dan, I'm, I'm not, I'm not very religious, but I'm spiritual. I always follow up with what do you mean by that? So, when someone says they're going to start lifting weights, I have to lean in and say, what do you mean by lifting weights? As an Olympic lifter, I think you're going to put weights over your head.

And then when someone says down, you'll drop it. And then the three judges will give you red lights or white lights. If you're a power lifter, they have a different vision paradigm of this. Bodybuilders. Well, I'm going to lift weights. So, I'll look better on the dais in my posing trucks. The high school kid, we're going to lift some weights. You know, like that TV show and that month. And we're all high five each other at the end. So, when you say right from the beginning, and this is the, I'm telling you, a lot of people have already fast forwarded through this. But this is the essential key.

What do you mean by it? So, when I say strength training, it's work based on first level will be tension, the next level will be load, where we make you stronger. There may or may not be changes in body composition. In fact, you really can't change body composition until you get strong enough so that the load can truly start that hormonal cascade. But every single woman you say lift weights, their first concept is some beast they saw on a TV show one time. Moms will hear that their son is going to start lifting weights. Their first image is some, you know, drugged up professional bodybuilder, you know, doing most muscular.

Where, you know, it takes more than a few weeks to get to that level. So, right there from the start, right there from the start, this is the first problem we have. People don't know what you mean by that. And so, when I train people for strength, and you say, what about throwing any exercise I don't use, and it drives me crazy at workshops until people realize I'm not answering stupid questions anymore. You can just throw out a bunch of exercises. What about jumping jacks? Well, what about them? What about slap jacks? Jumping rope. Why do you keep, not one of those is strength training. And yet, you keep asking me these questions.

Because people have mixed fat loss, body composition, body building, which is a quality, and swirled it into strength work, which is another quality. But there's also mobility and flexibility and agility. There's tactics, strategy, grand tactics, and grand strategy. These are all different qualities, and I'm trying to get people to talk about getting stronger. Because if you can get someone stronger, there's a real good chance they're not going to need geriatric care. They might even get the hormonal cascade that we get from training with the high-end reps. We might change the quality of life, and there might be no change at all to how the person looks at first.

So, when people do address you, and we go through this, you said steno symbol, right? Steno. S-T-E-N-O. And if you spell it backwards, it's O-N-E-1. So, that's the easy way to remember. So, when you address this with someone, how long does it really take in conversation to get to what they actually want? Because I know that you said in the seminar over at Perform Better, they kind of tell you what you think, what they think you want to hear, right? Yeah. Oh, so that's okay. There's the other side of it. Let's just finish with what you're trying to do at the first point. How long will it take? It could take forever.

Because some people will put up such a wall that you can never break through it. At the Perform Better seminar, I also talked about no matter what answer I give a client, a personal training client, they always hear vomiting and starvation diets. Even if I say, we're just going to get you stronger, we're going to do a few sets here and a few sets there, focusing on proper technique, mastery of the movement, and intelligent load, their brain will hear vomit, sweat, vomit, sweat, because that is their worldview and what I'm going to say to them. And if I say to them, I call it the more, more, more diet, I want you to eat more protein, I want you to eat more vegetables, I want you to eat, drink more water, and I want you to take more fish oil capsules, just for example.

More, more, more, more, more, more. What they hear is rabbit food and starvation. Even though I say, I want you to eat 27 meals a day, and every meal is going to have a pound of salmon and a pound of steak and a lot of vegetables. Which, by the way, you could never actually do, but it's a good example of hyperbole. They would still hear starvation. Yeah. So, is there, you said they're always going to feel that. So, when you. It's possible. Possible. So, when you're working with someone in your gym and you have, say they've made extreme strength gains, they feel better, they look better, and so on.

Do they, at some point, just start to realize more is, or sweating and vomiting is not the only thing they need? It, the proof, it's the old proof is in the pudding. So, you do, that's the, you do need some time. I've had kids come back and tell me, you know, we had a football team so strong that the scout team physically was stronger than any team we played that season. And the kids would come back and say, I threw these guys around. That is when they buy in, okay? With the females, especially at the high school level, boy, getting the buy-in to weight training takes a while until suddenly there's this little snap or click or whatever you want to say.

The button gets flashed and boom, oh, I feel better, look better, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, it is one of those hard ones because the proof is in the pudding. And to convince people that moving better, moving easier, my good friend Tim Anderson just wrote a great blog about how he passed the RKC that I just taught by focusing on making the hard easy. And I looked at that and it's like, this is the single smartest thing I've seen in years, making the hard easy. Because that's my, that's what I'm supposed to make you, as your coach, I'm supposed to make hard things easier. You know, like standing in front of 26,000 people after they call your name and performing the best of your whole life.

To be honest with you, I don't know if you ever stood in front of 26,000 people. Never. And having your name called and then stepping up to perform. The, you know, if you're not ready for the big stage, you're not ready. You get smaller. And so, so that is a hard thing. And my job as a coach is to make that feel easy. Which is why, one, just a side note here, Seb, is that, that's why I like to spend time talking to artists, Broadway, Broadway dancers, Broadway singers, people who do TV shows and things like that. Movies. My friend Wally Dunn's done like 13 movies and talking to him about this kind of thing made me actually a better sports coach because performers perform.

And so you need to, so when I said the proof is in the pudding, you know, a few months after doing this, you look better, you feel better, you perform better, whether it's in the carrying the groceries in the house to the bedroom, to the helping someone move a couch. That's when all of a sudden the switch goes off. Yeah. You know, I, one thing I've always liked about all the stuff you put out, Dan, is that it seems like you get on the philosophical level as well as the psychological level of training, but also other things. And I've always thought you made complex things seem really easy, although we can make them harder when we get into the intricacies of it.

But do, when did you start doing that? Was that like, was that just because of your own personal venture or did you find a need to get deeper in the psychology of people? Well, it's not psychology. Well, okay. It's funny you said philosophy because you nailed it right there. So philosophy is based on geometry. In fact, Aristotle's school, there was a sign, you know, if you don't know geometry, don't enter. And it's fascinating because theology is based on philosophy, which is based on geometry. So the one math class that was the easiest of my whole life was geometry. I could do proofs. I could look at a proof, just look at it and get it right.

But do you mind if I go down this road? Because this is gold. Oh, sure. Gold. So, so there's two things. There's two sides to everything. There's the givens. Now, if you're talking about, let's talk about this person. I'm going to try to improve their life or improve their performance. They're givens. Their DNA, you know, the joke I always make when a mom tells me they want their son to play in the NFL, I always say, you should have shown wiser in the backseat because it's DNA. The next area is something like a given is geography. You know, if you're from Southern California and you want to be a surfer, that makes sense.

If you're from Iowa, you have an issue. If you're from Iowa and you want to be a wrestler, you chose wisely. Canadians and hockey, you chose wisely. So, very often, your geography impacts literally where you live. So, the first two are givens are genetics and geography. From there, some of it's luck. Literally, I bumped into my Olympic lifting coach at a weightlifting meet when he was coming out of the bathroom. We literally bumped into each other. We talked for a few minutes and, of course, changed my life. There's going to be some luck in there. What are some other givens you have? Well, it does help if an athlete, for example, is lower.

The sixth child out of six tends to be a better athlete. The fifth child out of five tends to be a better athlete because they're used to chasing all the time. If you had older brothers who are wrestlers, you're probably going to be a pretty good wrestler. So, sometimes, it's just little things like that. If you go to a school with a great tradition of, and then fill in the blank, and that's what you want to do, you want to fill in the blank, you're very lucky and here we go. And, of course, the other thing is getting the right mentors and things like that, the right coaches, however you want to call them.

So, those are your givens, your structure, your DNA, your geography, family issues, community stuff, like what school you go to. And then the to-prove side is what goal you want to do. So, given your givens, and you show up to me. How old is that? I am 35. Just a mere child. Okay. So, at age 35, you'd come up and say, Dan, I want to be the world's greatest shot putter. One thing I would look at, you would see how tall you are and how wide you are. And then I'd trade nicely, as nicely as I could, bring up the fact that you're 35. Having said that, that list of givens, and, of course, let's also do this.

You live in the Arctic Circle, so there are no rings or places to throw the shot. Your givens have made it a little bit more difficult to get there. Okay? To your goal. So, but it doesn't mean you can't get your goal. If you come up to me and say, Dan, I'm 35. I was in great shape in high school. I let myself slide when I joined the frat in college, and I drank beer, and I got this high-pressure job. But I just got a buyout, and I decided to take two years aside and get back into shape. Boy, when you said two years, I leaned forward. Because when you gave me those two years, I kind of caught my breath.

Oh, okay, you're not a total idiot. Okay. You gave me two years to undo 18 years of damage or so. Okay? So your givens didn't necessarily change in those two stories, but your to prove did. And it's much easier to prove if you give me two years to get into good shape versus five years to be the best shot putter in the world. You follow? So, yes, it is based on geometry. Here's the funny other thing about geometry is there's three things in geometry and philosophy people miss. The first is the deductive method, which is really the given and to proves. To me, that's the thing I like the best. The next is inductive, of course, and that's when you look at it.

And that's what I think great coaches can do very well. That's when your experience shows up, you know. That's when you have the ability – people joke because I can – I assess, by the way, someone says good morning. I just look over and I go, oh, okay. And my mind takes in 10,000, you know, just does all this matrix, you know, all these numbers start flashing. And I go, yeah, you need to lose weight, you know. I was like, oh, what a scientist, you know. And, of course, the last one is, of course, famously, abduction, not the movement of the shoulders or hips, but what Sherlock Holmes does, you know, Sherlock Holmes, it was not deduction or induction, it was abduction.

That's when you throw out everything that's impossible, whatever remains, is probably the answer. And I think good coaches do that naturally. You know, when you're trying to build a football team, you might have – if I said tens of thousands of factors to consider, I don't think that's an exaggeration, but after about a 10-year period, you'll talk to a good football, basketball, track coach, fitness coach, and they'll be able to say, yeah, all that's fine and dandy, but what works is this. All that other stuff is wonderful. And, in fact, it's fun to talk about these magic spices and stuff. But, really, you know, that book came out a couple years ago, and the author was recommending going to – and taking all these extracts of green tea and stuff.

And, it's like, you know, I mean, what really works is, at some level, honestly, is calories in, calories out, truly. I'm not discounting hormones. I'm not discounting thyroid issues. I'm not discounting your biome and your belly. I'm not discounting food additives. I get that. But, really, you know, if you want to be a better runner, run. You know, I have seen that so true in my life. Like, throwers throw, sprinters sprint, hurdlers hurdle. And then you can raise your hand and say, what about this? And I'll be like, well, if you've got a hurdler who doesn't hurdle, I don't care what – you know.

So, you follow my point where abduction comes from, right? And so, yes, when you talk about me being a philosopher, it is because my mind does go in that direction. And what's nice about letting your mind go in that direction is it does provide a lot of clarity. Because you get more and more used to saying, well, the great Lou Holtz line, what's important now? You got a little sign, when? What's important now? And if you can kind of focus on what's important now, what's important, the other stuff kind of just gets out of the way. You know, when I first started working with people, I had all – I mean, these – boy, I feel bad for my first person's people.

I mean, we had them on, you know, diets that would get you prepped for the Olympia, cardiovascular programs, you know, strength, mobility. Now, if I first – the first month I work with you, I ask you to drink two glasses of water a day. That's it. Well, you're going to say, well, that's not to me. I have worked with people who can't do that for two weeks. What do you think the reason is? People have a thing called a mouth, and they can blow air through it and make words. But it gets back to the other point and made it perform better. You know, if – when I'm at a party and people know – like, I've got another book coming out.

I think it's 13 or something like that. And someone will say something, I've got a new book coming out. And I'll say, yes, I do. And already I know it's time to get more bourbon because here it comes. Someone will say, oh, what's it on? It's on strength training. It is on strength training. And then the woman will grab part of her butt and say, how do you get rid of this? It's like – It's a long topic at that point, isn't it? Well, and so – but whenever somebody says to a – when a trainer says to you, what do you want? The steno symbol you respond back is fat loss. Well, actually, it's weight loss.

But you have to correct them because it's fat loss. And then no matter what the trainer then says, the client hears rabbit food, starvation, vomit, sweating. No matter – I actually just said two glasses of water a month. But what you heard was all of that. Because you can't hear me when I say, I'll work with you. But you have to – I'm going to be your accountability buddy for a month. I'm going to call you every night at 9 o'clock to see whether or not you drank those two glasses of water. I have a funny story because I used to call this guy at 9, and it always rang a number of times. And I'm pretty sure it's because he drank his second glass of water at that time.

Yeah. Probably the water in his mouth at that point. But a year later, he lost 100 pounds and ran a half marathon. That's amazing. With the very first month being two glasses of water a day. The second month was I told everybody at work. We found the farthest parking spot we could from his office. And I told people, if his car is not there, here's my phone number because I'm going to fire him as a client. If he parks anywhere – so if he forgot something, he had to walk. That wasn't crazy. But no matter – every time he went back and forth to his car. But here's the thing. Here's what was good about that.

Every time he parked his car, he was on task for his goal. I have – this is sliding on another thing we call pirate maps. But let me just tell you. So I have an Olympic lift in me coming up in October. Okay? So on my computer, I have my pirate map. Do you mind if I just bore it with you real quick? No, go ahead. Okay, so it says this. One, sleep ritual. Make coffee for the morning. Blue blocking glasses after 8 p.m. Hot tub and ice shower after taking supplements. Two, wake up and be grateful. Then I have to do these movement exercises from Tim Anderson called pressing reset. Three, I have to do a one-minute meditation.

It's an app on my iPhone. One-minute meditation. Then it's three days a week I Olympic lift. Three days a week I do mobility. And then the last one is I have to eat eight different kinds of vegetables every day. But here's my point. Why do I do that? Because every meal I eat, I'm looking for vegetables to eat so I can get up to my eight. So no matter when I eat, every day when I have a meal, I'm lifting in the October weightlifting me. It means every day when I get out of bed and I do my resets, my mind is lifting in that meat. After my resets, I do my one-minute meditation where I come up. I clear my head and then I go to work.

But I've cleared my head after a workout. Even though all I did was a few rocking movements and some neck nodding and things like that. So what I'm trying to get across is that, you know, you go from the only way you can get something to turn your life around and the word we use in our world is called shark habits. One bite and you're done. And I keep trying to tell people that when you make this stuff just habit, just make it a habit, then great things start to happen for you. So he ended up parking in that parking space. Well, still does. That's his parking space. He still, everyone, he always has these little, he has these little mugs of those 64-ounce mugs you can get.

He always has them at his desk and he just sips a little bit every so often. Well, you know, it's been years since we've done this, but his habits are ingrained. So what you're trying to do, when you're trying to turn someone's life around, and I actually mean, I had an assistant coach who used to say, we're going to try to make this team do a full 360. And I would point out that a full 360 ends up in the same exact direction, but he never kind of caught on that I was being serious. But if we're trying to do a full 360, full 180, sorry, we have to, we just have to ingrain habits. And that's, and that is one of the big issues.

I was just at this conference in Norway and I found it fascinating because these guys, these nutritionists were talking about, if you put someone in a ward where they can't get out and you let them eat all they want and you keep the variety down, they all lose weight. The easiest way to get people to lose weight is have less choices. And I thought to myself, and it just zinged in my head because the week before I had some friends from Scotland come stay with us and they laughed. And we went to the landmark cafe because when they opened the breakfast menu where there's five pages of breakfast menus, instead of having breakfast and here you go, there was five pages.

Then they joked about going to an American. So in the United States, there's not, you can't just buy milk. It's whole milk, milk, 3%, 2%, 1%, almond milk, almond milk with extra calcium, almond milk. The choices are killing us as a society. So I'm tying all this in, if you follow. So when someone sits down and says, I want to lose some fat, you really have to get them to get themselves kind of, you got to get that Titanic turning the wheel earlier. And all I'm trying to do is turn the wheel, you know, we're not going to, we're not going to be able to turn, put full reverse on the Titanic. We just want to turn the wheel a little bit first, you know, uh, if they had turned that wheel earlier, it had been better.

So the later we wait to turn it, I still think it's got to be gentle. Two glasses of water a day and that kind of thing. It's almost like you're, you're molding the person, almost like prepping their, their brain for actually adding weight training. Cause like we've already been about, you know, 30 minutes in this podcast. We actually haven't given anyone quick tips or anything on how to lift, which is great. Um, cause you're slowly turning that wheel. Yeah. I mean, but if you don't do that, first off you have to, it's nothing but barriers. Next time you have record your first conversation with a client, all you will see is barriers thrown up.

Hey, I want you to lift weights. It'll make, it'll make muscle. Okay. Then we'll do a kettlebells. They look dangerous. We'll do dumbbells. Those are too heavy. Now I want you to eat, uh, uh, uh, some kind of food system. Well, I heard paleo will kill you. Yeah, sure. And of course it does. I heard orange will kill you. Yes. Cause everything ultimately will kill you. You're going to die. So you win all those arguments. Uh, yes, you're right. Weightlifting will kill me. Oh, 100 years from now, I guarantee I'll be dead. The cause of weightlifting, you know, you just, how, I mean, you feel like you're working with an NHL goalie, you know, there's just knocking everything out of the way.

And so you, you really have to, they just told you they want to lose weight. And no matter what you say to them, they push back or worse, they nod in agreement and don't know what you're even talking about. So once you get past those barriers, then how do you make it? I know one of the biggest things that people, it seems like other than they think they're gonna get massive is that safety, they think it's unsafe. So how would you, how would you make it safe? Yeah. That's well, because the biggest problem most people have is they don't understand tension, tension. The tenser you are, the safe you are.

Now the problem is most people don't understand tension because they also don't understand it's, it's, it's yin, yin relaxation. Most people live in a little bit of like a, on a scale of the one to 10, about a five all the time. And I'm asking you to get up to 10 or nine in a deadlift and then blow all that tension off and relax. For a snatch and clean and jerk, you want to be to four. I'm probably going to snatch you to four. Discus throws a four. Shot put you probably to seven for tension. So one of the hardest things to do with when you first start training people, and this is by knock on going instantly to machines.

Now listen, machines have great value and they will help with the hormonal cascade that will start the process of lean body mass growing. And so, yes, that's very good and you want to use it. The downside is machines don't teach tension. So I'll give you just a couple ideas that you should probably, but you really don't really, I would just, just do these. The first would be the pushup position plank or the traditional plank, but I like the pushup one better because you, and I want your, your knees squeezed together. We call that Utah birth control. Your heels squeezed together, your butt cheeks locked up.

I want you to pretend you have grapes in your armpits. You're squeezing the grape juice. And I want you to be as tense as you physically can. Most people do that for about three seconds and then shudder to the ground because they're not used to tension. And then we practice shaking off tension. Easiest way to get rid of tension is to smile, smile, and then shake your arms and your legs, you know. And then another good exercise I have found is the hip thrust or actually in this case, it'd be the gluteal bridge. Okay. Uh, that's the top of the hip thrust. Teach people that you're laying on your back and your, uh, your feet are on the ground.

Can you bring your, you know, your, you can put a picture of that and if you don't have one, I'll, I'll send one to you. Okay. I will put one in the show notes. Okay. Uh, just a gluteal bridge and you show people that squeeze your butt cheeks as tight as they can. And then, uh, a couple of drills I do is I have them put their hands at vertical and then I pulled up. They're on their back. So, uh, would be towards their head. Okay. And by pulling up with their arms, I make their abs tighter. Uh, sometimes I put my hands on the outside of their knees and I have them push their knees out all at the same time.

Push your knees out, squeeze your butt cheeks, pull your abs. And that teaches tension. And then two actual movement exercises. The first would be the goblet squat, which I call a moving plank. Uh, do you know who invented the goblet squat? Who did, who did invent it? Yeah. No, I don't. Mr. Goblet. No, I did. Did you? Yeah. I remember learning it over at the, uh, the RKC years ago. I think it was the plank, kettlebell swing and goblet squat and get up. Yeah. I, uh, it's funny how people like to invent things after. There's a bunch of words you use in a gym all the time that come right out of my mouth.

Yeah. You ever done a suitcase carry? I have. I use them every day. Never found a prick before I wrote the article in Men's Health, but hey, enough of that. Enough of that. He's calling the John carries. Yeah, I should have. I should like Royal Burpee, you know? Yeah. But, uh, uh, the nice thing about a goblet squat, first, it teaches that very important for long-term health of a number of joints, the, that, the deep squat. But it also teaches the person to maintain the, that whole calm, the columns area between your neck and your knees, but you have to have tension in there, but at the same time you're sliding through.

And so, push-up position plank, pop, uh, the gluteal bridge, the goblet squat, and then the farmer walk and suitcase carry, one or both. Uh, I like them both because those are, again, moving planks. If you have weight in one hand and walk, the other side of your body has to learn tension. So, that's why I always start with literally everybody I meet. I start there. So, they can get, and I'm working with people who are the best of the best in all kinds of different fields, and I go back and I start there. And it's funny because the wives sometimes, like the military guys will say, I'll tell you what he learned the most from, he won't, the military guys don't like doing hip thrusts around their friends.

And I don't, don't judge that. But the guy, the wives will say, he does these hip thrusts all the time at the home gym. And it just makes me laugh. But like, if you want to get destroyed, go for a really long suitcase carry with, I don't know, a hundred pounds in one hand, you know, go walk 10 miles with, and then turn around and walk back. Uh, don't do that. That's, that'd be insane. Even like 25 to 30 pounds is really tough on those for some people. Exactly. And that's weight. I mean, I found way too light. You gotta grab your. Yeah. But the idea is that you learn tension, those real sore muscles you have the next day.

Well, what are those muscles? And people will touch them and go, I don't know. I go, yeah, those are, those are muscles in your body. You've never said hello to before. Once you understand those four basic exercises, you can add more if you'd like, but those four are special in my world because they teach tension. And our job after every set is to teach you to blow it off. So we do move over, move over to the barbell. The dumbbell, the kettlebell, uh, the machine, the TRX, whatever load is, they've learned tension and relaxation. So when we're doing something like a row. So when we're doing something like a row in the future, I want them to have their, okay, we're doing a row of any kind.

So when we're doing something like a row of tension, we're doing something like a row of any kind of tension, we're doing a row of any kind of tension. We're doing something like a row of any kind of tension. So what we're trying to do with this is teach them the great skill and the great foundation piece of tension. Tension is the key to great strength. And once you get strong enough, then you can go back into the bodybuilding stuff because you're strong enough to get the hormonal cascade that you'll get from the bodybuilding. So in regards to, so just retracting a little bit, just to reiterate.

So it sounds like then developing tension first load, second, and this is for nine, not only performance, but also safety too. Oh, well, there's a word in the RKC effect. I'll be saying this sentence Friday morning, about eight o'clock safety is performance. Performance is safe. So if you've got a bunch of school children and you give me a discus, I can tell you where they're going to be safe. If you give one of the classmates a discus, I'm not sure where they're going to be safe. My high performance at discus store makes the discus safer. Okay. Reminds me of gun safety. Yeah, of course. I mean, scuba, snorkeling, I mean, you know, all those things.

Good performance in any of those is also the safest. When I'm around my military guys, you know, it is amazing to see the safety protocols. Uh, you know, um, I don't know how much I can share, but I tell you one thing, you know, when I'm, when I'm around them, I mean, I've got so much equipment on me and I'm just observing their conditioning, you know? And when, and these are not life, well, sometimes you lie fire, but usually it's just, you know, bang, bang, bang, because yeah, any place you go, I've heard that race car drivers are very safe on the road. But if you watch a show like ballers, you don't want to be in a car with an NFL player because they're talking to the camera at the same time.

Yeah. They're doing all kinds of things. Yeah. They're smiling. Their attention's really low. Um, so I've heard you talk about before, uh, inner strength. And so that correlation with tension then, um, can you explain? Go ahead. Are you talking about anaconda strength? Anaconda strength. Yeah. Sorry about the stupid words, but it helps when I'm working with people. No worries. I've actually used it since, since you talked about it at Perform Better. My patients seem to really love it. I, no one's been hurt yet, which is amazing because I get a lot of hurt people. Um, but I was the guy, go, go ahead.

The original concept comes from the 1964 Olympic camera champion. He was a Hungarian and he said that the secret to being a good hammer thrower was thinking of your body like an inner tube. So you have this inner pressure, like an inner tube and a bicycle tire. And I didn't fully appreciate it first. And then, but I started to notice as I started coaching longer and longer, you had a lot of kids who looked like Tarzan, played like Jane. And over and over, they, it's like, they would not do things like suitcase carry well, anything anti-rotation. They didn't do well. And I began to realize that what they don't, they don't have is this internal pressure.

Now, if a kid was a former wrestler, I'll tell you one thing, former wrestlers or wrestler, high school wrestlers make good discus and shot putters in the spring. Because I think they understand the concept of tension and anaconda strength kind of almost naturally. So the way we build it is by putting, well, a very simple way to practice is, is get to the bottom of a goblet squat and do a few curls. And when the bell falls forward, your body just swells up to counteract that load going away. And you get this pumping action of your body with every curl. And that is showing you where you're going to be heading with the anaconda strength.

Now, since then, of course, I discovered that really heavy bag carries, 100 pounds of bag carries, where I have the bag in front of me and I bear hug it. That seems to really do a good job with this anaconda strength. When you work with offensive linemen, it is what keeps, I mean, the guys who have that internal strength and can still punch, those are the guys that are great. They don't get, when they get contacted, their bodies don't turn. It's like hitting a brick wall all the time. And so, yeah, so that's, so that would be the side of things I call stone training. And there's three parts to stone training.

There's armor building, which is letting the weights hit you. That's tumbling when you, that's wrestling. And armor building is when you try to callous your body up, make calluses of your body. So you get used to hitting the ground or having a helmet hit your arm and not freaking out. Obviously, there's only certain kinds of people who need that. Then, of course, we went over anaconda strength. And the third A is what I call arrow. And that's turning your body instantly stiff. And you pick that up doing deadlifts and really deadlifts and planks. And the whole deadlift family, about a million of them.

But that's teaching, that's when you drive your tension up to nine or ten. And then, of course, after you drop a deadlift and try to get yourself back to one or two as fast as you can. So that is the family of the stone family. And that's a Sue McGill phrase. And the hammer is when you, you know, you take that drive leg and bang it into the ground. It's that drive leg banging so you can do a layup or slam. And the throws is the bracing leg. So a right-handed thrower, the hammer is the left leg. And the upper body becomes above an arrow after that. Yeah, so arrow, you see the word showed up again.

So, yeah, those are very important. I don't know of a client that you have that couldn't use some level of anaconda strength. Armor, I mean, that's, you know, football, collision occupations. Arrow has its great value, but, you know, you have to measure that one yourself. But anaconda, that internal pressure, it, well, you know, it's funny. I just did a workshop and someone asked a question. And actually, this will shock you. Are you ready for this? Uh-huh. It was a good question. They didn't ask about Royal Burpee? Royal Burpee, they didn't ask me about Burpee, or if I could only do one lift, what would it be?

Boy, but the question was, you know, what are the major gaps in the fitness industry? And I said, well, I said, post-part, you know, when we've just had babies. That's a massive gap. No, that pelvic floor work, you know, they just say, hey, you're good to go. And you just had a, you know, a parasite come out of you. And they did some damage in there. So, one of the things that can really help women is anaconda strength just to build up the pelvic floor and all the systems inside. Yeah, I agree. So many have urinary incontinence and they just think it's a normal thing that goes along with giving birth, you know?

Well, it's, but maybe, but I don't know. I mean, I don't know if bear hug carries are the answer. I don't know that. But you know what? At least let's try and just see, you know, maybe that's not it. But maybe the thing, maybe the thing we do after that is the answer. But if we're not doing anything, we're not moving, we're not moving very quickly on this. Yeah. So, let me help categorize, actually, for everyone listening, too, because we've talked about a large variety of things. I loved your quadrant system. So, people, can you help break down a little bit with goals or kind of what good expectations would be for people in different quadrants?

Because I'm sure you see a lot of people doing some very, some things that are kind of out of their quadrant. Oh, let's go through the quadrants first. And I don't, I don't want to, seal the graph off of OTP. Okay. And use that graph, okay? So, they can see it. But really, it comes down to this. Let's start with the most basic one. Quadrant one would be like middle school or high school physical education. You should learn lots and lots and lots of games and sports. You should learn how to march. You should learn gymnastics. You should learn how to get over a wall, first aid. You probably should learn how to use a defibrillator.

Heck, it wouldn't be a bad idea to learn how to fish and camp. You should know a lot of rules. You should play a lot of sports, get a lot of skills. But understanding that your level would never be very high. Okay? Okay. You're going to be, at best, miserable, I mean, poor. Okay? The joke, I always use is that. And it is true. My sixth period PE class, our basketball team won the tournament. And our team name was the endoplasmic reticulums. And the joke is, after 45 minutes, we won four to two. Now, that joke doesn't play a lot because it's just, everybody's terrible. We're all terrible. And we were the least terrible.

And so, we became six-tier PE champions. Well, okay. Quadrant two is collision sports and collision occupations. You need maybe hundreds of qualities at a fairly high level. You know, I tell people that Navy SEALs are B-plus students in 100 subjects. They're not A students. They're B-plus. To be in the NFL, you need to be a B-plus student, probably 50 things. But most of us are in quadrant three. You only need to worry about one or two qualities at a very reasonable level. I mean, as a discus thrower, you've got to be able to throw the discus. And the international standard would be, if you bench 400, snatch 250, clean 300, and back squat 450, that's strong enough to be an international level thrower.

Now, those numbers are pathetic compared to an Olympic lifter and power lifter. But they're pretty good to a normal population. It's shockingly low in fact. But you're also throwing the discus. You follow? So, quadrant three. Now, for most people, and when I say most people, I mean literally most people, they live in quadrant three. And if, honest to God, they ate some vegetables and drank water and then exercised, maybe lifted weights two or three times a week and went for a walk two or three times a week, all their dreams would come true. I'm not asking for very much here. And that's where most people are, right there.

Right. So, I mean, seriously, if you just did those four exercises, the push-up position plank, that glute bridge, the goblet squat, just the suitcase carries to them, you don't even have to buy two bells. You only need one bell, okay? There, there, there you go. Did that two times a week and then, you know, three days a week or four days a week, you and your beloved went for a walk. Not only would you be happier, you'd be probably pretty good. And that's the problem we have. Pretty good trumps anything else I know. So, when people are doing all these vomit workouts or they're not doing strength or these collection of exercises you just spoke about, are they, are they doing themselves good for that quadrant's goals?

Or is there, is there something missing in your life? Yeah, what's missing is it's unsustainable, it's unreasonable. That's what I see most of the time. You know, I'm not going to mention the training system, but it's the one that has gyms called boxes and most only stay open about 18 months. You know, you can beat the hell out of yourself, but that's not sustainable. And the thing is, if you're just, I work out to be, you know, I just work out to be better at working out. You can pull that macho crap for a while and then it just stops. And then it just stops. You just can't do it anymore. You know, if you've got a goal, I'm there with you 100%, but don't ever think your goal is to be an NFL player, to train like an NFL player.

That's the mistake we have. If you want to run 10K, go out and run and a couple days a week do, I would suggest probably make sure you keep your mobility up. You probably need flexibility, but not in the places most people think. And I would suggest some strength training just for your long-term health, but, you know, that bagel you ate after the race was probably equal to all the calories you burned running a 65-minute 10K. You know, yeah. So, finally, Quadrant 4, that's one or one, maybe two qualities at the highest levels humans can do. I always joke, if you ran a 10-100 meters, what state are you in right now, Seth?

I'm in California. That might not be true in California. But if you ran a 10-100 meters to your school, you have the school record. And your mom would wonder why no one's recruiting you to college. And my argument is you're not fast enough. Wait, you ran a 10-1, right, I know. That's just not fast enough. You know, we're at that thing one time and Dave Tate said, how many of you can bench 100? All the hands go up. How many can bench 200? Some drop, but most. How many can bench three? Rare air. How many can bench four? My hand went up. And he looked and he smiled and he goes, I have 13 guys who can bench 800 pounds.

Yeah. So, I kept putting my hand down real fast. So, I mean, you're talking about, you know, you're going to go to your local weightlifting contest and put on a big show because you snatched, you know, 363 as a super heavyweight. You know, you're going to put on a whole show and rip your shirt off. You're not making the fight. You're not a, you're, if you snatched that, you still wouldn't be good enough to make the A group at the European championships. Yeah. The Asian championships. You're not very good. And that's the problem with quadrant four is that we can look at the number and go, huh, yeah, you're only halfway as strong as you need to be.

So, that brings up something else, actually, that I heard you mention before. So, kind of having goals set, at least, kind of being in reach with even taking down times in training, it was something to that effect. Do you want to keep moving your goals? Example would be, say, so you have quadrant three, a lady can back squat 135. How much more does she really need and does she need to keep moving that carrot? How strong does she need to be? See, I used to think you did. But my good friend, Josh Helles, he talks about these, these minimal numbers, three, three pull-ups, three dips, squat or deadlift 135 for five for females.

And I really ran with that. And I, I really started to like it. Now, if you got a high school female, no matter what the body type, deadlift 275, the magic happens. His point, his point was this, he's never worked with a client who can do the three dips, three pull-ups, and the either squat or deadlift, who were not at their body composition goals. So, when you get to those numbers and you're not at your body composition goals, then we would look at nutrition, for example. You know, maybe, you know, maybe you're having some struggle. Now, I don't just, even though I know scientifically calories in, calories out is true, with females, I don't think it's absolutely true.

My wife had had an emergency thyroid removal last year. We thought it was cancerous. But once she, once she started on, you know, the treatments and stuff after, it wasn't cancerous. It was just a bad thing. But, but, but, um, her body composition changed without any change in exercise, eating or drinking alcohol, none, zero, because the thyroid wasn't working. So, and then of course, women, you know, have their, their, their, their, their menses, which throws off the hormonal cycle. So, having said all that, my point is, once you get a woman to those numbers, that's a good time for what I would call an intervention and talk about, hey, we're at this number right now.

It's a good number. Where do you want to go from here? And if she says, I saw this girl do, I saw that lady do X. I'd like to learn how to do X. My gosh, let's keep lifting weights and let's throw in plenty of time to practice X. Or she might say, you know, my reunion is coming up. My daughter's getting married. I'm getting married. I want to look great for that, those pictures. Okay, good. So, you know, look great for pictures where they have to do some kind of, you know, caloric restriction and maybe extra junk, you know, junk mileage, junk cardio, whatever. Okay. Burpees for God's sakes. So, that's, so once you get to those first levels, that, so for me, I, I, there's, and I use the word intervention.

I have a book called Intervention. I'm looking right at it right now, actually. And I call it specifically Intervention because I don't know if you guys ever seen How I Met Your Mother? Yes. Okay. I love the scenes with the interventions, especially my favorite one is the Quinn-tervention, whenever we try to get him to break up with Quinn. I love the interventions. I love that show because of interventions. An intervention is when you, as a big kid, talk with your client as a big kid, and you have a big kid conversation. It might be the best workout of the week for you. Let's just sit down and see where we are.

Hey, you know what? You've got me. Tick, tick, tick, tick. You've, you've, you've, you've ticked off some great goals. And then I would say to you, Sam, what do you want? You go, well, I saw this thing on TV called the Highland Games. And I'd be like, how, how much do you weigh, Sam? 165. Yeah. Okay. So you want to do the Highland Games. Okay. That's great. And there is a lightweight division now, so we have a chance. And I would say that to you, we have a lightweight division. Now, the one thing is you've got a lot of things to learn and we're going to have to get you bigger. So to get you, let's, let's do this.

Let's, let's get you bigger and start working on the most basic of the throwing events. You follow what I'm doing here? Yeah. And, uh, did you sign up? Did you send the check in? Did you, do you have a kilt? Do you have a hose? Do you know, do you have a flat flash for your hose? And then you go, no, no, no. And so I'm trying to get you in this, this first, this, this second really positive intervention is I'm trying to get you from, uh, is this a whim or something you really want? Now, if you say to me, Dan, I know, not only did I order the kilt, I have, it looks great on me. Uh, I ordered a little bigger cause I knew how to put some weight on.

I got the flash. I took some pictures. I signed up for the, uh, the happy days, uh, Highland Games. Uh, please give me some time. Three months from now, thank you. Three months is fine. Uh, three days is not. And so we need to, okay, you need a bigger engine, man. So let's, we're going to have to do, I hate to say it, we're going to do something like mass made simple. And you'd be like, oh, okay, that's going to be a lot of work. And you have to learn these events, but don't worry. We got time. Did you see how that worked? That's a lot of people don't do that. Just, you know, you have to stop, intervene.

You know, that's one thing I like so much about my friend Josh Ellis is he has these conversations with his clients all the time. It's not just talking, you see, we wouldn't just be, you and I aren't just talking about how's your day, how's, you know, your dog pooped on the carpet. Kids are no good. But I'm actually, you and I are actually having a conversation where we're, we're building, uh, we're, we're building a relationship, but we're going to build upon the success that we've had into a different direction. Now, if Edna just says, well, I squat at 135, can I just squat at 140? You could go, yeah, okay.

Then all you want to do is just add a little bit to every number. Yeah. Well, then you'd say, well, just stay the course. We're doing great. I've never seen that in my life, but maybe you will. Most, most people, when that snowball starts running down that hill, their goals get bigger, bigger, more exciting. You know, do they, do they ever actually, they bring up the, the big boy topic or, or do you have to pry it out of them and just dig in and figure out their goals? Well, well, yeah, well, I have a group of people I work with. So I'm 60 years old, okay, I'm 60 and I have two grandkids and, um, there comes these flashes in your life.

We realize that, uh, you know, like if you had, if you had a child born today, uh, do you have children? Oh, I don't have children. Okay. So if you had a kid this month, this year, um, you're going to do this weird thing where you do math all of a sudden and you'd be thinking, you know, I'm going to be, uh, 51 when I teach, you know, little Edna how to drive a car. And I'm going to be sneaking up on Dan John's age when I'll be walking her down the aisle and I'm a whole grandkid. You see what I'm doing? Yeah. And then when you're little Danny and little Josephine, my grandchildren look you in the eye, you do that math again.

So I hate to say it, there's a couple of events. There's a few events that make people do this naturally. The first is children, grandchildren. That's, it can also happen when a sister or brother or close friend has kids too. But Jim, the big, the big slap across the face of those, here's the other one I've found reunions, both sides of reunions. Uh, the first side is my reunions coming up in July and I, my ex-girlfriend's going to be there. I'm going to show her what she does or boyfriend or whatever. But the other side is after the reunion. I tell you, man, you could probably make a living called the after reunion reality check training.

When those pictures come out and look like, uh, yeah, you're the size that you thought you were, you know. But reunions tend to have that ability too. Now, it is also true, funerals can do this too, is these little reality checks. Um, now, maybe some of the clients that your listeners listen to, you know, you come in there. I'm at that age, by the way, where statistically it doesn't really matter what I eat, right? I mean, I'm 60. So, the most dangerous thing I do every day is take a shower. Cause you're going to slip. Is that it? Um, my wife tumbled down the stairs, uh, I had a surprise birthday party on Sunday.

Yeah. Uh, my godchild, Josephine, had a meltdown and she started to fall down the stairs. Tiff grabbed her. The momentum made them both roll down, uh, a wooden set of wooden stairs in the backyard. My wife hit her head at least twice, got a, uh, fairly good concussion and is, only today was she able to pull her straight in her neck because her body freaked out so bad. Here's the funny thing. At my age, the most dangerous thing I do is shower. And 28,000 Americans in my age cohort die every year from falls and fall related. And I got a chance to see it last Saturday, sadly, in living color because I couldn't do anything about it.

Yeah. And so what can happen sometimes is, I mean, I'm a person who likes to hear a number like that and then actively go out of my way, not to fall down a flight of stairs. Uh, we had all of our stairs reinforced about a year or two ago. You know what I mean? It was just, now I said, I'm just fixing stairs to be better. But the truth was I, I worked too hard in this field. I'd be stupid not to acknowledge what I see. Yeah. You know, um, you even went through showing how to prevent falls at that seminar recently, right? Well, you were paying attention. Kind of. Wow. Yes, I did. Did I take, did I throw myself on the ground?

Ah, you did not, you know, you didn't tumble. You didn't build any armor that day. Okay. Um, I did it at all the other ones. Oh, it's cause we had Taylor step up and show you the, so Taylor, so Taylor's on the preventive side of falling and Taylor Lewis and I'm on the falling side of falling. We're both right, by the way, we're both absolutely right. Um, so to, to get to your point, this intervention thing that we're talking about, uh, it really does depend on, uh, it depends on what that engine was to change that the catalyst that transformed them. Uh, and one of the things that would really help you at your age and maybe many of the listeners is maybe just have a little piece of paper where you start, it doesn't have to be fancy.

It doesn't have to be a matrix or a spreadsheet or anything, but start writing down the reasons people want to transform the P reasons people need an intervention. Oh, there's two columns right there. Um, here are the reasons I've come to talk to you about an intervention and here are the reasons that you've come to talk to me about wanting to transform. Can you see the subtle difference in those two phrases? Yeah. So as I see you and we, I'm here to be part of the intervention. And by the way, the best time to intervene is when somebody has already had success and you saw that this is, but this is money.

This is money. Telling someone you've had great success for the last couple of months, I want you to start thinking about and whatever you say next, what I would like you to start thinking, listen to the sentence I just told you, you have made great physical transformations and I'd like you to think just about, you know, where to go next people. You don't hear that very often. And of course, the next one is when the person comes to you and says, Hey man, I need, and what the, Hey man, I need is, you know? So it's, it's interesting because you see a lot of interventions almost, you know, like drug interventions.

You see them when they're spiraling. So it's almost like they're trying to stop the spiraling, but they didn't have success and they didn't come ask for help either. So do those, I mean, I feel like they're always, it always looks like at least when they reenact them, it looks like they're, they, they feel offended when that happens to them, you know? Well, but think about this concept called this thing called syndrome X, you know, that's that merge of hypertension when everything goes south. Okay. Wouldn't it have been nice to have an intervention before you get syndrome X? Yeah. You know, your cholesterol, I mean, I don't care about cholesterol, but you know, your heart, your resting heart rate's 305, you know, your blood pressure, they can't monitor, it gets too high and you're, you know, 57% body fat.

Wouldn't it have been nice to catch that at 49? Yeah. Well, I'm hoping this podcast is the intervention to syndrome X for a lot of people. Yeah. So, so I know they're offended, but I mean, it's how you, I mean, you know, I gotta say my children don't even know it, Kelly and Lindsay and my daughters, but they grew up around Navy seals and NFL players and people who talked about weightlifting and proper nutrition, going for a walk, being active as just normal behavior. They're both, uh, our Casey's kettlebell certified. Kelly was the youngest one ever to do it because you have to be 18. She was 18, like three hours.

Um, and they grew up in a world that they, I, I, I made every breakfast and every dinner of the bulk of their life for them. Uh, probably nine, 99% of their breakfasts and dinners I made. Okay. Uh, crock pot meals, barbecue, you know, whatever, lots of vegetables and they're 27 and 25 and they're both got it. They both missed the freshman 15. And here's why that's interesting. Lindsay was a division one hammer thrower. Okay. So, you know, the nice thing about that is I don't think we have, they're, they're past that first stage of life where the first big hit of obesity strikes, you know, that 19 to 27, 23, 24.

Yeah. Would you, am I right on this? You're right. You, you hit the, uh, I mean, if everyone doesn't know what the freshman 15 is, um, yeah, you go off to college and you gain 15 pounds, right? Yeah. And then the next big one is when you're first married, you know, those first couple of years of marriage, when you, you start doing the fast food and you start, you know, maybe start drinking too much, which I don't think it's a problem, but, and well, and then I'm not sure when the other ones are, but from my vision of women, there seems to be the late 30 seems to be a tough one because, you know, when things, things happen, you know, work and life get in the way, life, life, especially, you know, if you, if you're a mom with one of those, uh, you know, those minivan or SUVs and they're constantly chauffeuring their kids from soccer practice to elite soccer practice, to fencing lessons, to violin, you know, so you're, you're just driving around all the time.

You're not really living for your, your own life. So if, if we could intervene earlier on these, like intervene at the college level, uh, I live here in Utah, uh, it is amazing to see the culture of physical fitness. That's at the university of Utah. It's, it's actually kind of inspiring. I see it at a couple of other colleges too. I work at Westminster over here and, uh, boy, the, the, the, the, the rock climbing walls are always busy and it's great to see. Um, it, you, you don't see, you don't see as many people in parks or when's the last time you saw a bunch of kids playing baseball on the rock?

I mean that. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know if the boys in my neighborhood would know how to run their own baseball game. I think that the movie Sandlot is, is so archaic. You don't see that anymore. Yeah. Well, the film, by the way, uh, my favorite bar I go to on Friday nights, that's the street that movie was filmed on. Oh, really? Yeah. So there you go. Thanks for, thanks for the shout out to Midvale, Utah. I didn't even do my research on that one. It just popped out. Hey, that's good. Hey, you did good. You did good there. Um, so go ahead, go ahead. No, no, you're good. You're, I, I, I want to, um, well, I just want to make sure, cause we are, we are coming close to time and I, I, I do want you to say a couple of words about easy strength.

Um, cause I think it's sort of extreme value to everybody. So can you mention that a little bit? Sure. I mean, I already did. So, but one thing I want you to do, Seth, uh, yesterday I wrote a blog post on it. Okay. It was, I don't know if it was because of our discussion coming up, whatever, but everything I could possibly say about easy strength without you cheap buying people, buying the darn book is on that blog post. Make sure that's linked in there. I have a one hour talk on it. I have a PowerPoint presentation. I have massive articles on it. I have a very interesting thing on the first strength book.

I ever read in there. I got links to my books. If you want to read more, I'm not selling my books. I'm just saying, if you do, here's the concept of easy strength. I was trying to be the oldest person ever to qualify for the Olympic trials at age 47. Okay. And my friend Pavel said to me, you know, for the next 40 days, pick five exercises, never go to failure. Never even feel like you're straining. Day 22, I had lifetime PRs doing this program. By the time I got to day 40, people, I'd go to track meets and beat all these young college kids. And people come up and go, hey man, no big deal. But what kind of, you don't look at, what kind of drugs are you on?

No. And I would tell them to work out and they'd go, oh BS. So it's, you pick five exercises and I would recommend, do you mind if I go on just a little bit? No, go ahead. Go ahead. Okay. I call them the three verticals first. This is the foundation is the three verticals. Any, an overhead press, by the way, overhead press or variation, a pull up or variation, a deadlift or variation. The reason these three work always is because the stroke of an overhead press or a pull up or a deadlift is short, tight, and not very complex. So it works. So a press, an overhead press, a pull up, a deadlift. With those, you follow the rule of 10.

Now for, if you have questions, you're going to read the articles and the materials I provided. Okay. I actually outlined every rep and set for stupid, uh, the, uh, for the people who need so much information that you drive me crazy. I'll link them. So it's the rule of 10, which means you only do 10 reps each. So on easy days, you do one set of 10 with a really light, light weight, a heavy, hard day might be five sets of two, uh, three sets of three. So they all add up to 10. Yeah. Now the other two exercises, I strongly recommend some kind of ballistic, uh, huffy, puffy thing. Uh, if you know how to kettlebell swing or kettlebell snatch, pick those two.

Now the numbers are too high. So I don't suggest any more going over 75 to 125 swings, which by the way, you probably do five, which is 75 on the snatches. I have 80 to 120, but honestly think more 50 to 50 to 80, 50 to a hundred. If the hundreds of light. So, but that's every day. Okay. So you're going to snatch 50 to a hundred reps every day. You're going to score or not both or swing 75 to 125 reps every day. And the fifth exercise should be the ab wheel, either one set of 10 or two sets of five and never think any more of the ab wheel than that. If you don't, it's a magnificent exercise. It complements the whole program perfectly.

Don't make that thing complex. Otherwise I'll have to slap you in the face because you ruined a perfectly good workout with your idiocy. Okay. I'll, I'll add that. Actually, I got five things written up on my board over here and I didn't add ab wheel. So I need to add that. So what I did the first time through is I did, uh, the incline bench press pull up a thick bar deadlift because, uh, I'm a good deadlifter. So it wouldn't really have helped me to go too heavy at the ab wheel and Oh, cheat curls. I did cheat curls with a barbell. Um, so, uh, later just through the more and more experimented, um, you can certainly do cheat curls are great.

If you, if you, that's like a power clean, but with a curl grip and you've just, you hold it. It's a, uh, power. Well, it's a power curl. How else would I say it? Uh, it's a curl where you kind of jump it up. Okay. Uh, and, uh, that works really well too. So if you don't know how to do kettlebell swings or snacks, it's just do those and uh, just never fail, never strain, never get close to feeling up to failure. Uh, try to always feel better walking out of the gym than you did. And the weirdest thing is I had workouts. I would say to Tiff, Tiffy, honey, I'm going to go get my workout in. She, I'd be back in about nine, 10 minutes.

She goes, I thought you were training. Yeah. I'm done. So you didn't have to shower. Yeah. And she'd go, I thought you were getting ready for this big track meet down. And yeah, well, I'll get out hot and sweating while I'm throwing the discus or doing my drills. But that was just a strength workout. And the problem is it brings us full circle to the first question you'll ask me. What do you mean by that? Because easy strength is all about getting stronger. Now, what's going to happen to all your listeners is this. That's not what Arnold did. I know you, person. I know. Because we're talking about getting stronger.

We're not talking about peaking the bicep. Please, strength is one quality. Hypertrophy is another quality. Body fat loss is probably another quality. These are all different qualities. Stop chasing so many rabbits. Get strong. Then call me back and we'll work on the next one. It's only, if it's 40 days, you work out five days a week. That's eight weeks. I've been lifting weights since 1965. How many eight-week periods have there been? A lot. In fact, I've been writing up a bunch of stuff on isometrics again. I've had some conversations with people who started the faith, the whole thing, and they all agree, oh, yeah, isometrics is great, but at best for four months.

But that's not how it was sold for the people selling that machines and stuff. So, I always argue everything works for about six weeks. Okay. I like it. Not much works for four months. So, what I'm asking you to do is give up eight weeks of your life to these light, easy workouts to get stronger. And don't test it every day. You know, certainly test them the five, three, two days. But if you don't feel like it that day, don't do it then. And just keep coming back. You know, it's the same way you learned how to type. Now, it's not a good example anymore because my grandkids know how to type already because they want to use computers.

But when I learned to type on a typewriter, the more you type, the better you got. It's the same exact process. The more times you do a deadlift or press, the better the nervous system learns to adapt. But then, this magical thing happens out of nowhere called the hormonal cascade where one day you're lifting weights. And the workouts have been easy and someone looks over and goes, I don't even do it. You look great. Because when the load gets big enough, the hormonal cascade kicks in. When the reps and sets and load are all right, great things happen. So, I think that's a – how would you like to recap this entire podcast?

Because I think you came full circle and stuff. Well, if you don't mind, what do you mean by that? I think that you covered – No, no, no, no. No, I know what I covered. Okay. What do you mean by that? I want to get in shape. What do you mean by that? Okay. We're going to have you do push-up position planks, glibial bridge, goblet squat, and suitcase carriers. Well, I don't want to get all muscly. What do you mean by that? And trust me, without injections, better DNA, and a bunch of other stuff, you ain't ever going to look like that. Your DNA won't support that body. So, nice try. You follow my point?

Yeah. That the biggest issue we have in this field is this conversation. And not our conversation, but the fact that I said this word, and you said this word, but we did not mean the same things, did we? Uh-huh. Okay. Perfect. I like it. And that's, that's, that's the rock of Sisyphus we're all pushing up the hill right now. Because as long as, what is it, 86% of the United States do not belong to gyms or train, because what they hear isn't what I'm, at least Dan John is selling. I hated to go third person on you, but it's not what I'm selling. Yeah. Dan, Dan, what are some, some books that people should look at for you that, uh, that you wrote that I can link to?

Oh, um, you know what, that, I would say for this conversation that if you go in, uh, in my blog from yesterday, intervention and can you go, those would be great books for everybody. Um, I would also intervention, uh, intervention is the piece that finally I was able to explain the way I see everything. Can you go is how we assess and then ties back into intervention. Okay. And then the third book would be now what, but that would be if the people are interested, but that's got the shark habits, the pirate maps, programming stuff and, uh, the principles and how I teach tension arousal. So I, uh, maybe I should, why don't you email, why don't you email Marie and see if you can get those into a bundle for your audience?

Okay. I will do that. Okay. Um, seriously, um, those, those three in a bundle would be, you know, maybe save a, have her, you know, I, I don't know if she can, she will. She's so good. Do you have a Marie's, uh, um, do you ever, I'll do it off. I'll do it off. Yeah. I'd be glad to do it for you. Maybe a little bundle for those three books just for the, uh, for your listeners. Okay. That'd be perfect. Okay. Um, lastly, then how would everyone reach you if they wanted to ride around the waist? No, that was a joke. Uh, uh, uh, my email is Dan at Dan, John.net. And then of course you can just go to my website, Dan, John.net.

Okay. Perfect. Okay. Everyone. That was Dan, John. Um, you can find him, you can find his website at Dan, John.net. Um, he does have books and products in there as well as great blog posting. Um, he has a form in there as well. So, and you could be prompted to go onto an email list, which he does have great stuff. I'm personally subscribed to his email list. So I know good stuff comes through there. Uh, if you are looking for the show notes, it's at p2sportscare.com slash podcast. If this is, I think it's session numbers, it's going to be 61, right? So 61, if you actually do p2sportscare.com slash podcast slash pound 61, it'll jump you right to all of the notes for this podcast.

So if you haven't been onto iTunes yet, please subscribe and review this for me. It helps me with different stuff that I basically create its topic. So if I hear consistently, everyone's asking about one certain thing that they want to hear about, then I will make a podcast on it. I'll try to get the best person to speak about it as Dan, John was probably one of the best things to talk people to talk about strength. So I will talk to you guys soon and have a good day.