Dan John's Top 10 Tips
by Dan John


The Classic Tips
Years ago, I offered this list of tips for athletes:

1. Use whole body lifts; rarely isolate a muscle.

2. Constantly strive to add weight to the bar and move it faster.

3. The best anabolic is water.

4. Did you eat breakfast? If not, don’t ask me anything about nutrition.

5. If you smoke or don’t wear your seatbelt, please don’t tell me the quick lifts are dangerous.

6. Go heavy, go hard.

7. Keep it simple. Less is more.

8. You have to put the bar over your head.

9. Put the bar on the floor and pick it up a bunch of different ways.

10. Know and love the roots of your sport.

I still stand by this list; however, the past few months of coaching
and working with athletes have taught me a few new lessons. The first
three contain warnings, the second three are the hard won lessons, and
the last four are the tips that work in life, in love and in lifting,
but not in that order.


The Warnings

1. Beware of anything that makes no sense.
Okay, everybody try this: breathe through your eyes.
"I’m sorry, Dan, I thought you said to breathe through my eyes."
Yes, yes I did. Now, imagine yourself as a fetus in the womb of the universe.
"What?!"
Exactly.
My first tip is to beware of anything that makes absolutely no sense
to you. If you're at the local nutrition store and the assistant day
manager begins to spout about how the regression of this or that can be
subdiverted by the axial dynamic of a bottle of stuff costing $99, be
sure to back away slowly. My favorite new thing in the nutrition stores
is the "locked" glass cabinet. Certainly, something that has to be
locked behind glass must be worth more than I make in a week!
"Breathe through your eyes" takes on many variations. There's
nothing worse than when someone takes a community education course and
becomes an expert on how yoga is the best way to burn the visceral fat
that's housed deep in your abdomen. "Breathing deep" will flush it out.
Well, doesn’t that make sense? You have fat deep in your belly, so to
eliminate it you do deep belly breathing and the air will carry the fat
out.
If someone tells you that lifting slow makes you fast or that
jolting your abs with an electric shock every few seconds will carve
out a six-pack, try to breathe through your eyes. It'll bring clarity.


2. Beware the real estate professor who doesn’t own real estate.
Several years ago I asked my buddy, Jerry, how he became so rich.
(Jerry has some serious money.) He told me a very simple story. He'd
gone to the local university and started taking courses to become a
successful business man. During the first week, a student asked the
professor in the real estate course about the professor’s holdings. The
prof said he didn't own any.
Jerry dropped out of school that day and took up a career in real
estate. He said, "If this guy’s students are my competition, I should
be a millionaire in no time." Jerry was right.
No, you don’t have to be Mr. Greater Westphalia to be an
expert in nutrition or in training, but you need to look like you
bumped into a weight somewhere in your life!
Generally, I find that I learn the most from people from other
disciplines. I've heard great advice from ballerinas, martial artists
and monks on things that have done wonders for my training. But the
point is simply this: if somebody is telling you to radically change
your training merely on a whim or unsupported opinion, ask them simply
to try it on themselves first. Beware advice from somebody who doesn’t
put the advice into practice.


3. Beware overkill.
Here's an example of overkill:
"If jumping off a small box helps my vertical leap, then jumping off a building will help that much more."
Whenever I think about this, I'm reminded of my uncle who survived a
fall of 39 stories off a building. Unfortunately, the building was 40
stories. Get it? He was fine for 39 stories; it was the last one that
did him in. Of course, my uncle was an optimist. At the 26th floor a
lady leaned out the window and asked, "How’s it going?" My uncle
answered, "So far, so good!"
Okay, sorry, enough of that. This little warning illustrated by the
statement above is perhaps the most ignored in most people’s training
programs.
"If two sets of curls make my biceps pump, I'll do twenty and the
pump will stay with me until the lights come on at the club at three in
the morning."
Well, the pump doesn’t last that long and what are you doing at a club that late anyway?
Basically, I'm talking about overkill here. You shoot the deer, then
pump it full of twenty more shots "just to make sure." It's the most
common error in sports:
"Sixty grams of fiber a day is what some guys take to cut fat, so I’ll take in 160."
"The Bulgarians train six times a day, so I'll train twelve!"
"Arnold got up to 240 in the off-season, so I'll get up to 480 and be twice as big!"
You’ve seen it. You've done it. We all do it. Stop doing it.


Hard Won Lessons

4. Everything works.
Everything works for about two weeks. Nothing works after about six
weeks. I love books that promise "Titanic Triceps in Two Weeks." Of
course, the Titanic sank, didn't you know?
Things need changing. You don’t have to throw everything out, but
like Pavel says, you must change things up so that you do the "same,
but different." So, when you change a program after two weeks, you must
learn the most unused concept in training: to be subtle. Don't use a
sledgehammer; use a touch of variation. Change your grip, change the
angle, add a little to the rest period or cut a little off, change the
order of exercises. Change it up, a little.
Now, it's possible that your training program does need a complete makeover. How can you know that? Read #5.


5. Build a foundation of basic strength.
Generally, if healthy and fit, you should be able to do a double
bodyweight deadlift and a bodyweight bench press. I won’t tell you that
you need to military press bodyweight, but that's what I insist on.
Why? A double bodyweight deadlift means that the posterior chain has
been built up enough to begin the process of adding something to the
rest of the frame. The bodyweight press is just something that's cool.
I wish I had more to say about that, but that's just the way it is: if
you can’t bench your bodyweight, don’t ask me about all the other stuff
until you can do it.
If you're not yet at this level, you need to get there. All the
excellent supplements available and all the great training programs you
read won’t put Humpty Dumpty back together until you're at these basic
levels. I've worked with many people who suddenly thrive when they get
their basic strength levels up to these marks.
You need to have some basic strength to support advanced training. If you don’t, get it!


6. Commit this to memory: It is your parents' fault.
There. I said it. Something that every daytime talk show blathers about each afternoon is finally true. Yes, blame your folks.
You're hamstrung by your genetic capabilities. I have a friend who
played for the Utah Jazz and stands 7’4". His wife is 6’2." Now, they
have three children. Do the math: will their children have a leg up
(more like two feet) on you in basketball? Yes, because they will be
taller than you!
The problem with genetics is this: exactly what have you been
dealt in the gene pool crap shoot? You can’t find out if all you do is
bench press and curl! You may be standing on the finest legs since Tom
Platz or Cory Everson, but if you don’t ever get off the pec deck,
you'll never find out the truth.
I've always wondered if I could have been an Olympic champion in
kayak, fencing or team handball. Without any exposure to these events,
is it possible that I was a natural in saber? Once again, I can blame
my parents for not exposing me to each and every athletic competition
the world has to offer. I could've been the best cow chip tosser in
world history.
Now, shake your hand at the universe and blame everything else in
your blame pantheon. Do a good job; don’t forget your third grade
teacher either.
Done? Good. Now, get back to work and forget about all of this because there's nothing, I mean nothing that can be done about it! You can stop blaming your parents now and get back to the workout.


Life Lessons

7. Stand on the shoulders of greatness.
Guess what? Whatever you're striving for has been done before.
I've had the unique opportunity to talk with most of the elite
discus throwers from the United States, including those from the
1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s. I sat in the stands with former world record
holder Fortune Gordien who told me, "When you get stuck in practice,
either do throws with iddy-biddy footwork or throw with no reverse."
It's a gem I still use, and I still call them "iddy-biddy" drills.
The road to leanness can be studied by looking over the books by
Clarence Bass or Vince Gironda. Interested in starting training as a
teen and following it through adulthood? Read Arnold’s book. The web is
loaded with books and information from strongmen from the 1890’s to the
present. Certainly, you'll need to discern some of the information, but
don’t reinvent the wheel.
Generally, I avoid clichés like the plague, but "reinventing the
wheel" is the greatest mistake most trainers make! Learn from the
greats!


8. Train outside.
Recently, T-Nation asked me what was the one thing missing from most
modern trainers' quivers. Simply this: they need to go outside and
train more.
I'm famous for my hyperbole, but in this case the following is true: You will never
reach your potential if you stay in the cozy confines of your gym. Why?
First, you'll never ever see anyone else except those in the cozy
confines of your gym. If you're the biggest guy at the spa with your
guns measuring 15 inches around, you might never be inspired to go
beyond your current regime of bench, curl, bench, curl, bench, curl.
Recently, I saw a young woman do 21 straight pull-ups and immediately
decided that I certainly had been dogging this exercise.
But when I say train "outside," I also literally mean go outside!
Get off the treadmill and run in a park. Dump the lat pulldown machine
for a set of monkey bars. Drag your bar out into the field and work
out. Make a picnic and eat between sets of deadlifts. Carry the bar
loaded for long distances. Breath fresh air for a while and click off
your DVD, CNN, or CDs.
In past articles, I've written about things like one dumbbell
training which is perfect for training outdoors. Grab a dumbbell or
kettlebell, put it on the floor of your car, drive out to a nice spot
and simply invent a workout. Lift the thing as many ways as you can
imagine and do as many reps as your body will allow.
I spend the majority of my workouts outside. Certainly, rain makes
it difficult with iron, but I've trained in snowstorms and torrid
summer days. I keep a towel on the bar so I don’t burn my hands when I
grab it, but it's well worth the effort. Besides, why go to a tanning
bed when you can get a golden tan while performing multiple clean and
jerks?


9. Have some fun!
I have a workshop that emphasizes "balance." Simply, I outline four
terms: work, rest, play and pray. (Pray can simply be "alone time." I'm
amazed at how many of my college athletes who literally have no alone
time. They're always surrounded by roommates, teammates and mate
mates.) The harder you "work," the bigger the other three components
have to become in proportion to your added level of work.
I’m amazed how "fun" has disappeared from the strength world. I
don’t mean dinking around with someone while they squat 700, I mean
training that's fun. I was raised in the gym with goofy
contests like max sit-ups on the steepest inclines, jumping up on
things and trying to leap up and touch something with the most weight
(use dumbbells, by the way. Trust me.) No, they had no Olympic medals
nor trophies or award ceremonies. But, it was fun.
You need to work hard. Okay, I agree. But we have nearly forgotten
the fun stuff, like training outside or competing at some silly game,
and the joy of the opportunity to lift weights. This isn’t the same as
making fun of someone while lifting (that can be anywhere from juvenile
to deadly), I’m talking about having a great time training. It's easy
to measure: if you're doing something that seems like five minutes of
work but it actually lasts an hour, it was probably fun.
When in doubt, listen to one of my mother’s mantras: "Go outside and play."


10. Have some passion!
Passion is a word that doesn’t mean what you think it means. It
means "to suffer." Now, that may not be how we use it today, but that's
what the root of the word means, at least in the dictionary. Let’s
define it this way — Passion: To suffer for love.
I think that greatness comes to those willing to go past the sweat.
I hear it all the time, "Look, see, I’m working hard. I’m sweating."
Yeah, well, you'll sweat in a sauna, too. It doesn’t mean nothin'.
You have to go past the "hurt," too. The hardest thing to teach
young men in football is the difference between being "hurt" and being
"injured." Injured means "out." You’re done for today, this week, this
season. "Hurt" means that you've just moved beyond the pain. Winners
learn to live with hurt. In life, you're going to be hurt a lot. Bosses
don’t always care about your "inner child" when you blow a sale or ram
an oil tanker into a dock.
Passion is learning to push beyond all of this in the pursuit of
your dreams and goals. Your goals are going to cost you in every nuance
of the word: physically, emotionally, financially and all the rest of
the "allies" you can find.
I was once asked how to generate passion in an older athlete (like me). I wrote:

1. Travel to a lot of meets.

2. Hang out with your competition for long periods afterwards.

3. Read everything and watch everything you can about your sport.

4. Travel some more. Hang out some more. Learn more.

5. Spend your money on your sport!

6. See number four above!

Simple, huh?


About the Author

Dan John is the Diocesan Director of Religious
Education for the Diocese of Salt Lake City and a full-time "on-line"
religious studies instructor for Columbia College of Missouri.
Originally from South San Francisco, Dan came to Utah to throw the
discus for Utah State University and never left. He has Masters degrees
in history and in religious education, as well as having done intensive
work at the American University in Cairo, University of Haifa, and
Cornell.

Currently, Dan is ranked number one in the world in
the Highland Games, ages 45-49, broke the American record in the Weight
Pentathlon last August, holds numerous National Championships in
weightlifting and throwing and maintains a full-time free internet
coaching site at http://danjohn.org/coach.

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