I see so many high achievers trying to achieve more with fancy things. More marketing courses, more biohacks, more books, another mastermind…I’m a fan of all of these and use them often. But all too often I see those same people forgetting about their foundation.

Jesus describes this well in the Bible. 

Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. 

Matthew 7:24-27

Your foundation is your healthy body, mind and spirit. It’s what enables you to chase those dreams, create that content or build a killer business. Without it, sooner or later it will all come crashing down.

Here are a few things that I do and recommend to my high achieving patients to fortify our foundations. 

Get chilly. Get hot. 

We live in a world of comfort and it’s literally killing us. Our bodies need a bit of stress and exposing yourself to extremes in temperature delivers the perfect amount of stress to make your hormones and neurotransmitters work like a symphony. Whether you use a sauna or hike in high heat (with plenty of water of course), splurge on a cold plunge tank for your home or end your shower with 60 seconds of cold - these little bursts of extreme will do you good.

Move like a European.

I recently spent some time in Portugal and it made exercise seem so simple. You don't have to get fancy when it comes to staying fit.* You don’t need a Peloton, Tonal, Crossfit membership or a personal trainer. You just need to move like Europeans. They walk and they walk alot. We don’t. Our work life consists of sitting at our desks for hours on end and there’s not much we can do about it. So I walk and I tell my patients to walk everywhere and walk often. Walk in the morning before work, walk on your breaks, walk at night with your spouse. It’s a health fortifier and even better, a great way to clear your mind. 

*Don’t get me wrong, I love lifting weights and building muscle is critical for longevity and health optimization. But if you’re starting from ground zero - start with moving like a European and build on your foundation with lifting and other forms of exercise when it makes sense.

Don’t eat like an asshole.

coined the term “DALA,” which stands either for “don’t act like an asshole” or “directions for acting like an adult.” In his world, it stands for the things you do that set you back from achieving your goals or helping you achieve them. I’m borrowing this idea and coining mine “DELA.” “Don’t eat like an asshole” or “directions for eating like an adult.” We all know that sugar is terrible for us and that processed food, while marketed heavily and created to excite our taste buds, is equally deadly. We also know that natural, unadulterated food, fruits and vegetables and plenty of water fuel our body. So if you want to reach higher goals, start with what you put in your mouth.

Use stress as your superpower. 

There’s this thing called the stress curve. When you’re “understressed” let’s say watching Netflix or lounging by the pool, you’re on the left side of the curve and have little to no stress. It’s an enjoyable place to be every once in a while but there’s not a whole lot getting done. Then there’s the opposite side of the curve where you are overstressed. It’s where you’d be if chased by a tiger or in today’s world what it feels like when personal or business stress overwhelm you. In this state the body starts to break down. In the middle lies the sweet spot. It’s when you’re under a bit of pressure but handling it well. It’s where the flow state originates. Learn to create a life with the perfect amount of stress and a mind that knows how to handle stress to optimize your productivity.

REST.

Unless you’re one of those who can thrive on little sleep, you can’t avoid the fact that your body and mind need it. It’s inconvenient when there’s so much to do but the fact is, your cylinders won’t be firing without sleep. During sleep, your body is restored and repaired and your mind processes the day’s events. Without it, we break down, our immune system weakens and we are more prone to mental illness. I’m rarely seen at parties after 10 pm. I’m known to crawl into someone’s bed or fall asleep on their couch if the party is dragging on too late and my family doesn’t want to leave. Be that person. Prioritize your sleep like you prioritize your dreams. 

Spend time with your muse.

In Steven Pressfield's book “War of Art,” he breaks down the importance of spending time with your muse when engaged in the act of creating. We are all artists and in order for ideas to emerge, one must spend time in quiet reflection, isolation and creation. It’s where your “muse” enters the picture and delivers you the ideas you need to take things to the next level. Whether you meditate, pray, spend time in nature or take a sabbatical - consistently allowing yourself this time will strengthen you and be a launching pad for your next creation.

Don’t ignore your family* (friends).

It may be cliche to say “no man is an island¹” but it holds a profound truth. Humans are social creatures and we thrive on connectedness. There’s a tendency to justify isolation and time alone when there’s literally SO MUCH to get done. But we pay for it with loneliness, mental disorders and a weakened body. Look at your social time as a prescription for wellness. 

*There’s a caveat to this. If your family is a bunch of assholes, spend as little time with them as possible. This is another topic for a different newsletter, but spending time with assholes will lower your vibration and weaken your foundation, 

Touch the trees.

I do this thing when I’m walking outside. I love to touch trees and bushes as I stroll around. I didn’t understand my draw to nature until I learned about the importance of nature exposure and grounding in my integrative medicine studies. Nature literally heals and our exposure to it reduces inflammation and stress, improves sleep and enhances your mood. Lack of exposure to the elements is a recipe for weakness. 

While not all inclusive, these are a few of the practices you can do to start fortifying your foundation. Whether you are aiming for big achievements or simply desire optimum health, they are a perfect starting point.
 ¹Devotions upon Emergent Occasions - John Donne

Onward

Dr. Lynn K Wagner (Dr. Wags)

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The content in my newsletters is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or health concerns.

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God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

It’s a beautiful prayer. 

Lately, I’ve been using it with my patients but changing it up a bit. It goes something like this:

God, grant me the courage to change the things I can and medicate/biohack the things I cannot. 

Let me explain. 

We live in a time of unprecedented medical advances. At our fingertips we have the wonders of science available to us to heal various diseases and science backed information on the things we can do to optimize our health, improve our longevity and increase our vitality. 

When I started my integrative medicine practice over 10 years ago, after a career in emergency medicine, I was pretty turned off by western medicine. While I knew that it was critical for emergencies or advanced disease, my goal was to get my patients on as few medications as possible and away from doctors. I was heavily focused on using lifestyle for health optimization and supplements over drugs as often as possible. If you were excessively fatigued, I told you to get more sleep and take magnesium and melatonin. If you were overweight - it was all about your diet and level of exercise. If you had widespread inflammation - I prescribed turmeric and omega 3s and told you to eat an anti-inflammatory diet. 

Needless to say, a couple of years into my new career, I had patients who had a perfect diet, exercised regularly, got enough sleep… yet still felt fat, fatigued and definitely not optimized. I had to take a hard look at my doctoring style and pivot. I enrolled in functional medicine courses, attended continuing education conferences and did a deep dive into the world of biohacking and health optimization.

Today, my patient appointments look much different than they did 10 years ago.

So do my patients. 

They are healthier, they weigh less, they have more energy, and it probably doesn’t need to be stated, they are much happier. I’ve adopted a new way of doctoring that mirrors my take on the Serenity Prayer. 

God, grant me the courage to change the things I can and medicate/biohack the things I cannot. 

And it brings us to the title of this newsletter - “Should I take Drugs?”

As would say: “it depends.”

I still believe lifestyle is key and supplements should be a part of everyone’s regimen. But with the reality of busy American lives, our toxic food system and environment and our sedentary lifestyles - unless you have unlimited resources (time and money) to spend your days perfecting your lifestyle (sourcing clean food, preparing it, exercising in a balanced way and spending time in meditation/prayer), you will likely have some areas of your health that suffer from our American lifestyle. 

Modern medicine, the fields of biohacking,* anti-aging and regenerative medicine are our antidote to the reality of modern life. 

In other words - do as much as you can through a healthy lifestyle, and incorporate reasonable biohacks into your daily practice. 

Medicate the rest.  

I’ll use me as an example. I’m a physician in Green Bay, Wisconsin. While I’d love to be living in the south of Portugal, catching sweet waves on my surfboard and enjoying fresh food, open air and little to no stress, I spend my weekdays sitting (taking care of patients, dealing with the workings of a business and reading and writing). I don’t always have access to the best food and am exposed to a fair amount of stress. I love what I do but it definitely doesn’t support optimum physical health.

Yes, I do a lot with my lifestyle. I eat fairly healthy, exercise daily and focus on sleep. But it’s not enough to counteract the realities of my professional life. 

So I make up for what’s lacking with biohacking practices (breathwork, meditation and cold plunging), supplements and yes, a few drugs including hormone replacement therapy and peptides.

I change the things I can with lifestyle and for what I can’t change - I use biohacking and medication. It’s the best of both worlds. 

If you are trying to optimize your health, you probably already know that our healthcare system won’t be able to guide you. You also probably know that optimization is hard to achieve through lifestyle alone. Work with a physician who understands how to work the system - which drugs or peptides can help you lose weight,  which hormones can offset your imbalances and which supplements are legit and deserve a place in your daily pill box.

Optimize your lifestyle first then use biohacking and modern medicine to make up for the rest.

Onward

Dr. Lynn K Wagner (Dr. Wags)

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The content in my newsletters is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or health concerns.

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When his symptoms didn’t improve despite his hard work, he did what most normal people would do and sought medical advice. Over a year, he saw not one, but three different doctors including an endocrinologist (hormone specialist). They checked him out, ran some labs, including his hormone levels and they all told him the same thing. 

Everything is normal. 

Feeling defeated, he came to our clinic and indeed, while his hormones were in normal range, they were far from optimal. We started him on testosterone replacement and a simple supplement routine. As long as he continues to live his healthy lifestyle - he will do extremely well.

This patient’s story is common. In western medicine, lab results come with a normal range. These ranges are usually large and even if you are “in range,” you may be at the bottom of that range, yet you will be told you are normal. 

There’s a big difference between normal and optimal.

I’m going to give you a breakdown on testosterone. If you prefer to listen to information rather than read, I created a 27 minute video on this topic. You can watch it here:

If you are like me and prefer to read, it’s in written form below.

A man’s testosterone peaks in his late teens and 20s, then gradually declines as he ages. Peak levels are between 700 and 1000 ng/dl. Every decade, testosterone levels drop by about 100 points, meaning it is common for a man in his 70s or 80s to have levels between 200-400 ng/dl, or even lower.

Many of my male patients who are 40-60 years old will have testosterone levels of a 70 or 80 year old. Many of them are told this is normal, as it is in normal range. While that is not an incorrect statement and they are in “normal range,” there is a problem with this mentality. 

Let me explain why.

Testosterone is man’s most dominant hormone and plays a critical role in his physiology. It is important for male growth, maturation and masculine characteristics and vital for sex drive (libido), spermatogenesis (production of sperm), bone density, fat distribution, and muscle mass/strength. Not surprising, low levels of testosterone can lead to fatigue, mood changes/irritability, low libido/erectile dysfunction, a change in body composition (loss of muscle mass and increasing fat mass), lack of motivation/drive and even brain fog. 

We are seeing a more rapid decline in men’s testosterone levels than ever before. The reasoning behind this is complex. It has to do with increasing obesity and less physical activity, the standard American diet, increased alcohol consumption, disrupted sleep patterns and environmental toxins like endocrine disruptors found in plastics and other products.

This is why lifestyle is so important. Regular exercise including strength training, a healthy diet, good sleep, stress reduction, resiliency training and reduction or elimination of toxic substances like excessive alcohol use or opioid use are critical for those wanting to optimize their hormones. I’m upfront with my male patients about this. If they aren’t willing to adopt a healthy lifestyle, it will be hard for them to maintain healthy testosterone levels. 

But often, even when they are doing everything right, as was the case with my patient, their testosterone levels may be on the low end of the scale from things they can’t control. 

This is when medical management is an option.

Testosterone optimization takes a skilled practitioner who understands the entire male hormone cascade. It can include things like human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) injections, clomiphene pills or testosterone injections and creams. It depends on the person, their age, their financial means and their desired form of treatment. It’s also not a simple process. It takes a practitioner who understands the potential side effects of testosterone therapy like elevated estrogen levels, elevated blood count, acne and hair loss. And it takes a practitioner who knows the contraindications and risks to the therapy.

Knowledge is power. I believe all men should get their hormone levels checked, even younger men. If they have suboptimal levels, they can start with making lifestyle changes and using supplementation to support healthy hormone production. If this doesn’t get them to their goal, I recommend they work with a provider who understands male hormone management, not a provider who will tell them they are “normal” when they have the hormone levels of an 80 year old.

Onward

Dr. Lynn K Wagner ()

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The content in my newsletters is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or health concerns.

We wanted to make sure you were aware that the paid subscription feature will be turned on over the next couple of weeks so that you’re not surprised or confused when we do. Some things to note:

• You won’t lose access to anything that you have access to know.

• If you want access to everything but don’t want to pay for anything or price is prohibitive, you can grab your referral link and start inviting friends to earn free months of subscription.

Commandment One is a “for fun and for purpose” project for us. We would love to see the referral program grow a community of like-minded people focused on health, wellness and looking good naked (we know that’s what everyone really wants, anyway). If everyone got access to everything for free because they were bringing so many friends to the party, we would totally be cool with that.

If you want a distraction free experience, we recommend downloading the Substack app and following the authors you like most. It’s been a great experience for us.

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The most popular articles and posts can be found here. It’s dynamically updated based on whatever you maniacs read and share so you might want to bookmark it.

Here’s What To Expect, Next

It will probably be a while before we have a consistent posting schedule. It depends on how many questions come in and what you’re interested in as a reader.

In the immediate future, there will be three primary contributors.

1. Dan John. Dan is a Senior Lecturer at Saint Mary’s University in Twickenham, England. He has been lifting since 1965. He recently was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from Great Britain for his contributions in the field of strength and conditioning. He’s one of the most well respected and pragmatic fitness professional on the planet.

2. Dr. Lynn Wagner. Lynn has a thriving practice in Wisconsin. She is dedicated to changing medicine by changing the way people think about health and wellness - and helping them ask better questions to get better results. From dry vaginas to testosterone, peptides and nutrition - there are no limits to what Dr. Wagner is prepared for and willing to address.

3. Nic Peterson (that’s me). I’ve been heavily involved in health, wellness and fitness for almost 20 years now. It’s fascinating to me because biology and physics are fascinating to me - I realized early on that I didn’t have the patience to teach others - which is why I am grateful for people like Dr. Wags and Dan. I’ll share what I’m doing and the thought process behind it - but will always defer to someone like Dan or Dr. Wags - they live and breathe this stuff.

More importantly, my journey is my journey. Dr. Wagner is booked out solid for six months in her practice and Dan has been in high demand for decades - which means they have a strong contact with reality AND a much more diverse data set to work from than I do.

I hope you decide to join us & enjoy the ride.

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Live to learn. Give to earn.

Commandment One.

PS. The New Subscribe To Success publication just dropped is on their approved publications. Check it out here. (It’s at the bottom of the page)

His doctor came in, asked a few questions and performed a quick exam. After the 5 minute visit, he turned to leave, grabbing the doorknob. As he opened the door to leave the room, he turned to my husband and said, “you are obese and your blood pressure is borderline. I’d like to run a few lab tests and see you in 6 months.” Then he left the room. 

My husband was mortified. “I’m obese,” he exclaimed!

You see, even though he knew he was a few pounds overweight, the word “obese” hit him right in the gut.

The experience was mind opening for me. I was just starting my integrative medicine practice and even though I knew he definitely needed to lose some weight, I was appalled at how the doctor delivered the diagnosis. My husband was told he was obese as the doctor walked out of the room. No explanation, no further instructions and no tips on how to reverse a problem that we know can cause long term complications.

I knew what would happen if we did what the doctor said. In six months,  he’d still be overweight, his blood pressure would still be a bit high and he’d be placed on 1-2 drugs to treat his “diseases.”

We never went to his follow-up exam. We did his labs and he became a patient at Wagner Integrative Health instead. 

Since that visit, ten years ago, my husband has made some major changes to his lifestyle. He eats healthy and exercises regularly. He prioritizes sleep. He’s used some medications to optimize his health while also working on his lifestyle.

He’s no longer obese or hypertensive.

I like to think my husband was lucky. I think about the hundreds of thousands of patients suffering from things like obesity and other chronic illnesses (high blood pressure, high blood sugar and/or diabetes, heart disease etc). Year after year in the western medical system, they get sicker and sicker and never get the chance to reverse their preventable diseases.

You shouldn't have to be married to a doctor who specializes in integrative medicine to be given the tools to reverse chronic disease. Patients shouldn’t be labeled with diagnoses and prescribed medicine without also receiving a prescription for lifestyle change.

Which brings me back to Commandment One.

It’s easy to let year after year go by and slowly lose health, vitality and conditioning. It literally creeps up on you. Pretty soon, your life is dictated by your state of disease and not your goals and aspirations. 

You can’t rely on your traditional doctor to catch your decline and steer you in the right direction. You have to do it on your own and if available, with the assistance of a doctor or healer who looks at things in a different way. 

As stated in my first newsletter, “I want to help people take the reins back on their health so they can reach their potential.”

And that’s what I promise to you. If you can’t work with a doctor who thinks outside of the box, let me give you the questions you can ask them and the things you can do on your own to make sure your body keeps up with your passions. 

Today's “assignment:” do a check in on your state of health. Do you feel vibrant, strong, clear headed, fit and energetic? If not, that’s ok! Most of us don’t and none of us feel that way all of the time. 

If you want to take things a step further - you can use the wellness wheel we have patients at my clinic fill out when they get started with us attached here. Answer the questions and if you feel artistic - color in the wheel based on your answers. It’s a great visual that will show your starting point. There’s more to come on all of the ways you can optimize these areas of wellness and health that are simple and I’d say even fun. 

Download the Wellness Wheel below:

Wih Wellnesswheel Final

329KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

If I can help you (or your spouse) in any way, feel free to reach out.

Onward. 

Dr. Lynn Wagner ( )

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The healthiest of men didn’t get there by seeing the doctor...

When I decided to pursue a career in medicine, I thought I was entering a healthcare system. Little did I know that with every lecture, every hour I spent in the cadaver lab and every minute I spent with my patients; I was being indoctrinated into a “sick care” system. Medical training is disease focused. We learn how to take care of people who are diseased, not how to prevent them from getting there. It’s about putting bandaids on issues that run deep, or plugging a damn that’s about to burst.

If you’ve been a patient in our current system, you know what I am talking about. You feel depressed – you get some Prozac. Have a little heartburn? Here’s your Prilosec. Can’t get it up, Viagra to the rescue.

This isn’t to say our system is worthless. Medicine saves lives. But what does it do to optimize them?

I am one of the lucky ones. After 10 years of practicing traditional medicine as an ER doc, and a series of events, both health and personal, I was forced to take a long, hard look at the way I was taking care of my patients, and more important, the way I was taking care of myself. I navigated into the world of alternative medicine to find answers.

What I found and experienced was mind-blowing. It took everything I learned in my medical training and spun it on its head. In 11 years of pre-medical and medical training, not once had I learned about supplements. I received less than four hours of nutrition training. And energy healing…that was for hippies and weirdos. But it worked. It changed my life and started to change those whom I doctored.

Taking care of patients in the ER became painful. I’d see a person who was beaten down to a glimmer of their potential. I knew that after I treated their acute illness or injury, they’d go right back to the life and lifestyle that brought them to the hospital in the first place.

I couldn’t unsee what I’d discovered on my personal journey. There had to be a better way.

I found a fellowship that helped western trained doctors learn to approach medicine in a different way. I enrolled, began my studies and the rest is history. It brought formality to what I had personally experienced and set me on a new career path. I opened a private integrative medicine practice and began to doctor my patients the way I had doctored myself.

During this transition, people thought I was crazy. The wellness industry wasn’t what it is today, and my medical colleagues, family and friends thought I was committing career suicide.

But honestly, I didn’t give a fuck. You understand!  As a subscriber to Commandment One, you too probably have a passion, an obsession that makes sense to you and you can’t stop chasing it yet looks like lunacy to others. You’ve ignored the haters, chasing your dream anyway. 

Or you want to and you just don’t know how to do it.  

Which brings me to my role in Commandment One. 

When you signed up for this newsletter, you read:

The healthy man has 1000 wants, the sick man has only one. A newsletter about health, wellness and looking good naked. 

No matter your goals, passions or desires - they are irrelevant if you don’t have good health. 

The words health and wellness are omnipresent. Any scroll through social media, search through popular podcasts or the internet is overflowing with tips on how to get healthy. The wellness renaissance is upon us.

With the exploding amount of health and wellness information now available to the masses and the promise that every new supplement, peptide, or health device will be the answer to all that ails us, it's frankly overwhelming.

 I’m here to separate the wheat from the chaff. With the foundation of my medical training, years of patient experience and a dedication to health and wellness, my greatest joy lies in sharing what I know with others.

The first time I met Nic Peterson on a Zoom call, he asked me what my goal was in working with him. My answer was –”I want to transform medicine.” Now, several years later, I realize, I don’t want to fix a “sick care system.” I want to help people take the reins back on their health so they can reach their potential. Only then can we, as a population, demand a true healthcare system. 

About that “looking good naked” piece…well that comes naturally when you are healthy in mind, body and spirit. I got you covered.

Looking forward to great conversations, providing no bullshit information and of course,  helping you look in your birthday suit.

Learn More About Dr. Wagner:

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If you’re on board with getting healthier, feeling better or just looking better naked… join us.

Subscribe now

Live to learn. Give to earn.

Commandment One.

Remember, this is written for coaches but if you are the DIY type, you are your own coach so swap out “your client” for “yourself”

From Assessment to Application: The Five Tools[LS1] 

The five focuses outlined above form the basis of training programs for all seven QIII E² subgroups and are what I call the Five Tools—



1. Nutrition and caloric restriction

2. Inefficient exercise

3. Strength training

4. Basic bodybuilding and mobility training (the “Fountain of Youth”)

5. Mental set

After the 1-2-3-4 Assessment, you will know if any client is a One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six or Seven. Remember, if the person is an active athlete, your job is to support the technical work with a reasonable program focused on the fundamental human movements. In addition, if someone doesn’t fit one of the seven categories (waistline in check, successful plank test and sleeps with just one pillow) but is not an active athlete, train her as a Six.

We are going to now focus on the Five Tools as ways to help your clients feel better, move better and, ideally, live better. Each of the Five Tools is interconnected, and each can be confusing and frustrating for everyone from the researcher to the mom choosing dinner with hungry kids in a shopping cart. With each, forget about perfection and begin the process of moving forward to a generally “good place.”

The first tool, nutrition, tends to be a touchy subject. No matter what I discuss concerning nutrition, I usually upset someone. Still, our approach, honed by daily discussions with nutritionists, is solid advice that I believe will stand the test of time. The middle three tools involve movement of all kinds.  

Try to get a handle on the idea that equipment is simply a tool; it is how you use the tool that matters. One person’s inefficient exercise might be another’s mobility movement. And that is fine. The final tool is the mind, and I believe that we tend to work best in extremes here. Either option offered in this section may work for your clients. 

The First Tool: Nutrition and Caloric Restriction

Caloric restriction is going to involve talking about nutrition, and nutrition is going to lead to discussing food. I don’t know if there is anything as confusing as something as simple as what to shove in your mouth a few times a day. 

Whether or not a food is good for you is enough to cause fistfights. Recently, all the following have been outed as being bad for you—



·      Coffee (Hearing this made me spit out my coffee!)

·      Wine (What else does one serve with veggies?)

·      Veggies (Too many pesticides! Wine and coffee don’t have those…I think.)

·      Tap Water (Poisons and heavy metals!)

·      Meat (For a while in the 1960s, eating meat was on par with launching nuclear weapons.)

·      Milk (From “producing mucus” to “lactose intolerant”)

·      Grains (I heard one speaker call this “public enemy number one.”) 

It seems that few of us know what to eat. Yet we all bravely carry on eating. I can’t keep up with all the conflicting information, and most other people seem to struggle with it too. 

At our gym, we attempt to tell the story of reasonable eating and reasonable fitness. We strive to keep a moderate and balanced approach to all goals. The problem is this: Most people don’t hear us. 

Bill Koch, an American world champion in cross-country skiing, did a workshop years ago in Salt Lake City. For ten dollars, I figured that eight hours with a world champ and Olympic medalist was well worth my time.

There was a problem with the workshop: I still feel like I was the only participant who could hear him. It seemed the audience wanted elaborate programming, fancy training equipment and expensive gear. His answers were always simple and clear.  

“Intervals are the biggest bang for your buck.”  

“My daughters take the lift up the hill; I ski up it and race them down.” 

But the workshop still ended up being a series of intricate questions about the smallest details of training, and Koch’s response was always, “No, I don’t do that.”

The audience couldn’t hear what he was saying. It is a problem that we all see in every field: Most people want to be reaffirmed about their current methods of doing things.

When someone asks “What is the best diet?,” what do they want to hear? I think it’s “The one you are on.” As we joke around our gym, the best diet most people will ever do is the next one. 

So, what’s best? Atkins? Zone? Vegan? Paleo? I’m not sure which one is best, but I know that the adherents of some diets will physically attack you for eating the wrong kind of item. 

“Don’t you know that X is poison, and your children will suffer tragically if they come near it?” 

That’s hyperbole, but closer to reality than most people will admit. So, which is the best diet? My standpoint shouldn’t surprise anyone at this point, but I believe they are all right. There is a joke about Jesus and the miracle of the loaves and fish. As his disciples are handing out the free food, the audience starts yelling back. 

“Is the fish mercury tested?” 

“Is the bread gluten free?” 

“I’m a vegan!”

If you want to have a fun plane ride, sit between a vegan and a Paleodieter. 

There are some people who follow strict diets with the religious fervor of a convert, the discipline of a monk and the know-it-allness of a teenager.  

Let’s be big kids with food. Yes, fast food is bad and made from asphalt, toxic sewage and roadkill. Or whatever. But beyond that, what I look for are the consistent truths. What do all the ways of eating agree upon for daily consumption and daily avoidance?

I have found five truths that practically every way of eating agrees upon—



1.     Cut back on sugar.

2.     Cut out cardboard carbs.

3.     Get rid of Frankenstein fats.

4.     Eat colorful vegetables.

5.     Let’s all find what to agree on before we seek perfection.

Although some argue sugar consumption hasn’t increased as much as we thought, we still consume too much. Overall, your kids eat too much sugar—make them stop that. I’ve looked, and I can’t find one good argument for eating more sugar or maintaining the amount of sugar you are currently eating. Cut out sugar[LS2] .

Cardboard carbs are any carbohydrate found in a bag or box. If it can last on your shelf for ten years, it will remain on your butt that long, too. Cut them out. 

Given a cow and a video on how to make butter, I can make butter. But give me corn, and I can’t squeeze margarine out of it. It takes a lab. It takes equipment. It takes a scientist. Mother Nature doesn’t seem to be able to figure out how to deal with these Frankenstein fats, and neither can the human body. Get rid of them.

Every diet agrees on the value of colorful vegetables. Those green, yellow, orange and red veggies will do wonders for you. Eat them.

The point is this: Let’s get to where all of the various ways of eating agree. I am not sure the perfect diet exists and, if it did, the body would figure out a way around it too. Let’s instead keep focused on eating pretty good and forget perfect. I’ve said it before, in my book, Mass Made Simple—



Eat like an adult. Stop eating fast food, stop eating kid’s cereal, knock it off with all the sweets and comfort foods whenever your favorite show is not on when you want it on, ease up on the snacking and—don’t act like you don’t know this—eat vegetables and fruits more.

And in my workshops, I often add this little list for simple nutritional advice—



•       Eat like an adult!

•       Eat veggies.

•       Eat lean protein.

•       Drink water.

•       Train in a fasted state—sometimes.

•       Stay hungry after training—sometimes.

Recently, a hand came up about training in a fasted state. The person wanted to know if I followed this “modern” intermittent fasting idea. Fortunately, I had a slide prepared—



“Obese people and those desiring to lose weight should perform hard work before food. Meals should be taken after exertion while still panting from fatigue. They should, moreover, only eat once per day and take no baths and walk naked as long as possible.”  ~ Hippocrates, circa 471 BC

Hippocrates was recommending intermittent fasting long before the internet and even bound books. I’m not as sure about the bathing and nudity points, but I can defend the first sentence without much issue.

Over a century ago, Doctor Shelton in The Hygienic System noted, “The ancient Greeks—the finest of people, physically and mentally, that ever lived—ate but two meals a day.”

By the way, not eating is a common way to approach caloric restriction. In the religious traditions, it is called fasting, and there are a lot of degrees here, from simple hunger to dangerous starvation.

Pavel Tsatsouline summed up the whole diet question for athletes like this: “Meat for strength. Veggies for health.” Marc Halpern, my resident nutritionist, sums it up for us with a simple arrow.

Move to the right as far as you need. 

Your perfect place is a blend of health, lifestyle and values. 

Out there on the far right, at the arrow, is diet perfection. Forget it. Choose more salads and veggies, but don’t try to be faultless. When it comes to diet and nutrition, especially in terms of caloric restriction, doing more, better, is going to be where things work best. 

Less candy. More veggies.

The Second Tool: Inefficient Exercise

On the other side of the fat-loss coin is the concept that everything works and it always has. Whatever you choose to do or have your clients do—whether it is African disco dance or step-marching Spandex or kettlebell swings—it will work. The problem is a little odd: As you become more and more efficient, you get less and less benefit. A modern dance class will just about kill me, because every time the class does “step-ball-change,” I will have done twenty extra moves. Oh, it will be fat loss for me—but the “twinkle toes” to my right had better have a perfect diet, because she is just going through the paces.

Fat-loss exercise needs to be as inefficient as possible. That is why I like the kettlebell swing: You expend tons of energy with absolutely no movement! But and many disagree with me here, as you get better and better at swings, these too can become too efficient. Now, we have tips and tools to get around this, but it is wise to remember that Tim Ferris found seventy-five swings three days a week to be enough to start peeling the fat off one woman. If your client goes from seventy-five to two thousand swings a workout and stops losing fat, you may need to look for alternatives, additions, or another bell.

Inefficient exercise is going to look different for everyone—if your client is a horrible dancer, encourage him to dance; if your client is a lousy swimmer, encourage her to swim; if your client never bikes, encourage him to bike. 

People must seek ways to waste lots of energy. Leonard Schwartz had it right with his HeavyHands training. Tossing hand weights up and down while walking is a very poor way to walk—but it roasts the fat off!

And, I know, you can’t hear me. A reasonable approach to diet and nutrition, something your grandmother would applaud, just isn’t sexy enough for the postmodern reader. 

The Third Tool: Strength Training

Assessment allows us to see that our clients are on the path to their goals. It’s time to talk about the path. There are hundreds of options in training, but I think what is more important than the daily workout or yearly plan is the philosophy of training. It takes a while to come to clarity on your philosophy of training. My approach continues to evolve in clarity, although the principles have been around for a long time. My greatest insight came from a long-distance phone call with a friend, Mike Rosenberg.

I edited a fun little online newsletter called “Get Up!” for about a decade. In hindsight, its little run was amazing as we had reports from Olympic gold medalists who wanted to share their training ideas, programs of world-record holders, perhaps the first eyewitness report of how the Chinese were training the Olympic lifts and countless firsthand stories of “how I did it.” 

It was wonderful stuff, but the editing and writing was taking up a lot of my time. It died a quiet death, and the archives are still available on my site, danjohn.net. The price, as we always said, is going to double next month. (The joke: All the editions are free. Contain your laughter.)

In the second edition, Rosenberg told me to include my philosophy of training. Mike and I discussed what this was, and it slowly fleshed out into these three points—



1.    The body is one piece.

2.    There are three kinds of strength training: putting weight overhead, picking it up off the ground and carrying it for time or distance.

3.    All training is complementary.

Let’s look at all of these in detail.

“The body is one piece” is from John Jerome’s remarkable book, Suppleness. I often say you could add any superlative in front of “piece” to make the point better: The body is one amazing piece. The body is one astonishing piece. The body is one stupendous piece. I think you get the point. If you have diarrhea, today is not a good day to squat heavy. If you are doing a chest exercise like the bench press and I stick your calf with a fork, you are going to be in trouble with the bar across your neck. 

Sadly, most of us train like we are building Frankenstein’s monster. Arm day. Leg day. Chest day. The body is one piece, with one digestive tract, one cardiovascular system and one magnificent nervous system. If a client has trouble “here,” she is going to have trouble “there.” If the supply of blood to a client’s brain is shut off, his training would be impaired. That is not medical advice, by the way.

This first principle separates the good coaching from the less-than-stellar coaching. A college athlete walking into a workout after breaking up with her beloved is going to have a different workout. Sure, it is just a mild case of a broken heart, but with a proper dynamic mobility warm-up, I am sure we can cure this! In my youth, I was told it took eight days to recover from an NFL game, but, sadly, they play every seven. To my knowledge, Bill Walsh was the first NFL coach to come to the idea that practice is, well, practice. 

Your clients’ days, weeks, kids, bosses and just about everything else will impact, for bad or good, their training. Disease or illnesses will burden their systems. And let me offer you this: Idiotic training and programming will be as toxic to the system as many diseases. I have had my share of parasites in my life (sadly, true) and a good case or two of pleurisy, and these are easily overcome and fixable compared to idiocy and tomfoolery in the gym. One moment of too much load, poor technique or just bad timing can hold one back for months, years or decades. I have friends who strive to recover from muscles ripped off the bone, spinal injuries and a variety of broken, twisted and ripped joints and bones. 

Understanding that the body is one piece begins the process of seeing the life of the athlete, a training year and a workout from a more distant vantage point. It is a global view, a paradigm shift, from seeing everything as bits and pieces like Frankenstein’s monster to seeing everything as miraculously interconnected. 

The second point is that there are three kinds of strength training. It’s taken me twelve years to come up with a better way to explain this to people. Obviously, I still stand by it, but some good questions have come up. The best is when the fitness industry fell back in love with movement. The industry falls in love with everything new, exciting and shiny and, frankly, I fall on the opposite end of new, exciting and shiny. I like things to be basic and simple.

My gym is basic and simple. (It’s also my garage.) It’s heavy with kettlebells, barbells, TRXs, and a mishmash of stuff that allows us to handle up to two-dozen people and get some great training in a short period of time. 

For recovery, I have a hot tub, sauna and a very interesting electronic massage bed that does all the work for you. I also have plenty of food and emergency supplies from beer to bandages, depending on your injury.

It attracts a great range of people. I train with nutritionist and the elderly, high school coaches and people with life-altering diseases. Everyone is welcome—and by everyone, I include elite Special Forces personnel and NFL and MLB players. The upside of all of this is the great conversations. You get a glimpse into the wide world of elite performance, and you hear some funny things.

One of our regulars is a Major League Baseball player. One of the things he likes about training at our gym is that we don’t have “eyewash.” What is eyewash? It is all that pomp and circumstance and grandstanding and “look at me, look at me” that dominates the fitness industry. Listen, it’s a burpee; you don’t need to film it for the historical record. That’s eyewash.

Eyewash abounds in our industry. We need to get back to the basics of getting people to move more and move better so they can move more and move better. 

Jim Gaffigan, one of my favorite comedians, has this great insight into Mexican food—



Mexican food’s great, but it’s essentially all the same ingredients, so there’s a way you’d have to deal with all these stupid questions. 

“What is nachos?” 

“Nachos? It’s tortilla with cheese, meat and vegetables.”  

“Oh, well then what is a burrito?” 

“Tortilla with cheese, meat and vegetables.”  

“Well then what is a tostada?” 

“Tortilla with cheese, meat and vegetables.” 

“Well then what i—” 

“Look, it’s all the same s—t! Why don’t you say a Spanish word and I’ll bring you something.” 

I see training people the same way. You want to play in the NFL? Good, then we have to do pushes, pulls, hinges, squats and loaded carries, plus that everything else that’s mostly groundwork.

And you? MLB? Ah, yes, that would be pushes, pulls, hinges, squats and loaded carries.

Do you see that nice fat-loss client over there? She seems to need, I don’t know, let’s say, pushes, pulls, hinges, squats and loaded carries, plus that everything else that’s mostly groundwork 

Programming is that simple. Everybody has the same basic body and needs, and we must have the courage to train the fundamentals, the basics, at least 80 percent of the time. Sure, add some spice in there now and again, but focus on the basics. 

As I was told by a truly great coach, Rick Bojak: “You need to have the courage not to get bored watching the basics.” That’s the key. Yes, I know our clients and athletes come in with all these new and great ideas about how to train after watching twenty seconds on the internet or a TV commercial, but it’s our responsibility to steer them back to the basics. 

Let’s practice.

Client: “I saw blah blah blah on the internet, and I really want to give it a try.”

Inside your brain: “Eyewash. Eyewash.”

Program like this: Tortilla with cheese, meat, and vegetables. Stick with the basics for everybody—

Pushes

Pulls

Hinges 

Squats

Loaded Carries

Everything else, but mostly groundwork

Honestly, if your clients do the fundamental human movements with appropriate repetitions and load, they will be well on their way to almost any goal. 

The third pillar in my philosophy is that all training is complementary. As I have noted to many trainers, there is an “e” in there, not an “i.” So, it isn’t complimentary like: “Well, you look very good today, my young trainee! Excellent to see, and I love what you are wearing. 

Complementary is a bit different. We need to be able to tell the client: “Well, the soccer game you just played worked perfectly on honing your sprinting skills” or “You know, yoga would be a great place to practice that joint mobility work you want for increasing your sprinting speed.” 

Understanding the concept that all training is complementary frees up a lot of time as you begin to realize the key to success in training and life: More is usually just more. One of my favorite stories comes to mind here. Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson are sitting around one day, talking about life, when Thoreau pauses. 

“Yes?” asks Emerson, expectantly. 

“Simplify, simplify,” says Thoreau.

“You didn’t need the second ‘simplify,’” replies Emerson.

It is hard to remember this basic point sometimes. Training programs and exercise selection and nutritional tweaks bombard us nearly every time we get on the internet or open a new fitness magazine. We get deluged with “try this” and “do that.” How do we filter what works for us or for our clients? How do we discern what will or won’t work? 

Start by discovering your philosophy for training. What are the basic suppositions that drive your vision of training, health, and fitness?  

Once you know this, it’s time to design a multiyear, yearly, seasonal, or daily program (training session) by focusing on these three simple things—



1.    Focus on movements, not muscles. Ignore biceps, quads, or arm day. Stop thinking your clients are a Frankenstein’s monster. Training the movements will build muscles, stretch the client back into alignment and bring back joint mobility.

2.    Do what’s important every day. Once we know the moves, how often should they be done? My suggestion: every day. With most athletes, the movement needs repeating far more than most people think. At the elite levels of track and field and Olympic lifting, the total number of full movements is simply staggering. 

3.    Repetitions…lots of repetitions. I can’t say it any better than what I learned from a hearing-impaired discus thrower I worked with a few years ago. He had become very good, and I asked him his secret. He took his right middle finger and twisted it over his right index finger and then slapped it into his left palm. In sign language, it means “repetition.” 

The Fourth Tool: Basic bodybuilding and Mobility Training (the Fountain of Youth)

Let’s just say you are a well-meaning trainer, and you decide to take ninety-three-year-old Grandpa on the journey back to teen muscle. 

So, we pick up Grandpa and take him over to one of these new “back to the jungle” training programs. Gramps has been in a wheelchair for seven years after falling in church. Sign him up for tree climbing and leaping off boulders and all the rest, which I respect, but then press “refresh” on your brain. How do we get Gramps from the wheelchair to the wilderness?

That’s the value of machines. For post-youth basic bodybuilding, it’s hard to argue with how well machines work. For the record, I am not talking about machines as the answer to all questions after a six-week study that proves that Nautilus or whatever makes a difference. One of my readers sent me this study about how stretching alone improves strength in untrained people. Frankly, everything works for six weeks!

So, I see some hands raised.

“Yes? “

“Um, Danny, don’t you hate machine training?”

Alas. Before you ask, “Aren’t you the O-lifting/Highland Games/football guy?” Well, yes, I am, but there is also great value in just about every training system. 

Moreover, the longer you stay in the game, the more astute the following point, attributed to Aristotle, becomes: “The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.” I had this same point explained to me as a circle. Inside the circle is everything you know. The circle line is where you touch all the things you don’t know. So, as you study something more and more, the more you realize that you have so much more to learn.

The more I learn and study, the less sure I am about anything. The same idea is true when someone takes a weekend certification program and suddenly knows how to fix everything from cancer to MS, and knows everything there is to know about sports. In case you are wondering: I do not think a weekend is long enough to achieve mastery in anything. 

So let me say this: When it comes to aging well, I pull out my collection of Clarence Bass’s books and online materials, where I had my first contact with the Tabata protocol all the way back to 1998. In Bass’s work we discover how you train an older person safely, intelligently, and progressively. Yes, I love O lifts and kettlebells, but we need to keep in mind that every tool works, every method works, and every principle works at the right time.  

A few sets of eight to ten reps with a few strength moves—and a touch of stretching to top things off—may be life changing for the elderly. A few movements will make a huge difference.

It can be that simple: a few lifts and a few stretches. Mastering the movements, however, is going to be a journey. On this journey, there will be some obstacles. We need a system for dealing with these issues, and at the heart of it is this: Strength training for lean body mass and joint mobility work outruns everything else.

How much time should you spend on basic bodybuilding and joint mobility? The answer is simple: all the time you can spare. If the goal is to live well enough as long as you can, don’t overlook either one.

Years ago, Doctor Vladimir Janda began discussing the muscles necessary for posture. To simplify, and that’s always a slippery slope, he separated muscles into two groups: tonic, which tend to shorten when tired (or old!); and phasic, which tend to weaken under stress (or age, I dare say). 

Tonic Muscles (Shorten)                                     Phasic Muscles (Weaken)

Upper Trapezius                                                     Rhomboids

Pectoralis Major                                                     Mid-back

Biceps                                                                         Triceps

Pectoralis Minor                                                     Gluteus Maximus

Psoas                                                                         Deep Abs

Piriformis                                                                  External Obliques

Hamstrings                                                               Deltoids

Calf Muscles

I usually explain it this way: If a tiger chased you up a tree, the muscles you use to hang onto the branch for a long time are tonic muscles. If you decided to chase a deer, you’d use your phasic muscles. 

Sadly, most trainers work this backward. They tend to emphasize the mirror muscles like the pecs and biceps—with, say, bench presses and curls—and ignore the muscles that are really the muscles of youth. Simply training with the fundamental human movements will do more for basic bodybuilding, mobility and function than a million isolation moves. Janda taught us this, and we can see how the chart above and the FHM are interrelated—



·      Push: Deltoids and triceps

·      Pull: Rhomboids

·      Hinge: Butt

·      Squat: Butt

·      Loaded Carries: Butt

The movements you are ignoring are the things your clients need the most! As you look at this list, you should be impressed by the number of times “butt” appears. Training the glutes intelligently may be the fountain of youth!

So, movements first. Then, load. Let’s talk about reps, sets and load.

More coming soon…

live to learn give to earn.

Commandment One

More From Dan John:

• For books, you can see his bookstore here and his Amazon books here.

• For socials and more content, Dan’s Instagram and Youtube are updated consistently.

• Dan’s favorite Guardian Academy principles are Raising The Floor and What Is Enough? Both are also discussed in Bumpers.

F*ck your calculator.

"This calculator says that if I eat 2,500 calories a day I will lose half a pound a week”

Ok. So eat 2,500 calories a day. If you don’t lose half a pound a week… f*ck your calculator.

"This calculator says that if I take an extra 5,000 steps a day I will lose half a pound a week”

Ok. So take an extra 5,000 steps a day. If you don’t lose half a pound a week… f*ck your calculator.

It seems obvious, right?

And yet…

Millions of people around the world are plugging their height, weight, age, and goal into an app or calculator to get a set of instructions, following the instructions and not getting the outcome the calculator told to expect.

And then…

Wait for it…

Doing it again.

Not just doing it again, but completely ignoring reality and expecting it to work this time. It seems absurd to me.

The calculator is not a representation of reality - it’s an estimation based on a large set of data - group data. It might even be a good estimation (it depends on how close you are to the group average) but it’s an estimation. There is nothing wrong with starting with an estimation.

Think of the calculator as a tool to help you form a hypothesis and then frame it as such. “My hypothesis is the if I do X, Y will happen”. If you do X and Y does not happen, it would be nonsensical to believe the original hypothesis is true, reality is wrong and to keep doing X and expecting Y.

If your calculator says: Eat 2,500 calories and you will lose half a pound a week and then you eat 2,500 calories a week and lose a quarter of a pound…

….guess which one is real?

Yep. F*ck your calculator. It may have helped you get started in collecting the data with an educated guess, but once the data come in, that is the reality for you.

There is nothing wrong with you. You are not wrong. or broken. A calculator can never tell you what’s “supposed” to happen to a dynamic, evolving system using group indexed data.

A quick example.

Paul is 6’ 200 lbs and maintains his weight eating 4,000 calories a day

Jim is 6’ 200 lbs and maintains his weight eating 1,800 calories a day.

Both are 40 years old.

Their maintenance level of calories is a byproduct of their individual genetics and all the adaptions their body has made to the things they have done and been through over 40 years.

It’s individual to them.

On average, they are 6’ , 200 lbs , 40 years old, and maintain their weight at 2,900 calories a day. A calculator would tell them both that their maintenance is 2,900 calories.

…even though neither of them would maintain their weight at 2,900 calories.

Paul would lose weight - probably precipitously.

Jim would rapidly gain weight.

Neither is broken. Or wrong.

They just aren’t average. Most people aren’t. They make up the average, but they aren’t average themselves. The average American male is 5’9 - most men you know are not 5’9. The average American Male over 20 is 197.9 pounds - most men you know re not 197.9 pounds. The average waist circumference of an American male is 40.2 inches - most men you know do not have a 40.2 inch waist.

You get it.

Very few individuals in the group that make up the average - are average. So the data made up of the average will apply to very few individuals. Once again… f*ck your calculator.

If you need to use one to get started, fine.

But as soon as you get the data, it doesn’t matter what the app says anymore. When you do X, Y happens. That’s the reality. Decisions should be made based on that reality, not the calculator estimations.

Just like any hypothesis, things may not turn out as expected. You may have to explore why they didn’t turn out as expected, isolate variables and get more data. That’s part of the game.

But ignoring reality because some calculator or app says something else should have happened?

Silly.

I can’t tell you what’s going to happen. Your Fitbit can’t tell you what’s going to happen. Your online calculator can’t tell you what’s going to happen. What happens, happens - and that’s the data you need.

Good luck.

Live to learn. Give to earn.

Nic

PS. This is an extension of the Rearview Mirror. Most of what you need to figure out the next step is right in front of behind you. Just scoop up the evidence that’s already there.

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For this one, we did something different. We changed “your clients” to “you” and “coaching” to “personal results” throughout the article. Read Part One Here.

There is a short line in Think Like a Freak that made me suddenly realize why I am generally happy. Now, the journey to happiness as a coach is, to quote the boys from Liverpool, “a long and winding road.” 

But, this line set me free:

Knowing what to measure simplifies life. 

As I sit at my desk with my dog occasionally looking up at me when he isn’t snoring, I have a vague sense of this hard-to-find quality called “happy.” 

Like most people, I have achieved goals, traveled to many places and generally had a life worth living. As a coach, this has not always been true. 

The issue?

It’s sometimes hard to know what to measure.

Let’s look at how I make my living:

• Strength coach·    

• Track and field coach

• Fitness consultant (occasional fitness or personal trainer)

• Author

How do I know I am doing better as a strength coach? Hmmm. Let me break it down: My people get stronger because they lift more weight!

If load goes up, I did it—strength coaching—right. 

Don’t roll your eyes yet, I’m just starting.

Track and field coach? Easy. If the athletes throw farther, jump higher or farther or run fast, we are doing it right. 

Personal trainer/fitness consultant/fitness trainer? In my assessment, I give you one measurement: waistline. If your client’s waistline goes down, you almost universally got it right. 

Measuring “author” makes a more difficult calculation.

If you go online and trust the “star” reviews, good luck, my friend, in appraising if a book is good or bad. I have seen people give one-star reviews because their electronic device doesn’t work right. Great television shows get reviewed poorly all the time because “I bought the season, but only got one episode.” (The, uh, season…um…just started. They will come out every week…one at a time.) I’ve seen classic works destroyed by teenage reviewers because: “I was made to read this book and I didn’t want to.” I saw this in a Ulysses review and The Sword in the Stone. 

Really? You hate The Sword in the Stone?

For authors, actors and artists of all kinds, here you go: Measure your success by income. For authors, it’s royalties. Mickey Rooney and Burt Reynolds may not be your go-to favorite thespians, but they dominated screen revenue for decades. As the kids say, “haters gonna hate,” but no matter what you do, in the court of public opinion, some people are going to love your work and others are going to hate it. 

In full candor, the late Archbishop George Niederauer once said I was, and I quote, “a diva.” His point, and it did hurt, was I tended to only notice the poor or bad evaluations.

When he said this, I tossed my fur boa over my shoulder and stormed out. That’s a joke, although many people I know can imagine me doing it.

At one point, I ran a yearly event with up to 1,000 people. I hate evaluations; almost always, they have no value.

“The bathrooms were too cold.”

“The bathrooms were too hot.”

“There was too much food.”

These are actual evaluations from one year. The third one was funny, as we offered a buffet, so “too much food” reflects one’s (over)use of the serving spoons. 

People actually complained about the toilet paper too. Honestly, one can only do so much. 

Which leads us back to my life as an author. 

I focus on the royalties. Sometimes, I think, “This is my best work ever,” but the book doesn’t sell. Now, it might be true: This poor selling book does a great job explaining some key principle in lifting or coaching, but it only applies to the 10 people on the planet who care about that key principle…including me, and I get free copies.

But, if the royalties allow me to lend my yacht to the pilot of my private jet, I know I did something right. 

By knowing what to measure, I know my general direction is either going the right way or the wrong way. When things in all areas of my life are going the right way, I tend to be happy. 

Oh, I’m sure there is a self-help book that will tell me I should be happy no matter what, but I seem to be happier warm, full, hydrated and surrounded by people I love and who love me. 

In my coaching career, I also discovered it is often hard to measure things. American football, one of the true loves of my life, is a great example: You can really play well, improve across the board in all qualities and still get pounded by the opponents. We might have a team filled with future lawyers, doctors and Nobel Prize winners, but we still lost. 

 And, an undefeated season can also be a horrible experience to endure. 

That’s tough to explain. I have coached some amazing athletes, but I couldn’t turn my back on them. Sometimes, you win the genetic lottery and you are flat-out better. As a coach, you might have a lot of wins and trophies, but you might be miserable.

“Measuring measurements” is a delicate balance. Statistics are often fraught with issues, as British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli said (according to Mark Twain): “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”

Years ago, I endured a horrific season of coaching high school football. Frankly, the mix of the personalities of the football staff was bad and we had far too many dads coaching their boys. This is always an issue in the best of times, but in this case, we also had very little talent. 

It was that year—and we all have them—when everything just kept going wrong. As we finished our season (we lost every game in our region), one of the coaches mentioned this:

“We have the best pass defense in the region.”

What?

“Yeah, look,” and he produced some numbers. It was true, nobody threw the ball much on us. But, wait…there might be “the rest of the story.”

We were behind in games so fast and by such large margins, the opposition never had to throw the ball. His measurement, “the best pass defense,” needed the rest of the story. 

I use Jean Fournier and Damian Farrow’s book, 7 Things We Don’t Know!, as part of my work for St. Mary’s University. I constantly strive to remind my students not to just take measurements, but to study them closely. 

My favorite part of the book involves free throw shooting for basketball. There was a study that found that Division One basketball players hit six or seven free throws in a row…ALL THE TIME!

But, they shoot 69% of free throws in games. 

Hmmm?

The follow-up was simple. The researcher, Kozar, looked at the just the first two free throws in these practice tests. Not shockingly, the basketball players hit 69% of their first two shots in practice. 

You don’t shoot 10 free throws in a row in a game. You might shoot one or two. That’s it. 

In personal training, people use the weight scale (notoriously worthless at calculating lean body mass) or dress sizes (this is a fascinating discussion to bring up around wedding and prom season) or, more recently, use photoshopped pictures.

These measurements are, on their best days, worthless. 

When trying to figure out what makes an American football team or a rugby team win is really difficult. You have 11 or 15 players on a side. You have a massive field. You have dozens of things happening at once…ALL the time!

If my discus thrower throws 10 feet farther, we are right. If your rugby team loses in a close one…well, good luck finding what really cost the victory. 

As we say in American football about the film session after a game:

You never look as good or as bad as you thought.

Oddly, after a loss, it is often hard to see where the game was lost on the field. The opportunities to win were…ah, just right there! Watching film after a loss just breaks the heart: We say “coulda/woulda/shoulda” throughout the film session.

Some stats give some clarity. Turnovers in most sports are usually a key, but some turnovers, like tossing the ball deep at the end of a half, don’t mean much. There is a term, MOBP—Missed Opportunity to Make a Big Play—that can really unpack a loss. Literally, you will hear in the film room, “Right there! Right there!” 

But, again, that’s coulda/woulda/shoulda thinking. 

As we’ve discussed throughout this book, the lessons I learned teaching economics made me a better coach. The lessons I learned pulling together my personal financial security made me a better coach. Coaching and participating in track and field, the ultimate numbers game (along with competitive swimming), made me a better coach. 

If you can measure it, you can improve it.

Live to Learn. Give to Earn.

Dan John has spent a lifetime of living, learning and giving. If you found this useful or interesting, pass it (or any of Dan’s work) along to someone else that might benefit.

Commandment One.

PS. This publication is a for-fun project, applying Guardian Academy Principles to fitness and sharing some of the best, no-nonsense fitness insights. It appears that we may be expanding. Expect Dan John’s continued contribution and an introduction to the one and only Dr. Lynn Wagner (we call her Doc Wagz) soon.

More From Dan John:

• For books, you can see his bookstore here and his Amazon books here.

• For socials and more content, Dan’s Instagram and Youtube are updated consistently.

• Dan’s favorite Guardian Academy principles are Raising The Floor and What Is Enough? Both are also discussed in Bumpers.
  

For this one, we did something different. We changed “your clients” to “you” and “coaching” to “personal results” throughout the article.

If I can summarize the key to elite personal results, it would be this:

Ownership. 

You have OWN the process, the plan. It has to be yours. It took me years to understand this; I believed people when they told me they wanted to combine elite athletics with academics geared toward medical or law school. I was shocked when I later discovered they were daily drug users or day drinkers…party kids, basically.

I would often stop and ask: 

“I thought you said…”

“I thought you said…” could be a great coffee mug or t-shirt logo. All too often, the words that come out of people’s mouths have little to do with their actions. 

It’s true: Some parts of my goal-setting toolkit seem odd or weird. You might ask, “Why do I care about what movies or books they like?”

Yet, dialogue, discussion and conversation might be the true keys to establishing the road, the route and the journey to the goal. 

Ownership.

This is the first task: to get the person (you) to own the process and then do what needs to be done.

Getting People to Become Actors

I’ve been told to never watch a medical drama on TV with a doctor in the room. Rarely does real medicine come down to some rare tropical disease and we can only hope that interns don’t steal hearts from transplant victims. I’m sure police struggle with cop shows and I hate movies and television shows about teachers.

But, what I hate the most are those idiotic “high five” montages in sports films. You know the kind, a couple of kids from different financial and ethnic backgrounds suddenly put their personal issues aside and start running hills, beaches and fields. They bond through sweat and strain. Then, the HIGH FIVE happens; cue the championship music and the good guys win. 

None of that peacocking and posturing really pushes us toward superlative performance. Victory is won in the mundane, the basic and the simple. It is really as fundamental as repeat, repeat, repeat. But, you do need to buy in. 

And, to me, this is the secret. Sure, it is as obvious as “buy low; sell high,” but it is true. 

Good coaching stuns you with its power. Yet, it is also subtle. 

As a young coach, I fell in love with the Knute Rockne or Vince Lombardi halftime talks. I thought—like the opening scene in Patton—that I could stir our force above and beyond their former limits and limitations and we would, dear God as our witness, destroy the forces of evil. 

Or, at least, defeat the South Valley Sabercats sophomore badminton team.

I was trying to act like great coaches. In truth, I’m not a good actor. Oddly, taking a course on acting opened up this whole issue for me as a coach.

I took an online acting class to improve my presentation skills. I didn’t use much of it, but one concept really caught my eye:

Monologue–Dialogue–Soliloquy

A monologue, to understand this concept, is when you talk out loud.

For example, we begin hands-on certifications with a brief introduction from each participant. It can be funny or tedious depending on the group.

“Hi. I’m Dan John. I’m a Virgo. I like long walks on the beach and I hate phony people. My hobbies are skinny skiing and going to bullfights on acid.” 

Thank you, Caddyshack.

Most of the time when I do goal setting, it seems like the client or athlete is reading a monologue from a script:

“I want to lose weight. I want to have a six-pack.”

Folks, it’s easy to get a six-pack. There are literally three grocery stores within walking distance of my home. 

Oh…the other kind? Sorry. 

This is the “Not A” kind of goal setting I discussed earlier.

Monologues are fine, but we rarely move the dial ahead with athletes by using just this technique. Dialogues, obviously, are better. We are moving into a discussion now. 

I am a believer in the follow-up question. If someone tells me, “I like to work out,” I used to let it just stay there. Now, I follow up:

What do you do when you work out?

“Well, sometimes I, like, get up and maybe walk. Or I go to the gym.”

What gym?

“I dunno. I haven’t been to one in years.”

I learned this first while teaching religious studies. Literally, everyone tells me they practice a faith, a belief or some sort of spirituality. After a follow-up question, I discover most people believe they want a cup of coffee. 

As a coach, you need to press people deeper into the statements they make concerning health, fitness, performance and longevity. The follow-up question is the key to dialogue. 

But, there is one important next step in the process of getting the person to “own” the goal.

My online acting class taught me this great insight: You want to get the athletes to “overhear” themselves. This is called soliloquy: “An utterance or discourse by a person who is talking to himself or herself or is disregardful of or oblivious to any hearers present.” 

When athletes tell me they want to be great discus throwers, or whatever, I first press them with deeper follow-up questions. But soon, I want them to listen to themselves. 

The first tool is a goal-setting exercise. It’s the “waddaya want” question. This is a bit bland, but it opens the door to other things. Most of the time, people have goals that are almost completely unreachable. They have a wish list.

I wish I had six-percent bodyfat.

I wish I had a jelly doughnut.

I can get you the doughnut.

For the the person working on measurable goals, like track and field or reducing the waistline, the wish list goal can be charted on a piece of paper and reasonable steps can be discussed. What shocks most people is when they see the amount of time the goals take to achieve. 

For vague goals, I don’t really know what to do. Without a measuring stick, it’s tough to figure out a plan.

After the basics of goal setting, I want to encourage the person to buy in to the goal. It seems to help if you can get people to reflect on their life. Autobiography work is excellent, as it opens up the connections that draw people into why they want this goal and not another goal. 

I have been introduced to several different methods, but I like to start with the simplest first. The easiest autobiography tools are to list the 10 best movies and books you have watched or read. 

Let me share mine. 

Books

• The Sword in the Stone

• The Hobbit

• Don Quixote (Book One)

• Two Years before the Mast

• Hamlet

• Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

• Gulliver’s Travels

• Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder

• Dune 

• The Tao of Pooh

Movies

• Patton

• Star Trek II

• Lawrence of Arabia

• Star Wars (the original…call it “Star Wars”)

• Field of Dreams

• The Three Musketeers (the Michael York version)

• Brigadoon

• How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying

• Moonstruck

• Fisher King

It’s a fun discovery and actually easy to do. It’s easy to turn this into dialogue:

 “Why this book?”

“Can you tell me more about that movie?” 

But, often people doing the exercise pick up some interesting insights about themselves. I tend to like movies where the characters transform during the adventure—I’m sure I’m not alone here. Understanding that insight helps me plan things far into the future since I know it won’t happen overnight.

This assignment comes with a warning: If the person you want to marry has not read 10 books, take this fact under advisement. 

It’s not a bad idea to do this with favorite musical albums or dining experiences too. Obviously, the audience is the key to how far you can take this assignment. I find the conversation really unpacks the coach-athlete relationship and gives insights that one might not discover for years without this reflective task.

I would also have experienced athletes list their 10 best and 10 worst performances and, perhaps, training ideas or programs. Those 10 best training tools might be all you really need to move forward with the programming.

The drills and the whole idea of soliloquy prepare us for another insight:

Mythos and logos

Mythos is the “Why?” and logos is the “How?”

Reps and sets and exercise selection and diet and recovery are the “how.” 

And, yes, these are important, but more important is the “why” behind things. Truthfully, fat loss clients already know the how: some kind of caloric restriction and probably some kind of exercise. Getting them to go all in with a program needs an answer to the question: “Why?”

Which technique, monologue, dialogue or soliloquy explains mythos or logos better?

Avoid “either/or” here, as some people might show up with a “why” encased in stone. Maybe the goal is to be alive and healthy for their kids or grandkids. Often, it is to rise above a situation such as depressing poverty or pain. The coach needs, once again, a pretty full toolbox to bring the person along. 

Getting the people to hear themselves is the key to ongoing improvement in performance. Once the “why” is answered, we can move into the nuts and bolts of things, the “how.” As Viktor Frankl taught us: “Those who have a ‘why’ to live can deal with any ‘how.’”

On the coaching journey, like everything else, as I have discovered in life, we tend to go through four phases:

Unconscious incompetence—You don’t know what you don’t know.

Conscious incompetence—You know what can be done, but you can’t do it.

Conscious competence—You think your way through the process.

Unconscious competence—You automatically apply the techniques.

Young coaches will listen to the monologue, nod their heads and start with a warmup. As the weeks move on, the disconnect between an athlete’s goals and behaviors will become evident. Soon, though, the coach will begin to connect the dots with the athlete. 

An elite coach will have this as part of the system and these concepts will be applied seamlessly. It will be so effortless, the coach will not even remember there is a process in place. It just becomes part of who we are and what we do.

“What we do.” 

While taking that acting class, it was interesting to look at the word “actor” and discover that it comes from the same root as “doer.” My job is to get you to act—as an athlete, literally one who “contends for a prize,” and then to perform until you win the prize. Of course, how you define winning is a huge factor in whether or not you achieve success. I will discuss more on this shortly.

Performance is all about winning. To get from here to there—the very foundation of goal setting—you must have some kind of strategy. It’s a plan. It’s a program. It’s a vision of the route or journey. 

And, the vision is bound to be wrong. Plans are often wrong and I’m fine with that.

I live by two great quotes from leaders of the Second World War:

“You have to be fast on your feet and adaptive or else a strategy is useless.” ~ Charles de Gaulle

“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” ~ Winston Churchill

Preparation is my basic strategy. Preparation is my “secret” to coaching. And, almost universally, preparation is repetition. 

Make sure you are repeating the most important tasks for the goal.

Finally, before I hand out advice, I always walk through a three-step process:

First, in many cases, I let other people take over and I stay away. For examples, think of poisonous snake removal, EMTs, trauma surgeons, and lifeguards:

Let the experts work! 

Now, certainly I can advise everyone on the basics of not getting into many of life’s bad situations with the classic: Don’t smoke, learn to fall…wear a seatbelt.

Oh, and don’t TRY to be stupid. Watching that how-to video on getting rattlesnakes out of the basement does not make you an expert.

Second, I focus on my mom’s advice for most diet and exercise: 

“Starches make you fat.” 

“Go outside and play.” 

“Are your legs are painted on?” 

My mom believed cars were only for going to church or the grocery store. 

I make my living with a summary of her advice: 

“Eat like an adult. Lift weights and go for a walk!”

Third, when dealing with elite training goals, I always find someone who is:

1. Elite

2. Has accomplished the goal

Then, I advise you to do what that person did.

Live to Learn. Give to Earn.

PS. This publication is a for-fun project, applying Guardian Academy Principles to fitness and sharing some of the best, no-nonsense fitness insights. It appears that we may be expanding. Expect Dan John’s continued contribution and an introduction to the one and only Dr. Lynn Wagner (we call her Doc Wagz) soon.

More From Dan John:

• For books, you can see his bookstore here and his Amazon books here.

• For socials and more content, Dan’s Instagram and Youtube are updated consistently.

• Dan’s favorite Guardian Academy principles are Raising The Floor and What Is Enough? Both are also discussed in Bumpers.

I only trained twice this week for a total of 45 minutes - that’s 45 minutes in total gym time for the week. When it comes down to it, there will always be tradeoffs. Whether you have kids, businesses to run, family to attend to, or whatever - we don’t live in a vacuum and there will always be a time when you have to decide between doing one thing or another.

That’s one of the biggest benefits of the frameshift I’ve been experiencing with this new methodology - better tradeoffs.

For example… from a place of logic and reasoning, I truly think I would get slightly better results if I trained even less than I do now. There’s a few reasons I don’t:

• I like getting out of the office and going to the gym. The environment is great, I was fortunate to find a gem of a facility nearby.

• Simplicity. Splits are weird in that they are like mini New Years Eves - people just assume there is a retest button every Sunday similar to the imaginary reset button each New Years Eve.

  These splits make it easier to schedule the rest of your life - since most of your life runs on a 7 day week. I used to do a ten day week; I would deadlift every ten days. The rest of my training was built around those days and it’s really hard to run one part of your life on a ten day week and another on a seven day week.

  If I follow all of the rules of my current methodology, the “training week” (three sessions) could be anywhere from 6 to 15 days. If it’s done in seven days, it requires much less cognitive bandwidth to manage.

• Progress hasn’t stalled. I’ve had days where I hadn’t felt fully recovered/compensated - but have been stronger on those days.

If there was a reliable to measure it, I wouldn’t be surprised if I was making less progress than I could be. The bullets above just outweigh that possibility, for now.

Anyway, here’s the big shift.

When weeks like this last week happen, it’s a positive. Instead of being bummed about “missing out” on something, I see it a positive thing, because I truly believe I would get slightly better results training less, anyway. Plus, even it took 15 days to get the the “training week” in, it would still fall within the rules/parameters I have set.

This is a version of anti fragility (benefitting from disorder).

First, a set of principles-based rules. For example, I never train two days in a row, that means the shortest training week possible is 6 days. I never want to go 5 days in a row without training, that means the longest training week possible is 15 days.

That a pretty big range of winning.

(This is the “Enough”1 concept from the Guardian Academy)

Second, I want as little friction as possible. Since’ve set the range above, the details are mostly preferences based and pragmatic. For example, most of my world runs on a seven day week so if my training is scheduled on a 7 days week it will require significantly bandwidth to manage.

The ideal situation for me is to get three sessions in over a 7 day period. Not because it’s exactly the right frequency for massive results - but because it’s the most pragmatic for me and my life and it falls within the logic based rules.

And, since I built the system on my personal preferences and it’s contained by a range, when things don’t go exactly as planned it doesn’t necessarily hurt me - it might even help. This is part of the Adaptive Dilemma2 from the Guardian Academy.

This section above is about fitness things - but it’s not just about fitness things.

Surprised But Not Surprised.

I am putting very little effort into growing this publication. Mostly because fitness is not my job and I never want it to be a source of income for me. I have learned that some things are best as hobbies. They say…

“Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

There may be some scenarios where that is true. But what I’ve observed over the last fifteen years…

“Turn what you love into a business and you’ll stop loving it”

Feels more accurate, more often.

So this publication takes very little time. It’s (obviously) not heavily edited, if edited at all, and fairly simple in terms of layout. AND YET, the general engagement around it per subscriber is much higher than I would expect.

I even have people approaching me in person during events asking me about fitness stuff now. Note: if you approach me about fitness stuff, I probably won’t have much to say. It’s not because I don’t love you, it’s because you’re looking for a simple answer where one does not exist.

Share

Thoughts

I think high achieving, successful people seeking fitness makes up one of the best markets in the world. Think about it… they’ve achieved everything they set out to do - make money, marry a trophy husband or wife, raise valedictorian children. Even after all that success there is one thing that drives them nuts. One thing they have not been able to figure out…the way they think they look.

I say the way they “think they look” because most of the time, it’s not their body that is the problem, it’s the perception of their body. Add the guilt and shame the industry piles on, and you have a unique, high value problem to solve.

If you can solve this problem for someone, you’re not solving a fitness problem for them.

You’re dealing with someone that has achieved everything they ever dreamed of except this one little thing - they almost have a complete “pie of success” - if they could…just…solve. this. one. little. thing. When there’s only thing missing, that thing no longer represents itself, it represents the completion of something; the Final Form.

You’re not selling fitness. Fitness has a fair market value.

You’re selling them a completed pie; the final form. Which is priceless.

I suspect that’s why there is so much interest in this topic from my audience in particular. I know you. You’re very capable. You can probably figure out just about anything if you really wanted to - except for this.

It’s also why I think, if you’re fitness professional, you’re sitting on a gold mine. But you’re not gonna cash in on it by selling challenges, tactics and tricks. Biology is too good at what it does (survival) for those to work in any meaningful way.

Again, the section above is about fitness, but it’s also not about fitness. I think the best market(s) in the world are people that have figured out everything else -except one thing. It makes the “one thing” priceless to them because it’s not just one thing, it’s the final thing - a complete pie - it’s everything.

I think the fact that I am on this journey lowers walls. Everyone is always trying to position themselves an expert. Honestly, I think that has more to do with them trying to convince themselves of something rather than build authority in the marketplace. The market, by and large, doesn’t care if you’re an expert.

Imagine you’re in an advanced class at Stanford. The professor is well known as being the top expert i the world . He is so smart that you have a hard time relating or even understanding him sometimes. You want to learn, but there is a disconnect - the source is not at all relatable.

The best student in the class is sitting right next to you. She understand the material and is personable, easy to understand and uber-relatable. Not only does she understand what is being presented, she is a few chapters ahead of everyone else.

If you really wanted to make progress would you rather spend your time with the professor or the best student in the class?

An overwhelming number of people would prefer the latter - the personable, sociable, relatable student. She may not be an expert, but she’s a few steps ahead, which is all you need - help with the next few steps.

At this point in time, I have nothing to sell you in the fitness world. I can’t imagine I ever will - although it’s possible and you’d be the first to know. As people realize that, I think it makes them more vulnerable.

I guess what I’m saying is that you don’t have to establish yourself as an expert to help people. In fact, I think you’d help more people (and make more money, if you sell your help) by simply being a sociably, relatable human who is a few chapters ahead.

On the flip side… While I think it’s great to get help from a person a few chapters ahead, it’s important to remain receptive. They are a few chapters ahead but they don’t know how the book ends.

Actionable Insights:

• Whatever it is that you want to accomplish, reason from the ground - up to discover the range, what is Enough?

• Within that range don’t worry about optimizing for a single outcome. Building pragmatically around your preferences, within the range of enough, will lead to a higher probability of execution, which improves all outcomes.

• If you’re a fitness professional, you have such an incredible opportunity ahead of you, but it’s not tactical or tools based. It would require a different strategy than the cookie cutter stuff taught on the inter webs.

Hope that makes sense.

From The Comments

• I would guess that 80% of the way I think about mechanics was derived from Ben Pakulski’s stuff. It’s been reinvented through trial and error many times, but his stuff is the original source of how I started to think about movements.

• 90% or more of my thought process around nutrition comes from Dr. Trevor Kashey. Trevor and I lived together and carpooled to an office we shared together every day for years. So I am heavily bias. Still, objectively, I think he is one of the best in the word.

• 80-90% of the way I think about volume, intensity and frequency is inspired by Mike Mentzer’s late work. I think his work got better after he retired from lifting and he was able to be more objective about cause and effect.

I have more great stuff from Dan John I need to copy and paste over, stay tuned. That dude has some really great stuff to share. You can read decades of Dan’s stuff right here.

…I also have a tentative plan to bring more health and fitness related stuff to this publication. The truth is, this substack was designed to demonstrate Guardian Academy3 and Bumpers4 principles applied to fitness - it points directly back to both often.

If it grows to the point where the TGA data suggests we should put more resources into it, we will. If not, I’ll continue to add as time allows. Hope you extracted some value from this.

Live To Learn. Give To Earn.

Nic

Given all of that, it was easy to stay on track with the fitness stuff in large part because it was built to be simple and full “MED”.1

Today is the longest I’ve spent in the gym since starting this new methodology. The workout itself was 15-20 minutes, at most. But today, a small group of people wanted to talk - which is typically a problem because my criteria for choosing a gym is: wherever people are the least likely to try and talk to me.

This same group has been there every Saturday at the same time as me for a few weeks in a row. One of the dudes mentioned to me today that they have noticed two things:

1. I don’t workout for very long

2. I look drastically different than just a couple weeks ago

And… we got to talking about how I think about this whole fitness thing. They at least seemed to be intensely interested in the logic, reasoning, etc so I spent some time thinking about loud. Below is a summary/bullets of the conversation.

Remember…what I do is unique to me and my goals. The principles can be applied to anyone and their goals, but because the person is different and the goal are different, the details of that program will be different.

Also remember that I am not formally or classically trained as a medical professional or physicist. This is just how I think through things as a layperson.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Everything below is in regard to changing aesthetics. I’ll try to address is below, but there is a big difference between training a skill (getting good at something) and changing your body. When developing a skill, you’re generally looking to develop mechanical advantages and efficiencies, when trying to change your body you’re generally looking for mechanical disadvantages and inefficiencies.

For example, if you want to bench press as much as possible, you’d want to create the shortest range for the movement possible and keep the tension where you have the most strength and stability. You’d also want as many muscle groups engaged as possible. If you wanted to build the biggest chest possible, you’d want a full range for the muscle and have as few other muscles involved in the movement as possible.

Okay… so in regards to aesthetics…

Learning How To Pick Exercises Is Important… But Exercises Don’t Really Matter

People focus way too much on exercises. They don’t matter the way people think they do. What you want to focus on is the muscle. If you’re training for aesthetics, you’re training the muscle, not the movement.

So exercise selection is important in the sense that you are unique - your height, weight, arm and leg length, clavicle length, rib cage and pelvis shape and size, relative proportion of upper leg to lower leg are all unique to you.

An exercise that works for me to keep tension on a muscle and work through an appropriate range might not do the same for you.

Learn to pick exercises that fit your body.

If you’re trying to get bigger muscles, train the muscles.

If you’re trying to get better at a movement, train the movement.

Picking Exercises - What’s Helpful To Know:

• A muscle “pulls” in a straight line when it shortens. When you curl, the bicep pulls in a straight line. The weight does not move in a straight line, it moves in an arc around an axis (the elbow)

• Every muscle has two “ends”. If you wanna geek out you can go google the insertion and origin points of each muscle group. From a functional standpoint, it’s pretty simple:

  • Biceps and triceps: shoulder and elbow

  • Hamstring and quads: hip and knee

  • Lats: shoulder and tailbone

  **again this is being written to be easy to use in the gym. You can look up the insertion and origin points of every muscle - it’s readily available.

• Ideally, one end should be as stable or immovable as possible, the other end moving closer to the stable end.

If you can add resistance to the muscle, you will build more of it.

Once you’re picked an exercise that works for your body:

• Eliminate all necessary movement/stabilize yourself

• Initiate the movement with the muscle you are targeting

One of the reason this is important is that the stimulus must be standardized.

It’s super basic physics…

Remember where the bicep is attached? When it shortens, weight is moved in an arc (with the elbow as the axis).

If the dumbbell is held just a little farther from the elbow joint, it travels around an arc that is multiple times larger. This increase in range of movement occurs because the resistance arm is multiple times longer than the force arm.

Nowwwwwwwwwwwww, pay attention to the picture above. The F arrow and the R arrow will come into play shortly.

Okay, so why must the stimulus be standardized?

Because if your reps are not identical, you’re not doing the same movement. Even if the you use the same weight, the arc is different, the distance traveled is drastically different and the work being done is different.

Most people go to the gym and think they are making progress because they use more weight than the week prior - when in reality, they changed their mechanics. They didn’t get stronger, they made the movement easier.

Note: it was much easier to show them all of this. It proving to be tougher to share in this format than I thought it would be.

I don’t have the patience to write out the rest so I made quick video do demonstrate

Distance From Axis, Tension, Mechanics and All The Jazz

Thinking about progressive overload in regards to playing the long game and a quick overview of distance from the axis.

Again, just one way to look at things.

Remember, if what you are doing is working the way you want it to work, keep doing it. Your data/reality is better for you than mine.

Live to learn. Give to earn.

Resources:

• Simplicity (my set and rep range)

• Doing The Least Possible (MED)

• Unrelated, but I think you should check out Dan John’s stuff. It’s really good stuff.

On one hand, it’s the most progress I’ve made in the shortest amount of time.

On the other, it’s not NEW, it’s still getting back to where I’ve been before - and that’s an important thing to keep top of mind.

That said, this progress is being made spending less than 70 minutes a week in the gym.

I believe the simplicity is a big reason for the efficacy.

Here’s how it works:

1. Pick a basic movement

2. Pick a weight I can do 6 times

3. Fight like hell to do it 6 or more times

4. End

That’s it.

And then next week

1. Same movement

2. Same weight

3. Do more reps than last week

4. End

Until I can muster ten reps

and then…

1. Same movement

2. A new weight I can only 6 times

3. Fight like hell to do it more than 6 times

4. End

Once I can do ten, bump the weight to something I can only 6.

And.

That’s it.

At some point I might have to get creative. The reality is, this is the most efficient, highest return, lowest cognitive burden progress I’ve ever made.

So I’m not gonna fuck it up by trying to get too cute.

Why 6 -10 reps?

Because I’m working to failure. More specifically, muscular failure.

Below 6 would be incredible taxing on my nervous system - it would take significantly longer to recover from from that standpoint. Over a few weeks, it would be more likely that my nervous system, not muscles, are the reason for failure.

Above 10 and things like endurance, lactic acid, etc are more likely to be the cause of failure.

So, this gives me a big enough range to make progress over the weeks while keeping me in the range where failure is most likely to be muscular.

If you have different goals, probably shouldn’t model this - but the principle would be the same:

Work in a range and frequency with the highest probability of accomplishing the thing you actually want

Again,

Simplicity.

Nic

Generally, I’ll type out an intro (like this) and leave Dan’s work exactly as it was sent to me…

If the whole fitness things seems overwhelming, use these ten commandments to guide you.

The below is written as a coach to other other coaches and trainers. If you have a coach or trainer, you should be making sure they are applying the principles below. If you do not have one, but are trying to make progress…you are your own coach or trainer so this applied directly to you.

The Ten Commandments of Keeping the Goal the Goal as a Coach

By Dan John

No matter what your clients look like and no matter the goal, the Coach’s Ten Commandments of Keeping the Goal the Goal will keep you and your clients on track.

These ten principles will help keep you coaching in a way that is best for each and every client—



1.  Train appropriately for  the goal(s). 

2.   Train little and often over the long haul.

3.   The longer it takes to get in shape, the longer the shape will remain.

4.   Warm-ups and cool-downs really do play important roles.

5.  Train for volume before intensity. 

6.  Cycle the workouts.

7. Train in a community. 

8.  Train the mind. 

9.  Keep the training program in perspective. 

10.  Fundamentals are better than everything else. 

1. Train appropriately for goal(s). 

The best advice I can give here is to find someone who has achieved your client’s goal already. It can be that simple, but you have to be careful. When I was coming up as a discus thrower, I was lucky to have all kinds of people to talk to about this, people who were better discus throwers than me. Some of the advice was wrong, but most of it was right. 

Wrong advice in some things could be deadly. Use common sense as often as you can. Again, I was lucky and had some good advice that kept turning up over and over.

It was clear I had to learn the Olympic lifts, so I did. I had to throw a lot, so I did. With your clients’ goals, call someone who has achieved them and apply their good advice. It’s a rare day that I don’t talk on the phone with some amazing people from all kinds of backgrounds who can point me in the right direction. 

The reason I talk about fat loss a lot, besides the fact that it is a popular topic, is that many of my friends are in the business of training people in fat loss. So I hear stuff all the time and, in total candor, sometimes it is stupid. But usually it circles around things that work. Find someone who has been there. Find someone who has walked the walk. And train appropriately.

2. Train little and often over the long haul.

It is difficult to envision achieving a goal four to eight years from now. I think part of great coaching is the ability to whittle the dozens of tasks and details into small chunks and still keep an eye on the whole project. Coach Maughan told me “little and often over the long haul” back in 1977 when he discussed his approach to making a great thrower. He believed a thrower—



·      Should lift with the basic movements three days a week.

·      Should take time off after the season to regroup and refresh.

·      Should throw three to five times a week once throwing again.

·      Should do this for seven or eight years before deciding to add more.

Of course, I disagreed with all of this! He had merely coached a couple of great throwers and a world-record holder, but I was twenty-one. What did he know? Of course, he was right. And, at age twenty-one, I was wrong about a lot of things. 

Coach Maughan believed in attaining mastery without a lot of injuries and in growing up in all areas of your life. If you go to college for five years, for example, and compete at a high level, but don’t get your degree, you have missed mastery across the rest of your life.  

That’s why I always laugh when someone wants to be great at an Olympic sport well after a certain age. Someone once asked if I could do just one thing to improve my O lifting, what would it be? 

“Start at age eight.” 

I was partially joking, but it is truth. Excellence takes time in hours over time in years.

3. The longer it takes to get in shape, the longer the shape will remain.

My knock on quick-fix programs has always been the “Day 91” issue. You do a program for ninety days, great, but then what? I tell my fat-loss clients, “If it took twelve years to put it on, at least give me a few weeks to help get it off.”

The same holds true for getting in shape. A six-week off-season training program might do wonders, and it can, but if a client’s season lasts half a year, she is going to be scrambling to keep all of the qualities needed to compete. This concept lives in a symbiotic relationship with the second commandment, little and often over the long haul.

The longer a client takes to get in shape, to prep for an event, the longer the qualities seem to stay around. That’s just one of my knocks on the use of performance-enhancing drugs: I have seen guys change overnight, but, on the other hand, the losses are overnight too. Strength seems to stay for a long time if it is built up over a long time. This is the secret to what I was told by one of my heroes, Glenn Passey.

Passey weighed 178 pounds when he won the national championship and broke Utah State’s school discus record. When I finally got the chance to meet him, he told me that he “didn’t lift weights like you guys do now.” He explained that he used to lift weights maybe five months a year with just basically the Olympic lifts. Then he would stop. The next year, he would pick up weights again, get back to the previous year’s lifts in a few workouts and have some nice progress. 

This approach would continue over his college and post-college experience. Passey’s approach was a decade-long vision of preparing an athlete to get strong, as easily as possible, and holding on to those strength levels. 

So for both a yearly approach and one that reaches across an athlete’s career, the longer one spends getting into condition, the longer that gains seem to hold. It’s so logical, and reasonable, it is a wonder why people break this simple recommendation all the time.

4. Warm-ups and cool-downs really do play important roles.

I try to make mine seamless, literally so built-in that clients might not know we have changed gears, but there is a need for both of these keys.

I like to think of a warm-up in waves: You first let the little ones splash over you, then you take your time getting out into the bigger waves. 

The answer to how long and how much of a warm-up is needed is going to depend on a lot of factors. Sometimes, none is needed! This happened to me my sophomore year in college when we arrived at a track meet and heard the announcement, “Last call, men’s discus.” That couldn’t be right? It turned out that we had the wrong schedule—it was right. I went down, dressed behind a very supportive group of new friends, stepped into the ring for my first throw with no warm-up, and threw really well. My second throw was my lifetime best.

Sometimes, the whole workout can be just a warm-up. I recommend this for everyone about twice a month just to get the body feeling in tune again. And it is always a good idea to do this the day before a competition. 

For the rest of the time, I like to think more like a jazz musician and play around with movements, intensities, reps and volume to get my body ready for the work at hand. Playfulness in the warm-up, and perhaps even more importantly in the cool-downs, helps you keep clients coming back. And, if there is a secret, it is to keep coming back.

5. Train for volume before intensity.

Barry Ross took Pavel’s Power to the People template of deadlifts and presses and applied it to the world of sprinting. The lack of volume on the track and in the weight room when you first read his work is shocking. But it’s only shocking because you haven’t read the rest of his works! 

If someone suddenly makes unbelievable progress switching from a volume program to an intensity program, you should not be surprised. This is rather common, and it is the approach track coaches have used for probably a century, at least. The pyramid model of training can have flaws, but it is hard to argue that one needs to build a peak by ensuring a broad base. Getting the volume in helps get that base.  

Once the base is built, it tends to last (number three above). But at some point you also have to have the courage to walk away from volume and up the intensity. Not everyone likes to do this, as there is some joy and comfort in those medium workouts that feel good. Intensity can make you nauseous. 

Ross has a marvelous little conditioning program made up of twelve fifteen-minute walks with one rule: Go farther each time, but never jog or run. People fall in love with Ross’s deadlift and sprint workouts, but they tend to miss this little gem based on conditioning.

6. Cycle the workouts.

I am always shocked when people show me these twenty-six-week workouts they are about to begin. In twenty-six weeks, something is going to come up to interfere with their plans. Instead, I love two-week blocks and constant vigilance concerning omissions, errors and poor movement and mobility.

The reason I like two-week blocks is that most people—even the worst of us who can’t follow a plan for more than a minute without “making it better”—can survive two weeks without too many life changes. 

Not long ago, I was challenged by a “fitness expert” who disagreed with me: This junior in high school had a program that had bodybuilding, Olympic lifting, powerlifting, plyometrics and all the rest in one complete program. The issue with this kid, God love him, was that he had cobbled together several high-end, elite programs and had decided to go all in and take care of everything all at once. We all know it isn’t going to work because adaption is the king of performance, and doing everything won’t lead to adaption everywhere. 

I do wish it were true, though!

7. Train in a community. 

First, success leaves tracks so you will constantly follow the successful tracks of others, but don’t forget, second, that community seems to increase intensity.  I love two-week blocks and constant vigilance concerning omissions, errors and poor movement and mobility.

I have been involved with several clubs of people who get together to train. In California, we had the Coyote Point Kettlebell Club, organized by Dan Martin. Our idea was to ask questions, fix issues, train a little and eat sandwiches. It grew to about twenty members, and all of them helped me train better and smarter. By myself, I might not have done “one more round” of follow the leader presses, but with that many people, it is easy to press on. 

In Salt Lake City, we had the Crosspointe Kettlebell Club. We dealt with the issues of weather and being on a busy street. Today, we train out of my new house with its two-car garage and expansive backyard. With these experiences, I have expanded my understanding of correctives and my ability to teach using heart rate monitors. In my experience, the teacher learns the most.

8. Train the mind. 

Tommy Kono says the mind is 50 percent of the performance. I’m not going to disagree. Success leaves tracks so you can constantly follow the trails of others, but don’t forget that community seems to increase intensity.

Yogi Berra told us that “90 percent of it is half mental.” I’m not sure what you are doing, but there is a mental training tool, technique or tip that is going to help you. I have used affirmations, guided meditations, right- and left-brain work, goal setting work and other methods to “get my head right.”

It is the ticket to success in any goal-setting experience. Success leads to more success in so many ways. I’ve told every one of my state champions that “one day, the lessons you learned here are going to carry over to success in every area of your life.” Most agree within a year that successfully plotting a championship course requires the same set of tools as graduating from college or putting a career together. The right mental tools, the right “mental toughness,” carries over into all aspects of life.

9. Keep the training program in perspective. 

It’s just a gold medal or world record. In the big picture of things, not everything we do is epically important. I will keep this short: There are more important things in life than six-pack abs. 

10. Fundamentals are better than everything else.

Yes, it is going to be the fundamentals (the basics) that bring everything home: fundamental movements, basic flexibility and mobility, basic techniques and basic nutrition. It’s just a Gold Medal or World Record. In the big picture of things, not everything we do is just very important in the big scheme of things.

live to learn. give to earn.

check out more of Dan’s stuff below

More From Dan John:

• For books, you can see his bookstore here and his Amazon books here.

• For socials and more content, Dan’s Instagram and Youtube are updated consistently.

• Dan’s favorite Guardian Academy principles are Raising The Floor and What Is Enough? Both are also discussed in Bumpers.

See Part 1 Here

Remember: It’s written as a coach to other other coaches and trainers. If you have a coach or trainer, you should be making sure they are applying the principles below. If you do not have one, but are trying to make progress…you are your own coach or trainer so this applied directly to you.

One: Stand on One Foot

The first test is so fundamental, you may miss its importance. Ask your client to stand on one foot. If he can stand on one foot for over ten seconds, great; move along to the next assessment. Ideally, we are looking for a range between ten and twenty seconds. Anything beyond twenty seconds is not really important. Give him a hearty handshake and say, “Good for you.” If he stands for less than ten seconds, “outsource” him to a medical doctor. 

Years ago, Clarence Bass quoted this on his excellent website, cbass.com: “As with muscles, the balance system needs to be challenged in order to improve” (Scott McCredie, Balance: In Search of the Lost Sense).  

After reading this quote, as I thought back over my time as a coach and trainer, I began to link up little stories about clients who struggled with balance. One had MS and often had a small stumble when moving about the gym. Another was well over three hundred pounds and couldn’t find his balancing point.   

In 1991, one of my clients, a successful local real estate magnate, asked me about a painful ankle.

“Did you step off a curb wrong or something?”

“No.”

“Do you remember hurting it?”

“No.”

“Do me a favor and go see a doctor, would you?”

He did. He had prostate cancer, and they discovered it so early that he still comes by every so often and trains with me. Why did his ankle hurt? I don’t know. I don’t care. By getting to see the doctor early, he took care of the big problem. 

Why can’t someone stand on one foot for ten seconds?

I don’t know. I don’t care. Go see the doctor. 

By the way, everyone I know starts practicing standing on one foot after being tested. That’s a win–win for a coach: the client is seeking mastery outside the confines of the gym. It makes for a fun test and is something worth doing when you are just standing in line for a movie or doing a house chore. Does it have the value of the other tests? Well, who knows, but it takes only about a minute (at most!), and it might be challenging enough to get someone excited about improving all areas of her training.

Test both feet and get a sense of things. Often, one side might stagger a bit more than the other, and that is worthy of further discussion. But as we begin, let’s just stick to the ten-second standard.

Although I LOVE the ten-second rule, Doctor Michael Mosley shared a nice series of age-related numbers that may encourage many of us to practice our balance a bit more. Here is his piece1:

A good test of your balance is to see how long you can stand on one leg, first with your eyes open and then closed. Take your shoes off, put your hands on your hips and stand on one leg. See how long you last. The test is over as soon as you shift your planted foot or put your raised foot down on the ground. Best of three. Then repeat, with your eyes closed. You will be dismayed by how quickly you start to fall over. Here are the targets that different age groups should be able to manage:

• Under 40:45 seconds with eyes open, 15 seconds with eyes closed.

• Aged 40-49:42 seconds open, 13 seconds closed.

• Aged 50-59:41 seconds open, 8 seconds closed.

• Aged 60-69:32 seconds open, 4 seconds closed.

• Aged 70-79:22 seconds open, 3 seconds closed.

Two: Measurements

The “2” in the 1-2-3-4 Assessment refers to assessing two measurements. The first is weight. Have your client hop on the scale. If she weighs under three hundred pounds, continue assessing.

If she is over three hundred pounds, refer out. 

According to my doctor, Ross Brunetti, once someone gets over three hundred pounds, the rules change. If you are twenty-five to fifty-five years old and you don’t smoke and wear your seat belt, you will very likely live to fifty-five (statistics are statistics), but if you weigh over three hundred pounds, the rules seem to change.  Mortality rates for people over three hundred pounds are different.

When a client is over three hundred pounds, ask him instead to see three professionals: an eye doctor, a dentist, and a medical doctor.

Aside from the obvious benefits of a yearly eye exam—I strongly recommend everyone gets one—there are some other benefits too. An eye doctor can see diabetes (as damage to the blood vessels) and high blood pressure and can get a general sense of someone’s cardiovascular system.

My dentist, Seth Spangler, added the next piece to the obesity puzzle for me with a simple insight. He told me, after reading one of my articles, “I don’t see a lot of obese patients.” I followed up on this and discovered that the problem is most likely twofold. First, there is a serious lack of discussion and teaching about dealing with the obese population in dentistry. This is being addressed, but much of the discussion is based on larger chairs and other accommodations. 

The second issue is interesting as it involves a “chicken or the egg” question: If you have bad teeth, will you eat softer, more easily chewed food? Does poor dental health make it more difficult to eat those wonderful colorful vegetables we’re always suggesting, yet the client turns to rolls with margarine? Cardboard carbs, the chips and boxed-food family, turn into mush when put in the mouth, no chewing necessary. 

Could better tooth care be part of the issue with obesity? It’s worth discussion. It’s worth a bi-annual visit to the dentist.

Finally, and there is no surprise here, I would like this client to see a medical doctor. If this is the third appointment after the eye doctor and dentist, there might not be a lot of surprises left. Blood tests, blood pressure and other simple tests might highlight some long-term issues. 

I’m not qualified in any way to do medical exams. So, I send the client off to get all of these checked out. Does it bring me peace of mind or a surety that we won’t have issues? Not really. I’m not worried about sudden death in the gym. What I want to do is ensure that the client gets a sense of a whole-body approach to dealing with fitness, health, and longevity. If there were serious issues found, or even simple little things like cavities in the teeth, we are well on our way to addressing these problems.

If the person can stand on one foot and weighs under three hundred pounds, we can start truly assessing how we can help determine the proper approach to his fitness goals. The next step is simple: Measure his waistline and height. 

Always measure height. It is an amazing number for assessing performance at the minimum levels; there will be more on this later.

“Keeping your waist circumference to less than half your height can help increase life expectancy for every person in the world,” according to Doctor Margaret Ashwell, an independent consultant and former science director of the British Nutrition Foundation. Brad Pilon, of Eat Stop Eat fame, discusses at length this issue in his PDF book, Dieting for Muscle Growth.[LS1]  He takes this a step further and notes that if you are over the one-half measure on your waist (in regard to height), you might be suffering from a variety of inflammation issues. 

What it boils down to is this: If a person is over that number, whatever you do to reduce waste measurement (or, hey, get taller!) is going to be better. Again, quoting Doctor Ashwell, “Abdominal fat affects organs like the heart, liver and kidneys more adversely than fat around the hips and bottom, in terms of cardiometabolic risk.”

That’s good enough for me—and the test is so simple (and fast to set up and explain), it is worthy of instant adoption. So, if a client’s waist-to-height ratio is greater than 1 to 2, she is a body composition client.

It doesn’t matter whether the client is male or female. And, of course, you’ll want to make sure to find the narrowest part of the abdominal area to measure as the waist. For clarity, let me give you some examples of passing marks—



·      72 inches tall with a 36-inch waistline

·      64 inches tall with a 32-inch waistline

·      68 inches tall with a 33-inch waistline

The following marks would indicate a body composition client (again, the numbers hold for both men and women)—



·      72 inches tall with a 41-inch waistline

·      64 inches tall with a 50-inch waistline

·    68 inches tall with a 50-inch waistline

Recently, I found some additional ideas from Bertie Marklund’s book, The Nordic Guide to Living 10 Years Longer. I like how these include “risk,” as that often encourages people to realign food and exercise decisions. “Waist Height,” by the way is a fun little measure: lay on your back, push your lower back into the ground, and have someone measure (with a ruler or yardstick) how high is your belly. It gives an interesting insight into where you store fat. Higher is NOT better on this test.

Waistline Numbers

Men

Under 37 inches: Healthy

Between 37 and 40 inches: Some Health Risk

Over 40 inches: Clear Health Risk

Women

Under 31 inches: Healthy

Between 31 and 35 inches: Some Health Risk

Over 35 inches: Clear Health Risk

Waist Height (Healthy Numbers)

Men: Under 8.7 inches

Women: Under 7.9 inches

For all QIII clients (A² or E²), I use a Venn diagram assessment to help them (and me) address which of these three most important qualities need to be stressed in training and lifestyle: joint mobility, body composition (comp) and strength training (strength gaps).

Joint mobility concerns the ability of each joint to move freely. Enough is enough with joint mobility; if a joint is moving through a full range of motion pain free, it’s enough. There is no need for circus tricks. Body composition is the search for lean body mass—more muscle and less fat. And strength training improves quality of life for the elderly, the injured and the ill—and it can do wonders for everybody else too. 

The Big Circles

In my Venn diagram assessment, there are three big circles, and each represents one of the three most important qualities in training—mobility, body comp and strength. Some clients will need to focus on just one of these, some clients on two and some on all three. 

When I work with aging collision sports and collision occupation groups, I focus on section Six. I try to train strength and joint mobility back-to-back throughout the training session—that is, every strength movement has a joint mobility movement connected to it. I consider a QII client “old” after about twenty-six years old, by the way, as the years of training, competing and working tend to do a fair amount of aging to the system. People can only take so many hits before they don’t recover as well anymore.

As we progress, you will notice that clients who fall into section Seven are actually quite easy to work with in training and lifestyle. Addressing one issue, for example joint mobility, may help these clients sleep better and longer, which is often helpful in body comp. A little less fat and a bit more muscle helps strength training, which in turn builds a better platform for joint mobility. Sevens often make the best progress of all in the early weeks as well, as the basic principle of “everything works” holds true.

Three: Questions

1.

“How many pillows does it take for you to be comfortable at night?”

This single question has led to more pauses in conversations than an off-color joke. If the answer is one, we continue moving on with the assessment. Any more than one, and the client has joint mobility issues. The record, by the way, is from a former NFL linebacker who told me he needed nine—yes, nine—pillows to sleep. Imagine trying to sleep next to someone who is constantly trying to get comfortable fussing and fidgeting over nine pillows!

So which joint is the issue? I don’t know. But I do know this: As we address movement, we will also probably be addressing body composition, because joint issues impair a proper sleep cycle.

If you have ever been in pain, you understand this point. A broken limb, a painful back or a pinched nerve in your neck can play havoc on normal sleep. Imagine living years or decades with this pain. Sleep, along with proper dental care, seems to me to be the missing part of the whole fat-loss formula. 

In my other writings, I have discussed these odd sleep experiments I have tried to lose weight for weightlifting competitions. I once lost thirteen pounds in a week by trying to sleep twelve hours a day. I found it hard to be hungry, and the bodyweight just seemed to fall off. Robb Wolf taught me that all those lights, from LEDs to television screens to street lamps, are interrupting our sleep cycles. Even if you can’t sleep twelve hours, darken your bedroom as best you can when you do sleep. 

As coaches or trainers, we want to monitor how improving movement throughout joints and systems can help our clients sleep. 

Oddly, the easiest way is by counting pillows. Oh, and your bedmate will thank us for the changes, too.

In this assessment system, if a client needs more than one pillow, we consider him a One on the Venn diagram. It will be rare to find someone who sleeps poorly and doesn’t have any body comp issues, so many who start in section One will slide over to Two. The upside of working with Twos is that addressing either side, joint mobility or body comp, seems to help the other. A little less girth takes a load off the joints and limbs and, in most cases, allows better movement. Better movement tends to lead to more movement and that seems universally a good thing for people’s goals. Moreover, some sleep issues improve with body comp changes, and we begin to see that wonderful cascade where working on something “here” leads to improvement “there.”

2

“Do you eat colorful vegetables?” 

The word “colorful” is important as, originally, we left it out. French fries and potato chips might be vegetables to some, but chomping on red peppers is not the same as chomping on corn chips. 

If a client answers, “Yes, why, yes I do,” smile and nod. There might be some follow-up questions later—such as how many and how often and okay, now tell me the truth.

Sometimes clients are trying to give you the answer that they think you want instead of giving you an honest one. 

If a client answers, “Hell, no,” at least you know where you stand with her. Most of us agree that vegetables are a key to health, but this client is going to need to be convinced to join the veggie side.  

If a client answers, “Well, what do you mean by ‘vegetable’?,” you know that he doesn’t eat very many colorful vegetables. 

If a coach or trainer doesn’t get enough insights from this question, I have found these follow up questions to be extremely helpful:

•            Do you eat like an adult?

•            Do you eat “clean?”

•            Do you have a menu and shopping list?

•            Do you practice fasting?

 Fasting, of course, seems to be going through a rediscovery. Now, to argue that YOU invented it is going to be difficult: 

“Obese people and those desiring to lose weight should perform hard work before food.  Meals should be taken after exertion while still panting from fatigue.  They should, moreover, only eat once per day and take no baths and walk naked as long as possible.” – Hippocrates circa 471 BC

3

“Do you exercise for at least half an hour each day?”

You might find that many answer yes here, but often the other assessments won’t match this answer. Don’t judge. Some will go down the Socratic Dialogue Avenue (“What do you mean by ‘exercise’?”), and this debate will be far more telling than any actual answer. 

Honestly, elite athletes will generally answer no. Many elite athletes train often, but with several days off a week. You can get into the debate of what is meant by “exercise” in this question, but we are more concerned with the client’s response than creating a perfectly clear question. What we are looking for in the last two questions is the disconnect between the other assessments and the answers to these questions. If the person claims to eat nothing but healthy meals and snacks, yet is dancing close to obesity numbers, there is more to the story here. The first question highlights issues with joint mobility, but the last two give us some insight into the client’s mental and emotional processes concerning diet and exercise.

The art of coaching is in understanding and adapting to the client’s feelings concerning change. As Coach Maughan told us years ago at Utah State, “Make yourself a slave to good habits.” And, as I have said many times, it is one thing to tell that to a room full of Division One athletes and another to tell that to a single mom juggling everything. 

We must hear our clients and athletes, no matter what they say.

Again, some follow up questions for clarity might be helpful. I have used these, for example:

Do you wait for others to pull out to park?

           How many bars/stores/parks are within walking distance of your house?

           Are you active on days off/weekends?

           Where do you keep your exercise clothes/equipment?

Four: Tests

For many clients, you will only need the first test in this group right away. Certainly, each of the four tests has great value. To determine if clients are on the right path or going in the wrong direction, it is always helpful to test and see where they are now. Also, tests are a handy tool to see if the improvements are sticking.

The first assessment comes from Stu McGill, the great back expert from Canada. I am a big fan of all his work, and I always sit in the front row when he speaks. The test is very simple: Can the client do a two-minute plank? If not, this is an issue. Either, Stu tells us, the client is training his core poorly or he is obese. That’s why I love Stu’s work; he uses research facility to bring clarity into my training gym.  

Here’s a fun tip: I get a very high fail rate when I let clients know they’re halfway. That groan and that feeling of “No way!” lend themselves to people dropping out of the challenge. So, it often takes a few attempts to prepare the person mentally for a two-minute challenge.

It doesn’t matter what kind of plank is used. I prefer the pushup position plank (PUPP), but any variation is fine. This two-minute test—and, yes, to quote one athlete I worked with, “it is arbitrary and mean-spirited”—challenges strength in all its degrees and tests a bit of endurance. But what it tells you is this: The client is not strong enough. 

Using our Venn diagram, I look over at Five and see that the client is a candidate for getting stronger—and remember, rarely is someone a pure Five.

One important thing to remember is that most NFL players and SEALs would be trained as Sixes, so don’t think that any of this is negative. It is just a starting position to begin to program what the person needs.

Many women are Fours; they can’t hold the plank and have body comp issues. Strength training, as many have discovered, is a superior way to achieve the lean body that many women today aspire to have. The “Cult of Cardio” has slowly disappeared, and we find more and more women discovering the value of strength training.

Like the one-foot test, you may find your people practicing this test over and over. I can’t imagine a better thing for your clients to do than to try to master the plank and one-foot tests to “beat you.”

The second test is a fundamental human movement. Sadly, in most gym settings you rarely see people getting on the floor, and this second assessment is so simple that one may miss the point completely. Follow these instructions: Sit down on the ground. Now stand up. 

Fantastic—that’s the whole test! 

Doctor Claudio Gil Araújo, who performed a study at Clinimex-Exercise Medicine Clinic in Rio de Janeiro, said being able to stand up from a seated position on the ground was “remarkably predictive” of physical strength, flexibility and coordination at a range of ages. Araújo said: “If a middle-aged or older man or woman can sit and rise from the floor using just one hand—or even better without the help of a hand—they are not only in the higher quartile of musculo-skeletal fitness but their survival prognosis is probably better than that of those unable to do so.”

Each of the two basic movements is assessed (to the ground and back to standing) and scored out of five, making a composite score of ten, with one point subtracted per support, such as a hand or knee, used. Here is the interesting part: Those who scored three points or fewer had a five to six times higher risk of death than those scoring more than eight points. A score below eight was linked with two to fivefold higher death rates over the 6.3-year study period.

Doctor Araújo said, “Our study also shows that maintaining high levels of body flexibility, muscle strength, power-to-body weight ratio and coordination are not only good for performing daily activities but have a favorable influence on life expectancy.”

One of the things I have realized is that many Americans literally spend no time on the ground. So, I came up with a little teaching drill that masquerades as a cardiovascular workout for some and a mobility workout for others. It’s called “Get Back Ups” or GBUps.  

There’s an important key to using this drill: Do not overcoach. In fact, intentionally undercoach the whole movement.

Announce the position on the ground (on the front, on the right side, on the left side, pushup position plank and on the back). Wait for the client, or clients, to get in position. When all have stopped moving, announce, “Get back up.” When all are standing still, move to the next position.

Series One

The hands are free.



·      On your front (or on your belly)

·     Get back up

·      On your right side

·      Get back up

·      On your left side

·      Get back up

·      Pushup position plank

·      Get back up

·      On your back

·      Get back up

Series Two

The right hand is stuck to the right knee (tell them a puppy dies if their hands come loose from their knees).



·      On your front (or on your belly)

·      Get back up

·      On your right side

·      Get back up

·      On your left side

·      Get back up

·      Pushup position plank

·      Get back up

·      One your back

·      Get back up

Series Three

The left hand is stuck to the left knee



·      On your front (or on your belly)

·      Get back up

·      On your right side

·      Get back up

·      On your left side

·      Get back up

·      Pushup position plank

·      Get back up

·      On your back

·      Get back up

Series Four

The right hand is stuck to the left knee.



·      On your front (or on your belly)

·      Get back up

·      On your right side

·      Get back up

·      On your left side

·      Get back up

·      Pushup position plank

·      Get back up

·      On your back

·      Get back up 

Series Five

The left hand is stuck to the right knee.



·      On your front (or on your belly)

·      Get back up

·      On your right side

·      Get back up

·      On your left side

·      Get back up

·      Pushup position plank

·      Get back up

·      On your back

·      Get back up

Note: I also use “Both hands in the back pocket,” “Hands behind the head,” and “Hands on shoulders” for variety. The PUPP still stays, and it’s enlightening to see how the person attempts to do these.

Doing all five series is a total of twenty-five reps of going up and down, and the group will be hot and sweating. It’s a fine warm-up, but it also seems to improve movement. As the movements are restricted (hands on knees), the client needs to come up with new strategies to get back up and down. 

Doing these series, whether all of them or just some of them, improves the score on the Araújo test. Elderly clients seem to learn to simplify the movements and cut out the extra steps up and down. The feet become planted, and there is a drive upward for the whole leg and glutes. We are cheating the test, certainly, but there is great value in increasing the amount of time that clients spend standing up from and sitting down to the floor. 

A final tip here: A program that combines swings or squats with a pushup is going to get your clients successfully on and off the ground. If you mix and match things well, it will become dance-like in its flow. The devil, as always, is in the details.

The third test—and again this is optional for many new clients—is the classic standing long jump. The goal is simple: The client must jump over her body height. Not vertically! Horizontally! This is the standing long jump.

Using the measurement from the height-to-waist test (I told you height was important), either draw a line to get over or just have the client jump and then mark and measure. 

Less than height is an issue. Is it a lack of power or a lack of mobility? Either way, after training for a while, achieving this worthy goal is going to indicate that the training program is on the right path.

One of the first articles (we would call them “blogs” now) I ever read on the internet was about jumping and quick lifts. The author, Clarence Bass, began with this story—

“Do you do any jumping?” asked Dr. Terry Todd, Co-Editor (with wife Jan) of Iron Game History and keeper of the Todd-McLean physical culture collection at the University of Texas, Austin. Talking to Terry is always fun and informative; he’s in touch with just about everybody connected with the weight sports. Terry—a big man who weighed over 300 pounds in his heyday as a champion lifter—regaled me with the story of how he used to win tavern bets by jumping flat-footed up on bar counters. Turning serious, he related that, approaching 60 years of age, he still includes jumping and fast lifting movements in his training. “You know,” he explained, “people lose the spring in their legs when they get older; I’ve seen old people who literally cannot jump up on a curb.” Obviously, Terry doesn’t intend to let that happen to him.

The loss of explosive movement, a “spring,” is one of the markers of old age. Although we want to be safe and not cause injury, we must find ways to maintain and then build upon current levels of overall explosion with our older clients. The ability to pop is connected to the appearance of the glutes; again, the butt is the key to a youthful appearance and the secret to youthful power.

For the elite athlete, we expect more than body height. If everyone in a sport does standing long jumps (SLJs) over nine feet, then that is a target for an elite athlete. A coach could say, “Somewhere between six feet and nine feet is your problem right now,” and insist on more power, strength, and mobility training

If training increases the SLJ, I think things are going well. If training decreases the SLJ, I think you have a problem. The SLJ measures explosive power and overall joint health. Keep an eye on decreases here and address them quickly.

The fourth and final test changed my career: the farmer walk. It was the missing ingredient to my training, and once I added it I had a brand-new start as a thrower. In my forties, I threw farther than in my thirties and the only change, beyond two daughters, tuition payments, a mortgage and two pets, was farmer walks. 

The farmer walk assesses overall work capacity. Let me just say right here that it is hard to measure work capacity. Some tests are flawed, like testing professional basketball players on indoor cycles to find VO₂ max. Many basketball players can’t fit on a normal bike, and others have never bicycled—obviously their scores will suffer. Years ago, some coaches tested physical conditioning with a one-mile run. I certainly understand why, but at the same time the best miler would show the best results, which does not mean he would be able to play offensive tackle or throw the shot put far.

The Farmer Walk assesses work capacity without the issues of most tests.

Farmer walking can be mastered in less than a minute, but the challenge to a person’s grip, posture and overall conditioning is apparent on the first try. The test essentially boils down to this: Have your client do a farmer walk for a specific distance. A few weeks later, after intelligent training, retest the movement. If she goes farther, well, the training is increasing work capacity. If she doesn’t, why not? 

Load has been the topic of a lot of serious discussion in our gym. Sophomore girls in high school can use eighty-five pounds per hand, yet this is well over bodyweight total. Some have argued bodyweight in each hand, others half of bodyweight per hand. That’s a big difference.

Still, if the load is the same for the before and after tests, it should be okay. The downside is that people can go a long way…a loooong way…with too light a load. Most people using this test have discovered that erring on weights being too heavy seems to work better.

Mike Warren Brown pointed out to me the issues with so many people trying to get a handle on loading the farmer walk. We came up with a reasonable answer: Use the standards from the squat numbers in my book, Mass Made Simple, for individual people, and the trap bar numbers for gym members and large teams. 

Trap Bar Farmer Walk (Mass Made Simple Squat Standards)



·      Under 135 pounds: 135 pounds

·      136–185 pounds: 185 pounds

·      186–205 pounds: 205 pounds

·      Over 206 pounds: 225 pounds 

We experimented with half of bodyweight per hand and actual farmer bars, and it worked well, but we soon realized that it would not be universally repeatable. Kettlebells work well, too, by the way. Strive for bodyweight (half in each hand), but be aware that many places don’t have enough bells.  

Kettlebells (One in Each Hand)



·      Under 135 pounds: Double 24s

·      136–185 pounds: Double 32s

·      186–216 pounds: Double 40s

·      Over 216 pounds: Double 48s

You should always stay with the same loading, with one exception: growing youth athletes. They might need to jump up in load year to year as they grow during puberty.

So, these four tests can also obviously be a performance program. The plank, the GBUps, the SLJ and the farmer walk test a number of important qualities but are also self-measurable. Clients and athletes can practice and improve on these tests often. Moreover, these tests also reflect the needs of life and living. People want to be able to recover from a fall, leap over a rattlesnake and carry packages a long way. They want to have a core worthy of all the bends and twists of life. 

It takes a bit longer than four minutes to finish all these physical tests, and many clients will be unable to perform some of the challenges. That is fine. It can be an excellent goal, long term, to be able to do all the movements efficiently and effectively.

Grade the Mirror: Assessing the Program

Assessments are so intertwined with goal setting that the best way to think about goals and assessments is as a figure eight. Goals and assessments run in a continual loop. Goal setting points us in the right direction, assessments feed the process with updated goals and off we go into a loop of goal and assessment, goal, and assessment. 

However, there is a gap in most assessments. Usually, we assess the athlete, client, person, or student. And then a few weeks later, we reassess. That sounds right, yes?

What we forget to assess is the program we put this person on! And that is the key. 

I’m not sure why this obvious point is often overlooked, but we must assess the program as well as the person. 

There are bad programs. There are bad DVD workouts. There are bad methods of training. How does one separate the wheat from the chaff? Assess them and find out! Lewis Caralla, a young strength coach, and I were talking about this simple point. 

“Grade the mirror,” he muttered. 

“What was that?”

“Grade the mirror,” he responded, a little louder this time. 

That’s it. All too often, we throw a bunch of exercises, sets and reps and workout goo into a blender, press the puree button and call it a “training program.” Then, we gobble it down.

Any new training idea might be great, but let’s grade the mirror. Let’s assess both the person and the program.

I grade the mirror with these two tests: the Standing Long Jump and the Farmer’s Walk. If both the SLJ and FW improve with a program or a new exercise or idea, I can be confident that this is a good thing. If the FW improves and the SLJ drops, I need to look at what we have been giving up. If the SLJ improves and the FW doesn’t improve, that might be okay for a power athlete, but a problem for an athlete who needs some level of conditioning. If both drop…we have a problem.

So, grade the mirror and assess the programming every so often.

FAQ

Answering the most common questions about the 1-2-3-4 Assessment

Q. I sleep on my side with a pillow between my knees in order to keep my hips level. I think that’s safer than spending eight hours with one leg angled in, and would be common among some women. Am I still a mobility client? 

A. The pillow question is a fun one. No one has ever given me a false answer as there is no stigma to it. If I ask if you buckle your seatbelt, few will answer “No!” as common sense and research practically forces us to answer “Yes,” no matter what we actually do.  

The pillow question, as you can see by your question, “opens a door.” Many of us might use extra pillows from habit or comfort or just keeping the dog’s breath farther away from the face. For the assessor, it also gets us asking about mobility work, flexibility training and the key to recovery: sleep.  

If you put a pillow here or there for this reason or that, this is fine, of course. As we begin to plan out a training program for you, we are going to just be sure to actively include mobility work throughout your training. I can’t think of a person training who doesn’t need to access and appreciate the full range of motion throughout every joint in the body. 

As I type, my neck stiffens up from injuries from playing football. Wrist injuries make me roll the joint around daily and do a few finger movements. Most adults I know have similar issues. As I often tell people, “Don’t worry if you don’t have mobility issues today. You probably will in ten years.” 

Something like the Functional Movement Screen or all the various other mobility tests can be a great next step. Our job with the 1-2-3-4 assessment is find a place to start programming the person’s first workout. 

After a hard workout of hinges and squats, you might find the need for additional pillows.

Q. So, do you just do the same 1-2-3-4 Assessment every two weeks?

A. You certainly could, but you don’t have to. I like to test something about every two weeks. It can be as simple as a mobility test like one of the seven tests from FMS or revisit the plank or waist measurement. You can organize this, if you like, so that every three months or so, you do each mobility test once or twice and a full screen once. You can test pull ups, push-ups and a variety of strength movements fairly easy just about any time. 

The key is recording these tests and watching for improvement. 

Q: Your 300-pound weight line, is it lower for women?

A. My doctor was clear about this: man or woman, the line in the sand is 300 pounds. I certainly have no issue with sending each client off to the eye doctor, dentist and medical doctor, but I want to insist upon it over 300 pounds. 

I know this: If you decide that EVERY client walking through the door MUST get these exams, you probably won’t have any clients. They will listen to daytime television doctors, the lady at the salon, and the guy next to them on the airplane, but getting them to make and show up to an appointment is going to be a challenge.

When I first came on to the internet, I met a group of women called “The 100 Pound Club.” To join it, you had to lose 100 pounds. I found the group very welcoming, and I also just basically listened and learned from their experiences. Their progress was usually a series of simple steps that all of us would recognize: more water intake, some lifting, cutting drastically on carbs and watching for “triggers.” 

There were a lot of health problems discussed on the threads. A lot of medical advice was given out to the newbies from people who had lost a lot of weight, but never darkened the door of medical school. 

So, I am fine with erring on the side of caution with any client. But ask twenty people today the following question: “Have you been the eye doctor, the dentist and a medical doctor in the past year?” You will be amazed at how few answer yes. So, insist on those over 300 pounds and encourage everyone else to maintain an active medical history.

Q. What if the person “passes” all three of the tests?

A. The person who has their waistline at or under the 2:1 ratio, sleeps with only one pillow and can handle the plank for two minutes is obviously doing well. In my times assessing Americans, I don’t honestly see many of these.

I would suggest training them like a Six. Mobility and Strength work are always good for the human person. In addition, I would actively encourage them to participate in some kind of active hobby and perhaps athletics. Rock climbing will encourage you to keep your bodyweight down far better than a daily hop on the bathroom scale. You will feel those extra pounds as you pull yourself higher. Anything you can do to embrace the active lifestyle and continue to move about is going to pay benefits in your future 

Q. What does this assessment do for me? What is next?

A. This assessment process simply gives the coach and trainer a simple road map for the next three to nine sessions. Remember, we are discovering what the person NEEDs not what they want. Our job is to get them to turn their rudder in another direction. The assessment shows us what needs to be done 

I want you to stay on the path to your goals.

live to learn give to earn.

PS. This publication is a for-fun project, applying Guardian Academy Principles to fitness and sharing some of the best, no-nonsense fitness insights. If you’d like to bring some friends along, you can grab a referral link here. I have no idea what the referral rewards will be, but we’ll cook something up.

More From Dan John:

• For books, you can see his bookstore here and his Amazon books here.

• For socials and more content, Dan’s Instagram and Youtube are updated consistently.

• Dan’s favorite Guardian Academy principles are Raising The Floor and What Is Enough? Both are also discussed in Bumpers.

1. Dull

2. Distracted

3. Delusional

All of them creep in to derail our health, fitness and wellness journey. The solution to dull? Do something. The solution to distracted? Commit to the thing you pick. Simple. Not necessarily, easily. But simple.

However, to pick the best thing for you, you need to break the delusion.

Delusion isn’t so simple.

Delusion is not being clear and/or honest about where you’re at or what you’re capable of. It’s like having a false sense of “your current location” when trying to use Google Maps. Dan John is one of the most well respected coaches and educators in the fitness industry - and he’s put together a comprehensive process for breaking the delusion to help you and/or your clients get an accurate “you are here” reading.

Below is part 1 of a multi-part series,

It’s written as a coach to other other coaches and trainers. If you have a coach or trainer, you should be making sure they are applying the principles below. If you do not have one, but are trying to make progress…you are your own coach or trainer so this applied directly to you.

The 1-2-3-4 Assessment Part 1

By Dan John

In the past few years, I have come up with a simple method of assessing clients to get right to this core question: 

What do we NEED to do? What is Enough?

The 1-2-3-4 Assessment will answer this question efficiently and quickly. 

This assessment also answers the most difficult question facing coaches and trainers: What do we do next? We will answer this question with the Five Tools of fitness and nutrition. The assessment is simple and repeatable. It can be done with one person or hundreds. It answers the most important question in fitness: 

What is Enough?1

If you are just trying to get back into shape, the answer might be obvious. Perhaps you need to get a few workouts combining mobility and strength and increase your vegetable intake.

Now, if you are an athlete and you have an event coming up, we must look you sternly in the eye and ask another question: “Can you go?”

Those three words, “Can you go?,” are the great challenge of sport and life. When your child needs you, you rally up and take care of business even if you have the flu or not a minute to spare. For the athlete, this is the time to step up, step in, grab the ball and go. 

Can you go? To answer this question, under the heat of competition, takes years of training, growth, and preparation. The lessons we have learned from athletes help us lead the typical client towards their goals, too. 

The first step toward helping our clients achieve their goals in fitness is helping them figure out who they are right here and right now.

In fitness, success comes down to these two “truths”—



• Everything works. (Every diet, fad, program, and gimmick “works.”)

• Everything works for about six weeks. (Every gimmick usually has the tagline of two weeks or, worse, overnight…then, it stops working. Most people have learned this lesson many times.) 

These two truths lead us the question for Week Seven, Day One: “What do I do next?”

With goal setting, a simple assessment and a sense of where we are today (not twenty years ago!), we can answer the question:

“What do I do next?” 

It is simple. But it is not easy.

John Powell, the former world-record holder in the discus, has an insightful story about this point. Powell had been training a group of young men how to throw the discus. He was emphasizing how simple the movement is across the ring: 1-2-3. One boy attempted it, crossed his feet and fell to the ground. 

“You said it was easy,” he complained to John.

John countered, “I said it was simple, not easy.”

The answer is simple. It may or may not be easy. 

Let’s find out where you are first. Then, we address what to do next. 

Assessments: Judging Progression and Programs without Hyperbole

There is an important question to ask yourself about everything in life: Did “it” work? Away from the glitch and sparkle of advertising, BS sessions and bravado with friends, did “it” work? Here is how I usually know it worked: I did it.  

Fill in anything you want for it: life hacks, gasoline-saving tricks, window-cleaning tips, odd food combinations or exotic training programs. I think peanut butter on a hamburger is excellent. If it works, it works. 

 I believe in assessment. I often joke that we should be like the character from the Harry Potter series, Mad-Eye Moody. He would yell at the kids, “Constant vigilance!” Replace “vigilance” with “assessment,” and you will be a better coach, teacher and trainer.

Constant assessment!

If there is a must to coaching, it is this: You must assess. Vladimir Janda said this half a century ago: “Time spent in assessments will save time in treatment” –or in our case training. It’s true: If there’s a key to coaching, it is understanding that “here” is a moving target. I hope we established “there” already, the “B” of A-B. “A,” of course is where the goal setter is now. And, let me restate the cliché: If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.

We want to be on the road to mastery, even if we don’t make every goal we set. In this, I often quote Cervantes, “The road is always better than the inn.” We should write A-B as A TO B with capital letters screaming out the path. Simply getting on the path to appropriate, legal and worthy goals leads me to places I never imagined. If the road is leading you to a worthy destination (thank you, Earl Nightingale), there are many wonderful stops along the way.

In short, strive for mastery—or, better yet, strive for the road to mastery.2

When someone has a goal that is A–B, things are pretty easy. Attaining a goal is a lot like sailing a boat into the wind. You will tack back and forth with your goal on your right, then on your left, then back on your right. But these are course corrections; you are always advancing forward toward your goal. 

Your job as the coach and mentor is to shout out, “Bring it around!” every so often and get your clients back on target.

For those still struggling with an appropriate goal, our A–Z friends, assessments show us progress. The A–Z people often have goals that are so difficult and demand so much time, energy and investment that little steps are going to feel like failure. 

The mother of three who wants to look like the cover of a fitness magazine in six weeks is thinking Z, not B. Sometimes, our task is to point to logical, reasonable, attainable goals. This doesn’t mean that Z is impossible; let’s just start with trying to get some movement in the right direction first. 

There is another kind of goal that we call A/Not A. Steve Ledbetter came up with this insight; many people don’t know what they want in fitness, body composition or health, but they do know that they don’t want to be “here.”  

These people say, “This is how I look today, but this isn’t who I am!” Assessment allows us to reaffirm that they are not where they started. Once they were “here,” but now they can point backward and argue that they aren’t at that “here” anymore—indeed, that old “here” is getting farther away.  

Assessment should clue us into one important point: The impact of your training should be obvious: the impact of training should push towards the goal, and it should help achieve the goal. And most people know this. Sadly, most people’s training seems to not do anything at all to support the goals set. Instead, people tend to do what my mom used to call “monkey see, monkey do.” It’s a rare week that I am not asked a question about something on the internet or television that looks fun and interesting in training. It is all fine, but it rarely supports the goals of the person asking the question.

For years, I answered the total impact of strength coach and fitness trainer upon one’s goals as “it depends.” In my book, Intervention, I explained how the Quadrants clarified my understanding of how the coach and trainer can lead one to their goal.

The Basics of the Quadrants

I can’t repeat the Quadrants enough. The Qs are my attempt to answer the question: “What is the impact of a strength coach?” My original answer, “it depends,” wasn’t that enlightening. Over time, I came up with a simple image of four quadrants. A client’s location on the Qs depends first on the number of qualities that client’s goal requires (for example, playing football requires many qualities, but shot putting requires only two: get strong and throw the shot).

Second, the Qs relate to the absolute highest levels at which humanity can perform. 

I wish you luck trying to figure out how to train for elite sprinting and elite swimming at the same time.  

Usually, when I walk people through the assessment, I tell them they’re in Quadrant III. It’s not laziness; it’s reality. Sure, an NFL player was in Quadrant II, but as a career moves on, training simplifies.

There is a sad, but true moment for everyone I walk through assessment:

You are not in high school—or college—anymore! 

Quadrant IV  demands the hand of God, as I like to joke. You have to be born a sprinter or elite lifter and be blessed to be in a location that supports sprinting or lifting. A boy born with the genetic gifts to be the greatest lifter of all time and raised in Iowa might end up being an outstanding wrestler. Put that same kid in certain towns in North Dakota, and you have a solid hockey player. Now, if he was born in Bulgaria or China, we have a multiple world-champion lifter. 

Quadrant II gets all the press. Collision sports and collision occupations tend to bring out the need to be a superhero.. It takes a special kind of person, in both mental toughness and physical gifts, to be the best of the best, and few have long careers doing these kinds of jobs. Professional football players and Navy SEALs are amazing. Fitness authors sell a lot of books and magazines to people who want to be like SEALs.

To “be a SEAL,” it would make sense to join the US Navy.

I’m going to just say this right now: You aren’t in QII. Usually, if you were at one time, you are not anymore. Nor are most of the clients we will ever train in the gym.

Quadrant I is that wonderful period of youth when we learn movement, games and sports. I hope you learned to swim and ride a bike, as these are harder to learn as you age. 

Once we leave the primary and secondary years of school, we leave QI behind too. 

Most people are in Quadrant III. There are only a few physical qualities needed to train in this quadrant, and the levels are comparably low. Fat loss can be defined as caloric restriction and inefficient movement. There are only two qualities, and picking the appropriate approach to these qualities can ensure success. This approach might not always be what someone wants to do. A bad dancer burns more calories in a dance class than a good dancer and a crappy bike takes more effort to move than a good bike. Inefficient movement might not be as fun as mastering the sport, but it ensures successful fat loss.

The problem I always had in the past in explaining QIII was that I lumped Olympic athletes into the same group as the person trying to lose five pounds. While they are both QIII, there is enough distinction between the two to break them into smaller groups: active (or aging) athletes and everybody else.

For shorthand, I refer to active athletes as A² and everybody else as E².

Active (Aging) Athletes

Training for the QIII A² is simple: The athlete needs to practice the sport and then do fundamental human movements with the appropriate reps, sets and load in the weight room. The focus in strength training will be to address weaknesses, but we want to compete with our strengths. 

Yes, it is that simple.

Some A² will do complex movements such as the Olympic lifts. Others will find the basic movements (planks and goblet squats, for example) support their goals. If there is lagging movement or joint mobility issues, some specialized training might be valuable for periods of the year. Gaps in training or lack of attaining the basic standards in the fundamentals will become more glaring as the athlete ages. Additionally, these issues will also diminish the chances of achieving the highest goals, as elite performance demands so much from the body. 

 QIII is where the champions roam. I usually joke that we don’t do much—but that’s okay, as we don’t do it well. In truth, the QIII A² needs to master the techniques, tactics and strategies necessary to perform at the highest level possible. The strength coach supports this by providing a balanced, strong platform to launch the A² toward the goal. 

So training the QIII A² is going to be a balancing act. Since lifting weights has become a part of every athlete’s training, we see athletes much bigger and stronger now than ever before. Athletes seem to get bigger every year. In the 1960s, offensive linemen in the NFL were still in the 210–230 pound range and rarely did you see a 300 pounder. Today, many high schools have 300 pounders. 

For the QIII A², one of the hardest things to teach about strength is when enough is enough. Doctor Tom Fahey once studied the strength levels of an elite discus thrower. An athlete thrower needs to be able to do these lifts—



• 400-pound bench press

• 450-pound back squat

• 250-pound snatch

• 300-pound clean

To the average person, these are big lifts, but to elite throwers, these are almost light—and to some, these are poor lifts! Getting stronger, along with getting more flexible, is one of the easiest things to achieve. Lift weights and you will get stronger. The issue for the QIII A² is this: As you continue to increase your strength, you must see a corresponding improvement in your sport performance. Lifting is the easy part of the formula for improved performance. To improve or maintain elite levels of performance, the athlete must remain fresh enough to train. And, yes, I know you know that. But applying this truth is hard.

Strength coaches who help QIII A² must focus on two things—



• Are there any gaps in the training program? Are A² clients doing all the fundamental human movements? Is there a balance in load and volume in these movements?

• Is the athlete up to standard in these movements? The levels for track and field are known with a large body of experience and research. Other sports are catching up in this area quickly.

Every other quality that an athlete needs should come from practicing and performing his or her sport. As I always say about being a good head track-and-field coach, “Throwers throw. Jumpers jump. Hurdlers hurdle.”

If you are a soccer player and haven’t kicked a ball in months, but you can deadlift three times your bodyweight, you are missing the point. The point? You should be playing soccer!

With the QIII A², you must have a laser-beam focus on the goal. The most important key is to cut the options back. Insist on less variety in the weight room, focus on quality reps and apply appropriate load. Enough is enough. As I tell my people, “You are doing the big work here, so get off my back.” One of the most common errors in training is to start questioning the process. This often happens after the athlete reads something or hears something new and exciting. You must trust the process, trust the path. Let the process happen, and—something that doesn’t happen as often as I wish—finish the process. 

Even if you or your clients are not athletes, there is a lot of value in listening to the sports world. There are some things we’ve learned the hard way in elite performance, and you might as well enjoy the free knowledge.

For example, traveling as an athlete is always an issue. Many athletes are just built “funny”: too big, too long and too wide for normal seats. The traveling athlete has the same issue as your typical office worker. With prolonged sitting, the body begins to round forward, the hips tighten and we seem to get glued to the screen (computer or television).

So there are three things I recommend for traveling athletes the moment they get into their hotel rooms—



1.    Stretch the hip flexors.

2.    Work on your thoracic spine mobility.

3.    Try a few bird dogs, and test the single-side bird dog to reestablish rotary stability.

Universally, traveling athletes suffer from tight hip flexors, stiff T spines and a loss of rotary stability. So before you step up to the plate with a guy throwing something at your face at ninety-five miles per hour—or doing whatever it is you’ll do—I recommend getting yourself back to “more normal.” As one of my baseball players noted, he was shocked to see how stable he was with bird dogs when at home and how that vanished during plane rides. 

I am convinced that everyone needs to do these few correctives every day, unless you walk and move all day without lengthy periods of sitting (commuting, typing, watching shows). So learn from the elites, stretch a bit and test those bird dogs daily.

Athletes can also teach the rest of us that superior performance comes from not trying so hard. In World War II, fighter pilots were having a problem not recognizing friend or foe quickly enough. Among others, Bud Winters was hired to help them deal with this issue. Using his sports background, he discovered that physical relaxation leads to mental relaxation, which in turn brings quicker recognition in the sky. 

Years later, he became the head track-and-field coach of the legendary San Jose State teams known as Speed City. His program was better than nearly every national team in the world, and his athletes led the world in sprints, discus throws and pole vaults. He called this method of relaxation, Relax and Win. 

He expected his athletes to learn to fall asleep, on demand, anytime and anywhere. He used physical warm-ups to produce more relaxation. He believed that a loose, relaxed effort was superior to trying to “kill yourself” for victory. It works—and not only in sports. You can find these benefits in business, public speaking and normal human interactions. 

At the same time, Eastern European sports scientists were discovering that everyone can tense at about the same rate, but that superior athletes can relax the muscle faster. They theorized that relaxation was the secret to elite performance.  

So relax. You are doing fine.

The next great lesson we can all learn from elite performance is simple: Getting stronger by lifting weights can improve every aspect of life. Yes, you will throw farther and jump higher, and that is great, thank you very much. But you will also move the couch easier, carry in more groceries and generally be more of a help than a hindrance in daily life. That, by the way, is nicer for the rest of us too.

Can You Go?

I have a sad truth about QIII A² and assessment. It all comes down to one question:

Can you go?

It’s a phrase we use in American football, a simple question that means “can you play or not?” If you walk up to me on the day of nationals and tell me about the lousy dinner, crappy hotel and rough commute, I will smile and nod and act like I listened to all of that, and then I’ll ask you, “Can you go?”

If you can, then get in your uniform, begin your warm-ups and let’s get going. If you can’t, it’s over—let’s go home. We are finished here today. I hope you learned something from all the preparation but we are through today. I’m sorry. You can go home now. It’s over.

I wish I could be kinder, but athletics can be cruel. So be sure to ask yourself this question often—Can you go?—and don’t wait for the morning of something important to wonder why you started this in the first place.

This leads us to a small, but important, question: Is everyone an athlete? Doctor George Sheehan, the famous writer and runner, once noted: “Being fit is one thing. Being an athlete is another. Fitness is the ability to do work. Being an athlete is something quite different. Fitness is what you pass through on the way to a superior physical and mental and spiritual state.”

 As much as I love Sheehan’s work, I have always felt this line made athletes and athletics too important. While fitness, I agree, is the ability to do work or a task, Doctor Phil Maffetone, whom I use for much of my understanding on cardiovascular work, wrote a book called Everyone Is an Athlete, which argues an opposing standpoint.

I, however, will take the middle ground for once and think that both have valid points. But we have to meet people where they are in life. So if I ask you the question, “Can you go?,” and you answer, “Where?,” I need another set of assessment tools.

Everybody Else

It’s time to look at everybody else, or E².

There’s a joke that has been hanging around education for a few decades. A fish, a bird and a monkey are all standing in line. The guy with a clipboard says, “Okay, it’s time for basic assessment. Let’s see who can climb a tree the fastest.” 

The fish says it can’t get out of its bowl or it will die. 

“You fail then.” 

The bird asks to fly to the top, and the guy responds, “No, the test says climb, not fly. You must follow the protocol.” 

The monkey wins by climbing the fastest and gets the job—the job is to climb a tower and look out for enemy ships approaching the land. Of course, this is a job that a flyer or swimmer might have been better at doing.

Somehow, I think this story is a fair warning about assessments and readiness.

The assessments for QIII E² are based on experience and on the study of both elite athletes and victims of polio. Polio was a feared disease throughout much of the early to middle twentieth century, and two researchers combatting the disease remain relevant today. Progressive resistance exercise, developed by Tom DeLorme, remains the key to understanding strength training. Vladimir Janda’s contributions and insights about certain muscles shrinking with age or disease and other muscles weakening with age and disease continue to be the best approach to total body training.

Elite athletes note that while traveling they lose hip flexor flexibility as well as have issues with T spine mobility and rotary stability. Janda showed us decades ago that the tonics, the muscles that tighten with age or illness, need to be stretched. These are the pectorals, the biceps, the hip flexors and the hamstrings (among others). If you’re sitting in a chair, these are the muscles that you want to stretch back into place as you stand up. 

Paul Anderson, a fine weightlifter from the 1950s and 1960s, once noted: “The guy with the biggest butt lifts the biggest weights.” Janda found that the glutes, along with the deltoids, triceps and abdominal wall, were a person’s seat of power. These are the muscles you would use if you had to run down some game for dinner with a stick or rock. As we age, these muscles weaken and need strengthening, and that is another time when the strength coach becomes important.

Finally, the great tradition in lifting from the pre–anabolic steroid age recognized the importance of keeping the rep range for most movements around fifteen to twenty-five. Reg Park, one of history’s great bodybuilders, recommended five sets of five for strength and power. The DeLorme protocols call for about the same number of total reps in a training session per movement. The important thing about these three points is simple: From the elite training halls and the rehab wing, we learn the same basic keys to success in training—



• Stretch what is tightening.

• Strengthen what is weakening.

• Do both with the least amount of work.

Keeping the Goal in Mind

As we begin to discuss the assessment itself, we will measure the standard things like height, weight and waist measurement, but I would like to ask you to actually use these measurements. I call this approach the 1-2-3-4 Assessment.

Mentally, I want you to have two thoughts as you begin an assessment—



• No ice cream

• Be a “forthteller,” not a fortune teller 

A few years ago, Payton Manning would step up to the line of scrimmage and yell out “ice cream.” Now, this wasn’t as famous as “Omaha, Omaha,” but I discovered from one of my trainees who won a Super Bowl ring with the Colts that “ice cream” had a special meaning: 

“Everything I am about to say, ignore.” 

Manning would then point at the other team and yell lots of words, numbers and colors, and none of it meant anything. 

When I get a business card that reads “The World’s Finest Coach,” or “The World’s Finest Personal Trainer,” what I actually see is “ice cream.” Make sure your assessment isn’t just a bunch of ice cream. Don’t just use it as a way to entice clients or to send out the illusion of professionalism. 

Assessments can literally save lives. Assessments are the first line of defense against injuries in the gym. Assessments are important. Occasionally, assess what we do in the gym. We ask our people: “Do we do what we say we do, or are we just barking ‘ice cream’?” 

The next thought to hold in your head is that you are a forthteller—“this is X; this is Y.” You are not a fortuneteller! When asked, “What does X mean?,” you need to answer “X.” That’s our job. Our job is not to guess that someone’s bones are all pointing to a future filled with back squats. Just assess. Don’t guess. Don’t predict the future. 

Besides, as Niels Bohr said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”  

Illuminate. Project. Point. That is the role of the assessment test.

To be continued….

Next: The 1-2-3-4 Assessment

More From Dan John:

• For books, you can see his bookstore here and his Amazon books here.

• For socials and more content, Dan’s Instagram and Youtube are updated consistently.

• Dan’s favorite Guardian Academy principles are Raising The Floor and What Is Enough? Both are also discussed in Bumpers.

Commandment One is a derivative of The Guardian Academy, a principle-based program exploring extraordinary people doing extraordinary things - and the toolboxes they carry with them.

The very first Guardian Academy Commandment is:

Commandment 1: “The Healthy Man Has 1000 Wants, The Sick Man Only Has One”

- Confucius

If you’re filthy rich but your body doesn’t work, your mind is a prison, and the only people around you are paid to be there… are you really wealthy?

Health is a top priority. And we mean both physical and psychological.

Your health will help you get rich, and it will help you stay wealthy. So carve out the time to focus on your health and wellness. It might seem like "now is the time to grind" - and it might be. But if you neglect your health and well-being for too long, you will blow yourself up and take yourself out of the game. 

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Commandment One is dedicated to the helping preserve the first commandment of The Guardian Academy; your health. We also know that what most people really want is to look good naked, they’re just afraid to say it. Don’t be. We’re here to help with that, too.

This page will be updated periodically to keep you oriented. Feel free to bookmark it and check back often. If you feel lost, uncertain, confused, or worried you might be missing something…just navigate back to this page.

THE THING ABOUT HEALTH, WELLNESS AND FITNESS…

Is that they are different things.

There are different variations of each. What is health? It depends on who you ask. What is fitness? It depends on who you ask. When you walk into a gym, it’s easy to assume that everyone is there for the same reason you are and using the same language as you.

They probably aren’t.

And this is important to understand, because if we don’t know why someone is doing something, we can’t responsibly offer or take suggestions or advice.

For example:

“How often should I work out?”

It depends. If you you’re trying to build muscle, often enough to build muscle. If the gym is a form of catharsis to you, how ever often you need for it to be cathartic. There is no right answer, there is only an answer that is best for you, given your priorities and preferences.

“Is my form correct?”

It depends. If you’re training for a powerlifting competition, you want as much leverage as possible. If you’re training for a sport, you want to train through the range appropriate for that sport. If you’re training as a bodybuilder, you want as little leverage as possible.

Three people can do the same base exercise, look very different doing it and all be doing it correctly…for what they’re training for.

The Adaptive Dilemma can crush you pursuits if you’re not intentional about the language you use and attentive to the language other people use.

People will often use “healthy”, “athletic”, “lean”, and “skinny” interchangeably. Since they are very different things, it becomes really difficult to have a productive conversation. I believe this explains much of the confusion on the internet.

There aren’t as many conflicting ideas in the fitness world as people think there are. It’s just a bunch of people having a bunch of different conversations mistakenly thinking they are having the same conversation.

What sounds a lot like hundreds of different opinions on one subject is often hundreds of different subjects being discussed - being mistaken for one. It can get confusing, quickly. We’re building Commandment One to bring to view these things from different lenses, bring experience and wisdom into the conversation and explore the commonalities and differences amongst disciplines.

The goal is simple - play a small part if your pursuit of becoming a little better every day.

The Main Players

The contributor list will grow over time, we’re slow to bring people on because we want to make sure they are actively applying principles we are aligned with. The strategies, tactics and tools will look different for everyone, it’s the principles on which we want to align.

Nic Peterson: Revisiting A Past Life

Nic is the founder of the Guardian Academy. His past life was focused on fitness. You can read a little about that here. *Important: Nic is sharing his experience and his reasoning. He is NOT a fitness or medical professional. Look at the logic, reasoning, and evidence he shares and come to your own conclusions.**

Dan John: One Of The True OG’s

Dan John is a Guardian. He is also one of the OG’s in the online fitness world and one of the most respected coaches out there. You can read a full piece on Dan here. We asked John to contribute as a voice of reason and experience. He is also a great writer.

• Dan’s Books on Amazon

• Dan’s Ebooks

Dr. Lynn Wagner - “Doc Wagz”

Dr. Wagner believes that everyone deserves to live a life at their maximum energy and vitality. Through the application of customized and integrative therapies, she guides her patients towards achieving their optimal health, with a strong emphasis on wellness, longevity and disease prevention. Dr. Wagner firmly believes that true wealth lies in one’s health, making it the utmost priority in living a fulfilling life. 

Dr. Wagner is a disruptor in the healthcare industry. She thinks outside of the box and provides her patients with a different type of health care that is individualized, optimized and positioned to give them their best possible vitality. As an emergency medicine turned integrative medicine physician - she truly understands the best of both worlds and brings this to her patients. 

Learn More About Dr. Lynn Wagner and her reason for Joining Commandment One here.

How To Join Commandment One

I couldn’t ask our contributors to dedicate the time to releasing the information we think is most valuable in real time without support. There’e always a tradeoff, we’re giving up other projects to take on this project,, and happy to do so. That’s because we think Commandment One can be the most powerful way to reach and help more people. It will be fun and informative for us all.

Commandment One will be offering three versions of this publication: free, paid and Founders version. Here’s the deets:

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This is a great place to start. It will also be a great place to hang for a while.

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Other Guardians and collaborators that have proven competence apply Guardian Principles:

**Note: there are a TON of great professional out there. These are just the ones we have spent time with and have worked with over a long period of time. If you’re a Guardian or in the Guardian Academy world and want to get on this list, it’s simple: show up and engage the field.

• Dr. Gabrielle Lyon

• Paul Lyngso

Pre-Req And Self Study Guide

These are the principles that are the most commonly applied to health, wellness and fitness successfully.

1. Bumpers. It’s a short read and it was written largely in the context of biology/fitness.

2. The Adaptive Dilemma: Specifically, Part 1: Language. Get clear on what you’re trying to ask when seeking help

3. Frequency Of Exposure: Stepping on the scale every day can do more harm than good if you’re not aware of the consequences of frequency of exposure.

4. Raising The Floor applied in any ways. Focus on the rolling average of your weight or performance. If you’re on a diet, rising the floor is having fewer bad days and, when you do, make them less bad.

5. “Enough” is the single most important concept in fitness, in our opinion. Understand it and build from there.

6. Engage The Field. If you do not engage the field, you will not learn anything. Get your own data, it’s always better than someone else’s theory.

Welcome to Commandment One. Looking forward to “next”!

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On an average week I see Jon:

• Tuesday he comes to the office to work and hangout

• Wednesday night is family night, which we spend with Jon’s family

• Hiking on a Saturday or Sunday

So I see Jon a few times a week.

In a previous update, I mentioned how I am not weighing myself and why that’s the case. Yesterday, Jon - who knows a lot about fitness - guessed that I had gained about 15 pounds over the last few weeks (since starting this new methodology).

When I started building out this new methodology I was sitting between 219 and 221 pounds - so an extra 15 lbs would put me around 235. I told him that I doubt it, because the math doesn’t support it:

1. I have been over 235 lbs before and I do not feel that heavy

2. 15 pounds on the scale would be approximately 3.75 pounds of new muscle tissue (remember, muscle is 75% water, so 3.75 pounds of tissue will be about 15 pounds of weight). 3.75 pounds of tissues would require 13,125 calories over maintenance - and I’m simply not overeating that much.

This morning I was curious, so I stepped on the scale:

221.4

Here is a recap of the anecdotal evidence:

The Human:

• Same weight. Maybe, on average, half a pound heavier.

• Look fifteen pounds heavier

This combination generally suggests that shape has changed. If shape has changed, its generally because distribution of weight has changed (body fat %, for example). And there’s more…

The Exercise:

• In the gym AT MOST 70 minutes a week, often much less, split into three sessions.

This is already enough, combined with the above bullets, to create some confusion.

The Nutrition:

• Protein is lower than its been in the past, somewhere between 180 and 200 grams a day on average

• Replaced the volume of protein with carbohydrate, mostly white rice because I’m lazy and rice with garlic salt is amazing.

The Hypothesis/Deductive Reasoning

• Being leaner makes men look much larger than being heavier does. I have always believed (more-so now than ever) that people trying to “bulk” should be trying to get less fat, not more fat. Most men are fatter than they think they are and would look better if they stopped trying to gain weight.

• Carbohydrates are awesome.

• It’s looking more and more (to me) that volume in the gym is, indeed, overrated for building muscle. Which makes sense through the lens of adaption, recovery and over compensation.

I also don’t believe that most people should do what I’m doing.

When you’re dealing with a complex system, nuance is important.

For example, the whole theory/methodology assumes that the only thing that matters is triggering the mechanism for your body to adapt - and doing no more than that. If you do not train with the proper intensity to trigger that mechanism, there will be no adaption response.

And I’ve been in a lot of gyms over a lot of year…

Most people do not train with enough intensity in the proper range to trigger the specific mechanism I am trying to trigger (muscle growth).

For example…

If you train super hard for super long and/or with super high reps, the limiting factor becomes your cardio, endurance and lactic acid build up. You may “feel the burn” but the limit is your ability to displace lactic acid or your general endurance. So the adaption is more likely to be cardiovascular in nature.

The body may be adapting to SOMETHING, it just may not be what you want or expect.

I ‘m the opinion that your muscle building activities should optimize building muscle, your cardio activities should optimize for improving cardio, your fat loss activities should optimize for fat loss.

If you try and do it all at once, it’s not optimal for any of them AND you will have less control over what the body actually adapts to.

Here’s an example:

Instead of trying to use your gym time to build muscle and burn fat, you could do this:

1. Use gym time to build muscle. Which means whatever is optimal for muscle building.

   1. Additional muscle will increase your metabolic rate, so it’s already aiding in the second priority.

2. Walk a lot. The lower your heart rate is during activity, the higher percentage of fat you are using for energy. The higher your heart rate, the more glucose is necessary, which is pulled from the muscle and starts to eat into the recovery of the recovery and adaption process.

Here’s a mind-blowing thought experiment about all this hardcore cardio people do:

Remember: the higher your heart rate, the more glycogen you will pull from muscle mass for energy.

Walking generally burns the highest percentage of fat - less calories, total, but a higher percentage of those calories being stored fat.

Okay so…

Your muscles might store 350 grams of carbohydrates.

That’s 1,400 calories.

So if you go do an insane 90 minute cardio session, with your heart rate super high the whole time, the energy is likely being pulled from glycogen stores in skeleton muscle. Body-fat will be unfazed because you pulled the energy from glycogen stores.

Make sense? Okay…

And then, when you eat, the glycogen will be replenished, restored in your skeleton muscle.

Deplete glycogen stores.
Replenish them.
Repeat.
Bodyfat remains the same.

That’s a lot of really hard work to make no real progress - just depleting and replenishing energy stores.

Okay now…

Same situation…

Your muscles might store 350 grams of carbohydrates.

That’s 1,400 calories.

You walk for 90 minutes.

Yes, you will be burning less total calories in that timeframe, but nearly 100% of it will be body fat.

Make sense?

Here’s the takeaway (in my opinion):

If you are doing something to be less fat, do the thing that makes you less fat in the most efficient way possible. Depleting and replenishing the same glycogen is not the most efficient way to do that.

If you’re looking to improve your performance as much as possible, do the thing that improves your performance the most in the most efficient way possible.

If you’re looking to do a few different things, prioritize them properly and do them separately, not together. Otherwise you end up working really hard to get nowhere.

And NEVER FORGET…

I’m not a doctor. I’m not a fitness professional. I’m a total amateur, consult someone smarter than I am before trying anything at home.

Nic

Here is a flyover of the most common questions and my general answer(s).

This is is just my opinion based on my working theories. This is obviously not medical advice, I am an amateur sharing my random thoughts and you should read this with that understanding.

The questions came from about a dozen different people, I’m just lumping them all together.

What do you think about protein?

I don’t think about it all that often.

Okay, but do you think you need as much as they say?

Who the fuck is “they” and what do they say? lol

The fitness crowd and bodybuilding crowd. How much protein do you think you need?

I think “need” is a strong word. And for what? To survive, you don’t need much. I think the fitness crowd WAY overvalues protein for the wrong reasons and I think the general population eats too little, but not for the reasons you might think.

I think there is profit to be made in selling people on protein, so the numbers the experts put out there are ridiculous for the minimum necessary to build muscle. However, I do think eating an appropriate amount of food (calories) is the single biggest lever.

Protein has a higher satiety index than fat or carbs, so protein has value in the sense that it’s more satiating and more difficult to overeat like and asshole. That is the same reason I think the general population eats too little - not because they need more protein for muscle (although they might) but because it will help them control their calories better.

But don’t you need protein to build muscle?

Ugh. Will come back to this shortly.

What do you think about vegetables.

I think about them less often than protein because I rarely eat them.

But don’t you need them for nutrients?

Again, need is a strong word. I think of needing something only if you are deficient in it. What nutrient(s) are you or I deficient in? If none, then no, I don’t think you need them.

Like protein, they are great for satiety - which I think is a great reason to include them - calorie control. If you like veggies, eat them.

[After seeing his face] If it hurts your heart or your brain that I don’t, I find it strange that you let another persons eating habits impact you…like… at all. There’s something deep-seated there. Guilt, shame, judgement, or something.

Okay back to this one…

But don’t you need protein to build muscle?

Do you know what muscle is, mostly?

It’s not mostly protein(s).

It’s mostly water.

Now, when people talk about carbs, what are they leaving out? The full name…it’s not a carb, it’s a carbohydrate.

I find it strange that people can say things like “well the body is 60-70% water” while also waging a war on carbs. Seems like something is missing.

Yes, some protein is necessary to build muscle, but it’s far less than any of the fitness people are saying. Again, oftentimes their recommendations work wonderfully because they help control calories.

But I am in the small camp that biases carbs over protein.

To be fair… my protein consumption is over 1x my body weight because I really like to be full of food. I don’t think any more than that is necessary.

Also, the calculations are wonky…

The recommendations should be per pound of lean muscle mass. For example, 1 gram of protein per pound of lean muscle mass. Fat, water, etc have no requirements to maintain, so I don’t see why they would factor into the calculation at all.

So…

If you’re 220 lbs, you do NOT have 220 lbs of lean muscle mass. The X pounds per pound of bodyweight doesn’t make sense to me.

It’s possible I’m missing something.

What is your post workout shake/meal?

None.

What about your gains? (paraphrased)

Assuming you’re referring to the made-up post workout anabolic window thing. Great marketing, by the way.

Given the logistics of digestion, whatever I ate a few hours before training is going to available in that sacred window. If gains are the goal, I think what you do before you train is more important than immediately after. (This includes naps)

Rebel, I know.

Remember, I’m just an amateur sharing my journey through this funky world of fitness.

Onward

Nic

They are also counterintuitive if you follow mass media fitness nonsense.

But…

A few have asked so here is what last week in the gym looked like.

FIRST…

You HAVE to understand these two principles and my stance on them for my schedule, split or exercise selection to make ANY sense to you:

1.

2.

Read those… otherwise this will not make sense.

Okay, here we go:

Total minutes in the gym: 71

Everything below is done using the principles above. The number of reps doesn’t matter, because it’s to failure. I try and choose weights that keep me over 5 reps and under 12. The rest is explained in “To Failure” above.

Day 1:

1 Set
Fly Machine superset with
Incline Bench Press

1 Set:
Straight arm lat pulldowns superset with
Reverse Grip Lat Pulldown

1 Set:
Chest supported row
This was supposed to be deadlift because I didn’t expect for my strength to come back so quickly. To hit failure in the 6-10 rep range, I would have had to had well over 500lbs on the bar which is NOT something I have the capacity to fully recover from at this point. So I swapped to rows, as they are much easier to recover from.

Day 2:

1 Set
Leg Extension superset with
Leg Press

1 Set:
Lying Hamstring Curls

Day 3:

1 Set
Lateral Raise machine superset with
Rear Delt Fly Machine

1 Set
Barbell Curls superset with
Reverse Grip Lat Pulldown

1 Set
Tricep Pressdowns superset with
Dips (3 reps, needed assistance on each. Couldn’t even hold myself up to attempt a 4th)

And… that’s it.

And about the deadlift…

Remember, I was dedicated to strength sports for a long time.

The current program is not designed for strength, nor do I care to be stronger than necessary to function day to day. It’s helpful to remember that I have pulled in the 600s and 700s many times - so some level of that will come back, it is not being developed by what I’m doing now.

What I am doing now allowed me to get back to baseline faster than I ever thought possible, I doubt it will make me stronger than I’ve been in the past - and that’s okay because that is not the goal.

And now, we can relive the last 12 years of Nic deadlifting stuff:

12 years ago, my first strongman competition... before i really knew what I was doing. 405 x 21:

11 years ago...when I started figuring out how stuff works...my first 650lb deadlift:

and for good measure……

Here's a 740lb pull before Night of the Living Deadlift in Nashville. (I don’t know how to embed a short)

Stay tuned for “Nic Pressing Stuff Over His Head Like an Idiot”…

And Nic picks up rocks…

DISCLAIMER: Pressing stuff over your head, deadlifting like a maniac and picking up rocks is kinda stupid. I would totally still do it, but I’m kinda stupid.