The Ten Commandments by Dan John
I asked Dan John if he would be willing to contribute to the Guardian Academy as a benefit to his fellow Guardians. In true Dan John fashion, he overdelivered so we created a section just to organize his contribution(s). You can see it here.
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.
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Dan’s favorite Guardian Academy principles are Raising The Floor and What Is Enough? Both are also discussed in Bumpers.