Ep. #438: Dan John on How to Optimize Recovery and Avoid Injury

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So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, please do consider supporting me so I can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this. Welcome. Welcome to the muscle for life podcast. I’m Mike Matthews with legion athletics. And this one is an interview with Dan John on optimizing recovery and avoiding injury.

So here’s the thing getting injured. sucks. It’s not just the pain either that sucks, but it’s also how you have to change your training and often your diet as well to recover. You either have to take time off completely or you have to dramatically alter your programming to work around whatever is injured and you can’t train the way that you want to.

You can’t really push yourself in the gym and make progress. And as far as your diet goes, if you want to maximize or optimize your recovery, you are going to make sure that you are in a calorie surplus, unless it’s a very minor injury. But if it’s anything remotely serious, a calorie surplus is going to speed up the process.

And of course that means Putting on unwanted fat and that’s just the way it is. Getting hurt sucks. Under recovering sucks too. It doesn’t suck as much as getting injured, but ironically it can lead to getting injured. If you push yourself too far and too hard in the gym, your training becomes a slog.

And if you keep going, it eventually can get dangerous because you soar all the time. Your lifts. Stagnate or even regress, and yes, your risk of injury goes up, at least of repetitive use injuries, usually in the joints, you’ll see that often where people are pushing themselves too much and then They will run into joint issues.

Now. Such are the reasons why it is smart to make sure that you are playing good defense in your fitness journey, so to speak, and ensure you are taking steps to not only push yourself hard in the gym, that’s the offense but also to prevent injuries and optimize recovery. Now, as you probably know the basics.

get you most of the way there. As with most things, 80 percent of the results are obtained by the diligent and intelligent application of the fundamentals, right? The 20 percent that gives you the 80 percent and in the case of reducing the risk of injury and maximizing recovery. This includes things like maintaining proper sleep hygiene, eating a nutritious diet and following a well designed training plan, but there’s more you can do.

And that’s why I invited Dan John on the show. I invited him on to dive a bit deeper into this defensive side of fitness and share some non obvious tips on how to not only decrease the risk of injury, and improve recovery, but also how to better deal with some of the nagging issues that we all have to deal with now and then if we are in the gym and training hard shoulder problems.

For example, he gives a great tip on how to alleviate shoulder problems. Something I had never heard of. Now, in case you are not familiar with Dan, he has quite the resume. He has competed in the Highland games. He has written 14 books and he has coached athletes and weightlifters for over 40 years now.

So as you can imagine, Mr. John has seen and heard it all. And in this episode, we discuss things like how to prevent injuries, the benefits of loaded carries and farmer walks, how to better recover from your training, especially as you get older, several fitness lessons that can be applied to just life in general, and finances in particular, and more.

I hope you like the interview and find it as helpful and interesting as I did. Here it is. Hey, Dan, thanks for taking the time to talk with me today. 

Dan: Hey, this is great. Thank you. The timing’s perfect. 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. I think Roman reached out just last week. And he’s Hey, can you do Monday? Sure. Why not?

Dan: Yeah. I go to Australia on Wednesday and I lose, let’s see, I lose Thursday. I won’t have my life will not have a Thursday this week. I get two Mondays. So that works out nice, 

Mike: nice, nice. I haven’t been to Australia, but I’ve heard it’s a neat place. 

Dan: It’s a long flight. I’ll tell you that.

That’s the biggest thing I have to concern myself with right now. 

Mike: Are you flying a economy or business? 

Dan: I have a thing in there. I might get free upgraded to a first class. So that’d be nice, but I always fly with Delta comfort or something like that. Whatever, it’s fine. It’s just part of the survival of 

Mike: what you 

Dan: do, 

Mike: no, but I know. Cause my wife’s from Germany, so I’ve done in the past, not now so much now that we’re. Settled and have kids and things. We try not to travel but previously I’ve done many 10 hour flights. Yeah. So I know especially as a, I’m a tall ish person. I’m like six, two. And so 10 hours cramped into a middle seat.

Not exactly fun. I know the feeling. Sure. Yeah, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about. We’re here to talk about what I wanted to talk to you about is injury prevention. I think a good place to start on that, the injury prevention for people who are into weightlifting. It could be bodybuilding. It could be powerlifting.

Dan: Yeah. One of the most important things you do if you’re coaching is you got to constantly keep circling. I think if I injure someone and it happens, so I try not to hurt people in the weight room. But when you do get an injury, one of the first things you need to do as a staff or as a group, or even if you call up one of your friends is break down what happened first.

And the idea is downstream. This isn’t going to happen again. And that’s one of the reasons, for example, I, we don’t do box squats we were getting injuries from them. Pardon me. Box jump. What kind of injuries have the shin rips, when you get those massive gouges on the shin and then one or two knee injuries, the CL kind ACL MCL kind of things.

And so you just sit back and you say, okay, maybe we’re just no good. We’re not good at coaching this simple idea. Or whenever you throw box jumps into something, it’s always at the wrong time. Either way. You just got to sit down sometimes and say, maybe this isn’t for us. Another exercise, the exercise that kills the bench press, whenever someone bench presses, I think you need to have a lot more safeguards in place than probably any other exercise in the facility.

Mike: Specifically on that. I’m sure people listening are wait, what should I not be benching? Is that what you’re saying? Or 

Dan: no, what I’m saying is it’s the only exercise that kills. When I was a young lifter, it was a famous story in San Francisco. Bench press and by himself in his home with his five year old son the bench comes down funny, gets over his neck and he dies.

Mike: Yeah. I just realized when you said kills you meant it literally, I thought you were talking figuratively. I thought you meant like, Oh, it kills your shoulders or literally kills. Kills. Yeah. Yeah, no, I get it. 

Dan: Buddy of mine at Utah state lost all of his front teeth when his hands, he had read somewhere that you can add five pounds to your bench by taking your thumbs.

So instead of going around it, the old suicide grip, and he slid out and went right into his face with the fact that he survived is amazing. But let me take even another step back. I coached American football for a long time. And one of the reasons I was hired one place is that they had a shoulder injury epidemic.

And they were doing all these silly things like band pull aparts and stuff like that. And I said that’s great. And one of the injuries happening, they said, Oh, in games. And I go exactly what happened? When you looked at the film with the injuries the athletes didn’t know how to roll when they were getting tackled, they were reaching for the ground my weight, your weight in collision, I’m going to stop.

I’m going to stick my, I’m going to jab my finger in the ground and that’s going to put me back. And so by teaching them how to roll, to tumble. We eliminated shoulder injuries literally in one season. They’re all gone. It wasn’t banned pull aparts. It wasn’t anything like that. So what I’m trying to get across here, Mike, is I gave you two directions on things.

One is that when you’re looking at injuries, okay. In the post, when an injury happens, I think you need to sit down and ask yourself. Do we not teach it right? Do we not have appropriate bullet points? Do we not put it in the right time for training? Some exercises should be done when you’re fresh.

Some exercises are off season. Some exercises maybe should never be done. And then on the other side, are we missing something so obvious when it comes to injuries? Like it wasn’t weak shoulders. It was bad judgment on how to deal with being tackled. And sometimes the answer becomes very simple when I go into the weight room and I talk to most people, it is interesting how when I first came up, you would hear mostly about knees and backs.

And in the last few years, almost all the injuries I hear about our shoulders. And then with its twin brother elbows, we have a joke about somebody called maps, middle aged pull up syndrome. If you’re at, after a certain age and you try to grind out an extra pull up or two, you get this bizarre pain on the bony edge of your elbow.

That doesn’t go away for months. And the only way to get rid of it is to not do pull ups. But the number one thing that I see that I get complained to about now, 2019, is shoulders in the weight room. The answer is real simple to me. It’s driving your car to work. It’s spending your whole day on a computer.

It’s watching Game of Thrones for an hour and 40 minutes. Not worth anymore, 

Mike: by the way. 

Dan: Spending all day looking down at your phone and so when the head tilts forward and the shoulders come forward and then, you get that little rounding lower back and then you go into lift, I think it puts all the pressure on the shoulder joints in an unusual way.

I see so many men nowadays do one arm bench presses, two handed dumbbell or kettlebell presses. Bench presses or even barbell bench presses, and you’ll watch as they start to exert that their chin comes up to their chest instead of staying back, their head staying back on the bench. Their head is now coming onto their chest because that’s the position they spend so much time in.

And it’s interesting because there’s an interesting study out of Hawaii where the way to get rid of most of these shoulder injuries is to simply hang from a bar for 30 to 60 seconds a day. And I read the book, I looked at the study, I talked to a lot of smart strength people. And it is strange to think that something as simple as dangling from a pull up bar, just hanging, can do miracles for the shoulder girdle.

It’s called the whole family of things. That’s interesting, I actually haven’t heard of that before. Oh yeah, it’s an interesting thing. Interesting study, 90 out of 92 people, shoulders improved people who are on the edge of a surgery and the two who didn’t, they dropped out of the study for personal reasons, which is just funny.

So yeah, so we’re supposed to be brachiators. If you have opposable thumbs and your eyes are look forward, that’s one of the things I found with javelin throwers, getting them to Eliminate shoulder and even weirdly back injuries. We started having doing monkey bars and they would do monkey bars.

And that first season we eliminated all of our shoulder problems. So I guess what I’m trying to say, if you don’t mind, I know this is long winded. 

Mike: No, this is great. I’m I, myself, I’m like, I’m getting a pro I’m getting a pull up bar in the office and I’m going to hang from it 30, 60 seconds a day, because I’ve never heard of this before.

Maybe that’s just my ignorance, but. 

Dan: There’s three and I’m just talking about shoulders now, but there’s three sides of the injury thing. Okay. The first is we talked about in the beginning, if we have exercise selection, if we do things that cause injuries, I don’t know what it would be, what would be a you know how some people hate when they do dips.

It kills their sternum, right? It’s especially of adolescents because they’re both the growth plates aren’t fused yet. So maybe something as simple, every sophomore I have complains about dips. We can shuttle dips to the side for a long time and do other things that don’t hurt the sternum.

The second thing is then honestly look at the injuries that happen. And if you could circle the sports injuries and say, okay, we think it’s a prehab or rehab or strength issue. But really it’s just the fact that they’re not, I don’t know, not wearing helmets at the right time, or the surface of that field isn’t where, if you have a field that has a bunch of dips, valleys, and, gopher holes, it’s going to be hard to undo the damage of gopher holes to the ankle and knees.

So a better surface might be the answer there. And then I guess the third part is trying to find Reasonably simple things to do to undo basic general injuries. We can deal with oddly. I like Tim Anderson’s original strength. You get on your hands and knees and you gently rock for he thinks up to two minutes, you lay on the, on your chest and you do little neck nods.

You can’t see me right now, but that’s what I’m doing for you. And then the other one is you look down. You turn your head, trying to find your shoes. I like people to sit in the bottom of a goblet squat for about 30 seconds, at least every day. And of course, hang from a bar for about 30 seconds to a minute, whatever, whatever’s appropriate.

Boy, if those simple kinds of steps can, I wouldn’t ever want to say that we have surgical answer. I’m not going to say to a surgeon, no, you’re wrong. But if we can help the body heal itself, By doing reasonable, simple things. Let’s do it. Maybe you don’t need the 32nd hang, but the other 29 people I work with do.

So we’re all going to hang because sooner or later, Mike, you’re going to need to hang. 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. I I’ve dealt with shoulder issues. Some biceps tendonitis that was. Bicycle groove was all jammed up and had to work with a physical therapist. We got it sorted out, but now to keep it staved off.

What I do is, and I actually wrote an article about it just to share what I’m doing is I do a, it’s about 10 minutes, a little routine every day of several yoga poses that I found have been Good for there was some imbalances in my hips external internal rotation was totally off. Like my external rotation was good on my left, bad on my right and internal vice versa.

And for the shoulders, like there’s like a tabletop pose or a few things that I do, but the hang of the tabletop. Yeah, sure. So the hanging, I’m going to be adding myself and just so I can understand, can you explain the rocking thing and what’s the purpose of that? So you’re on your stomach or you’re on all fours.

Dan: You’re on, your hands are on the ground, your knees are on the ground, your feet are on the ground. What you do, and all you can do is sink back, and if you look, it looks like someone’s squatting. And you just do these little, they’re called pendiculations in some places, but these little Pulsing movements, nice, smooth, like you’re just gently moving in and out of that deep squat position.

There’s no load on you. It’s funny because some people sit, feel, they’ll tell me, I feel like my joints are lubing. It’s okay that’s fine. Somebody else will say, I just feel myself opening up. You let your knees widen open and you just do these gentle little rocks and it just provides.

Yeah. Is it mobility? Is it flexibility? I’d say yes. Sure. But it’s also, and I do like the idea when someone says it’s lubing their joints. I like that image because really I think one of the ways we keep our joint health is by lubing it up. Interesting we found and this is Stu McGill’s recent stuff, the great Canadian back guy.

Mike: I was going to say that your philosophy seems to align with his, I had him on the show a couple of months ago. 

Dan: He’s good dude, isn’t he? 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. I like him a lot. 

Dan: You go for three, if you’ve got a back injury, go for three, 10 minute walks a day because that spinal snap as you coil and uncoil the spring on every step that is Lube.

I hate to say lubing, so I might not be right, but. That’s what it feels like. You you’re at a little moisture to it. It’s weird when you tell somebody who’s got it, who’s back is crunchy. And you say, we’ll go for three, 10 minute walks. And the first thing that will, and then do I do exercises?

Yeah let’s try the three, 10 minute walks first. It seems to do miracles. Sometimes I was working with A 74 year old man last week, and we, he complains about sciatica, which I guess means something different than I think for people of a certain age, sciatica is the the umbrella for all kinds of terms.

I got my sciatica. And so I convinced them to go for a little walk before every meal. And honestly, within two days it was like, Oh, of course there is another thought here. Maybe. Maybe just simply, he just needed to go for a walk, but it does seem sometimes the simplest answer is the best when it comes to no, we got to differentiate.

If you’re in a car crash and your head goes to the windshield and you get T boned, that’s going to be a different set of, you’re not going to walk 

Mike: it off, 

Dan: but for more, yeah, it was spit on it. Walk it off. When you step back and say okay, for stuff that’s not auto accidents and stuff like that, maybe sometimes a little bit of the poison, it will help you.

That would be a little bit of the exercise. That’s probably the thing that a lot of us in the last 20 years, especially have come around to is stop taping injuries. Move the injuries. Obviously sometimes I listen, you got to lock things down sometimes to get the things moving again. When a lot of runners were having problems with certain things and they started doing those, I don’t know if you’ve ever done that water aerobics that way.

They put that little vest around you and you run in place in the water. It is the most exhausting thing I’ve ever done. Zero contact. I was praying to get out of there. Please get me out of here. 

Mike: Yeah. And just for people listening who want to check out the the shoulder rocking. So if you go to original strength.

net, there’s a videos. Yeah. There’s a video section. Those checking it out. It looks interesting. I, and I’m not. I’m familiar with Tim Anderson the first time hearing about him. 

Dan: Oh, get him on your show. He’s a great guy. He’s really good. You know what I would recommend? So for us, we do original strength, every workout, that’s just part of who we are because we’re trying to get a little bit, a tiny bit more mobile, a tiny bit more flexible, every workout, a tiny bit stronger, a time we’re trying to just keep adding that 1%, and Tim’s work really works well.

Sometimes I think we take too big of a sledgehammer to things. Sometimes when you read flexibility books and here on my shelf, I have a few. Sometimes they hit the flexibility with a sledgehammer. And I think you want to gently coax the body into mobility and flexibility increases. I don’t think you want to increase by much because some other part of the system isn’t going to be able to catch up to that.

We used to talk about as kids, one of the problems with kids throughout my career, the problem with taking anabolics is that you can really increase the size of the muscle very quickly, but the ligaments and tendons don’t grow nearly as fast. So that’s why you see, whenever I hear about a guy blowing a peck off or a bicep off.

Yeah. Gruesome injuries. Almost always. We shrug our quad blown quads off. It’s like we shrug our shoulder and go you dance with the devil. 

Mike: Yeah. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Hey, quickly before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode, then you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well. Please do tell them about it.

It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say. Thank you. You can find me on Instagram at muscle for life fitness, Twitter at muscle for life and Facebook at muscle for life fitness. I know that you are a fan of loaded carries and farmer walks.

Why? Yeah. Those are exercises. If you can call them that that you don’t see many people doing at least not in the gen fit world, go to your everyday gym. You’re probably not going to be seeing anybody doing those things. 

Dan: It’s funny. Cause if you go to the gym, I train at everyone does them every day.

Yeah. I should have been doing my whole career. I kept bouncing into them in and out, but I had a nice thing happened to me. I blew my wrist apart. And the doctor said, I’d never lift weights again, but I still wanted to compete. So I realized that I could do sleds, I could do sled runs. And then pretty soon I would pick, I had this 80 pound bag and I picked that up.

And boy, that, that was a game changer. And then carrying the bag and dragging a sled. And then pretty soon Mike Rosenberg sent me out some farmer bars and he said, try these. And so I would do farmer bars plus a weighted backpack. Dragging a sled. And then I would do farmer bar in one hand, and then I would do all these things, kept making stuff up.

And then about in 2001, maybe 2002, I came out with a DVD called carried away where I came up with a lot of phrases that honestly, everyone, if you’ve ever used the word waiter, Walker. Our suitcase, those are my terms. It’s like goblet squad. I invented the goblet squad. That’s the truth. I didn’t know that.

The reason I’ll get credit for it is because, in the age of the internet you can take my work on a small site and then write an article about it. But it’s funny because my first, I published the article on it. like in 2003 on men’s health. And then a guy claimed to have invented it in 2008. I thought to myself that’s amazing.

He must’ve gone back to the future and then to the past. We have this thing called the slosh pipe. And two weeks after I wrote the article in teen nation about it, the CrossFit people claimed to have invented it. Two weeks after the article. It was just amazing that they had the same exact word do for the same exact piece of equipment.

So that was interesting. Marketer is going to market has got a market, man. So yeah. So one of the problems most of your listeners are going to have is there, they’re still stuck in 1975 when Arnold, the educational bodybuilder came out. And Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When I say weightlifting, they hear bodybuilding.

So I say I’m an Olympic lift. They say, what muscles that build. And the thing with loaded carries is I don’t care what muscle builds. It’s not bodybuilding. We’re trying to build work capacity. And so when you’re dragging a sled, you’ve got, it doesn’t matter the weight on the sled doesn’t matter.

But you say you have an 80 pound backpack on and two farmer bars weigh in. I don’t know, 85 pounds a piece, that total load on your system is asking your body to do things. Obviously the body thinking something bad is happening and we still have to keep going. And then over time, one of the things you pick up when you do a loaded carry family is that some weird.

Level. And you’ll understand when you do it, your work capacity increases, and you’ll know it when you see it. The thing I noticed first there’s two things I noticed. One is I started throwing the discus in Highland games better than I ever had in my whole life without doing traditional weightlifting.

Listen, if the discus goes farther. I’m right. Whatever I told you is right. If you jump higher, run faster, it’s right. That’s the beauty of track and field. The other thing I also picked up on, and this is a hard one, is that instead of just throwing 12 to 18 solid throws in a workout, I was quickly discovering that I had this reserve of extra high quality throws.

And then we started having American football players do it. I got the same exact feedback. The word I use today, 2019 is snapacity. That’s combining snap with work capacity. So as a football player, what I want you to do is I want you to be able to snap bang, but I want you to be able to do that. Over and over and over again.

So everybody loves the single big hit and that’s great, but I want you to be able to maintain that for four quarters or for the entire practice. And I want you to have, if you’re doing a 40 throw workout and we ask you to have 12 good throws, I want you to be able to, with your range be Out there on those 12 throws.

I don’t want, great throw, horrific horrific, horrific. I want you to be a little better. That’s what I think you get from the loaded carry family. 

Mike: What’s a good milestone to work toward for somebody who hasn’t done them at all. 

Dan: Easy carry body weight for a hundred yards.

Cool. And by the way, don’t forget folks, that’s going to be half body weight per hand. Or if you use a trap bar, you can just load up a trap. I finally found a use for a trap bar. It’s great for loaded carries for primal walks. Yeah. That is a good standard and it’s oddly harder than people think. What do you weigh, Mike?

200. Okay. So 100 pound dumbbells aren’t going to knock you on the ground or a 200 pound go 205. Make the math easier on the trap bar. Sure. Pick up 205 and start walking with it. And what you’ll begin to pick up almost instantly is you’re going to start to discover that where your chain is weak. But from the base, your skull to your toes, there’s going to be some weaknesses in your chain and yes, it is grip sometimes.

And yes, sometimes it’s simply a odd thing, by the way, baseball pitchers tell me. That their shoulders feel better from farmer walks. It’s interesting. Farmer walks, your shoulders are being stretched by the weight being pulled to the ground. We can fix shoulders by hanging from a bar. It seems maybe what helps shoulders maybe is.

The shoulders just need to be pulled a little bit, but it is interesting that over time, my pitchers will tell me their shoulders actually feel a little bit bouncier again, like they used to, they’re not stuck in there. If the mistake you’re going to make when you do things like prowlers and sled pulls is that you’re going to try to make the prowler and the sled too heavy.

There’s no reason to do that. 

Mike: How do you like to run the sled? 

Dan: I think it’s really important to put around your waist. The belt should go around your waist. Weight belts are great with just even a rope or a cord. If you sprint, a tire isn’t great because it bounces too much. But if you’re just doing a walk, it drags very nicely.

I have had. Metal sleds for those of you who are cheap and, hi, I’m Dan John and I’m cheap. If you go to a place like Home Depot, they sell wheelbarrows but don’t buy the wheelbarrow. They sell the green shell of them and they have these little holes in the front. You can put a rope to the holes or cord or whatever you got, and you can throw in old pieces of cement.

Your children weights a couple inside the wheelbarrow shell and drag that and that actually. In my entire life, that’s by far the best one of all, there is one problem. It sounds like a jet fighter taking off. 

Mike: That’s what I was thinking. That’s going to, it’s also going to rip up whatever it is you’re running on.

Dan: Yeah. That’s, if you’re on a grassy area, that’s fine. Or even a turf of some kind, you’re okay. I also, I’ve used all kinds of different ones. The thing is, the only thing you have to learn with sleds, and this is just a fact of life. You do have a narrow, it’s not a forever item. Okay. You can buy a kettlebell or a good Olympic bar and never buy another one with sleds.

You’re going to go through them. It just grinds them out. Okay. Yeah. 

Mike: And what is a good milestone to work toward on the sled? See with the sled, there would be none. I was thinking maybe weight and distance or something, but 

Dan: yeah, I would like and I wish I could give you something. I know that when you get over about half body weight and sleds, you don’t really use explosion anymore.

But here’s the thing about this, Mike, if you live near hills, of course I live in Utah, so I’m lucky. You don’t need to buy a sled. You can just run up hills. But if you live in a flat place, sleds become your hill for you. So you want to have that when you’re doing a sled, you don’t seem, but I’m pumping my arms now, but you want to be athletically moving with a sled.

I think I don’t want you to be trying to be like some poor Colt, slave coal miner. Yeah. Yeah. Trying to pull a car or something. Yeah. Someone whipping you on the back with something, with sticks or something. It should be rapid. 

Mike: And do you think there’s value in the sled for just everyday people who want to fit?

And what, how come it’s like running Hills? How does that translate over though, to people who are, let’s say they’re spending a lot of their time lifting weights and maybe they do some cardio as well, but they’re not looking for athletic performance per se. 

Dan: You say the word cardio and I’ll raise you 10, 000.

Doing hill sprints and doing no, it’s brutal. I know I’ve is it I hate to use the word cardio cause I’m doing cardio right now cause my heart’s beating, but it is such a hit to the body. It’s shocking how much harder it is. 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. I grew up playing ice hockey and so we used to have to, I’ll go to camps and they would beat us up with stuff like that.

Dan: Here’s the other thing about hills and sleds is there’s almost no D acceleration. Sometimes when normal people. Pick up the speed into a sprint. They don’t decelerate appropriately and they you hear that noise as they slow down, the nice thing about sleds and hills is when you decide to decelerate, it just happens.

Yeah. It’s over. It’s only a few steps and you’re done. And one more idea for safety, I think. 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. What are your thoughts on preventing injury in people, let’s say in their forties and fifties and beyond? Are there common reasons why these people tend to get hurt versus younger and then what they can do to avoid it?

Dan: Yeah. The information’s a mere 75, 80 years old. It’s what Yonda taught us years ago the facic and tonic muscles as you age and I’m 61, so I get this as you age, certain muscles tighten. And if you’re listening folks. Tighten your pecs, tighten your biceps, tighten your hip flexors and tighten your hamstrings.

You’ll just turn yourself into a very old person. Those are the muscles that tighten with age. So your pecs, your biceps, your hip flexors, and your hamstrings, those are the basic ones. Okay. So if you go in and bench press, curl, leg press, You’re actually turning yourself into an old person. And if you spend all day at the desk, which is a bench press, curl, leg press position, all you’re doing is reinforcing that bad posture.

So what you want to do with those is you want to stretch them. The stretches I recommend if you go to my Yahoo account, DJ 84123, I only have a few mobility moves up there, but the stony stretch and the windmill stick stretch those muscles. But the muscles that weaken with age. Now, those are the ones I would focus as you hit your forties plus, that’s the glutes.

And I always tell people you’re sitting on a gold mine. The glutes are the fountain of youth. So the glutes, the deltoids, the triceps and the ab wall, but the ab wall remember is a fast twitch muscle. And this is a mistake. Most people make best ab exercise I know is vomiting by far. It’s a great ab workout.

Recommend it or do it however you feel. 

Mike: Tanner Iskra All you need is what? What’s that? Was it Ipecac? Is that the stuff that you Marshall Yeah, Ipecac. Tanner Iskra that’ll do it for you. That’s an easy way to get it done. 

Dan: Marshall But when you sit down with somebody and you go over some of this stuff, like how they train their abs almost universally, it’s crunch.

These slow hundreds of reps kind of things were really one of the best Things we know it’s comes from the wrestling community, like you box someone’s ab wall, if you’ve ever gone up and just, and can you hear this noise? 

Mike: You’re 

Dan: beating 

Mike: yourself up. 

Dan: Yeah. You, if you can now, if you do it to yourself, you will get reactions, but it does help to have somebody else.

You tap someone’s apple. Slight punching. You’re not hurting anybody. You’ll find that. So I had a wrestler guy telling me you should do three, two minute rounds of that. Let me tell you, man, 20 seconds of it kills you three, two minute rounds. I don’t know how the guys do that. I was impressed with that.

Here’s your perfect workout for your adult. Okay? So it’s overhead press. That’s the deltoids and the triceps among a million other things. Have someone punch you in the stomach for a minute and then either deadlift, squat, kettlebell swing, a hip thrust, whatever. But exercise you seem to know best and then stretch your pecs and stretch your hip flexors and walk out the door cause you’re done.

And then maybe throw 

Mike: up if you want to finish off the ads. 

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. Do 

Mike: that on Saturday morning. 

Dan: Yeah. 

Mike: Is there anything that people in their forties and fifties and beyond can do to recover better from their training? 

Dan: I hate to say this cause I can’t make any money on this, but it’s sleep hygiene.

That’s the most important thing of all. Is your room completely dark? When I travel, I bring these large size their office clips. They can hold like a hundred pieces of paper together. Very thick. Clips. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about because when you go into a hotel room, there’s always a gap in the curtain.

There’s always a gap. And so you put these clips on there. Rob Wolf says, you take duct tape and put duct tape over every little light that’s in your bedroom. And it’s weird because I was in, I go, I travel a lot and there’s up to 17 little teeny red and green lights in most rooms I stay in. And so it’s real difficult to get true dark rooms.

You should probably go to sleep within two hours of the sun going down. You probably shouldn’t eat, I would say two, three, four hours. You got to be reasonable on this within your bedtime. Your room should be cool. I use a white noise maker when I sleep. So honestly, Oh, your to do list, you should write a to do list about an hour before you go to bed.

And just so your monkey brain isn’t dancing around, you got to get the Henderson report in or whatever it is. 

Mike: The TPS report has 

Dan: to be on TPS report. That’s it. Yeah. So the number one thing is sleep hygiene. And yet most people listening to me will discount what I just said. 

Mike: I can vouch for that firsthand because for the last couple of years, I’ve had sleep issues, mostly staying asleep.

I generally don’t have a problem falling asleep, but I’ve, I’ll have trouble staying asleep and I’ve tried many different things. And I, I’m not doing any of the obvious things wrong. I’m doing all the obvious, all The things that you mentioned, and it still just comes and goes randomly almost.

So I don’t know if it’s, if I’m just a naturally lighter sleeper and also it’s in the time where my, I had my second kid and she’s noisy or at this point, maybe it’s psychosomatic, man. I don’t know. I don’t even have, I’m out of good ideas. Maybe I’ll just go do, I’ll go do a sleep study for fun or something.

And they’ll be like, yeah, I don’t know. 

Dan: It’s either psychosomatic or in your head. Isn’t that the old phrase? Yeah. Yeah. But On that, I do a one minute, there’s an app called One Moment Meditation, and I do that now I’m doing it at the end of every workout too. So once a day, I count my breaths for one minute, and that’s all it is.

But what’s interesting, and the reason I’m bringing this up in your case, is that a simple meditation thing, just a minute or so, can maybe highlight some of the things that might be going on in your head at 2am. The thing that I find fascinating, and this comes from Maffy Tone, But I can tell when I’m not running a hundred on full cylinders, because that one minute of counting my breaths seems wait, I keep going.

When is that buzzer going to go off? Because I’m out of time. A minute should feel like a minute, but when I’m a little stressed, a minute of breathing seems like two minutes of breathing. Which is just, you 

Mike: just generally feel like you just don’t have enough time to do all the stuff you need or want to do.

Yeah. 

Dan: Yeah. So I’m stressing out because I took a minute. 

Mike: Such is my life. I understand. 

Dan: Yeah. So you’re stressed out because you took a minute aside out of your day. That right there should indicate why you’re probably sleeping poorly. So what do you do then? I also subscribed to a thing called brain.

1. Brain. fm. Yeah. I 

Mike: like brain. fm. I use it when I’m writing. 

Dan: Yeah. Oh yeah. Me too. And then something like that white noise seems to help some people. It could just be the age you’re going through. Oh, sneaking up on 40 seems to be it for men in my experience. Yeah. I’m 34 

Mike: turning 35 this year.

Dan: Yeah. It’s just obviously, like the guys at fit ranks argue that the age groups are 16 to 35, 36 to 55 and over 55. And it’s funny when I heard them say at the workshop, it tied in perfectly with the big issues I’ve seen. I can’t speak on the woman’s side and I apologize to the 51 percent of our population, but with men, 35.

And 55 ish seems to bring a whole new set of, I don’t want to call them problems, let’s call them opportunities to challenge challenges, to re it seems like some things change 

Mike: out of selfish interest. So what am I, what do I have ahead of me here? 

Dan: The need for hypertrophy work is going to become much more important than you think the need for mobility work, you’re probably going to find that smashing your face against the wall is no longer a recoverable thing.

Mike: Yeah, I’ve noticed that in my training just in the last five years where I was able to. Yeah, my recovery was just better five years ago. I was sleeping better, so that helps, but even like the RPE of the workouts, when I think back to some of the stuff I was doing, it didn’t seem that hard at the time.

I just did it. Whereas less intense workouts now just seem harder. 

Dan: So the sleep issue, don’t hit it with. A nuclear weapon, I would not slide up to prescription drugs. 

Mike: Yeah, no, I wouldn’t do it either too many risks. And why go down that road? 

Dan: It could also be, maybe your kids will be one year older in a year or two and magically their sleep is better.

And so is your sleep, but it could be something as simple as a hot tub, a half an hour before bed. It could be an ice shower. This is the, this is what I love about the human body. I showers for me, put me to sleep. I like to do it in the morning. Cause it wakes me up because it wakes you up. It puts me to sleep and it wakes you up.

Which I just love about the way the humans are designed. Maybe you need to get, I wear those silly blue. Yeah. And I watch TV at night and that is really helpful for me. Maybe you need to wear eye shades. The place at the airport has a whole new style of flying eye shades that are really high tech and they don’t have that little strap that rips into your ears.

Do you meditate as you go? Sometimes when I’m struggling, I’ll put the earphones on and. Your body produces certain enzymes as you sleep the important thing about, that guy starts talking. I don’t even know what he says after he pours me to death and I fall asleep. I know I’m supposed to count my breaths and all this stuff, but maybe you need a change to a higher grade of sheets.

But again, I would go with a very simple. Program just a few simple steps first and then slowly get, maybe you need to buy new curtains. Maybe you need to buy sound dampening somethings, maybe. And then of course, down the line is, over the counter and then prescription help. But boy, once you go down the road of prescriptions, then you’re really narrow your choices in the future.

Dick Nottmer warning me about taking anabolic. So he goes what are you gonna do next? Cause that’s going to be, once you decide to take the drugs, nothing else is ever going to have the impact. He was a big believer that all it did was put you two years into the future. But the problem is in two years in the future, you’re going to have some new ideas.

How to improve six weeks. You might not. Yeah. 

Mike: Yeah. And speaking with quite a few drug users over the years, one of the more common I guess you’d say regrets is just the psychological dependence that they weren’t really, they weren’t thinking with that, that how much different people are. Yeah. It feels when they’re on cycle versus off cycle, and not just in the gym, but in general, and when they’ve gotten a taste of what life is like when your test is that never drops below 5000 HDL plus everything else, it’s hard for them.

To get off and function normally. 

Dan: Exactly. And of course, on the female side, some of the things are irreversible, but this, by the way, folks, this isn’t an anti drunk rant on my part. My part is from the tradition I come from a coaching is that you always try to find the simplest answer, the Occam’s razor, the simplest solution first, and then you just.

You try to March ahead on that. And let’s be honest if you discovered the perfect rep scheme for yourself, when you were 14 years old, three sets of three, three days a week, three exercises, and you’re the 47 time world champion, I ain’t going to correct you, you’re doing okay. Or whatever it is, I’ve ever seen the movie splash.

No, delightful movie, Tom Hanks and John candy. John candy has his pickup line. He’s used since he was 10. Hey, it’s always worked. Okay. It’s not funny. I have to see the 

Mike: movie. What’s the pickup line? 

Dan: He throws coins in the ground. He picks them up. He was a genius comedian. It’s a wonderful show. If you’ve seen the shape of water, it’s basically splash without Tom Hanks.

Mike: Okay. Which I didn’t see. I’m behind on my movie watching admittedly. So you mentioned you’re traveling around a lot. Is that For what do you, are you delivering seminars or are there things that people listening, if they like what you have to say, can they come meet you?

Dan: Sometimes? Yeah. A lot of my work would be for private audiences, with the United States military and professional teams, but I also do kettlebell certs with the RKC. I’m doing a two day workshop in Australia. I’ll be doing a couple in I go to England for about four or five weeks a year. I go to Ireland for about four weeks a year working.

It is weird. It’s funny. Cause I did a workshop in salt Lake. I live here in Murray, Utah, and. The number of workshops I do in salt Lake a year is almost zero, but I could work every day of the week ever in any other country. Go to Poland. I go, I went this year, I’ve been to Okinawa, Poland, Hawaii. I’ll go to Australia this week.

And I’ll get back and head right out to England. It’s, so it’s a busy thing. My workshops are basically they’re obviously on weightlifting and stuff, but a lot of people say I give a lot of like life lessons and stuff. Cause I believe that the lessons you learn in. Fitness and performance are the same lessons you learn in finance and relationships.

There’s no difference. Little and often over the long haul, focus on the fundamentals. I’ve been debt free for a long time. I started saving money when I got my first job when I was 21. Saving money for retirement, everybody listening knows both of those things, be debt free and save money for retirement.

Everybody knows it. That have an emergency fund, everybody knows that. Just do it. I’m gonna tell you to push, pull, hinge, squat, load to carry in the weight room. Most people know that. But then I have to argue with them for hours about, okay, you’ve done 700 sets of upper body work and one set of squats.

There’s no balance there. , . 

Mike: And that’s 700 sets of consumption of high status items. And, one, one set of savings. 

Dan: That’s right. Yes. Exactly. I taught at a school where a lot of these parents, there was this fad of buying these things called navigators, these massive as Lincoln navigator, and they were all buying them and then they’re complaining about how their kids aren’t getting college scholarships and how they’re going to Ford college.

And I’ll be like that piece of crap car that eats more gasoline than the USS enterprise. That might be the issue, 

Mike: along with the house that they can’t afford. And what are some of the other key lessons that you can learn in fitness that apply elsewhere? 

Dan: Okay. Here’s one, everybody who knows me right now knows exactly what I’m wearing.

I wear a polo shirt from a company, a black polo shirt. I bought 16 of them. I have six pairs of the same barbell brand blue jeans. I have six pairs of the same shoes. I wear the same thing every day. I can tell you a month from now what I’m going to have for dinner Monday, Tuesday. We have a menu in our house.

I have a chores list. I only do certain chores, certain days of the week. So those are what we call shark habits. One bite. And you’re done. So when you guys asked me to come on this podcast, what did I say? Monday. I said, Monday. How about that? That’s a shark habit. I said, yes, boom, done. So shark habits are everything.

That’s it’s not necessarily that they’re unimportant to other people, but they’re just these decisions. They’re on off switches. I say yes or no. So everything that’s not my goal, and by the way, don’t take this wrong. Don’t, I don’t want you to think that you’re not important, but you are not my long term goal.

I thought it would be. So when it comes to things with business or life, I just say, yes, if you asked me to go to a wedding, I say yes or no. If I say yes, I Probably go right on and buy your gift right there. I’m going to make plans to fly out, whatever it is, or I’ll say, no, I apologize and still buy you the gift.

But on the other side of something that Pat Flynn calls pirate map and that everything that is my goal goes here. So a pirate map is this, it’s a very simple plan. Go to St. John’s Island, find the white coconut tree, mark seven spaces to the West. Dig. Okay. So my daily pirate map, in fact, is on the back of my computer.

Number one is the night before I make my to do list and set the coffee. I wake up to the smell of coffee every day. The first thing I do when I wake up is I try to be grateful for something. The next thing I already mentioned, it’s the one moment meditation. So now half of my pirate map is done almost within a few minutes of waking up.

My to do list has already been made night before. I smell the coffee. I’m grateful. I do my one minute meditation and the other two are simply this. I try to strive to eat at least eight different vegetables a day. I usually strive for 14. I’ve already done it today. And the other thing is three days a week.

I do my AB AB workouts with my trainer, Ben Fogle. And the other days of the week, I do original strength and usually like loaded carries or go for a walk. My goal, just for you guys want to know, I have a five year old granddaughter named Josephine and I want to dance at her wedding. 

Mike: I like that goal.

I can relate. And now that I have two kids, 

Dan: Where do you have grandkids, man, that really changes things. So my grandmother died in 1925. All my grandparents were dead by world war two. My mom died in 1980, my dad, not long after. I never met my grandparents, my kids never met theirs on my side, and this ends on my watch.

So when you hear something like that now, 20, 30 years ago, my goal might be to win the pleasant and Highland games to win the nationals in the discus to compete in three different sports in a year. Then those pirate maps would have been a little different. So what a pirate map is basically folks is about five and you can sneak it up to eight, but I’ve never really seen it work well after five.

Five items that if you do ’em every day in, day out, 365 days, a thousand days in a row, all your dreams come true. It’s like what the automatic millionaire guy does before you even get your paycheck. 10 percent’s gone in savings, three percent’s gone into your your fortune fund. That, that this dream that you have, whatever percents goes into your retirement and something goes into your emergency fund, and then you get this check.

And in our case, we have the mortgage taken out. We have the insurance taken out. We’ve had the all the bills taken out so that we get checks in this house. That’s what we have. But the nice thing is the fortune fund that do you mind if I talk about this real quick? 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. I’m actually I’m reading the millionaire next door right now.

Oh, fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s good. I like it. A lot of the basics, I have, I read on a rotation and so I have finance and investing as one of the topics. And 

Dan: I read finance books because of what they teach them about strength. What you learn in finance is the same as performance.

So the first thing you should have is an emergency fund. Generally, it’s funny. When I was young, they said about 1500 bucks. They still say about 1500 bucks. And the number you always use is what does it cost to replace a water heater? Whatever a water heater costs, that’s what you need in ready access.

And then number two is you could try to get debt free, which is the greatest freedom of all. And then number three, you have this goal called your fortune and debt 

Mike: free would include no mortgages, obviously. 

Dan: If you can do that. Yeah. Yeah. In December, 2009, I took my whole family to Ireland for Christmas, and that had been my goal since the day I saw their little eyes when they were born.

And it took a while to put it together, but that was what I was building up for, oh gosh, what, 20 years of marriage to take my daughters to Ireland for Christmas. And we did it. And, to me, I think whenever you plan something, I think you need all three. So for example, if you decide to get into like exercise or performance or better fitness, I think you should have three levels at the first level.

Maybe something as simple as, I want to be able to move around the house. Okay. That’s, If the house caught on fire, I would like to ambulate myself out. Okay. Okay. And there might be some listeners who can’t and God bless you. I’m not making fun. I’m just saying level two might be, you want to move better, feel better, that kind of thing.

And then level three is your dream is you want to walk around in a thong on a beach and have the young, Sorority girls check you out and Hey, and as a 61 year old, that’s all we aspire for. Whatever you should have I always think you just have kind of three levels of when you get into something.

You know what I mean? 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. 

Dan: So if you’re going to get in, I’m going to, I’m going to go on a diet. Oh God. Okay. Whatever. So number one, why don’t you drink more water, eat more protein, eat more vegetables. Number two, why don’t you get rid of the second level, get rid of the crap that’s killing you.

And then number three, the most restrictive, perfect diet the world’s ever seen, and no one’s ever done it. I always look at, try to get encouraged people to come in at three different levels on a new goal. 

Mike: Yeah, that makes sense. And then the idea is what to work toward the third level, if you need to, because like in the case of dieting, for example, it, it depends what you want to do.

You, you might be able to get to where you want to be by just cleaning things up a little bit, so to speak. On the other hand, you may need to Make a meal plan, stick to it or track your calories. There is a point where eating intuitively just it gets hard to continue losing fat if you like, want to get really lean, for example.

Dan: And then what’s the third level? The third levels is perfect. 

Mike: Yeah, 

Dan: Yeah. Protein, veggies, water at every meal, clean eating, whatever that means. And then cleaning your 

Mike: food first, like washing it off. And then, 

Dan: yeah. And then the third level is, entering the Mr. Greater Midvale contest or whatever it is.

Yeah. 

Mike: What vegetables do you eat every day? You mentioned you try to get up to 14 different. Yeah. The goal is different. No, I’m sure that you’re rotating through the same. Are there staples that you, 

Dan: yeah, you can’t, there’s no way you can’t have it. At least where I live. You’re going to have tomatoes, avocados, onions, green peppers, even though you really should probably just eat red and orange and yellow.

Why do you say that? Green peppers are not ripe. Green peppers are on their way to a different color. 

Mike: Didn’t know 

Dan: that. Nor did I. And then just think about a typical salad. If you had dandelion greens and whatever that other. 

Mike: Spinach. 

Dan: Arugula. It’s amazingly easy. The one place I eat at Landmark Grill, I order the the veggie melt.

And I get the the vegetable soup with it. They have a great veggie soup and in there, in the veggie soup, they’ve got green beans and peas. They’ve got, you’re almost done. You’re done with that. I would include all of us in there and for people listening. 

Mike: So you can also make this stuff at home.

Easy to meal prep a bunch of soup for the week. We do that at at my house. We’ll take a bunch of the vegetables. I do, I like to do a stir fry at night, so that’s where I’ll eat a fair amount of vegetables, but then often my wife will take a bunch of vegetables and just turn it into a soup, which is a nice.

change for getting in healthy things. 

Dan: You don’t have to be a lunatic. And I do think at some level that soups might be a better engine for getting your vegetables in. Not only can you throw a lot of different ones in there, but I think that the process of making soup with vegetables seems to unpack.

I hate to, I don’t know if this is even true, but I think the phyto chemicals come out better when they have a nice, some time to cook and simmer. Yeah. 

Mike: I could see that in the case, especially with certain vegetables. We know, for example, there are notable changes that occur, like when you cook legumes, you cook beans, for example, it neutralizes lectins and things.

So I wouldn’t be surprised if also positive things that happen if you’re cooking, especially because in the case of soup, whatever nutrients are being leached out of the vegetables are in the broth. So you’re not losing as opposed to maybe like it. Yeah. Microwaving some vegetables and some water and throwing the water away or something like that.

Dan: My favorite part of when we have a ham, as you take the ham bone and all the extra ham, and then you make split pea soup with it and split pea soup to me is one of the great metaphors for life. When you first look at split pea soup, you. Oh, you call up your wife and say, honey, I’ve made a terrible, tragic error.

It looks terrible. Then you wait four or five more hours. You look back in. It’s I’m the best cook the world’s ever seen. You have literally done nothing except let it take its time to get where it needs to be. And I think seriously. I think split pea soup is a life lesson. 

Mike: And how is it, how is life like that?

Dan: When I first got to Utah State University, coach Mon, I said, what does it take to be a great discus thrower? And he said Danny, you got to lift weights three days a week. Got it. You got to throw four. Got it. For the next eight years. Most people miss that last part where he said eight years, and that is the key.

You got to let the soup simmer as an athlete for about eight years. It is true. You should, some people say you should be at a high level in two or three years. That might be true, but you still, it’s going to take you a, I tried to rush every time I’ve ever made a mistake as an athlete.

I tried to skirt, get around the reality of time and to make good splits piece. You can’t rush it. It’s like trying to rush a Turkey. I come over to your house for Thanksgiving and you got this block of ice that has a Turkey in it and you say, we’re going to eat in half an hour. I don’t think so.

Mike: What are we going to be eating? Exactly. 

Dan: By the way, and one of my favorite things of the year is Thanksgiving, we have, we call it practice Thanksgiving. We probably have three or four of those a year. We just make a. Turkey and our friends come over and we have a practice Thanksgiving. And one of the things that besides the communal aspects, it’s the fact that you can’t rush any part of that.

Tiff and I will buy the Turkey on Tuesday and we might thaw out on Thursday for a Saturday meal, probably at nine in the morning. I’ll be working on that Turkey and I’m not serving it until five. And that’s just a great metaphor for how performance sports are in academics and love and everything else important in life.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree with that. Things never seem to move as at least this is where I’m at in my life. I’m always. So at least slightly dissatisfied with the pace, despite the pace, despite the amount. It’s not that I’m not working. It’s not that the, all the people that work with me aren’t working. So sometimes I even have to remind myself of that, of, okay, look at where things have gotten to in the last six years or so.

And all along the way there, it’s the same sort of, they’re not, things aren’t moving fast enough. Things are not moving fast enough. Yeah. And I think there’s, I think that’s positive to some degree because it definitely keeps me focused and keeps me from getting too lackadaisical or just contented with where I’m at.

And especially because similar to you, I’m very goal oriented. And so as far as my work and my career goes, I have some specific goals that I want to achieve over the next three to five years. So I think having a That’s a never wanting to rest on my laurels type of attitude helps, but then it also contributes probably to stress and things that could be even messing up my sleep, which has not lost on me that my sleep has gotten worse as I’ve taken on more in the way of businesses and obligations and commitments and the stakes are higher in the finance.

And there’s just more that goes with it. I’ve I try to do my to stay upbeat and just keep going. But I think I would be naive to say that. It doesn’t have at least some sort of toll on me. And I, I know Oh, if you can reframe stress, see it as challenges, like I’m familiar with that.

And I agree with that. So again, I think I deal with things fairly well, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that not only, I probably could just go down the list of, I’ve met quite a few successful people, whether it’s and I’d say in just in there in talking professional success and that, that comes with varying levels of financial success, but.

Professionally successful people, especially business people who have gone through, yeah, periods where things were just tough and they weren’t sleeping very well. And they always had things. It’s like everything is always on fire and they had to just decide which fires are going to get put out first or at least which are they going to get under control.

And I don’t know if there’s any way to get away from that. And also do bigger 

Dan: things. It’s funny you say that because in my, I just came out with a new book. And one of the things I discovered it happened in 1979, I graduated from college and I had been top of the heap academically and athletically for a long time.

And then there was this like gear change in life to me. I just like to Throw my arms around this guy, a little Danny John in 1979 and say, dude, you’re doing fine. It’s the ebb and flow of life. You’re okay. It’s not bad. It’s just that if you fall in love with summer, you got to fall in love with winter to cliche time goes around companies, just going to, and we all know that, but it’s tough.

Sometimes it is weird though, is that it does seem sometimes when you’ll hit the, Apex a few times in two or three areas of your life, but all of a sudden you can almost feel the other things that, and this is why I think it’s so important. When I learned in the second grade, a sister Maria Sumpter put up on the board, a compass and on the top, it said work the four points were work, rest.

Play and pray. And she said, if we kept those four things in balance, don’t work too hard. The word workaholic wasn’t even out yet. Don’t play too hard. If you do decide to work, you have to make sure you play, but you have to make sure you rest. And if, even if you don’t believe in praying, but at least alone time or appreciation of nature or art, you got to make sure you have that balance.

And I’ve discovered in my life that if I start going too hard, just from my academics, athletics and I left the other sides. Fall, I crash, but if I consciously say, okay, like when I started doing the Highland games, one of the reasons I moved to it from the discus is it was so much fun and I needed more fun.

And so when you train in the Highland games, it’s a lot more fun than doing another 15, 000 throws with the discus and at the Highland games, there’s music, there’s dancing, there’s drinking, there’s laughing. And it. Yeah. So sometimes I think when we’re struggling, I just sit back and look at the, I have someone sit back or I look back at my compass and say oh, here’s where I made my mistake.

I lost and fill in the blank from there. I didn’t have any alone time. Which can happen as a parent of young kids, moms, I’m never alone. There’s a, I go to the bathroom and there’s someone pounded on the door. You 

Mike: know, that’d be my, that’d be my daughter. That was a good impression. Yeah. You’re welcome.

Never heard 

Dan: that one before. 

Mike: Yeah, no, I can relate to that for sure. I’ve I ran across, it was an article that led me to a book. I didn’t read the book. I put it on my list of books to consider reading, but it was just about incorporating play as an adult and doing things that just for the sake of doing them because they’re fun.

And how if I remember correctly, that it was like a, Type a personality business person who was all just about work, and then was having problems with anxiety and probably sleep issues and other things. And then the only thing you tried all kinds of random stuff, but the only thing that solved in the end was to.

Just bring some play back into his life. I forget. I didn’t read the book. But the story was maybe you start playing sports with his friends, doing something like he realized that he didn’t do anything that was fun anymore. All of his time was consumed by things that were positive. And they maybe brought him satisfaction because it brought him closer to goals, but they weren’t necessarily fun.

Dan: Exactly. That is that’s the great life lesson I 1963 or something like that. Four, maybe whenever I maintain that compass, all four areas of my life, I’m happy. I sleep well. Everyone loves me. I’m. King in the hill, top of the heap, all that stuff. And when I let one area go too far, and that’s what crushes me down.

That’s just, it’s a truth of my 

Mike: life. Yeah. Yeah. I’m sure many people could relate to it. Hey, this was great. I like how the discussion we started off with very. Sterile technical things. And then we’ve gotten off on some interesting and fun tangents. So where can people find you and your work?

Obviously you’re a writer. So you mentioned that you have a new book that’s out. So if you want to tell people about that and maybe your other books and anything else new and exciting that you have that you want people to know about. 

Dan: Danjohn. net, you can find literally thousands and thousands of free stuff, pages of free stuff there.

I’ve been told it takes two or three reams of paper to print everything off danjohn. net. And then you can go to you can also sign up. I got this free weekly newsletter called wandering weights, which is just, I just do it for fun. I find stuff online that I find interesting. And then I talk about the sword and the stone.

I’ve written 14 books. My newest one is 40 years with the whistle. It’s about being a coach for 40 years and 41 now it’s selling well. I, a lot of the stuff we talked about, like snapacity would be in there. And I do have a chapter on sister Maria Sumpter cause she’s in the middle part of the book, which I call my mentors.

Yeah, and you’ll get a chance to hear about Ralph Ma and Dick Notmeyer, Bob Jacobs, whole bunch of people you’ve never heard of and probably never will, but they’re all shaped my life to the better. Okay. 

Mike: That’s great. Awesome. You’re going to be writing another book? Of course. You’ve written so many now.

Dan: I have an idea for the next one. It’s, Time. I think for another, do this book, how to, I go to these bookstores and there’s a company, I won’t mention his name, but literally have cut and pasted my work and turn them into books. Really? Oh yeah. There’s no, 

Mike: have you contacted? Oh yeah. Talk to the 

Dan: editor about it.

And he laughed. He goes you gave us the workshop at our place. I go, I know, but man, you don’t even have You’ll usually see like in Lou Schuler’s books, always notes when I do the work, but it’s a company, but it’s a company that puts out a lot of stuff, but it’s like they break everything down into push, pull, hand, squat, loaded, carry.

They use my rep schemes. They use the names of the exercises I use they have a huge section on loaded carries and not even a mention because it hate to be so full of myself, but loaded carries and goblet squats. I’m the kind of the pied piper of those things. I’m the little minstrel on them.

So 

Mike: plagiarism is lame, especially when all they’d have to do is just credit you. 

Dan: I 

Mike: mean, if they want to argue, Hey, fair use, we don’t have to pay royalties for small amount of information. Yeah. Okay. Fine. But it’s a matter of manners. It’s not even, 

Dan: I agree a hundred percent with you.

Listen, I’ve really enjoyed this. I do have to move on now to some other exciting things in my, some fun, but I really appreciate you coming on. Okay. That was great. 

Mike: Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I’m doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider supporting my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics, which produces 100 percent natural evidence based health and fitness supplements, including protein powders and protein bars, Cheers.

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