Dan John on How to Optimize Recovery and Avoid Injury

8:28PM Oct 22, 2020

Speakers:

Mike Matthews

Dan John

Keywords:

people

sled

injuries

shoulders

called

life

hear

buy

day

eat

sleep

exercise

years

carries

vegetables

walk

book

goblet squat

workout

highland games

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% natural evidence based health and fitness supplements including protein powders, and protein bars, pre workout and post workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support and more. Head over to www dot Legion athletics that's le g IO n athletics calm now to check it out. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout and you will save 10% on your entire order. And it'll ship free if you are anywhere in the United States. And if you're not, it'll ship free if your order is over $100. 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. 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 that's just the way it is getting hurt sucks under recovering sucks to it doesn't suck as much as getting injured. But ironically, it can lead to getting injured. You see, if you push yourself too far and too hard in the gym, your training becomes a slog. And if you keep going and eventually it can get dangerous because you're sore all the time your lifts stagnate or even regress. And yes, your risk of injury goes up, at least have 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 right, 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% of the results are obtained by the diligent and intelligent application of the fundamentals right the the 20% that gives you the 80%. 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 invite 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 at 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 trip. 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 liked 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.

This is great. Thank you the timings perfect.

Yeah, yeah. I think Roman reached out just last week, right? And he's like, Hey, can you do Monday? Sure. Why not?

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 to Monday. So that works out kind of nice. You know,

nice. Nice. I haven't been to Australia, but I've heard it's a it's a neat place.

It's a long flight. I'll tell you that. That's a no ship have to concern myself with right now.

Are you flying economy or business?

Well, I have a thing in there. I might get free upgraded to first class. So that'll be nice. But I always like what Delta comfort or something like that. I mean, it whatever. It's fine. You know, it's just part of the survival. Yeah, what you do you know?

No, but I know cuz 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 But previously I've done many 10 hour flights. Yeah, so I know. Especially as a tall ish person. I'm like, six, two, and so 10 hours cramped into 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 injury prevention for people who are into weightlifting, it could be bodybuilding, it could be powerlifting. Yeah, well, the most important thing to do if you're coaching is you got to constantly kind of 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 one of your friends, is break down what happened first, and the idea is downstream, this is going to happen again. And that's one of the reasons for example, I we don't do box squats, we're getting injuries from them, pardon me, box jump, what kind of injuries, the shin rips, you know, we get those massive gouges on the shin, and then one or two knee injuries, the CL kime, ACL smcl 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 a 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 that the exercise that kills the benchpress. You know, whenever someone bench presses, I think you need to have a lot more safeguards in place than probably any other exercise in the facility.

Specifically on that I'm sure people listening are Wait, what should I not be benching? Is that what he's saying or?

No, what I'm saying is it's the only exercise that kills. When I was a young lifter, I mean, it was a famous story in San Francisco. guy was bench pressing by himself in his home with his five year old son. The bench comes down funny, gets over his neck, and he dies.

Yeah, I just realized when you said kills you minute, literally, I thought you're talking figuratively. If I mean, like, oh, it kills your shoulders or literally kills. Kills? Yeah,

yeah, no, I get it. 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, you know, just suicide grip. And he's slid out and went right into his face with the fact that he survived is amazing. But let me take even another step back. You know, 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 only silly things like band pull parts and stuff like that. And they said, Well, that's great. And one of the injuries happened and they said, Oh, in games, and I go, well, exactly what happened? Well, when you look at the film of the injuries, the athletes didn't have a role. When they're getting tackled, they're reaching for the ground. Like, you know, my weight and your weight. In collision, I'm going to stop, I'm going to stick I'm gonna jab my finger in the ground, and that's going to put me back in. 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 band 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 know how appropriate bullet points do we not put it in the right time for training? You know, some exercises should be done when you're Fresh, some exercises are offseason, some exercise 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 it's 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 something called maps, middle age 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 is not

worth anymore, by the way,

fully ruined, spending all day looking down at your phone. And so when the head tilts forward, and the shoulders come forward, and then you know 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, nowaday do one arm bench presses, two handed dumbbell or kettlebell 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 on to 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 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 study. 90 out of 92 people shoulders improved, people who are on the edge of surgery. And the two who didn't. They dropped out of the study for personal reasons. Wow. Which is just funny. So yeah, so we're supposed to be breaky eight years, you know, 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. In 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.

Oh, this is great. I myself, I'm like I'm getting I'm getting pull up bar on the office, and I'm going to hang from it 3060 seconds a day, because I've never heard of this before. Maybe that's just my ignorance. But

there's there's three, I'm just talking about shoulders now. But there's kind of three sides of the injury thing. Okay. The first is we talked about in the beginning, if we have exercise selection, if we do do things that cause injuries, and I don't know, what do we, what would be a? Well, you know how some people hate when they do dips? It kills their sternum. Right? Well, it's especially of adolescence, because they're, the growth plates aren't.

Yeah,

so maybe something as simple every sophomore have complains about dips, well, we can shuttle dips 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 can kind of circle the sports injuries and say, Well, okay, we think it's a prehab, or rehab or strength issue. But really, it's just the fact that they're not wearing I'm not wearing helmets at the right time or the surface of that field isn't isn't where it goes. If you have a field that has a bunch of dips, valleys and you know gopher holes, it's gonna 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 the basic general injuries we can deal with. Oddly, I like Tim Anderson's original strength, you know, 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 a little neck nod. You can't see me right now, but that's what I'm doing for you. And then the other one is you kind of look 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, you know, whenever it's appropriate. Boy, if those simple kinds of steps can, I wouldn't ever want to say that we have a surgical answer. I'm not going to say to a surgeon, No, you're wrong. But if we can kind of 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?

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I I've dealt with shoulder issues. You know, some biceps tendinitis that was stemming out bicipital 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 about 10 minutes, a little a little routine, every day of several yoga poses that I found had been good for. There were 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 that hangs tabletop. Sure, so so the hanging I'm gonna be adding myself and just so I can understand. Can you explain the the rocking thing? And what's the purpose of that? So you're on your on your stomach, or you're on all fours.

So you're on your hands on the ground, your knees are in ground, your feet are on the ground. So what you do, and all you do is sync back. And if you look, it looks like someone's squatting. And you just do these little, if they're called pendik elations in some places, but these little pulsing movements, you know, 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, cuz some people sit fields, they'll, they'll tell me, you know, I feel like my joints are looping. It's like, okay, that's, that's fine. Somebody else will say, I just feel myself opening up, you let your knees wide 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 lubing their joints. I like that image. Because really, I think one of the ways we keep our joint health is buy kind of lubing it up. Interesting. We found this is Stu McGill's recent stuff, the great Canadian back guy.

I was gonna say that your philosophy seems to align with his I had him on the show a couple months ago.

He's good, dude.

Yeah, yeah, like a lot.

So you know, you go for three, if you got a back injury, go for 310 minute walks a day. Because that spinal snap as you coil and uncoil the spring and every step that is kind of loose. I hate to say looping, so it might not be right. But that's what it feels like you kind of your add a little moisture to it. It's weird when you tell somebody who's got whose back is crunchy and you say we'll go for 310 minute walks and the first thing a little and then do i do do exercisable yet one. Let's try the 310 minute walks first. It seems to do miracles sometimes. I was working with the 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 kind of 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 net, we got to differentiate him if you're in a car crash in your head goes to the windshield. And again, you get t boned I mean, they asked me a different set of

Well, you're not going to walk it off, but for most

Yeah, walk, walk it off. But when you step back and say, Well, okay, for stuff that's not auto accidents and stuff like that, maybe sometimes a little bit of the poison will help him and 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 I've come around to is stop taping injuries, move the injuries, you know, obviously sometimes you got to lock things down sometimes. But 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 have ever done that water aerobics that where 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 mean, I was praying to get out of there But please, please get me out of here.

Yeah, and just just for people listening who want to check out the the shoulder rocking so if you if you go to original strength dotnet there's a videos Yeah, there's a video section. Those checking it out. It looks interesting, and I'm not familiar with managing the first time hearing about,

oh, get him on your show is a great guy. He's really good. You know what I would recommend? I mean, 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, you know, we're trying to just keep adding that 1% you know, and I Tim's work really works well. Sometimes I think we take too big of a sledgehammer to things. Sometimes when you read flexibility books in here on my shelf of a few, sometimes they hit the flexibility with a sledgehammer and 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, I guess. 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. Right? That's why you see, you know, whenever I hear about a guy blown a peck off or a bicep off,

yeah, gruesome injuries,

almost always we kind of shrug our quad blown quads off it's like we shrug our shoulders and go well, you know, do you dance with the devil?

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, and 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 former walks Why? Those are exercises if you can call them that, that you don't see many people doing at least not in the in the gen fit world go to your everyday gym, you're probably not going to be seeing anybody doing those things. It's

funny because if you go to the gym, my trainer, everyone does them every day. Yeah, I should have been doing my whole career. I mean, 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 this 80 pound bag and I picked that up and boy that that was a game changer and then carrying the bag and dragging the 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 weight or walk or our suitcase, you know, those are my terms. It's like goblet squat, I invented the goblet squat. That's the truth. I didn't know that. The reason I'll get credit for it is because you know, 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 on goblet squat, like in 2003 on men's health, and then a guy claimed to have invented it in 2008. I thought to myself, that's that's amazing. You know, he must have 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 and teenager about it. The CrossFit people claimed to have invented it two weeks after the article on tea nation. It was just amazing that they had the same exact word to for the same exact piece of equipment. So that was going to

marketer is going to market

market has got a market man. So yeah, so one of the problems most your listeners going to have is they're they're still stuck in 1975 when Arnold the educational bodybuilder came out, and when I say weightlifting, they hear bodybuilding. So I say I'm going to Olympic lifts, they say what muscles. 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 know 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 to Farmer bars when 85 pounds apiece. 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 over time. One of the things you pick up when you do a loaded carrier Family is at 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, well, there's two things I noticed. One, is I started throwing the discus in Highland Games better than I ever had 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 this is a hard one is that, instead of just throwing 12, to 18, solid throws and 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 snip acity. 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 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 asked you to have 12 good throws, I want you to be able to you know with your range be out there on those 12 throws me I don't want you know, great throw great throw horrific, horrific, horrific, horrific, horrific, horrific. And once you'd be a little better, that's what I think you get from the loaded carry family.

What's a good milestone to work toward for somebody who hasn't done them at all?

Easy. Carry body weight? 400 yards. Cool. And by the way, don't forget, folks, that's gonna 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 fun walks. Yeah, that is a good standard. And it's oddly harder than people think. What do you weigh like

200?

Okay, so 100 pound dumbbells aren't going to knock you on the ground or a 200 pound, go to a five make the math easier on the trap bar? Sure, pick up tool five, 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. So but from the base of 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 odd thing. By the way. Baseball pitchers tell me that their shoulders feel better from farmer walks. It's interesting farmer walks, your shows are being stretched by the weight being pulled to the ground. Yeah, we can fix shoulders by hanging from a bar. It seems maybe what helps shoulders maybe is the shoulders just the 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 you know what I mean. Yeah, the mistake you're gonna make when you do things like prowlers and sled poles is that you're going to try to make the Prowler and the sled too heavy. There's there's no reason to do that.

How do you how do you like to run the sled?

I think it's really important to put around your waist, the belt should go around your waist. Weight belts are great with or 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 not 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.

So it's thinking that's gonna it's also gonna rip up whatever it is you're running on.

Yeah, well that's I mean 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 gonna go through them. It just grinds them out. Okay, yeah.

And what is a good milestone to work toward on the sled?

Let's see what the sled there would be none.

I was thinking maybe weight and distance or something. But

yeah, I would. And I wish I could give you something. I know that when you get over about half body weight and sleds. You don't They use explosion anymore. But here's the thing about this Mike, if you live near hills, well, of course I live in Utah. So I'm lucky. You don't need to buy a sled you 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 out 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 coal. You know, slave coal miner.

Yeah, like trying to pull a car or something.

Yeah, someone whipping you on the back with some you know, with sticks or something. It should be rapid.

And do you think there's value in the sled for just everyday people who want Oh, yeah. And what 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. You know?

You say the word cardio, no raise at $10,000.

Doing Hill sprints and doing?

No, it's brutal. I know, I've is a

kind of, I mean, I hate to use the word cardio because I'm doing cardio right now, because my heart's beating. But it is such a hit to the body. It's shocking how much harder it is.

Yeah, yeah, I grew up playing ice hockey. And so we used to have to go out go to camps, and they would, they would beat us up with stuff like that.

Here's the other thing about hills and sleds is there's almost no D acceleration. So sometimes when normal people pick up the speed into a sprint, they don't decelerate appropriately, and they kind of hear that plump up, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, noise as they slow down. The nice thing about sleds and hills is when you decide to decelerate, it just happens. It's over. It's only a few steps, and you're done. And one more idea for safety, I think, yeah. What are your thoughts on preventing injury in people, let's say in their 40s, and 50s and beyond, like other other common reasons why these people tend to get hurt versus younger, and then what they can do to avoid it. Yeah, the informations a mere 7580 years old. It's what yanda taught us years ago, the phasic 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 benchpress curl leg press, you're actually turning yourself into an old person. And if you spend all day at the desk, which is a benchpress, 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 in the window stick, stretch those muscles, but the muscles that weaken with age. Now those are the ones that would focus as you hit your 40s plus, that's the glutes and I always tell people, you're sitting on a goldmine, the glutes are the fountain of youth. So the glutes, the deltoids, the triceps and the AB wall. But the AB will remember is a fast twitch muscle. And this is a mistake most people make best AB exercise and no is vomiting. By far. I mean it's a great app.

Recommended. Do it however you feel.

All you need is what what's that? Was it the CAC is that the stuff? Yeah, that'll that'll go for

it. That's an easy way to get it done. 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, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, these slow hundreds of reps kinds of things. Were really one of the best things we know it's comes from the wrestling community. Sort of like you box, someone's Abul you if you've ever gone up and just and can you hear this noise?

Yeah. You're beating yourself up.

Yeah, you if you can take note, if you do it to yourself, you will get reactions, but it does help to have somebody else. You tap someone's Abul 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 triceps among a million other things. Have someone punched 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 because you're done.

And then maybe throw up if you want to finish off the abs.

Yeah, well, you do that on Saturday morning. Yeah.

Is there anything that people in their 40s and 50s and beyond can do to recover better from their training?

I hate to say this, because I can't make any money on this. But it's sleep hygiene. I mean, that's the most important thing of all. I mean, is your room completely dark. When I travel, I bring these large size, their office clips, they can hold like 100 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 travel a lot. And there's up to 17, little teeny red and green lights and most rooms I stay in. 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 234 hours. I mean, you got to be reasonable on this. Within your bedtime. Your room should be cool. I use a white noisemaker when I sleep. So honestly, oh your to do list you should write it to do list about an hour before you go to bed. And just so your your monkey brain isn't dancing around. You got to get the Henderson report in or whatever it is.

The TPS the TPS report has to be on

TPS report. That's it. Yeah. So the number one thing is sleep hygiene. And yet most people listening me Will discount what I just said.

I can vouch for that firsthand, because for the last couple years, I've had sleep issues mostly staying asleep. I generally don't have a problem falling asleep, but I'll have trouble staying asleep. And I've tried many different things. And I you know, I'm not doing any of the obvious things wrong. I'm doing all the all the things that you mentioned. Right. And it still just comes and goes randomly almost. So I don't know if is if I'm just a naturally lighter sleeper. It also gets in the time where my 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 maybe I'll just go do all go to a sleep study for fun or something. They'll be like, Yeah, I don't know. It's either

psychosomatic or in your head, right? Isn't that the whole phrase? Yeah, yeah. But on that I do a one minute. There's an app called One moment meditation. And I do that, well, now I'm doing it at the end of every workout too. So once a day, I count my breaths for one minute. That's all it is. But what's interesting in 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, this comes from maffetone. But I can tell when I'm not running 100 on full cylinders, because that one minute of counting my breaths. Seems like wait, I keep going. What does that buzzer gonna go off? Because I'm out of time. A minute should feel like a minute. Yeah. But when I'm a little stressed, a minute of breathing seems like two minutes of breathing. Which is

what you just generally feel like you just don't have enough time to do all the stuff you need or want to do.

Yeah, so I'm stressing out because I took such

as such as my life. I understand.

Yeah. So you're stressed out? Because you took a minute aside out of your day? Well, that right there should indicate why you're probably sleeping poorly.

So what do you do then?

Well, I also subscribe to a thing called brain.fm. Brain.

Yeah, I like brain.fm. I use it when I'm writing.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Me too. And then, you know, something like that white noise seems to help some people. It could just be the age or going through. Oh, sneaking up on 40 seems to be it for men, in my experience from

34. Turning 35 this year? Yeah, it's just

I mean, obviously, you know, like the guys at fit ranks argue that the age groups are 16 to 3536 to 55. And over 55. And it's funny when I 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% of our population, but with men 35. Ish, and 55 ish seems to bring a whole new set of problems. Let's call them opportunities to

challenge challenges. challenges, okay,

challenges to kind of re it seems like some things change

at snad of selfish interest. So like, what am I What do I have ahead of me here?

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

Yeah, I've noticed that in my training just in the last year. Five years where I was able to die. Yeah, My recovery was just better five years ago. I mean, I was sleeping better. So that helps. But even like the rpp 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 kind of did it, whereas less intense workouts now just seem harder. Mm hmm.

So the sleep issue, don't hit it with a nuclear weapon. You know, I would not slide up to prescription drugs.

Yeah, no, I wouldn't do too many risks. And why go down that road?

Well, it could also be, maybe your kids will be one year older, and he in a year or two, and magically, their sleep is better. So as you're asleep, but if I'd be something as simple as a hot tub, half an hour before bed, it could be a shower. This is this what I love about the human body, I showers for me, put me to sleep,

I like to do it in the morning, because 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 that humans are designed. Maybe you need to get I wear those silly blue blocking glasses. Yeah, no 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. I mean, sometimes when I'm struggling, I'll put the earphones on and your body produces certain enzymes as you sleep. The important thing about you know that guy starts talking, I don't even know what he says after the death, but I fall asleep. I know I'm supposed to count my breaths and all that stuff. But maybe you need to change to a higher grade of sheets. I mean, but again, I would go with a very simple program, just a few simple steps first, and then slowly get you know, maybe you need to buy new curtains maybe need to buy sound dampening, something's maybe, and then of course down the line is you know, over the counter and then prescription help. But boy, once you go down the road of prescriptions, then you really kind of narrow your choices in the future did not marijuana me about taking anabolics? He goes, Well, what do you do next? Because that's going to be once you decide to take the drugs, nothing else is ever gonna have the impact. He was a big believer that all it did was put your two years into the future. But the problem is two years in the future, you're gonna have some new ideas to improve. Six weeks, you might not.

Yeah, and speaking with quite a few drug users over the years. One of the more common, I guess you'd say, or Gratz is just the psychological dependence that they weren't really, they weren't thinking with that, that how much different 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 and steel plus everything else. It's hard for them to get off and function normally. Exactly.

And of course, on the female side, some of the things are irreversible. Yeah. 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 arms razor, the simplest solution first, and then you just you try to march ahead on that. And let's be honest, if 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 gonna correct you. You know you're you're doing okay. or whatever it is, you know? Yeah. I've ever seen the movie splash know, a delightful movie. Tom Hanks and john candy. JOHN candy has this pickup line he's used since he was 10. Hey, it's always worked, you know?

Okay, it's not funny.

To see the movie. What's the big one?

He throws coins in the ground. He picks him 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.

Okay, which I which I didn't see. I'm behind on my on my movie watching admittedly. Well, so you mentioned you're traveling around a lot. Is that for you? are you delivering seminars? Or are there things that people listening if they like what you have to say, can they come? Can they come meet you?

Sometimes? Yeah. A lot of my work would be for private audiences, you know, with the United States military and professional teams. Cool. But I also do kettlebell certs with the rkc. I'm doing a two day workshop in Australia. I'll be doing a couple and I go to England for about four, five weeks a year. I go to Ireland for about four weeks a year. Working. It is weird. It's funny because 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. 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 there, obviously on weightlifting and stuff, but a lot of people say I give a lot of like, life lessons and stuff. Because 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. I mean, little and often over the long haul, you know, focus on the fundamentals. You know, I've been debt free for a long time, I started saving money when I got my first job when I was 21. I mean, you know, saving money for retirement. everybody listening knows both of those things, be debt free and save money for retirement. Everybody knows it, that have emergency fund, everybody knows that. Just do it. I mean, I'm going to tell you to push pull hinge squat loaded carry in the weight room. I mean, 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.

And that's 700 sets of consumption of high status items. And one one set of savings.

That's right, yes. Right, exactly. Well, I taught at a school where a lot of these parents that there was this fad of buying these things called navigators, these massive as

Lincoln 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 gonna afford college and be like, well, that piece of crap car that eats more gasoline than the USS Enterprise, that might be the issue, you know,

along with the house that they can't afford and what what are so what are some of the other key lessons that you can learn in fitness that apply elsewhere?

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 gonna 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 we call shark habits. One bite, and you're done. So when you guys asked me to come on this podcast, when 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, that's not necessary. They're unimportant to other people. But they're just these decisions. They're on off switches that 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. This is. Wait, I thought it would be. So when it comes to things with business or life. I just say yes. If you ask 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 the gift. But on the other side is something that Pat Flynn calls pirate maps, 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 Mart 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 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.

I like that go. I can I can relate. And now that I

do get well what do you have grandkids man that really changes things. So my grandmother died 1925 all my grandparents were died by World War Two. My mom died 1980 my dad Not long after. So 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 2030 years ago, my goal might be to win the pleasant and Highland Games to win the nationals and 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 focuses 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 them every day, day in, day out 365 days, 1000 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% gone and savings 3% gone into your, your fortune fund that this dream that you have, whatever presents 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 that Do you mind if I talk about this?

Yeah. I'm actually I'm reading The Millionaire Next Door right now.

Oh, fantastic.

Yeah, yeah, it's good. I like it a lot, a lot of the basics. And you know, I have I read on a rotation. And so I have finance and investing as one of the topics and

why I read finance books, because of what they teach him about strength. I mean, what you learn in finance is the same as performance. So the first thing you should have is an emergency fund. Generally funny when I was young, they said about 1500 bucks, they still say about 1500 bucks. And the number he always used is what does it cost to replace a water here, whatever 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 you're fortunate and

debt free would include no mortgages, obviously,

if you can do that, yeah. So 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 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 you whenever you 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. The first level may be something as simple as, you know. People move around the house. Okay, that's, you know, if the house caught on fire, I would like to ambulating myself out, okay. Okay. And there might be some lessons you 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 and have the young sorority girls check you out. Whoo, hey, you know, and and as a 61 year old, that's all we aspire for. But you know, whatever you should have kind of I always think he's have kind of three levels of when you get into something, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. 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 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, you know, that I always look at trying to get encouraged people to come in at three different levels on a new goal.

Yeah, that makes sense. And then the ideas what to work toward the third level if you need to, because like in the case of dieting, for example, you know, it depends. It depends what you want to do, 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. You know, 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.

And then what's the third level? The third level? Is this perfect.

Yeah. Yeah.

Protein veggies, water at every meal, clean eating whatever that means. And then you can when you're cleaning your

food versus like washing it off. And then

yeah, and then the third level is, you know, entering the Mr. Greater midvale contest or whatever it is, yeah.

What vegetables Do you eat every day? You mentioned you try to get to 14

different Yeah, the goal is different. I'm sure that you're kind of rotating through the same like, Are there other staples that you Yeah, you can't. There's no way you can't have it where at least where I live, you're gonna have tomatoes, avocados, onions, green peppers, even though you really should probably just eat red and orange and yellow. green peppers are not ripe. green peppers are on their way to a different I

didn't know that

nor to die. And then just just think about a typical salad. You know, if you had dandelion greens and whatever that other spinach or rubella rugal over dances It's It's amazingly easy. The one place I eat it, landmark grill, I order 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. I mean, they've got I mean, you're almost done. Oh, you're done with that, you know, I would include all those in there

and Virgo listening. So you can you can also make this stuff at home. Oh, yeah. Easy, easy to meal prep a bunch of soup for the week, we do that at my household. Take a bunch of the vegetables. I mean, 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 for getting in healthy things.

Yeah, you don't have to be a lunatic. 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 that's even true. But I think the phytochemicals come out better when they have a nice, some time to cook. And some Yeah,

I could see that being the case, especially with certain vegetables. And we we know for example, I mean, 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 for 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 microwaving some vegetables and some water and throwing the water away or something like that.

Well, my favorite part of when we have ham, you know is 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. I mean, 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 and it's like, 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. I think I think seriously, I think split pea soup is lifeless and

and how is it? How is life like that?

Well, when I first got the Utah State University coach one, I said, what does it take to be a great discus thrower? And he said, Well, Danny, you got to lift weights three days a week. Got it. You got throw four got it for the next eight years. Most people miss that last part, we said eight years. And that is the key. I mean, you got to let the soup simmer as an athlete for about eight years is true. You mean some people say you should be at high level in two or three years. Well, that might be true, but it still is going to take a I tried to rush every time I've ever made a mistake as an athlete. I tried to skirt you know, kind of get around the reality of time. And to make good splits pea soup. You can't rush it. It's like trying to rush a turkey. I come over to your house for Thanksgiving, you 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.

Yeah, what are we going to be eating Exactly.

Ready in that. So you know it's in, 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 turkey and our friends come over and we have a practice Thanksgiving. And one of the things that besides the the communal aspects, it's the fact that you can't rush any part of that tiffin, I'll buy the turkey on Tuesday, and we might fall 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 till five. And that's just a great metaphor for how PERFORMANCE SPORTS are in academics and love and everything else important in

life. 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 subtly slightly dissatisfied with the pace despite the pace. Despite the amount it's not that I'm not working. It's not that the old 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 was the same sort of, you know, they're not things aren't moving fast enough, things are not moving fast enough. 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 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, you know, with have 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 finances. You know what I mean? There's just more that goes with it. But I've I tried to do my best 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, you know, I know like, oh, if you can reframe stress, see it as challenges like I'm familiar with with with that. And I 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 mean, I 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 their in talking professional success. And in 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, you know, I don't know if there's any way to get away from that, and also do bigger things.

But 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, right, I graduated college and I had been top of the heap academically and athletically for a long time. And then there was just 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 know, 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 too. cliche. Time goes around companies just gonna 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, your life, but all of a sudden, you can almost feel the other things. This is why I think it's so important when I learned the second grade system, Maria Sumpter put up on the on the board, a compass and on the top, it said work that four points where work, rest, play and pray. And she said, if we kept those four things in balance, Don't work too hard. You know, the word workaholic wasn't even out yet. Don't play too hard. You know, if you do decide to work, you have to make sure you play, but you have to make sure you're rest. And if even if you don't believe in praying, but at least alone time or appreciation of nature 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 let 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, because it was so much fun. 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 really kicked my career up. So sometimes I think when we're struggling, I just sit back and look at I have someone sit back or I look back at my compass and say, oh, oh, here's where I made my mistake. I lost and fill in the blank from there. I didn't have any lone time, which can happen as a parent of young kids, Moms. I'm never alone. There's a I go to the bathroom. There's it someone pounded on the door. You know

that that would be my that'd be my daughter. I was a good impression.

Never heard that one before.

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 on my list of books to consider reading. But it was just about incorporating play as as an adult in doing things that just for the sake of doing them because they're fun and how, if I remember correctly, that it was kind of like a type A personality, business person, it was all just about work, work, work. And then was having problems with anxiety and probably sleep issues and other things. And then the only thing he 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. So 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.

Exactly. I mean, that is so that's that's the great life lesson I picked up in the second grade, what 1963 or something like that, for maybe whenever I maintain that compass All four areas my life. I'm happy I sleep. Well, everyone loves me. I'm King of the Hill, top of the heap, all that stuff. And when I let one area go too far, that's what crushes me down. That's just, it's a truth of my life. Yeah,

I'm sure many, many people could relate to it. So, hey, this was great. I like how the discussion we start off with very sterile technical things. And then we've gotten off on on some interesting and fun tangents. So where can people find you and your work? Obviously, you're a writer. So you mentioned 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, kind of new and exciting that you have, that you want people to know about?

Dan, john dotnet, 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. Dan, john dotnet. And then you can go to, you can also sign up I got this free weekly newsletter called wandering weights, which is just, you know, I just do it for fun, I find stuff online that I find interesting. And then I talk about the Sword in 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 snip acity would be in there. And I do have a chapter on sister Marie assumpta because she's in the middle part of the book, which I call my mentors. So yeah, and you'll get a chance to hear about Ralph mon Dec. Not Meyer, Bob Jacobs, a whole bunch of people you've never heard of, and probably never will, but they're all shaped my life to the better. Okay,

that's great. Awesome. You're gonna be writing another book. Of course, you've written so many now,

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 paste in my work and turn them into books. Really? Oh, yeah.

There's no Have you Have you contacted Oh, yeah,

talk to the editor about it. And he laughed. He goes, Well, you gave us the workshop at our place. I know. But man, you don't even have it. You'll usually see like an Lu schuler's books always notes when I do the work but it's it's a it's a company but it's a company that puts out a lot of stuff but it's like that they break everything down into push, pull, hinge, 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 mentioned, because it'd be full so full of myself but loaded carries and goblet squats. I'm the kind of the Pied Piper those things. I'm the I'm the little minstrel on them. So

plagiarism is lame, especially when all they'd have to do is just credit you Yeah, I mean, if they want to argue Hey, fair use you know, we don't have to pay royalties for a small amount of information. Yeah, okay, fine, but it's it's it's a matter of manners. It's not even

i i agree 100% with you. Well, listen, I really enjoyed this. I do have to move on now to absolutely some other exciting things in my some fun, but I really appreciate you coming on. Okay, that was great.

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