(3) Dan John - The Path to Being a Legend - Little and Often, Over the Longhaul

Hey everybody, this is Eric with the Future of Fitness Podcast and Fitness Marketing Alliance. And this was a really, really cool interview for me personally. I have to say, it went much longer than uh what we would normally do, is about a 90-minute interview. But um Dan John has uh has been a major influence in my fitness coaching career, and hopefully you know who he is. Hopefully, as a man doesn't have to go without introduction, but in case you don't know who he is, he is a uh longtime athlete, longtime coach. He's an author of s at least six books. Uh he's competed in a um track and field as a discus thrower. He's uh competed in the Highland Games, he's competing in multiple different, and he still competes. I think when I talked to him, he was going to be preparing for an Olympic lifting meet in the age of uh somewhere he's in, he's in his 50s now. But the special thing about Dan John is that he can take an incredible amount of experience and information and boil it down to the simplest forms. And during this conversation, he really honed in on the little things that he's done consistently over time that's made him a huge success in the fitness industry. So tune in, pick up every little bit you can because this is a highly valuable uh interview. And without further ado, Dan John Hey everybody, this is Eric with the Fitness Marketing Alliance, and I am extremely excited to be here with Coach Dan John. Um Dan is a legend in the strength game. He is uh an author. Uh he is a father, a grandfather now, as well, grandfather as well, and also uh what I would like to call a warrior poet. Um I've had the pleasure of meeting you, Dan, I think, uh three times now. Twice at Strength Matter Summits. Uh you gave uh a handful of presentations there on various topics. And then I also had uh one of the highlights of my coaching career, I think it was a three-day um intensive uh program with you and a small handful of people. I think it was right before you published your book, Can You Go? So was that 2015?

Where where was that?

That was in La Hoya.

It was a that yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. That was the art of coaching.

Yeah. That was it. And you gave that's right. And you gave uh that was when you uh I think the four the four part assessment came out. Maybe that was right when you were honing that.

It was then towards the after the after the yeah.

Yeah.

You guys probably had books because it was probably who knows.

Yeah.

And you remember I was trying to teach and had the personal trainers right behind you guys doing stuff?

Yeah, I do. I also remember you permanently fixed my push-up. Um, that's another story, but some things I really didn't realize that my my shoulder was pretty junked up, and you just right right away you you got it just from looking at like two push-ups.

Yeah.

And it was this this part of my hand came up. Remember?

Exactly right. So every single push-up you did was uh Yeah.

Yeah. So it's gotten better. I can't say it's perfect, but it's gotten better, coach. And um, you know, just from a personal note, you've been a huge influence in my coaching career. Um, I think the most impressive thing that um really attracted me to to you and your your writing and and you as a coach is that you take all these years of experience and you boil it down into the simplest possible terms that we can digest as fitness professionals.

Well, it but the hard thing is is that no matter what I do, people still misunderstand me. Can I talk for a few seconds?

Yeah.

Well, I mean I I I'd love, I'll go in as much depth as you want, but this is for personal training, this is for personal trainers, right? Right?

Right. Fitness professionals as a whole. Yeah.

Oh, okay. So the biggest problem, and uh, I I talk about this all the time, is that people have a worldview, a paradigm about things. And it's very difficult to push past that. And I've got you've got to give me a few seconds. And I'm gonna say this is a standard thing when I talk to personal trainers, especially. In theology, there's a word called steno symbol. And steno, s t-e-m-o, you flip that and it's o-n-e. A steno symbol is a word, a phrase, a concept with one meaning. So my my uh this is my desk right here. So if we're on the beach and a woman walks past us and I elbow you and I say, She's so desk, you're gonna be like, I have no idea. Is desk is this thing right there. Uh a great example would be the word gay. You know, um, a hundred years ago, gay men happy. You can't call up your parents tonight and say, Mom, dad, I'm gay, and have them hear anything but one thing. And good or bad, now listen in the fitness world, we are stuck in paradigms. So I'll go to a workshop and they'll be out, they'll say, Dan, talk about getting people stronger. And I'll say, for what? You know, like throwing the disc as far as an off-season football player. And I'll go, okay. Someone's hand will go up, what about burpees? You know, what about burpees? What about, well, where are they in your program? Well, they're not in my program. You said to get stronger. Oh, yeah, well, they burn fat. Well, I don't well, burn fat. I think you burned fat on a barbecue, but I digress. You know, I didn't take physiology, but I know that's not true. Uh most people have this bodybuilding paradigm that I'm gonna do hypertrophy work and I'm gonna do some junk stuff, uh, eat chicken and broccoli, and then I'll have the body of my dreams. And that's as great for you, good for you. But the downside of the body of your dreams, you still might not be able to perform. You still might not be stronger. You might look better, but no one in most sports, no one cares how you look. No one cares how you look. You know, people used to make fun of Charles Barclay, the round mound. Yeah? You go play Charles Barclay. A buddy of mine, uh, I've got I used to work with a local professional team here, and they would talk about certain people in the league, like Carl Malone, trying to get around Carl Malone, trying to get around Charles Barclay. And so who cares? I mean, obviously Malone was in pretty good shape, but Barclay, no. But you had to get around it. So maybe we could take Barclay in an offseason program, have him do a bunch of burpees, you know, lean him down 80, 90 pounds, and then he's no longer in the league. Right. This is the first problem we have when we talk to people. Most people who are even listening, when I say weightlifting, their mind goes to desk, their mind goes to gay, their thought is lose body fat, hypertrophy work. I didn't say build muscle, I said hypertrophy work. So when clients come in, and I say to a client, a typical everybody else person, you know, coming into a gym, what do you want? Their steno symbol, okay. When your mom said, Did you do your homework? You said yes, yes, I did. Because that's how you and your mom talked.

Right.

You know, I mean, I could have family members call me up right after an operation where I'm still bleeding out. Danny, how are you doing? I'm doing fine. Because that is the steno symbol to how you doing. Right. You know, you don't say, Hey, Merry Christmas. The response isn't up yours. You know, it's just these Well not your family.

Yeah.

Huh? Not your family.

Yeah. So these are kind of built-in mindsets. So when people come in to talk with me, I mean, I hear uh I want to lose weight, and I I break that off with, well, I'll just cut your leg off because you'll lose weight then. But uh but I want to lose fat. Oh, because that's always what they say. And then when I say, What do you mean by that? They don't have a response. When I tell them, here's the other side. And then when I say, I want you to eat more meat, uh, more protein, more veggies, more water, take fish oil, they hear starvation. When I say we're gonna try to get you, uh, we'd like to see what you know, I'd like to get you a little stronger, you know, do some movement, you know, they hear throw up sweaty mess. So before, and this is see, here's the thing. We probably already had people click it off, like, who cares about this? Folks, this is the communication problems you're having. Did you do your homework? Yes, yes, I did. Well, show it to me. Oh, that homework. So, you know, it's like those, you remember the two questions I ask of everybody? Do you eat colorful vegetables and you exercise half an hour a day? Everybody says, yes, yes, I do. Here's the funny thing. If you ate colorful vegetables every day, not not a ton, just any, and you exercise half an hour, you would never need to hire me or you. But they say they do. And so then I say, because I think I have the uh the gravity, I I I can say to them, Well, then you can't I can't work with you because you're already doing what I was gonna tell you to do. And then all of a sudden, they realize that I just smashed their steno symbol. And now we can finally talk. But as you learn in the one, two, three, four assessment, the can you go, is that the the next step is I need to give people what they need, not what they want. You know, and the problem is, and I don't know how I don't know what parenting is like now, but my job raising my daughters was to make sure they had their needs, not their wants. You might want a pony, and that's nice, but you need to go to school, you need to read great books, you need to eat home cooked meals at least twice a day. I can't, you know, school lunch is school lunch, you know. Um, but you know, you don't in our family, you don't get treats for doing your damn homework. That's your job, you know. I don't care if you want a treat for doing your homework, you need to do your homework. You follow my heads out here.

Yeah, yeah. And the question I have for you on that is you so you do have the gravity, right? To give people, tell people what they need. For most fitness professionals, right, especially those who are just getting started in their one to five year point, in some in some way, they need to give them what they want until they earn that right to give them what they need.

Okay, it's not how you do it.

Yeah.

The bulk of the men I know need mobility work, they need free movement around the joints. Yeah. But if I just gave them mobility, they'd never come back. So what I try to do is mix for men what they need, mobility, with hypertrophy, which is what they want. So between every set of hypertrophy work, we do anywhere from original strength movement to a bird dog to a to a suspension trainer movement to a so you're gonna do a set of presses with your right arm, and then we're gonna do a stretch, then set of presses with your left arm, and oh how happy you are because you're building muscle on your on your shoulder and your greater antelius and your outer sphinxius and your whatever, you know. Uh, but what I'm getting is you're more mobile. And the funny thing is, if you do hook mobility and hypertrophy together, they actually work together. Various qualities work together. Here, let me just give you the quick two strength and flexibility, because they're both neurological, they're neurological tricks, work well together. So, for example, that's why when I first started Olympic lifting, I needed more flexibility and more strength. And I was able to make great progress, and then the hormonal cascade hit me because of the load, and I put on all this body weight. The other thing that works well together seems to be is hypertrophy and mobility. Those two things work well. There's not a lot of qualities that work well together. I mean, I keep hearing people say, you know, long distance running and powerlifting. I'm like, because that's what I hear, you know. I want to be an offensive lineman and a female Olympic gymnast. That's what I hear when people tell me the goals.

Yeah.

You want to weigh 340 pounds at 6'8? Yes.

Yeah.

You want to be a female Olympic gymnast? Yes. Now you laugh, but that's what most people's goals are. You know, that 52-year-old woman, and God bless her, you know, she wants to look like she did before she was 14 and uh, you know, hit secondary puberty, then had three kids, and then didn't exercise for 40 years, 30 years. You know, give me more in two weeks, okay? Give me three on that to turn that thing around. Right. That's how that's the very first thing I think we need to do is first kind of wrap your arms around this idea that your worldview, yours, your I'm talking to you, your worldview in some cases is it's it's hypertrophy work, bodybuilding work, and a long treadmill. That doesn't cut it for most of your clients. A guy like me, when I first started, I thought the answer to all questions were the Olympic lifts. I was wrong. I was wrong. But for the clients I was working with, I was absolutely right. So, and then the second state is that you have to get into this idea, I have to give people what they want and what they need. Read a good, honestly, people ask me, are there good coaching books out there? And I say sometimes, I always go, you know, there's a there's a great book. I couldn't tell you the author, because I bought the book probably 12 times and giving you, I think his name is Wong, W N G, but it's called The First Three Days of School. And he wrote a book about establishing everything in the first three days. And I've gotten so much insight out of that book because it's such a brilliant book. Because once you set up the standards and the rules and everything else, the school year is simple. Um, good parenting books are often good coaching books because good mothers and fathers and parents uh have the ability to ah, here's a quick one. You tell your child who's five, you want to go to Taco Bell or Jack in the Box or whatever, Wendy's. Yeah, you're too stupid to be a parent. You're in charge. If they don't want to eat what you made, they go home, they go to bed hungry. They will learn, they will learn quickly. So we've got to get ourselves out of this idea as coaches that we're a modern parent who throws, oh, these teachers, if you show up on time to a thing, they give you a piece of candy. Well, no wonder in obese culture. You know, if you're constantly being rewarded for what you're supposed to do, you'll never learn. So the first thing you need to do with your client, in fact, I've got a phrase out of the book, mask made simple, that I see on memes all the time. It is weird. My sister loves the fact that I get memed. She thinks it's hilarious. She just thinks it's hilarious. And there's one called Eat Like an Adult.

Yeah.

That's my diet advice. Yeah. And people, well, what do you mean by that? Well, if you don't know what I mean by that, get out of the fitness business. If you don't know how to eat like an adult, really, it's that hard? But here's this is the follow-up. Right. People it's it's kind of a modern thing. Uh, I see it happen at my workshops all the time. Hand will go up. First off, anytime a hand goes up, I almost always want to say a question ends in a question mark, or do you have a story about how wonderful you are? And the thing I've noticed very recently in the last few years is when people's hands go up at workshops, they're just trying to let the rest of the audience know either they're smarter than me or more qualified than me. Absolutely. And yet their ignorance that comes out of their mouth disqualifies them from that.

Yeah.

But you know, you'll ask me a question, okay, uh, okay, uh, I'm gonna say that you eat like an adult, and you're gonna say, what do you mean by that? What do you mean by that, coach? You mean to eat like an adult? Well, it means, you know, eat real food, you know, uh go to the store, make your own meals. It'd be nice to make some meals from scratch. Uh, I would clean up after, I'd start, I would eat as a family. How come that's so foreign to you? And you gotta put it right back in there to say, Oh yeah. And you gotta kind of lean in like this and go, why do you think that's so strange to shop and make your and then I always tell women I meet, if you meet a guy who does who doesn't understand that, run screaming. We can stop their his DNA right now.

Darwinism. Yeah, I mean, it's it's if so many clients, and I wasn't, you know, I've been in the finestry long time, own a gym for nine years. How many people, if I say, hey, what where's the vegetables on your on your food diary? Like, oh I don't like them. I just don't like them. And I've used that. Like, well, can I even like an adult?

Let me show you how easy it is to get the vegetables. Welcome to my home, everybody. It's my house. This is uh right drunk and sober or say let's walk into my kitchen. You still with me? We're here. All right, see there's a bowl of avocados and lemons. Yep. Let me show you an easy oh, don't look at that. That's sweet. My mother-in-law brought over something she wants. But let me show you how easy it is to get vegetables, okay? Oh, there you go. There jumaka, tomatoes, onions. You can go to can you see this okay? Yep. So I buy about three or four of those a week, and that's my snack. That's my snack, okay? And that's my dog. He's not happy with you. Okay. My point is where are the vegetables? We live in a culture where you can go to the store, and it's funny, because they're already pre-made and pre-cut for us. Right. They're cheaper. The pre-made, pre-cut ones are often cheaper than doing it yourself. Right. Where are the vegetables? Uh buy can, why don't you buy progresso cans of vegetable soup? So once you snack on that. Well, isn't there salt in there? Oh, I see. Yeah. That can of vegetable soup was what put 100 pounds of body fat on it. You know, it wasn't.

Yeah. So let me segue that. Because I think, you know, you you, if anyone's read your stuff or they've they've attended your seminars, they know that you really um and what was the book that you wrote with uh Josh Hillis? Fat Lost Starts on Mondays, right? You mean this wonderful book? Yep. Read it, love it, use it all the time. Now you talk about why that was out, but go ahead. Habit-based nutrition, right? So taking that thought, and let's move it over to and let's talk, you know, Joe or Susie trainer, who's you know, a couple years in the industry, um, wanting, you know, great coach, but maybe just can't find the clients, can't get the clients in the door, right? What little habits did you do as you've been coming up as a coach and a trainer that have made you successful from the standpoint of business and marketing? Things that you do on a daily, weekly basis.

Wow. Gotta be different, but let me let me share you, let me share with you a couple of things that I do. And it's all, I mean, I think I've been more than honest. I don't think I've hidden anything, have I?

No, never. Not to my knowledge.

So let's do this. Let's start, let's start with the food thing, okay?

Yeah.

Let's start with that. Because I have this belief that fitness, it's called the four Rs now. It used to be called the three Rs. Fitness, finance, food, and relationships all have the exact same truths. Okay? It's called the four F's. Okay? So do you have a menu for what you're gonna eat every night for dinner? You're already behind the A ball. I'm already gonna write more books than you this year. Because I know every night of the week what I'm gonna have for dinner. Because I have a menu. And the menu hasn't changed. My daughters were probably seven years old. Kelly's 27 and has two kids. The reason you have a menu is so that on Sunday, after you eat, you go shopping to the menu. What day of the week do you do your dark laundry?

No idea.

Monday. What day of the week do you do white laundry? Tuesday. What day of the week do you clean your bathrooms? Wednesday. So here I'm you're gonna miss the point what I'm trying to say, but let me just Say it right now. I have a white laundry basket. When I walk past it on Thursday and see that, maybe there's some sheets in there for you know, maybe some whatever, whatever reason we have sheets in there. My brain doesn't see it. Because Monday is white laundry day. So when I'm shot when I come home from shopping, from the shopping list uh that's on the refrigerator, I can go show it to you if you want to see it. Okay, we make Monday night's dinner. We make Sunday night's dinner, but we also make Monday night's dinner. Well, start on Monday night's dinner. I'll probably have steak, salad, and champagne. So while we're cooking up the Sunday special, which is ever some of you, Sunday is always different because it's what you find in the store, okay? Right. Monday is always steak, salad, and champagne. So Sunday night, I'm gonna brine the steak up. I'm gonna pour boiling water with brine and uh salt in them with a little bit of you know, like Worcestershire sauce, whatever, peppers and stuff like that.

Oh yeah.

And let those steaks sit for 24 hours because we might not buy the nicest kind of steaks, but 24 hours in a bath of that makes them phenomenal. Sure. So if I'm hungry at three o'clock in the afternoon, I don't pull over because I know I have delicious steaks at my home. When I'm cleaning up the steaks is an easy meal, while either while doing the salad or make Tuesday's night meal, which is don't don't worry about it, or just by point. Yep. The more things you can compartmentalize in your life, basically turn them into checklists, the easier and simpler life becomes. In the world of food, have a menu. In the world of finance, there's two things. There's nothing. Well, here's here's the overriding on all of them. Little and often over the long haul. Yes. Is the answer most of humans' issues. So when it comes to food, a little thing like a menu done often works better for your body comp than all the other nonsense you do. Having basically the same shopping list weekly is miles easier than inventing a new one every week. And you're gonna say, well, isn't that boring? The average American eats only 14 foods. Did you know that?

I had no idea.

I think I eat more.

Are you sure? I'm not sure.

Write it down, count them up.

But I'll find out by 5 p.m. today.

So I mean if you start your day with Cheerios with milk and coffee, okay, that's three foods. If you do that every day, that's still three foods. Right. So my argument is might as well pick the 14 foods. I mean, if your 14 foods are like blueberries, salmon, steak, coffee, broccoli, you know, you know what I'm saying, cottage cheese, your four, you're gonna be okay.

Yeah.

You know, uh unsalted almonds, you know, those kinds of things. If that's your if the super foods are your 14, God bless you, you're you're you're not gonna suddenly go, oh my god, how do I get fat eating salmon and broccoli? Well, good luck to do that. Because those foods are satiating.

Yeah.

So I have, in fact, it's right here on the back of my computer, you can't see it, but would you mind linking this? Well, it don't worry about it. So I have a pirate map that I follow every day. It's a phrase I got from Pat Flynn. So I have a weightlifting meet in the last weekend of October. I'm 60, but I want to I want to lift up, you know, I lift in meets, you know, when I can't, Olympic lifting. So I start, I start my day the night before. So before I go to bed, I make the coffee. The smell of coffee is what wakes me up in the morning. I wear my blue blocking glasses if I'm watching TV or using the computer. I hot tub and ice shower every night before I go to bed after I take my supplements. Okay. Those four steps are like a dog rolling or turning around in a circle.

Yeah.

When I wake up, the first thing I do is I have a moment of gratitude. And usually it's for a couple, you know, there's a couple things I'm very grateful for. Then I get on the floor and I do my uh uh Tim Anderson original strength. He gave me a couple movements to do every morning. Um at that moment, I then I get to take care of my college grades. I answer every email. You know that's true, right? Yeah. I've never laid in emails. And then if I have to, I write. And I'm oh I'm knocking out, I'm knocking out about what, four articles a month, two, three books a year. Um, and I focus on that until about nine o'clock. So I'm up for maybe two and a half, three hours. And then at nine o'clock, I shower and I work out because people all over the world come to train with me. Three days a week, I Olympic lift, two to three days a week. I either always mobility work, some more hypertrophy when I'm away from a meet, but you know, close now. That's what I do every single day. When I'm done at night, when we're done working out about 10:30, I go to the landmark cafe, I go, you can call them up right now, a vegetarian omelette, a side salad, and cottage cheese. I fast for what is that about? I fast for about what 16, 17 hours a day. And I starved to only if I eat, I eat the big breakfast, I eat a normal dinner, and if I eat between meals, you saw what I ate.

Yeah.

That little thing of of veggies. When you called, I had a thing of I'm trying out this new style of beet. So that whole bowl of beets, and the only problem is they spilled and I got them on my coffee. Yeah. So now I'm angry. Ruined a good book. So what I guess what I'm trying to say, but why am I talking about food and finances? Finances. If you're debt-free and you put a little bit away of money every month, when you're my age, you'll be absolutely fine. I retired, what, 2010? You know, at age what was I, 52, 3 or something like that? Awesome. How'd I do that? Everybody knows how I did it. What would your mother, father, grandfather tell you at age 22? Debt, my friend. That's a bad thing, you know? Put away a few dollars. Folks, that's a bad thing. Well, but you know this, right? Fitness, you know, we know that you know, lift weights, go for a walk. Most people's dreams come true if you just do those two things.

Yeah.

Okay, or plank, goblet squat, do some hip thrusts, and uh farm a walk of suitcase. There's four exercises.

Yeah.

Four. Sorry, that was a European uh American you know, push-up, goblet squat, hip thrust, walk with wings. All your dreams come true. Go for a walk. You know, it's just not turn off the TV and read good books. There's not one thing. So when you're talking about becoming successful, the very first thing people need to do is watch where the watch where the time and energy and resources are getting blown out of your life. So where where where are the time wasters in your life? Um my wife and I in 2010, uh, she got a promotion, and we nice things happened. I had a couple of books really hit. So we moved to California, and and then when our daughter got married, and then of course the two Danny and Joseph being my grandchildren came by, we we kind of decided to move back here to Utah. And we came back, we lost a whole bunch of friends, and it really, in many cases, kind of hurtful. But then Tiff and I talked about it about where those relationships had gone. And I won't say they were toxic. I don't like that phrase. You might have known toxic people in your life, and we all know those life suckers, but the relationship, the cost of benefit of the relationship wasn't there anymore. So I would say do that in your whole life. For example, I do watch a lot of TV. This is true. Uh, like when I do laundry, uh, I watch television. Uh, you know, when I'm folding clothes, I watch television. But we never watch, uh, we we have a real hard time uh getting the um like ABC, NBC, C best and the rest because we don't have the ability to get them here. Uh so I walk, I'll if you tell me a series is good, I'll buy the series and watch the shows in 21 minutes with no commercials. I'm not saying you have to do this, and I'm not saying I'm a lunatic. I'm just saying look for those places in your life where you see everything just pouring out. You know, uh my young friend down there, Sirius Black, my dog, you know, he's a pound puppy, but you know what? He earns, I mean, he's not. We have a little system, he understands things. He he's my companion, he trains with us. Um, my wife and I both travel a lot, and when I'm on the road, Sirius Black makes me feel better about my wife, you know, being alone. Um, so for me, the dog is not a time moisture. Uh, but what are time oysters in your life? Uh, here's one shopping 23 times a week. Uh we shop on Sunday, we have the winter dairy people that's the local dairy, deliver stuff to us on Thursday because the worst thing most of us can do is go back into a store. You know, what do you what do you or what kind of vehicle are you driving? You know, I mean, I know people who this is a while ago, but got second mortgages on their house, so they could buy big SUVs. And I thought, well, how stupid are you?

Yeah, okay.

So now you're working for a car that has a shelf life, what, six, seven years? So I'm just saying this, where are your time wasters? What's sucking the energy out of you? Because until you get control of you, Earl Nightingale had a Earl Nightingale had a wonderful story. So this dad's watching football, and uh the sun keeps bothering. So he takes out the Sunday paper, and the dad cuts up uh a picture of the world. He says, Son, piece that together. Well, in just a few seconds, the sun comes back. It wasn't perfect, but it was a good job. And he goes, How did you do that so fast? And he goes, Well, Daddy, on the back side of it was a man. And when I put the man together, the world came together. And I've always I don't use that story enough because it doesn't resonate as well as I'd hoped, but when you're together, your career suddenly becomes together. You know? Uh, I know many personal trainers, in fact, I don't want to, I mean, I'm thinking of a few who don't have six-pack abs and perfect so so cow bikini bodies. But their clientele is massive because they're together. They're together. Even though they might not have the genetics or maybe some bad life choices, it doesn't matter. Because I, you know, I want you, the personal trainer, to give a shit about me. I don't care that you have six back abs. I don't care that you have you know nice big arthritic hands. I don't care. I'm paying you to help me get better. And most people in our field don't yet get that. You know, I've I've been around coaches who you know sit in their lawn chair and wax eloquently about events that happened 50 years ago and don't coach their athletes. And I see you see it all the time. So the first thing, job one, is you gotta put your stuff together. And the areas you gotta put together are fitness, finance, small half food, relationships. You gotta get you got to get that together. You know, I'll tell you one thing: if if you're young in the in our business and you were smart enough to like join the Marine Corps and have all your education paid for, and you go out there in this business debt-free with money saved, you're gonna probably have more clients than the person who's just struggling to keep ends meet. Yeah, because people can smell it, man. Yeah, people can smell fear, not fear, people can smell success. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah, that was question one that went on.

Yeah, that was great. Yeah, feel to run off as much as you want on these. I have um, I know obviously you're a big reader. There's a book uh I recently just um worked on it. It's called Thank You for Being Late. I want to get it right. An Optimist Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations, and it's by Thomas Friedman. Um do you know this book?

I know Thomas Friedman's book.

So he he he makes a really good argument in the book. And I'm a closet futurist, and he uh, well, I guess I just outed myself, but he talks about 2007. He makes a strong argument, right? That in 2007 all these technological advancements happened at once. iPhone being the biggest one, right? Uh GitHub being another one, and way just information in the cloud, essentially, right? So that was 10 years ago. 10 years, right? The iPhone has only been around for 10 years. Um you are what I would consider a master content creator, right? Which would be the term we use in the marketing world. You consistently pump out quality content, obviously books and things like that. Um the question I'm getting at here is how has technology changed the way you do things, if at all, right? Um and then what what do you think is gonna happen next in the fitness industry?

Well, the odd thing is, you know, I was one of the first blogs, fitness blogs.

Yeah.

Now I'm gonna say something.

Because you were on T Nation too, which I mean now how many people I wonder how many modern-day fitness professionals know about T-Nation, or at least the history of it. Anyway, carry on.

So in 1998, you know, this this job came up and I applied for it uh to be an online professor. They didn't have the word yet, uh, for Columbia College in Missouri. And Tiff saw it and said, you know, you should apply for this. I'm joking, I might be joking, it might not be true, but I might have been the only applicant with an email address.

That's awesome. Was it Prodigy? Or was it what was the email address? Softhome.

Softhome.net. Okay. D John at SoftHommet. Don't use it, folks, the Zed account. Uh and in 1998, I went on this thing called the internet, and I found Clarence Bass, and he's the first email I ever wrote, and Rob Wolf is the second. Because back then people used to have these big chains on their emails, and you go up and mine them for people's addresses.

Yeah.

So, I mean, the fact that you know that that'll date me, but to my point, a guy by the name of Tamir Katz emailed me one time and said, you know, you need to start a blog to help us because the people who ran the internet fitness at the time were the high high-intensity people who believe one set to failure. So in 1998, the people who dominated the internet and the world of fitness were one set to failure on an autos machine. They dominated it.

They were the loudest. Huh? They were the loudest.

Yeah, well, they had they were the only ones on.

Right.

Since they never actually trained, they had plenty of time to do other things. Not just making fun. But so in 1998, I got online and I started pumping out a lot of information. I I wish I could find my original um address and pull them up from uh uh the Wayback Machine. I don't know if you're ever in the internet archive, but I can't find my original internet site was hotbot.com slash fitness slash exercise slash Dan John slash, but I can't that's I don't think that's right. But there was it was it was this long, you know. And then uh but so I just started, you know, person asked me a question and then I'd type up a five-paragraph answer. Uh someone asked me a program and I'd type it up and I would storm, I'd retype stuff. I was very concerned about losing some of the stuff, like notes and stuff from workshops I'd been to. So I just type it up there and throw it up there. And well, and then you say to me, 2007, so about 10 years after the first blogs, the iPhone show up, and now it's 10 years. So we're talking about about a 20-year period. Frankly, I'd almost say things have flattened out technologically. I would almost say that. Uh it's not the Wild West anymore. Um, you know, when I was first get online, you know, you would ping don't type in snatch Olympic lifting, because man, it would take days for you to shut down all the pop-ups that would come up. Days. And that's all done now. Um well, as my friend told me not long ago, always look at porn to find out where technology's going.

Yeah.

Because, you know, I guess there's a book or something about that, how porn chose DVD, and that's DVD, porn chose VCR over beta.

Yeah.

Um, and what you're seeing now in the porn world is this idea of virtual starting to show up. And I'm wondering if we're not far from uh it's funny if you watch the HBO show Ballers. Uh there there is a trying to get the guy to invest in uh virtual reality. And it's a very funny little scene, but gosh, that's the future.

Yeah.

I'm still convinced, I start to think that maybe the future, I know for sure in the uh strategic sports, the tactical sports, American football, rugby, soccer, probably basketball, that uh the virtual reality uh for the athlete will become very big. The quarterback can make 700 reads on a defense. You know, he can get seven, he can look at a defense, make an adjustment, make the play call, pick the receiver, and never take a hit or get tired and not have to worry about 21 other people being out there at the same time. So if you can get a quarterback to get a couple hundred reps a day on his own, when he does come out to breakfast practice, he's his brain is gonna be warp speed ahead of the rest of the people. Right. And so I think in the performance, I think in the performance, you'll see that. Interesting because if it probably hard to find it now, but maybe libraries will still have them. But Stanford tried this thing called Cybervision. Oh boy, it'd have been right around, yeah, it'd have been um late 90s, and they would film great athletes, and they like in the hammer, putting on the glove was ding-ding ding, ding-ding ding. And then they'd have music ding ding ding, woo, and then another sound was woo, woo, woo, to teach you the rhythm. And then they just show you the hammer trace, and they kept trying to lay in the patterns. It didn't make it. It just didn't make it because it was only it was only this and some here. But now the virtual world with the new gloves that are coming out and things. I mean, I see I see the future and performance sports virtual. I mean, absolutely virtual. I see leagues starting up online where I'm I'm an offensive tackle for the uh ready player one nights. You know, you're you're from the Lord of the Rings Hobbits team. And I I see I see virtual leagues showing up where you know chubby kids in their basement are playing high-level sports.

Yeah.

You know, I I think I I don't think this is me, you know, being out out there.

No, I don't think so at all. I think it's a it's a good I mean, have you got to play with any of the the VR stuff, the virtual reality stuff with the gloves? And have you done that opportunity?

Well, you know, I I have early prototypes. I won't let you know what company this is, but uh this is uh This is an attempt to do something. Uh, if it's powered up, I'll show you some cool stuff. Cool. But yeah, so I mean, yeah, you know, I mean, I've I've been around long enough to test everything, but these are these are supposed to I don't want to show too much. But those are classes that are supposed to make my training harder, and that that was an early thing. That's like step a step before where we are now. Yeah. Yeah, those those bad boys. Um, and then I was there for some other things, but I think I'm the only person, there was this method they did at the Olympic Training Center. I think I'm the only person I've been done twice. Um, it's it's archaic 3D, but not archaic, it was even, but uh you had to stand there in a speedo, and then they put um silver dots on all your joints. Yep, and you had to stand there for five, ten minutes, I mean a long effing time in a speedo in front of people, and then uh you're in the ring, and then they'd say, Okay, throw the discus as far as you possibly can. Okay. I threw 180 feet like that, and that might be the best throw of my life. And it's funny because uh when you look at my throw, uh you can tell that I mean it wasn't I could have thrown farther, but it was just it's a funny little throw because my it's just it's just so instead of being like this, it just takes off like that. Uh the downside is how many throws did they do with me?

One.

One. I stood there, so it wasn't a real, I mean it was a real discus throw, but nowadays you can get that feedback. I mean, honestly, we're to a place where you know what they do. I don't know if you watched like The Hobbit where Gollum were in smog and the I'm pardon me, Gollum in um Lord of the Rings and then smog, where you just have that they have the suits now that are covered with the dots.

Yeah.

No, those aren't perfect either, but at least you're not standing there for 20 minutes. You could probably take 20 throws, you follow? So that's another area. Okay, sorry, that's another again. We're only in performance. I think what's gonna happen in the on the fitness world is it's gonna get much worse. Uh, food producers in the United States um know that your brain is your amount of free will to control your food is low. Well, it's like I said unsalted almonds. Well, why did I say that? Well, next time you go to the store, look at almonds and look at how many different varieties they have. Here's a funny thing: I can give you two pounds of salmon, but if I find an almond with the kind of salt or spice on it that you like, you'll start munching them away. If I pull that out and add another one, barbecue sauce, almonds, you'll start shoving those down your throat. I think we're in deep trouble because the food corporations, the industrial food complex, is gonna make it. You just gotta look at a few commercials on TV. You know, uh, we're I mean the fast food places. You know, Tiff and I uh the other night, there's a there's a company that's selling like a two, it's two for one. It's it's a burger fries and a drink, and certain days of a week, it's two for one. So dinner is five dollars, and this is 2017. Yeah. Well, if you're a struggling, not a struggling family, but you're a family that has kind of run out of options because of a busy Tuesday, you're gonna eat there, and you'll probably eat more. Because with the soft drink, you're probably already over the caloric limit for that one meal, you know. And in the exercise front, I keep thinking we get smarter, and then I go on the internet and I realize that we're we're miles to go. What I'm trying to do before I die is provide at least clarity to things. This is strength training, this is mobility training, this is bodybuilding slash hypertrophy training. This crazy stuff you're doing over there is fine. It's inefficient exercise coupled with caloric restriction might help you lose body fat. Burpees, uh, treadmills, uh, those weird bikes, you know, all that's all that stuff. But do not take that weird bike over to my strength room. But it's a piece of equipment for exercise. True. It's a phrase I use all the time. Uh if you chase two rabbits, you go home hungry. Yeah. Most people train and chase 50 rabbits and they wonder why they get no success. You know, I I trace very, very few rabbits. Very few rabbits. Now you say that and you raise your hand and say, Well, don't you teach religious studies? Yes. Aren't you an instructor over in England? Yes, yes, I am. Don't you write? Yes, I do that. But I only chase a few rabbits. You know, and I chase a rabbit, I chase one rabbit, finish with that rabbit, and then chase the next one.

Yeah.

But if you don't have checklists, if you don't here's here's a quick one. Uh do you have a monthly, uh, a yearly calendar? Not a yearly calendar like the okay there, okay, that's right there. You better have birthdays and anniversaries in that yearly calendar. But what I'd also tell you to do is when do you well, here's a quick one. When do you shop for Christmas?

Uh right after Thanksgiving.

Okay, I already got you, B. I'm already heavy. On Thanksgiving Friday, my wife and I put up Christmas around our house.

Yeah.

And then we go on Amazon Prime, drink wine, and shop. Or Christmas shopping with two bottles of wine. We call it wine and prime.

Yeah. That sounds like a blast.

But Thanksgiving Day, I've taken care of Christmas and I've taken care of, well, taking care of Christmas. And I have a delightful free day because no one does anything on Thanksgiving Friday. And by the way, we're also watching football at the same time. Yeah. So it's win-win-win. Like, when do you do your tax stuff? When do you when do you do your tax stuff? When are you gonna get this? When are you gonna do that? I try to have, like, for example, the other day, uh, I had these big sails in my backyard to keep the sun when we're out there. Well, I that is a September chore taking them down. I de-summer my house in September. I try to do one or two small things every day, de-summering my house. And I try to push it off so that you know you can still come over the house and we you can still sit outdoors from you know deep into October, November here in Utah. I also start to set summer up. That's April. April, I start getting summer ready, and I try to do one or two small. Why wait until you have 150 people come over to get the you know to get the chairs out? So you find where the brain is here.

Yep. Yep.

Okay.

Um organization and planning.

Yeah.

And simplicity, right? I mean, I think uh in one of your wandering weights issues, which is Dan's uh weekly email, you had mentioned an article about decision fatigue. Oh and how that is overwhelming for today's society, right? And I find it every day. By 5 p.m., I can't make a decision worth anything, right? Because I made so many up to that point. What kind of jeans do you wear? What kind of jeans? I actually don't wear jeans.

Okay. I buy barbell brand jeans.

Nice.

I bought the full pair. What kind of shoes do you wear?

Uh I bear wear basically Nike Meccons and Innovates. That's it.

Nike free? How many pairs did I buy?

Four.

I bought uh I don't have it on me on this because I've been working out, but I bought 16 of the exact same shirt. Sure. Where did you buy them? Uh it's the old name for bird, anthrax or something like that. Okay. And I got 16 because that's all they had my size in North America. And they're all black. I mean, let's talk about decision. And then people, so I'll finish this whole damn thing. People saying, How do you knock out two or three books a year? It's like, because I wear the same shirt to everything. What's the secret? My secret is I did you not listen to the first? I wear the same shirt to everything.

Yeah.

Well, well, how does that help you write books? Because when you're the every second you're looking through your your closet, I'm already writing. I'm already. You saw my snack tray, right? Right?

Yeah.

You buy a couple of those, if you're hungry, eat a couple of those first, then see if you're really hungry or just bored, you know.

Yeah.

Ah, decision fatigue is huge. Well, there comes. I tell people all the time, uh, this is just because I'm a kettlebell instructor, don't just listen to the point.

Right.

Well, if you just had a gym with kettlebells and like suspension trainers, that's all you had. You A would have very good clients, and B, you would keep out a guy who walks in, oh power lifter. Do you have the Megatron 5000 squat rack? No. Well, you uh, if uh you get one, I'll sign up. Megatron thousand costs 24,000 bucks. That's only a show about two months anyway. Why buy the why waste your money? No. What do you got? We got kettlebells, suspension trainers.

Yeah.

Well, what about, yeah, that's not our gym. Well, then I'm not gonna come here. Okay.

Right.

If your people don't fire clients, there's too they're I'm a big believer in getting rid of people.

Yeah.

And I and the reason you do that, and I haven't done it in years, but the reason you do it is because you will spend more time trying to please the person that got you, they picked up you by the way, stop doing group on. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, coach. Stop discounting your stuff. You do not give well away 12 sessions for for the price of 10. What you just told everybody, that's your price. It's a joke I heard years ago, and it's important. You walk up to a woman at a bar. Would you have sex with me for $5 million? And she says, Yes. Oh, okay. Would you have sex for $5? Well, you think I'm a whore? We've established that. Now we're just working on the price.

Oh, you have to clear that one off. Is that okay? No, that's great. No, I just think no, it's Dan. That's Dan.

What you tell your client is this I'm charging $100 an hour, or $80, or $70, or $60, or maybe, you know, if you got the group on $30 or $5. What you just did to me is you just told me you're now we're just finding a price for you. You put your price out there, and that's your price. Now, and I'm in a world different world. I mean, I do discount workshops all the time. I have a set price and I charge much less all the time. But it's because Tiff and I have a family motto, make a difference. So I'll look at it. If it's for a high school, if it's for high school coaches, if it's for a fundraiser, uh, I've done many fundraisers for free. I, in fact, um, do you mind me talking about this?

No, not at all.

Please do. So last last year when uh Tiff and I went to Ireland, we had a rough couple of months. Uh she had to have an emergency of thyroidectomy. Um, drilling down into her heart, and we almost lost her. And then at the same time, they found cancer on me. I'm fine, don't worry about it. But uh, so we decided we needed a timeout. So we went to Ireland for a month. Then while we were there, I did a whole series of workshops to raise money for this little girl in Belfast who had this rare disease. Now they have socialized medicine, but they had to go to the United States a lot for certain treatments. So I did a series of fundraisers where everybody, every nickel that came in, went to this little girl in her family. Well, you know, I'm in a place where I can afford to do that. But the thing is, too, just how happy the mom was. I mean, it was so worth it, you know. You know, all and I'll tell you one thing, everybody stepped up. Everybody stepped up. I mean, it was the every single event was better than the one before. And I made friends for life, and so for me that's worth it. But I'm also 60 years old. You know, I also have those book royalties coming in. For you, the young trainer, you need to be, you need to be a parent, you need to be an adult. This is my this is my job. Well, the guy over there charges 50, and then you have to have the courage to say, he charges less for lots of good reasons.

He's not as good as me. Let me let me ask this question. When you have to fire a client, or when you decide to fire a client, you don't have to do anything. How do you how does that conversation go down? How does how do you how do you have that conversation? Because there's a lot of people out there listening to this, and they know that there's clients they should fire.

I let them fire themselves. Here's how you do it.

Yeah.

In my Venn diagram, and I think you remember it, right? Do you remember sevens? Sevens, their waistline is over the uh height to raise ratio, so they're more than half, you know, the two to one ratio. They sleep with seven pillows, and they can't hold a plank for two minutes. So there are seven. They failed all three tests. With sevens, the first I will hire them on under and one thing. For the first month, you have to drink two glasses of water a day. If you can't do that, then I'm not gonna work with you. Yeah, and so if you can do it, either you can do it, it'd be nice to have an assistant. Uh say I don't have to do all this stuff anymore. But every night at nine o'clock, I'm gonna call you every night at nine, or you know, that's this is by the way, this is a goal. Bring bring bring. And the funny the joke is it goes bring bring bring because they're drinking the second glass of water, as you call. Uh, my best fat loss client of all time. I've got two real good stories, but he told me so he lost a hundred pounds in one year and ran a half marathon. A hundred pounds in a year. Wow. You know, I mean, yeah, you know how he what he did for the first month? Drank two glasses of water a day. The second month, I told I went to his place and found out the farthest parking space to where he needed to be every day. And I told one or two of his workers, if he parks anywhere else, here's my phone number, you call me, I'm not working with you anymore. I don't care if it's because you forgot your keys, you always park there. Always. So it was it was a good, I mean it wasn't you know, it wasn't three miles, you know, like what I used to do to walk to school every day, uphill both ways. But uh what it did at the end of the second month, so we we got through the first one, two glasses of water. By the way, everyone started noticing he would be walking around all the time with jugs of water. Because once he started drinking water instead of all the other, it's funny. See, this this habit knocked it when he was thirsty before my my good friend Stony. What got him overweight was he worked at a company and had free soft drinks. You know, you start slurping down free soft drinks all day, pretty soon you volume up. Absolutely. If we can trade water for soft drink, we that's a win-win. It wasn't the walk. The walk had nothing to do with it. Number six of my pirate map every day is eat eight different vegetables. I didn't say eight servants, it said eight different. But every time I consciously look for a different vegetable and Olympic lifting at a record breaker's meet in October. Every time I do my original strength on Olympic lifting at a record maker's meet in October, every time he parked his car, he was losing weight and fat, but in his case, weight, because it was destroying his knees and ankles. So when you have someone who's a seven, they've failed at everything. Tossing them in isn't going to help them. They've got to turn it around. The funny thing is, is if you can get them to month three, all their dreams come true. Because when you scale them up, and here's the thing: so all you did was drink two glasses of water and walk to you know, in a little few more steps. Yeah, and I lost substantial weight. Right. Well, now, now you got you're the ski slope, man. You are accelerating. Now we show them the goblet squat, the farmer walk, and the hip thrust. And the next month, for God's sakes, doing that three times a week, often by themselves in their own home, boom, you weigh in, and it's because now momentum's happening. He's still doing goblet squats and farmer walks and the hip thrust and the push-up. The big four. Okay. So I guess what I'm trying to say here is I was on the velocity diet. I think I've told you the story before. Yep. And uh the velocity diet's six protein shakes a day, and that's it. There's there's nothing more. And I go to this family party and I beg my wife not to tell anybody in her family, especially her mother. She told her mother I was on this diet. So, of course, her mother, honest to God, I don't know why we just don't hire her when hurricanes are coming, because she'll tell everybody. Um, so she told my sister-in-law Kim that I was on this diet. So Kim famously walks over me with a can of Patch Blue Rubin beer in this hand and a chicken leg in this one. And I heard you're on this diet. And so I've learned a good lesson. Always drink diet coke at parties if people think you're a bourbon drinker. Make sure you're in a highball glass with because people think you're like a bourbon. It's true. It's perfect. And you go like this, you know. And people yawn. Um she walks up to me, you know, with Kim with her big eyes, and uh, she's going, you know, that's that's that's me. I'm all about discipline. When I set my mind to it, and I swear to God, she changed my career right there. When I set my mind to it, and I thought to myself, this is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. That's not necessarily true, but it's pretty true. It's the hardest thing I've ever done voluntarily in my life. How about that? Fair. I've done harder things, but not well, yeah. I signed up, but I didn't think they meant that. And so when I set my mind to it, that's when I realized that somehow her diaphragm was pushing air up. It was going across the vocal cords, and sounds were coming out of her mouth. But there was no connection. When I set my mind to it, and I hear that all the time, it's like you've put on 50 pounds of fat in the last 15 years. Where's your mind been those last 15 years? Well, you just you forgot it somewhere, it wasn't you dropped it one day. Oh, here's my mind. Now I can put my mind to it. The problem is this, it gets back to this. I'm not saying that your clients lie to you. They're they're telling you what they think you want to hear. You know, Kim couldn't have done the velocity diet. You know, you know how I got done. You know what I did? I put it on Teenation. Yeah. At the time, it was the most well-read form in the history of that place. People would post on there. I had friends say I was checking 30 and 40 times a day. I was getting, you know, women were sending me shots, you can, if you can find it, encouraging shots. Uh you know, uh people were walking with me. Uh one night famously, I called up my brother. My brother Gary is a disabled American vet from Vietnam. He's deaf. He had his Had his issues coming back. And when I say what he said, we'll know you know the problem. And I said, Gary, I'm dying here. I can't finish it. And he said, Do me a favor. You can quit tomorrow. I'm just begging you, make it through tonight. And uh so the next day I got up, I took my supplements, went for a 30-minute walk with my wife and my dog, my dog uh Lexi Blessed Memory, and I was fine. And I made it through one more today. So I certainly understand the emotional hit from all this stuff, but I have to say this, you know, for the record, I'm a Division I MVP. I'm a Fulbright scholar. I teach college and coach college at three different universities. I write two books a year, and sticking to a stupid diet is the hardest thing I've ever done voluntarily in my life. So what it did for me is it made me realize that we need if if you're coming from the far end of the fitness spectrum, not the good end, you need a month, two months, three months of tiny wins. I don't know if you ever read the work of BJ Fogg, F-O-G-G, Tinyhabits.com. I strongly recommend everyone listening, tinyhabits.com, watch his TED Talk about flossing. You're supposed to floss your teeth every day, right? I've done mine twice already. Because it's real easy for me, because I keep my floss sticks in the little side thing in the car. So whenever I drive, I floss. Anytime I drive. Drives my kids crazy. But he doesn't he doesn't want you to floss your teeth every day. He wants you to floss one tooth every day for a week. And hit can you do that? Could you floss one tooth once a day for a week? Could you do that? Yeah, I could. I hope so.

I do, I do, I do.

So his idea is this most people try to train like Mr. Olympia and eat like Gandhi to turn their life around. Right?

Yeah.

That's too big. Floss one tooth. Eat uh vegetable a day. Uh uh uh when I did the thing, I did two push-ups before I showered. Uh you need uh you need that that in context. Where I'm at in my life right now, at my age, statistically, the most dangerous thing I do every day is take a shower. Statistically, if I ate a pound of bacon for breakfast or oatmeal, that changes my survival statistics statistics one in 10,000. It's not even worth looking at. But consciously, entering and leaving the shower every day ramps up my survival rate for the next 20 years. Uh, I told you I got cancer last year. Statistically, in my age, it's better to get cancer than is a slip and fall for two-year survival. Shocking, isn't it? It is so that push-up was making me more conscious. So I was trying to get, I was doing two for one on this. Those two push-ups made me more conscious of doing the shower. That tiny habit will, I think, allow me to perhaps dance at my granddaughter's wedding. That's awesome. And that's a beautiful message. So I guess what I'm trying to say on all stuff, I know I come off as a lunatic. I in fact, Dean Somerset posted on my Facebook wall, I'm not a loop, I'm not a psychopath, I'm just really busy. I'm a really busy guy.

I'm a busy guy.

But but what we need to start thinking where when we're working with people who are at the far end of fitness is that they can't set their mind to it. That's a diaphragm pushing the lungs, pushing the vocal cords with the lips moving. What we need to do with them is embrace them where they are and tiny, get listen, it would have been a lot easier for the Titanic to turn the wheel early. I mean, they could have done this early, and they'd have been fine. As it got later and later and later, they had to spin that wheel more and more and more. But what we're talking about with most North Americans now is we've just hit the Titanic, and now we got to figure out how to get things done. You know, the obesity rate is going up so fast that they had to change the way they the colors and how they measured it, because they had already used red, which was the alert, but then it went up even higher. You know, this the southern states and the flyover states, the obesity epidemic is well reflects the way they vote. But oh, sorry. Sorry. Um, but we we are in a place right now, man, where we're in a place right now where we could have turned this years ago. You know, you go back to McGovern and his commission. I mean, you I mean, you can go back to the McDonald's brothers with with their hamburgers. I'm sure that if Ray Kroc wouldn't have anything to do with it, McDonald's food would probably still be in the food category. You know? You know, when my friends from Scotland come here, they're shocked to see how many milk choices I have. This is a good thing you're you're listening to me do this. This is not, I'm not being a psychopath. Go to the grocery store and just count, click, click, click, click, how many choices of coffee is at the cup at their store? Walk over to the eggs section. Eggs, for God's sakes. How many egg options do we have? Go to the no fat, 2%, 4%, whole almond milk, half and half. But and I'm all and I get it, I I understand why. But we talk about decision of fatigue, and that's absolutely true. But at the same time, we're giving these blessed people, you're at the far end of fitness, and then we throw at them uh a journey that they cannot possibly do. So I tell them to drink two glasses of water a month. What about the rest? We'll get to it. Nice. Walk farther away. Here's a couple of movements. Oh, I like them. Okay, I'm gonna call you to make sure I want you to get out of bed every day morning and do can you do one hip thrust every morning for me? Well, yeah, I can do one. Well, how many can you think you can do? I don't know, a hundred? You'll know. Too big. Uh ten? Really? Ten? Okay, I like 10.

Yeah.

By God, what you're doing is you're building on success. And at the end of that year, he's a hundred pounds lighter, he runs a half marathon, people don't recognize him anymore. He's a new husband, he's a new father. You know, I gotta tell you, man, you know, my coach told me one time it would take me eight years to get my goals as a discastor. Most people can't handle that thought. But it's the truth. You know, I read a book years ago, uh, it's by Tobias, T-O-B-I-A-S. You might be able to get on uh Nightingale Conan, but the book was called Debt Free Millionaire. And I can remember the very first assignment was to find out where you are, and it was to take your assets and then minus your liabilities. And you had to go around your house and put in your car, put in your debts, and at that time I was worth $4,000. But his advice is very good. Next year your goal is to be $4,001. Well, by the next year, I bumped up big time because I had what you're supposed to do is you it's uh snowball debt, uh it's when you eat that first. Snowball effects get the bigger so if you have a Mervyn's card for $72, eat that one this month. Uh you know, your your uh card 122, get that one next. If you've got this one, wait on that one. And I gotta tell you, because once you get momentum, that's when all the magic happens.

Yep.

Most of the and getting back to your so when you're working, go back to successful personal training. You gotta have momentum. So you maybe only have one client, but make that client's life better, and all of a sudden you're gonna look around and you're gonna have a packed house. Because that's how it happens. You know, when I was finally got kind of like finally got to where I wanted to be as as a as a as a track coach, we had this thing called football Friday, and it was a way to get my athlete to do conditioning because they throwers hate to sprint. Because we played flag football with these specialized rules. You could never have the same person quarterback, you had to switch every time. Well, you know, you had girls who never throwing a football. Hey, sorry, you better teach me, and of course, the boys we spent the whole week showing them how to throw a football. Take the snap, roll right, throw the ball, you know.

Right.

Well, I noticed one day that football Friday had 20 kids, so we had to separate the games out of these different little things. We had a league going with our throwers. I thought to myself, it started with one or two little kids, and now look at this. Look how it spiraled up. And I looked around and noticed that some of the kids weren't on my throws program. They just wanted to be around it. So I made those kids, I hired those kids to be the filmers and the uh, you know, I gave my official titles, assistant to the assistant to the adjunct head coach, you know, just gave them titles. But once it starts, man, but you've got to be real cool about how you start. Because man, I always think whirlpool up, spiral up. But you gotta start here and do the logical stepping stones, build it and build it. It's gotta be believable at first. If you'd have told me, Dan, you can't throw the discus in a competition for eight years, I wouldn't have lasted very long. But I threw 70, what? 70 feet in my first meet. That season I got to 100, 103, 129, 144, 170, went to college, 162, 174, 177, 190, way farther, way farther, way farther. That's how you do it. By doing in point badge presses and running some hills, believable goals, and then you build upon it, you know.

That's um beautiful messaging. And I think it's you know, the fundamentals of everything don't change, whether it's life, business, training, um, a little bit of focus.

But four F's.

Yeah, four F's, and uh I I probably only got to about two questions that I wanted to get to. I'm gonna I'm gonna nail three right here at the end.

Go.

I want to know what are you reading? What are you writing, and where can people find you?

What am I reading? Well, uh when I shopped the other day, I did not know that the new Sue Grafton book is out. It's called Why is For Yesterday? They're the alphabet, they're called the Alphabet Murders, Kinsey Malhome. So I came and I said, I cannot believe the 25th book is out. Because in our entire marriage, I have been reading one book a year. So it's book number 25. So I'm reading Sue Grafton's Why is for Yesterday. I'm also reading, um, I don't know how well you can see, there's gonna get some light on this. Yeah, uh I'm reading the Rick Rearing books. Uh that's I just finished all the Percy Jacksons, and now I'm on The Lost Hero. But as a gift, uh I got the graphic novels. Uh for my I just turned 60. And so um, and the reason I'm reading these books is I think I told you earlier, um, a little friend of mine, uh, she's a she's a sixth grader, and she one day said, Have you read Percy Jackson? I said, Uh no. And whenever whenever a young person says, Have you read a book? I think as an adult, my job is to go out and read the book. So now I've read all the Percy Jacksons, I'm almost done with this one. And every time I see her, I go, Yeah, I didn't see that coming. And what I'm telling her, I'm teaching her, teaching her, is that I really respect your intellect. Book reading books is wonderful. Um, oddly, this is gonna sound weird, but I don't read my own work. But when I was in uh Denver, I bumped in my friend Josh Hillis, and people were telling me how great this book is. So I got a copy of this book because I've never read it. Uh it's I wrote it, I wrote part of it, but I don't I can't stand reading my own stuff. So I'm reading my own work. Um, let's see. I just reread Chad Harback's The Art of Fielding again. Chad wrote my the uh, which is by the way, a bestseller could turn into a movie. He read he wrote the introduction to Can You Go. So that's not that's not that's not a bad person to have an introduction. Um gosh, uh I just zipped through Tommy Conan's book again. Um this is nice. I gave a workshop recently, and someone asked me my favorite book. So they were able to find the 1939 copy of The Sword and the Stone. And if read my wandering weights, this is the book we're yeah we read every week. Uh next to my bed, I have uh Bogest, both Jurassic Parks, uh, one volume Bogest, one volume, both Jurassic Parks, uh The Iliad and the Odyssey, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, um, or Philosopher's Stone, I think is my edition of the British edition. Um, and my mind's looking over there right now. Uh, there's another book right there that I like. Uh so uh very often at night I'll pick up Oh Dune, Dune, Dune. Yeah, yeah. We talked about that earlier. Yep. Very often at night I'll pick up one of those books, books I've reread a million times, and I'll read those to kind of let to turn the engines off. Not so much if Tiff's in town, but if I'm alone, I'd much rather uh, you know, being a you know, my wife and I travel a lot, so we're alone a lot in hotels and home. And uh reading book good books sometimes trumps watching kind of because you'll keep watching TV until it's midnight, and then you'll go through. Uh, I just uh my next book went to the printers last Monday, and it's called Hard Style Kettlebell Challenge. And I'll be honest, I just looked through the you know the the copy before the copy before, you know. Right so much work, my dad, so much work. Um, and it's good. I'm I'm actually very pleased with it. Fantastic. I know it sounds weird for an author to say something like that, but yep.

What are you reading? What are you writing, and then where can people find you?

Now, what I'm working on now, actually, today was marvelous. It's one of the best insights. Um, you know, in this sword and stone thing, I'm talking about uh the words quest and quarry come from the same exact root. It means to seek. And in this chapter we just finished, uh uh young King Arthur has just found Merlin. So when he says, I I must have been on a quest. Well uh it just hit me that Sir Parcival and the Holy Grail story has this great insight about how um Arthur fell asleep here, and Merlin was right like right next to him. And the great lesson of Parcival's story is that that which you seek is always right right there. You know, you you you you left to go find adventure, but adventure was in South San Francisco. You know, you went on the you went out, you went around the world trying to find love, and love was right there. You want to be, you know, and I've had, I mean, not trying to do this too much, but hurting it. I've had a lot of success, but I was always most successful on the journey to success. It wasn't winning the thing, it was the journey towards it. And uh so that I'll share that this week. Uh that was that's a great insight. And where can they find me? Uh Danjohn.net uh on this thing called the Facebook. Uh there's Daniel's on it. I'm Daniel John of Facebook. Someone talked me into doing this thing called Dan John Strength Coach, and I hate it. It's just so much more work for me. But it's there, you know. Okay. But uh honestly, if you're gonna ask me questions, folks, don't use the Facebook, please. Just email me at dan at danjohn.net, and I'll be able to see it and answer. And as you know, I'll answer right away.

Okay, yeah, you do every time. And uh thank you again so much, Coach, for for coming on this. And maybe I can uh uh I think you're gonna help a lot of young or all aged fitness professionals with some of the stuff you've given here today. And um hopefully you'll come on again.

You know what? Uh, this was easy. Anytime you want.

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