Dan John University - Dan John

Hey everybody. Welcome to the Future of Fitness, where we talk with entrepreneurs, researchers, and practitioners in fitness, wellness, and the health sciences. I'd like to give a big thanks to our sponsors, Level 5 Mentors, helping entrepreneurs achieve the highest levels of freedom in time, money, relationships, health, and purpose. Also, Certified Course Creation, helping entrepreneurs create accredited online certifications that are not only lucrative but highly scalable. Go to level5mentors.com or certifiedcoursecreation.com and learn more. I am your host, Eric Malzone, and once again, welcome to the Future of Fitness. Boom, we're live. The great and all-powerful Dan John. Welcome back to the Future of Fitness.

Hey, well, thank you so much. This is uh it's nice. It's a gloomy day here in beautiful Utah, and uh I think we're gonna have some weather coming in, and it's kind of nice to you're you're the bright spot in my afternoon.

Good, good. Well, likewise, you know, I was telling you before, it's like uh it's it's good to hear your voice. I've been in the coaching industry for a long time. I've read probably the majority of your books. I have attended your workout, your workshops, and seminars and uh listened to you on other people's podcasts, and it's just uh it's always kind of a steadfast voice in the industry. So um it's it's good to have you on. So 2020, we're wrapping it up. How has your 2020 been?

The covet the COVID thing, first off, I believe there's an actual disease. You know, I'm one of those weird people who actually does trust science. It's my my whole career has been based on you know uh a dance between uh the sciences and theology. And it's weird because uh I I how can I do it so easily? And yet a whole bunch of other people, you know, yesterday uh at the little cafe I went to, this couple wouldn't put on a mask. And, you know, uh okay, I hate to do this, but they were probably in their mid-30s, white, and they were pushing back this poor little waitress. All she was doing was following the state of Utah's law, you know, and telling them to put on a mask. And they were such jerks about it. And so I gotta tell you, Eric, and this is this is there's a there's a point to every story. I don't always remember it, but this one has one. For me, it's I think a lot of us, a lot of people have been exposed as truly ignorant. The word ignorant means to ignore. And many, many people are ignoring the common decency to take care of the elderly, uh, like myself. You know, I'm 63. I have a history of a terrible lung disease called pleurosy, it hits me every few years, and so I'm I'm a target. You know, I got that big COVID target. My nephew got it, he's still doing, you know, he's he's getting better. But uh my other nephew has it now. Uh I lost uh two friends to it, and yet me can't get you to put on a mask with this all these signs on the door saying wear a mask. Uh it's that's I guess to me, Eric, it's my frustrate frustration with with people. But you know, it's funny because Eric, we're gonna be probably talking about obesity in some cases here and a few other things. And I would say, you know, it goes right back to Dickens' The Christmas Carol, reread the, especially the part where the ghost of uh Christmas present shows up, and and you know, the girl has want written on her name, and the boy has ignorance. And Dickens tells us beware them both. But both most most of all, beware the boy. For what is written on his brow spells doom for all men. Um, and I to me, that's the disappointing thing about 2020 for me. Personally, I've done very well because you know, I've had an online presence since 1998. My new project with Brian Waltley, you know, we have that thing called a workout generator. You don't need, you know, you plug in what equipment you have or even nothing, and it springs out workouts for you. So I'm very proud of that. I was able to knock out a book because, you know, and I'm working on a Pavel uh Satsuline and I are redoing Easy Strength. We're we're pretty deep into the project now, and that'll be coming out hopefully soon. You know, I competed in a weightlifting meet. Um it's been a good year, but I have to say, and uh I'm just I I just feel that we we can certainly do better. You know, growing up, a friend of mine named Will, his father had no arms because he had lost him and got blown up in World War II. And, you know, my father, of course, you know, had stomach issues in World War II. And, you know, we asked that generation on December 8th, rallied up, and it's kind of funny when I mentioned that right now, and uh, we can't get a person to put on a mask and wash their hands. I mean, come on. Okay, enough of ranting. I'm done. I'm done.

Well, it's um it is, and she I had a very similar circumstance. I was actually in a small liquor store and locally owned, and someone walks in and the front desk person says, and it says everywhere, you know, hey, um, please wear a mask. And the woman says, No. She walks in, she's like, Well, uh, it's I have a mask. If you she's like, No, I don't wear a mask. And she walked in and just area, like, it's not that hard. You know, it's it's uh I understand people's frustration with what they feel is a limitation of freedoms, yes, yada, yada, yada. But you know, respect the small business, respect people who are very vulnerable to this, and and just just do it. Just it's short term. We got vaccines, we'll get through this, but from the time being, just suck it up. And uh I have to say, uh, I saw you in the airport at the Delta Lounge about a year ago. Okay, and I'm shocked to say that you're 63, man. You look great. Oh, well, I blush.

Uh oh my stars. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah.

Yeah. What do you do? Like, what is your normal routine now? I think everybody always wants to know. What is it?

It's very simple. So Monday through Friday at 9:30, I open my garage, it's uh my gym, and people from all around the world come and work out with me. And uh basically, right now, let me just give up when I was getting ready for the Olympic lifting meet, three days a week I would snatch, overhead squat, you know. But let me just give you a basic normal thing, okay? Monday, Wednesday, Friday is whole body workouts, okay? You know, push-pull hinge, a squat, a little bit of loaded carriage, usually very often a walk. Tuesdays is buns and guns. We work, uh, do a lot of hip thrusts, a lot of deficit deadlifts, that kind of thing. And then the arm work, baby. And uh Thursday, which is today, as we're talking, is uh we just do uh Tim Anderson's original strength. That's the that's the big picture, Monday through Friday. I generally don't work out on Saturday and Sunday, uh, just because that's the way life worked out for me. Okay, it's not there's not a good or bad reason for that. Just that's just the way it is. Almost every day, uh Mike uh leads us through. Uh we have suspension trainers and we do a lot of T's, Y's, I's, rows, one arm rows, uh, mobility, flexibility work with the suspension trainers, using our body weight stretch and move things around. Then we do original strength practically every single day. We get on, we got pads and we go through the rocks and nods. Uh, and then we try to do, you know, a reasonable, you know, it can be something simple as three sets of eight and the press, you know, the press squat kind of thing. It doesn't have to be crazy. And and then many days I put on ankle weights, five pounds each foot, and grab three-pound uh little dumbbells, and we go for uh yesterday I did uh four miles, today I'm probably about a mile, but uh just a random heavy hands walk, the work of Leonard Schwartz Schwartz back in the 80s. Personally, I still think heavy hands, uh, gentle listener, if you don't know what it is, it's when you put weights in your hand, and you don't, you don't, you're not farmer walking, they're not hanging there. It's that you actively pump as you walk. And for me with the threes, basically I look like a classic cross-country ski glider. It's you know, uh kind of my my hands are counter to my legs, and I just pump, I pump a little bit higher than my shoulders uh on the and that gets my heart rate where it needs to be in my target zone. And if I do it right, we can have a marvelous conversation. Uh, yesterday, one of my former students, who's now uh a law professor at Columbia in New York City, uh, we went for about a three-mile walk, just a nice jaunt. And I think that a big part of your year, Eric, uh uh should be focused on general mobility, general flexibility, basic hypertrophy, push-pull, hinge, squat, 15 to 30 reps total-ish, you know, uh, don't lose your mind, and then walking of some kind. That to me, those are the moneymakers uh that you want to keep coming back to.

Yeah, not complicated.

No, and then when I get ready for an Olympic lifting meet or uh five Highland games, and well, I hopefully I was gonna, you know, do track track meets this year, then of course things will change a little bit. But nothing. I try to stay away from crazy, you know, which is tough. You know, which is tough.

Do you track your heart rate? Are you using a monitor or are you just kind of doing it that feel?

So what I do is I I have uh I bought Phil Maffeetone's uh heart rate tracker. That's the one that goes in the ears.

Uh huh.

Interesting. And then it and it gives you a nice GPS. And then, you know, and and I use that, I'm down to probably just once every three weeks using that. If I'm testing, okay, okay, can I separate this out into two parts? So what I use it every couple of weeks for is just to make sure that when I feel this way, like my heart rate is in its target zone. When I can talk to you about like this, that's my target, that that's when I know I'm in my target zone. Oh, we can still talk, but I'm breathing. Like, you know, that's my target zone. And I test it every couple of weeks to make sure I'm still there. I also have a chest strap uh one, which is great too, but uh then I have to bring my, you know, then you have to keep looking down at it and all that. And it's listen to me complaining. My God, listen to that complaint. Jeepers, I have to open my phone. Uh, but it yeah, but actually the truth is, yeah, you have to open your phone while you're swinging weights and uh becomes a bit of a hassle. But I I still think for most listeners, the talk test is probably still close enough. Um, you know, if you're walking your you've got your 89-year-old grandma and you're walking her and she starts getting quiet, you might feel fine, but you've blown off her walk and talk. Um, there was another point I was gonna make about uh oh, the other thing I use it for is a I I I should do it more often, but it comes out about it once every two or three months. Um the loop around my block is uh 0.2 miles. So I do 15 loops of that, and all I do is, and I have to, okay, there's it's it's called the MAF test, the maximum aerobic function, maybe. So I must stay in my aerobic zone is, okay? And that's what rule one. And what I'm doing is at the end of every fifth loop, which is the mile, is I, and nice thing is my nicer uh heart rate monitor does it for me. It it gives you the mile splits. So, like, say like the first time you and I do this, you know, Eric, and to stay in your zone, you know, we have to put a vest on you and ankle weights and heavy hands, and it takes you 22 minutes to walk a mile in the heart rate zone. Mile one, mile two is 25, mile three is 30. Okay. Uh three months later, you're at 19, 22, and 23. But you stayed in your heart rate zone, it's the exact same distance, exact same loads. We can, assuming is always a tough thing, but what we can say is certainly you are trending in the right direction with your aerobic function.

Nice.

So that's why I like to give blood as often as I can. And I do my annual physical, and of course the dentist does everything now too, and the and so does the eye doctor. But when you go in for those things, you know, if my heart rate is suddenly high when I'm at I'm giving blood, okay, I do this thing called power red, that's two whole bloods, and then they give you a plasma back. Well, it takes about an hour. It kind of I hate to say it, but it freaks me out a little bit. Well, if my heart rate is, you know, 79, but last time it was 72, and when I was at the eye doctor, it was 68. I I'm not worried about that one-off test because I'm trending in the right direction, usually. And that's why I think it's kind of important. I don't know if you need to weigh in every day, but it is a good idea to weigh in often, check your waist measurement often, because if all of a sudden you start trending in the wrong direction, you can catch it earlier than later. Does that make sense?

Makes total sense. Yep. Consistency over time. And one of the things I always picked up from uh a couple of your workshops too was your emphasis on dental health. Oh, yeah. Yeah, tell us tell us what why that's so important.

Well, oddly, uh it's a very weird piece of uh information, but they had noticed at old folks' homes uh that when great grandpa Jimmy uh lost his last tooth, oddly, his health by his blood profiles improved. And then they, you know, then a dental hygienist said, Yeah, of course it is. If you have an infection in your tooth, you don't have an infection in your tooth. Every time your heart beats, that infection shoots around your entire system. So for your cardiovascular health, this sounds crazy, but it's true. Talk to your dental hygienist, talk to your dentist, flossing your teeth might be one of the very best things you can do for your cardiovascular health. Because what you're doing is stopping those minor and sometimes major infections that can happen in your teeth. I got an ear infection right before the weightlifting meeting and put up, put on about 12 to 15 pounds in just a few days. When I get an ear infection, man, I just my head blows up, man. I'm not awful. I'm not a good looking guy anyway, but boy, you throw that on. But by having that ear infection for probably what, it was probably six, seven days, I probably did more damage to my heart, so to speak, than uh, I don't know, eating a Twinkie with butter on top of it, you know, because that every time my heart pumped, all that goo was going around the whole system. Another thing that my dentist is really trying to get me to do, and I'm getting better at it, is scraping my tongue. I have a tongue scraper. Now, bacteria is good, bacteria is a good thing, but according to my dentist, scraping my tongue gets rid of some of the worst bacteria I have in my body. So I I know this has got gross, folks, I'm sorry, but so you know, floss your teeth, scrape your tongue, brush your teeth, gargle with mouthwash, and spit it out. You know, here's the funny thing, Eric. You might never see the benefits of it, but if you don't, you might see the problems with not doing it. Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like wearing a seatbelt.

Right, right.

Uh I agree. I mean, my dad was a dentist, and he always talked about that stuff. So it was, it rung with me when I was doing lifestyle challenges at my gym back in the day. One of the habits that we always told people, I'm like, hey, you get a certain amount of points if you just flosh your teeth. And they're like, Really? Man, you're a fitness coach. I'm like, no, no, let's boil this down. Like here, and then inevitably there would be a hygienist in in the group or you know, a dentist would be even better. But hygienists actually seem to know more about this stuff. Um and they verified it. They're like, oh yeah, it's critically important. It's like a root of heart disease as well. Um, here's an idea.

If any of you listening are personal trainers, I would keep a bag of those uh dental sticks, uh, the floss sticks. And if I have a group of five people, so say the workout lasts an hour, first 15 minutes are introduction and blah blah, you know, the warmups, whatever the you know, setup, and the half hour is the workout. I always want, I think it's really important that you talk to your clients every day. And it can be a round robin thing about how are things going, but hand everybody a dental floss stick while you go over the importance of drinking non-caloric uh drinks, the importance of eating vegetables, why fermented food is good for you, why consistency is better than intensity. You know, what whatever, you know, whatever. And I would, if I were a personal trainer, I'd probably type out 40 to 50 to 100 topics and just kind of come in, you know, every workout have a different topic I want to go over while my people are flossing their teeth.

Awesome. I love it. Great tips. So I would, if you know Maya, I'd love to talk about Dan John University and what you guys did with that. I, you know, visit uh I'm on your email newsletter, I have been for a very long time. And I I feel like you've been talking about this workout builder for a little while and you you made it happen this year. So it's at danjohnuniversity.com. So people can don't go right now, people go when the show's over. But tell us about it. Like what what what was the thought process behind it? Why was this important for you to do? And yeah, give us a game.

It involves two people. It involves me and Brian. And Brian is a young trainer, real smart, very mobile. He's got a lot of we're like yin and yang when it comes to, you know, I'm a big engine, fast twitch, you know, I'd rather punch you than, you know, you know. Uh he's just a real good guy. He's he's into balancing rocks. He's did, he's really a good man. Uh these just and so a couple of years ago he said, you know, there's this thing called medium. And would you mind if I repackage some of your articles? And so I sent him, I I must have sent him 150 articles I had written that were just kind of sitting in, you know, folders, you know. And he repackaged them, put them up. And we started talking one day, and and it comes down to this, Eric. It's it's interesting. When people work with me, because I like to goof around and I'm, you know, I think, you know, and I am very eclectic, and I get that. And, you know, not many people can. I'm a scripture scholar, you know, uh I I've published articles on Beowulf, King Arthur. I had a column in a in a religious newspaper for what, 10 years. I throw the discus hammered, you know, I coach football, wrestling, and chess. I'm a different dude. I get that. You're you're a renaissance man, I like to say that it's important. But what I didn't realize until Brian pointed out to me is that to a fault, my brain works if then. And it's not a good thing. Uh, if you read online, I have an issue with a thing called transactional relationships. If you do this, then I cut you out of my life. And that's something I'm I've been working very hard as an adult. But if you go to my assessment, the one, two, three, four assessment, if you can step, stand on one foot for 10 seconds, then we measure you on the scale. If you can't, I send you to the doctor. My assessment is if then, if then, if then, if then. The way I coach people, well, the first question I've always asked people, and it's it took me a while to learn this one, well, what equipment do you have? Because if you want to Olympic lift, but you don't have an Olympic lifting bar platform and plates, then we can't do it. If then, if then. And what Brian told me was this is an algorithm. Your brain works perfectly for a spreadsheet, a system that we can use on a computer. I said, yeah, it was like one of those Beverly Hill Billy moments. He's like, oh gee, person, how dark they seen that. Uh yeah, I was like, I I didn't understand anything. So uh Brian went to work, and uh, and Brian is the reason for all the success. He it's funny because uh, you know, he was able to take my assessment, the way I program, the way I combine mobility, flexibility, uh, hypertrophy strength, and make it logical and usable. So the first thing you do if you go to the generator, we we do have set-in-stone programs, and now we've even got it even cleaner. But let's just say you're just you just want to have a home workout. Well, the qu the first question is what equipment you have, and you, you know, there's the uh ab wheel, there's a Olympic bar, there's a kettlebell, there's a pull-up thing, there's a well, if you don't have it, you don't press it. Okay, how many days a week do you want to work out? Three. At what intensity? One to ten. Uh repeating work, you know, there's I don't know, I think there's five questions, and then you press a button, and this thing spits out your workouts for the week. But wait, folks, there's more. But the thing I like best about it, and this is when I use this myself, especially when I'm on road trips, I use it. So it says today to do air squats, but I don't, I mean, I really want to go for it today in the squats, okay? So I can glide up on the workout. I can go, I can press the button up or down to choose goblet squat, front squat, overhead squat, back squat. Or I can go down. Today's not a good day for air squats. I'm gonna do suspension trainer assisted squats, which I did after, you know, in my surgeries, for example. And what's nice is you can so here you get an individualized workout, and then you can still choose to make it harder or easier. And if you don't know what the exercise is, by God, Brian and I, you press the button on the exercise, and a video comes up and shows you how to do it. And I'm like, I'm looking at this thing like I said one day on the on the site, I said, guys, I can't program any better than this. And people thought I was joking because it's my site and my programs. But how, let's say there's 13, 15 pieces of equipment, I think, maybe it's 15 uh choices that you have. You have seven days of the week, you have up to 10 different intensity levels, then you have two times the other thing. And the how many variables are we talking about, Eric? I mean, I wouldn't say it's infinite, there is a number there, and and and somebody smart could probably figure it out, but how am I, how does this little 63-year-old Virgo me uh do that for every single person right through that program? I look at the programs the thing sets up for me, I look at them and I'm like, this is the best workout I've ever seen. Wow, wow. I I here's one thing I've gotten out of it. You ready? This is a funny thing. At my own site, I learned something. I now start every workout with a 10-minute walk. Either I start so I go downstairs sometimes by myself, sometimes, you know, I try to do it a little early so I don't hold up the actual workout. Put on my ankle, put on my heavy hands, and I just it's I don't know if it's 10 minutes or it could be 15 or 20 or or 15. Five or six, it doesn't matter. But that damn little walk is a game changer for me at my age. Game changer. Yeah. So that's what it is. And then there's probably, I don't know, 15 to 20 downloadable books there that are pretty good. We we pulled a couple. Every so often I'll ask them to swap a few off to see if anybody notices. Uh there's probably a hundred plus essays. Uh there's a really good form, good people on good, good, smart people. We got professors uh all over the world on it and smart, hardworking people. I'm very proud of it. Sorry I went so long on it.

Yeah, it's great. It's great. Um you have a podcast too. How long have you had that?

Well, I've been doing Pat Flynn's podcast for a couple years now, and I've been doing podcasts anytime anybody ever asks. But what happened is when we started the site, we started getting questions that were kind of very individual, you know what I mean? But when I saw the question, it'd be like, yeah, this is in it, this is a specific question, but I bet a whole bunch of people would like to know the answer to that. And so Brian said, let's start just doing a podcast. And I'm here in the production, the media center of Dan John Enterprises, of the $4 billion. Yeah, it's my it's my office. I really enjoy doing it. Sometimes we have some very, very good questions. And we edit out, we do we do a fairly good job editing some of it out because, you know, frankly, some of the questions are like, come on, you know. The hardest thing for me, Eric, is when someone says something like, I'm a 57-year-old man, I've got, you know, two fake knees, a broken shoulder, I do Brazilian jujitsu five days a week, I do triathlons on the weekend. Um what should how should I be doing the small enough squat cycle? No. Take a nap.

Take a nap.

I I I guess I I don't mean to be frustrated, frustrated. That's not necessarily true. A lot of people are doing things that is ultimately going to hurt them. I'm getting more and more fighter questions. I work with a couple of professional fighters, but those guys are radically different than this uh gentleman fighter that I'm getting a lot of the questions from. You know, if you're making the one guy I work with, I can't remember if it was a hundred thousand or a quarter million dollar bonus for having a good fight. I mean, if you're getting a quarter million bucks, a hundred thousand for having a good fight, uh then I think it's the cost of benefit of doing some of the stuff is worth it. You know, you're gonna have a nice house for the rest of your life, your kids are gonna be doing fine, your grandkids will go to college because of you, which is you know, which is one of my goals, of course. You know, speaking of grandchildren, I've got another one coming along the way. Here we go.

Congratulations.

A little Leo exciting.

How many, what's the total?

So there's Danny, uh, Josephine with my daughter Kelly, and then Leo Hemingway Robinson with my daughter Lindsay. Yeah.

Awesome. Um, I want to ask you too, because it's been a very novel year, and and I know that word novel is being thrown out in many different ways. I've had a lot of guests on the show this year. We talked about the future of the industry, the fitness and coaching industry, pivoting. These are all pivots, another word I like to just package up and get rid of it. Pivot. Yeah, right. You know, so it's if I got a lot of people's opinions, um, very few people actually that I've talked to this year have had the experience under their belt that you have. Like you've been coaching for what, 40 years?

42, 42.

42.

Yeah. So I started 79.

A little while.

Yeah.

What do you, I mean, seeing this change, you know, is and maybe the acceleration of what you know, what we thought was kind of coming in the fitness industry. What what's your take? I mean, having a long view on things, like what do you think this means for the coaching and fitness industry? Um, how much of it maybe you think was going to happen anyway? Or what do you what surprised you?

Well, first off, that's you know, it's kind of a fun question because we have to, you're asking me in a sense to uh uh be a historian, uh live in live in the pure present, and be a bit of a uh a fortune teller, fourth teller.

Yeah.

Fourth teller on this one, okay?

All three dimensions.

Yeah. Uh I I'll say this. So I have been to hotels during this. I mean, uh I've been I had to travel for to with the military. And one of the things uh that hotels I doubt will ever do again is daily housekeeping in your rooms. So I think when you come into the hotel, you'll have a clean room, yay for you. And then uh when you check out four days later, maybe you've got an extra towels or something like that, but I think housekeeping's gonna be gone. I notice uh I don't think they'll be packing us into cafes and restaurants as much as they used to anymore. Uh, I think so. What I'm trying to say, Eric, in my in my always roundabout way, is I think there are permanent changes that are gonna be the new normal that we just don't even notice. Uh here's uh one of the new normals is in my world is that most people are gonna have a home gym more serious. But those of you who didn't take home gym seriously, now you understand why you should have taken it seriously when I told you two years ago. I think the big box gym is going to be, well, they never seem to really truly die out, but I get a sense that uh you're gonna see, and I can folks, and I'm okay to be wrong on all this, but uh I think the big box gym that gets that that initial $9.99 a month for the rest of your life, I think a lot of those will be gone. I think that, like I thought for a while, the boutique gyms will do okay. That would be gyms that cater to the elderly. Here in Salt Lake, we have age performance, gyms that uh that are like pure powerlifting, Olympic lifting gyms. I think they'll survive. Uh you already noticed that the the workout that shall not be named, those places are closing up everywhere. The one thing that I think will really resonate long term, ideally, there's probably two things. One is the the resurgence of home cooking, and the other thing is walking. Uh and that is just that is what I'm getting for a lot of people cooking, having meals at home. And then, and the funny thing is, if you ate three meals a day at home and you had any, any reflection of the basics of healthy food, you probably lost weight during the pandemic. And uh, but I've noticed, and just about everyone I've noticed to say it, I see people walking outside more now than I have in my entire life. The parks here, uh, there's always people meandering, uh, saund train, as we used to say, uh St. Terrace, the Holy Lands, wandering, wandering across Europe to go to the Holy Lands. I think a lot of companies had to really make a hard uh lane change uh in the fitness business. Uh I don't want to say the name specifically, but I'm I'm on the phone with a lot of people. And one company told me that what they used to do was they would average, I think it was $6,000 a sale. Now it's $600 a sale. So the amount, so the um the work in the warehouse is radically different than it was uh a year ago. So a year ago they were throwing the sale would be 10 Olympic bars, five squat racks, you know, uh and this year it's three kettlebells, a medicine ball, and uh jump rope. So I think that's it because of the the the explosion of the home gym. You know, I look over my life, and and and this this year smells different. Uh I said that about Black Lives Matters, and I've been, you know, certainly a fan of the civil rights movement my entire life. I can't help myself. So, and and listeners who disagree with me, uh we'll discuss that when you meet your maker. But, you know, when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and I remember it well, there was a feel in the air, you know, in the mid-70s when I was in high school, and we had the OPEC uh gasoline crisis, we had the Watergate, and we had that terrible finish in Vietnam. There was an air, there was an air to it. Uh the movie Invincible with uh about the Philadelphia Eagle football player captures it kind of well, actually. That feel in the air, if you know what I mean.

Yeah.

Uh after 9-11, there was something in the air. I feel that way right now. I kind of feel like this balloon has been blowing up and blowing up, and all of us are standing around the little kid keeping the blow up, and we're just waiting, you know, waiting for them to put that last little puff that it blows up. Uh yeah, as I understand it, a lot of people are on the edge there a little bit. This COVID exhaustion, this pandemic exhaustion is is here. So as I always try to do my, and I and I try to do my best on this, but uh uh the way the way my my brain works, and and you can argue whether or not it works, you know, well or not. But uh, you know, Johann Fitzke was that great uh German philosopher, and he had that idea that you had a thesis, and then you had the antithesis, the antithesis, and then from there you get to uh synthesis. And I and I love that, I've always enjoyed that. So I think what's gonna happen is you're gonna see a lot of in our field an explosion in kind of two directions. So you're gonna see a real explosion in the minimalist home gym world, trained at home on Zoom. This will stay long term. And on the other side with the exact opposite, I think that certain kinds of public gyms will do well. And our job is to figure out how to bring community to the home gym and bring individuality to the to the big gyms. That will be the that will be the key, I think.

I've there's a couple of people I've had in the podcast recently. Uh Jared Moon from the Garage Gym Athlete. Okay, had uh Shane Farmer from Dark Horse Rowing. And these are all the reason that they're they're doing very well. Um, and they're doing well because they are home equipment based, right? People who have obviously the garage gym speaks for itself as people have built their own garage gyms and they want a community. And dark horse, the same thing is they're they're forming community around this relatively isolating trend, which is interesting, right? It shows you know that community can be done in many ways. And it's it's fascinating to me. I I haven't really talked to a lot of equipment providers this year, but about the 6,000 down to the 600, that makes perfect sense. It really does. And then I also talk to people who have very high-end personal training one-on-one. And, you know, people who would spend money on fitness pre-COVID are going there and they're willing to spend the extra dollar to get that clean, individual, safe experience, right? And I like those trends. I like them a lot.

Yeah. Back when I was younger, they used to talk about a thing called paradigm shifts all the time. And I would say that in our life, I mean, uh the the certainly the internet has been a game-changing paradigm shift to the point that it's almost difficult to remember. Well, that's uh your friend's phone number is a good example of that because it's in your phone. You don't have to memorize it anymore, and you don't have to memorize anything because the internet has it all there for you. I think COVID is going to be a paradigm shift in the industry of fitness. I don't know how much it's gonna change the actual uh practice of it. So uh one of the things is, you know, I I'm trying real hard to make uh a communal, a communal individual kind of thing. It makes sense, uh making sure the forums are there, personalizing things as best I can. Uh it'll be somebody else's job to make the the uh the 24-7 gym more individualized, uh, if they can. But once you've trained yourself at home, it's real hard to go back to that the place where the zitty-backed high school kid won't wipe down the bench after he uses it.

I I was I was at the gym today and I I came in and I saw must have been like a middle school team, you know, and I walk into the functional fitness room. And I'm in Montana and gyms are open, most things are open where, you know, just not a lot of people here. Um, but the gym was a mess, man. I almost it drove me crazy. I'm like, and that am is that who I am now? Am I the crotchety old guy who wants to like go talk to the general manager about these kids left this place a mess? I didn't. I just quietly cleaned up and moved on. But uh anyway, that was just struck me. I'm like, I'm that guy now. I'm totally that guy.

Well, but see, that's that's why I I think that's one of the reasons that the the fitness industry is gonna face you know some issues. Because when did why am I babysitting a bunch of middle school fine young cannibals? Yes. Yeah. Well, go, that's good. That's good. I I like that. Let's let's move on.

But I like Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, let's talk about your book. I mean, you've had uh that's a positive to come out of 2020, right? You've had some more time to write. And how many uh how many books are you up to now?

I think it's 14. Wow. Whoa. Um it was nice that I've had several of my students, so well, it w it was kind of fun. My so my attorney is my former student, my doctor is my former student, my tissuan is my former student, but uh yesterday we got into a conversation. Uh we were talking with Ed and Paul about uh they were both at my wedding, you know, and I haven't married 33 and a half years. Uh and you know, it's this isn't it's not like you know, these are my former students. One Paul is my attorney, and of course, Ed is a professor of law at a major university, and we were discussing, I said, Well, every time I'm together, I'm the dumb one. And then uh uh Paul said, funny, yeah, but we're not best-selling authors. I was like, oh, okay, that's kind of like I'm still a master, yeah. Uh but yeah, uh, you know, I I like writing, and I would write whether or not people like my work. I it's weird to say the sentence I'm about to say, but on my desk right here is my book, 40 Years With a Whistle. The one thing I don't like to do is read my own work. But when I give the copies to my students and they were there, I get these weird feedbacks, like, oh my God, I remember that. But they don't remember, they didn't know the whole story. And so I'm reading my own book today, and it's kind of fun uh to do that, you know. Uh I like to write, I like to, I like to read a lot. I read, I have this little habit. I'm trying to do it. If you read Wandering Weights, where I read a short story every day and I read a poem every day, and uh because I'm trying to improve my, I think, yeah, maybe my writing, maybe, but I'm also just trying to improve my my brain. And uh I try to write every single day. I actually recently, and Eric, you can tell me if I'm right or wrong. I think some of my best writing has been the intro in Wandering Weights.

It's your wandering weights newsletter. I'm astonished at the I can't imagine how much time you put into it and the consistency of it and the the level of writing. It's it's really I mean, I don't read all of them. I get a lot of emails nowadays, but yours I always bookmark and I'm always like, well, I hope I get to it this week, right? Um, but every time I get to them, I'm like, this is thoughtful and it's genuinely you. Like it it is, it's a feat. I mean, how many how long have you been writing it? Have you ever missed one? No. No. That's crazy.

No. In fact, if you remember, one of the hardest ones uh was uh the week my I was at my brother Phil's funeral, and my daughter was getting married that weekend. I I put one out that week, uh, the week after, uh, while I was recovering from my daughter's wedding. Because we also not only do we drink a lot and dance a lot, we also have a Highland game as part of our rehearsal dinner. You know, I had to flip I had to flip some tabers at my daughter's uh wedding. And uh, you know, there I was hung over, you know, up at the wedding site, you know, working, working on uh the wandering weights. And it's but it's uh I I think I'm a big believer in certain kinds of commitments, you know. And if you're gonna if you're gonna put if you're gonna do something like wandering weights, you you gotta do it every week. Um I just uh about an hour ago I I retyped the section for the sword and the stone again. And for the listeners that don't know, I've had this love affair with T. H. White's uh The Sword and the Stone uh for a long, long time. And I'm retyping the entire book and then commenting on basically about a paragraph or two at a time. And sometimes I one of my favorite things is I've glossed over all these words. You know, I read it four times a year. And and now that I know what the words mean, now that I know the deeper I dig, the more I love it. So that's a second part of it. And I do that purely for myself, Eric. It's not selfish, it's a labor of love. Which is, I'll be honest with you, I mean, much of what I do is a labor of love.

Is it therapeutic for you doing that wandering weights? I feel like part of it is self-therapy, right?

Absolutely. I mean, uh, you know, I've I've gotten, I've actually had people cancel because I actually believe in COVID. And uh I just have to go, okay, listen, I gotta be true to my own, you know, I gotta be true to my compass. And my compass says that the right thing to do is the right thing to do, you know. Uh so yeah, oh yeah, it's very therapeutic. Yeah, sorry, I was getting away from that.

Yeah.

If I can, like when I was doing coaching and I own gyms, I I was I always did a I did a weekly email as well. And for those coaches listening and you're not doing any kind of email marketing, you should. Not necessarily the email marketing, just connecting with your with your people, right? I would always use yours as inspiration because I'm like, well, what am I gonna write about this week? And I'm like, well, let me just go back to one of Dan's, one of Dan's things that I can pick up. There's probably like 10 ideas in every email. Uh that's that's a very powerful reason to go and and you know, uh get the newsletter because it really does uh, you know, I'd say just inspire and ideas and thoughts, and um, it's very, very useful for coaches.

Yeah, and like I kind of wish it could be in a a piece of paper every week, but this is just what it is now, and uh we do it through emails. But uh I've often thought how fun it would be to compile all those. Somebody else is gonna do it, not me. But uh to compile all 300 or 400 editions or whatever the hell it is now, you know. Yeah, it is, and it is communications, man, is is I don't know if you've seen that show called Social Network or something like that.

Yeah, social dilemma.

Social dilemma, yeah. Uh one of the things I'm trying to do is to be a voice of kindness and reason in my wandering ways. Okay, there you go.

That's great. So the book, what is it? Which one? The new one.

Oh, the new one is called attempts. So uh Montaine gave us a word that you've probably knew your whole life but didn't know what it meant. You ever heard the word essay before?

Yeah, yeah, of course.

So an essay it means attempts. So the book is based on my attempts at some big questions in life, you know. Uh, and some of it's funny. The original plan was to have uh a reading a day, 365, you know, uh readings, but then I just got away from that. And and then I started talking about, then I decided, well, I can't talk about this without talking about that. So I have so I've broken down all the stuff I've been working on my whole career. So if you know my quadrants, I've got quadrant, all four quadrants, and then I've got great depth, how do you train at these levels? Why, you know, and then I talk about easy strength in there, and I talk about health versus fitness, longevity versus performance, and I give all kinds of it's I talk about easy strength for Olympic lifting, easy strength for this or that, you know, and I give programs. What I what I wanted to do in this book is it and the book started to write itself as often happens. Uh I'm looking at 40 years with a whistle, and that book just wrote itself, you know. That was the easiest book I've ever written, by far.

Oh my god.

Nothing. I was knocking out three chapters a day. I mean, it was just like it was it was nothing. Um but attempts is my attempt to explain fitness, health, longevity, uh, and performance in uh very easy to bite chapters. Um there's there's chapters on fluid versus crystallized intelligence, um, which I think is something that those by itself, those that chapter, those two chapters alone probably are the most important things I've written in a long time. Um crystallized intelligence is knowledge. So I have crystallized knowledge when it comes to weightlifting. I mean, you can say any program, and I might go, oh, that's just like you know, Baumgarter did in 1964. Fluid intelligence is the ability to adapt on the fly. So if you're a defensive back, you need some crystallized knowledge. I mean, you need to know the rules of the game and stuff. But when that quarterback breaks the huddle and that wide receiver suddenly, instead of just walking out to position these, sprinting, he's got a bounce in a step. You have to say to yourself, hmm. And uh so that's fluid and crystallized intelligence. And then I and that, those chapters I talk about things like Yoda, and you know, uh it's it's a fun, it's a fun, it was a fun uh book to write, I'll be honest with you. Yeah.

That's awesome. So that is number 14.

Yeah, I think so. And then uh I'm gonna count the new edition of Easy Strength as number 15 because we're rewriting everything.

Awesome. Are you is your stuff available on Kindle?

Yeah. Uh in fact, I wrote my books for Kindle. So I was, but just so you know, I was wrong, but it wasn't a bad wrong. When my first book came out, uh Larie wanted uh people say you can have a lot of pictures in it. And I said, Because these e readers were starting to come out. The the Barnes and Noble had like the white tab. tablet or something like that. And then there was the Kindle early. And I figured, well, everyone's going to read this on computers. I didn't know they'd read it on a phone at the time. And uh so I said, you know, let's not have pictures so that it's really easy to look at in e format. Well, now you know ten years later ish, maybe a little bit longer, is that in our field, Kindle isn't a good choice for a strength book, right? But so I wrote my books to be very good on Kindle and but which is great, but see I hope I'm making my point good enough. I asked for certain things so they would look good on e-readers and long term it makes them also probably be a little bit better of a book too. Because sometimes I have a few strength books in here and it's honestly there's 12 pictures on every page and you know it's not a book. It's a it's a it's a two page essay with a bunch of pictures of you know hot girls. And I've got nothing against that.

I have that's probably what got me in the fitness industry I think.

There are times my friend yeah I know boy uh tried and truth methods.

Um well Dan I want to I want to respect your time. I mean it's it's so good to get you on here every year. Uh you know let's do it more often. What's that? Let's do it more often. Yeah I agree. I agree. Uh I'm actually I haven't talked about it yet uh but I'm I'm gonna be launching another podcast in 2021 whatever year is coming up next and uh we're gonna be talking about kind of the the importance of recovery and I think it's gonna be a very big thing in the next few years. So I'm gonna get a lot of great coaches, you know the network I've built over the last two years.

You know, the problem with this kind of pandemic is that it wasn't acute. This is an important point. I think it's much easier to recover after a motorcycle or automobile accident. Now the accident's horrific and God bless you if you're putting up with it and and I hope for the best if if if you're listening but if you get hit, you know you're in a car you get T-boned and you break some stuff that recovery is pretty easy. I mean it's gonna it's gonna suck but emotionally it's like you know you put on Maurice Ravel's bolero bum bum bum bum bum bum bum yeah and you're okay I think erosion and I feel that the Coronas has been an an erosion is much harder to recover from. So you know if you got uh if it took you 50 years to put on those uh 85 pounds getting those off is much harder I think than recovering from an automobile accident.

Yeah so I think one thing I'd like you to kind of sp spin around your head a little bit Eric is uh is is the discussion between uh uh acute and then well whatever you want to call um glacial acute versus glacial yeah because those are two radically different kinds of recoveries yeah I agree and it's it's gonna be I mean we'll know that you know I I think the fascinating things is five years from now when we know a lot more right when why some people died and others didn't yeah yeah yeah and why all of it right and what happened with like stimulus packages and and and what you know why certain things happened why was the lockdown strategy the one show like all of the things right it's gonna be fascinating when people have time finally to kind of really reflect and look back and research and you know have conversations about you know what happened in those small rooms of people who made big decisions and and all of it. You know why did the vaccine come out at a specific time? All of this, you know, I'm not a um conspiracy theorist although I do love a good conspiracy.

I'm an Occam's razor guy so that doesn't uh doesn't work for me. We we Harvey Oswald killed President Kennedy it's an easy shot and I know I can do it and I imagine most people can too.

So there you go. Yeah well it it will be interesting and but yeah let's uh let's see so danjoonuniversity.com where do people go to get on wandering weights anything else that uh you can provide you can sign up for wandering weights there or just go to danjohn.net so danjohn.net is basically my library there's about oh in 3000 pages of free information there easy help yourself lots of PDFs to read to get the great getup newsletters from the pastor in there whole bunch there's three free books in there enjoy and then uh and that's free and it always will be and then danjohnuniversity.com I I wish I I thought about it Eric I would give you some kind of plug uh some kind of code or something but I didn't sorry man I dropped the ball on that but yeah we yeah we can plug that in later reasonable I think the price is very reasonable in fact to the point that people who've been around a while have told me it's the best deal they've ever seen having said that it still costs money to do all the stuff so yeah I have to that's what makes the world go round um thanks coach it's always a pleasure um yeah people go check out all 15 of his books and uh if you're a coach you'll love the philosophy and the knowledge and one of my favorite things about you know my experience uh you know through through learning from you is you take a lot of experience and you boil it down to very simple principles that people can follow. So appreciate you coach appreciate you coming on.

If you can't simplify it you don't know it. So just remember that.

Hey my best to you we'll stay stay in touch let's do this again sooner not later okay sounds good and uh hold on for one second afterwards coach ladies and gentlemen coach Dan John Hey it's your host Eric Malzone thank you so much for listening to another episode of Future of Fitness if you enjoyed it please do me a huge favor by going to the website and signing up for our newsletter website is futurofitness futureoffitness coming down the pipe and we want you to make sure that you are on top of it. Thank you again signing off