E19: Doing Less, Getting More: The Truth About Strength & Coaching with Daniel John

Jimmy: Welcome to the Physio Insights podcast presented by Runeasi. I'll be your host, doctor Jimmy Picard. I'm a physical therapist, running coach, and team member here at Runeasi. On this show, we have real conversations with leading experts digging into how we recover from injuries, train smarter, and use data to better guide care. Whether you're a clinician, coach, or an athlete, we're here to explore what really matters in rehab and performance.

Let's dive in. Dan John, welcome to the podcast. I'm super excited to have you here.

Daniel John: Hey. Thanks so much. I it's funny how we have so many connected dots between us. Yeah. It's it's just interesting.

Once again, there's Mark Twight, Dan Clether, Jim Jones, the SEC, track and field. It's always it's always funny how I keep thinking the world's a big place until I talk to somebody and it's like, that's no. Yeah. It's, you know, your seven steps, you know? Yeah.

Weightlifting is the Kevin Bacon of sports. Yes.

Jimmy: Like I said off air, I wish we would have connected while I was living in Salt Lake down the street from you. It never happened, but here we are today. So again, excited to have you on the podcast. For those listeners who may not know too much about you, do you wanna just give us a quick introduction?

Daniel John: I usually start with this because I think it's so important. My brother Ray had just gotten home from the Vietnam War. He was one of those marines that went over with that. I think it was called the second expeditionary brigade. You know, his orders were for the duration.

And when he got home, he was he and Gary were both pretty broken up from the war. And, my aunt died, and we got $500. So they went to Sears and bought the Sears 110 pound barbell set. And I still have the Ted Williams booklet back there. And Ted Williams was my first strength coach, and I fell in love with it.

I think the way my brain is wired, I like progressive. I like love geometry because it was so logical. And I love philosophy. I love theology because it's so logical. And there's nothing more logical than strength strength training.

There there's nothing more logical. It is you know, if you deadlift 600, you're stronger than a guy who deadlifts 500, and we don't have to have a the show's over. You know, there's none of that. Well, I don't know about you know, did you notice his left pinky dropped off? No one says that.

When I first started, the other thing was going on at the same time as I was in the great books tradition at the school I was at Saint Veronica's and that was really helpful. I wanted to be in the NFL, picked up a book Seven Days of Sunday, it's right over there and on Wednesday, Kenny Avery was an undersized kid, and I was an undersized kid. But in the spring, he ran the eight eighty, which I'll tell you about the date, threw the shot, threw the discus, did the hurdles. So my ninth grade year, I tried to all four. I wasn't big enough for the shot.

Didn't like the eight eighty for good reasons. So I hurdled and threw the discus all through high school, football, soccer, and hurdles and track, and discus. And quickly, it became apparent that by lifting weights my first year, could get ahead of other people. And the next year, I had throwing shoes and I worked I was the ninth graders usually just do standing throws, which is terrible idea. So but I turned.

And I realized even though I was undersized at the time, I was the youngest kid in my class and I'm Irish, so I hit puberty in college, literally in college. And it was kind of fun. I'm the youngest of six kids and I was the youngest in class. But the time my body finally hit the switch, I mean, went just sprinted past my competition. It was kind of a fun time.

In the ninth grade, I got that book right there, the track and field omnibook, JK Doherty. And then the first edition 1971, talked about Ralph Bahn at Utah State University being a great discus coach. I told my sister, I want to throw the discus for you, for Ralph Maun at Utah State. Couple of years later, my dad says, bum, there's a call for you. And he goes, I think it's Utah State.

Hi. This is Ralph Maun from Utah State University, and I'd like to offer you a full ride. So that was pretty cool.

Jimmy: Oh my god. Yeah.

Daniel John: My senior year, he asked me to come back in the fall and be a strength coach. So that was 1979. So I might have been one of the first track and field strength coaches in college. I'm pretty sure if I'm not the first, I'm in that conversation. And I got my my first master's then in history.

I started teaching, always coached. I wrote articles on Beowulf, King Arthur, religious studies, religious education. Kept throwing the discus. Had a forty one year career as a discus thrower. And then, one time I was at a workshop.

One of the guys there was Chris Schugert from Teen Nation. He said, why don't you write an article for us? And I did and they sent me a check for $1,500. And when I got the check, Tiffany of blessed memory, she said, you're not writing any more articles on Beowulf and King Arthur and religious medicine. So I knew a lot of stuff and I'm a real experimenter.

I'm a real I'm a person, like the wife of Bath in, Canterbury Tales. I'm a big believer in experience. So you can have all the you can read all the books you want. You can take all the courses. You know, you can go to chat GPT and get the answers for all the essays.

But unless you're unless you're trying stupid ideas and pounding your face against a wall, you're not gonna learn a lot in track and field and and weightlifting, American football. You've got to experiment with things. You've got to you've got to try new things. When the world record was stuck at 59 feet and the shot put, you know, this guy named Otis Chandler, his coach said he would kick him off the team he found out was lifting weights. Well, he snuck off and lifted weights and broke the oldest world record at the time.

Damn. He later became, the editor of the, LA Times by the way. And so that that's Stanford student one zero one, you know? LA Times editor and, you know, world record holder shot.

Jimmy: Nice. So

Daniel John: if you don't experiment, Fosbury remember, his coach at Oregon State did everything he could to stop Fosbury from flopping.

Jimmy: Yeah. And

Daniel John: now Fosbury became famous, Morris went around the country teaching this revolutionary technique. I look askance at that. But that that's my background. I'm a grandfather of five, two daughters. I still lift weights three days a week.

I, I walk at least 10,000 steps a day. Still, I dance Thursday nights at the senior center. I'm a big supporter of the arts and music here in Salt Lake City, Utah Presents, and Hot House West. I try to be, you know, I I still volunteer as throws coach. I'll help anybody anytime for free at throwing.

And, my home gym was called America's Top Gym by Men's Health. And every day I welcome people from all over the world to work out with me. So I'm basically the an over overeducated volunteer now. So there you go.

Jimmy: I love it. It all got started with that first barbell set.

Daniel John: You know, two things happen in my youth. We have this assignment. I have this thing called the inner circle. And one of the assignments is you go from age one to age 15, 16 to 30, 31 to, you know, you you can do math for it. And what you do is you just go through and you write out events that happen.

Obviously, you've already heard a couple. Had three brothers go to Vietnam, two are disabled. I started lifting weights. I had great books. In the ninth grade, I didn't know what to take because I went from a Catholic school to a public school.

So I took typing. Well, by the time I was done with my ninth grade year, I knew weightlifting and I knew I was a very good typist. And it's funny because who'd have thought at nineteen seventy one that I would make my living typing about weightlifting. And so I think there's I think one of the great things about this assignment is sometimes, you know, we have a phrase, you know, coincidence is God's way of being anonymous, you know, and my family are that my daughters gave us a motto and our family motto is not where you start, it's where you finish. And it's interesting because you never know what tools you're getting, the value of them until later.

It was only about two or three years ago I put together the typing class and my love and passion for weightlifting. It was only then I went, oh, yeah. That was in 1971, the two biggest tools I'd have for my life. I mean, obviously other things had to happen, but Yeah. So that's kind of why I thanks for letting me share that story with you.

Jimmy: Yeah. I love it.

Daniel John: For all you listeners, I mean, there's a phrase I use. Usually I call it shit site, but we'll call it poop site. So it'd be nice. And if someone doesn't know what they want, I just I just ask them a simple question. What don't you want?

What would be the worst possible thing that could happen? Twenty years from now, you know, Jimmy, what would be the worst thing you could think of? Well, you'll come up with a oh, like for me, I I don't wanna be in the home. I wanna be able to find my keys. I wanna be able to drive myself.

I wanna lift. Right? That's what I want to do. I don't wanna be, but I so this is funny because instantly I shifted. Did you see how quickly I did that?

I couldn't even take it. I couldn't even talk about being in the home. So for me, it's been in the home and can't find the keys or someone wipes me after I use the bathroom. Okay. You don't want that.

Well, what do you? So then what are the things we need to do today to make sure in twenty years you can still clean your own self? Oh, well, maybe I should walk more. Maybe so. Maybe I should mhmm.

Maybe. Yeah. And, the other one I use is called the benefit or the science of hindsight. And that's where you look back, a different set of glasses, I guess, at your life and look for those threads that begin to emerge that tell you so much about the person you are today and the tools that you gathered along the way. And then when you combine those two things, it gives you okay.

So this this is the tool that's been helping me my whole life. Don't abandon it. Keep writing for twenty years. If I keep writing and coaching and walking for twenty years, my college students, I mean, I'm a freaking dinosaur to those, my college athletes.

Jimmy: Sure.

Daniel John: I'm a dinosaur. I mean, I'll say things and they'll go, you know, coach, sometimes you say things that are inappropriate. And I'll say, what did I say was inappropriate? And they'll explain something to me like, all I did was call something something. I just said that that throw was bad.

Yeah. Today, coach, you can't really say the throw was bad. Why? It's not a good throw. Give me another word for it.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Daniel John: It's a throw in process. Okay. Well, that was a really lousy throw in process. Okay? So you're talking to a dinosaur here basically.

Okay.

Jimmy: What I like hearing you talk about is just this process of mastery and committing to these two crafts of writing and then honing your coaching skills, which sounds amazing. And you're now sharing that knowledge with other people. I believe your latest book is The Art of Coaching. Is that your most recent one? They just keep coming out.

Daniel John: Since I wrote that, I've written Armor Building Formula Two, a new one that we don't have a title yet. It's just about to come out. It's about the tools of coaching. And then another one that's just about to come out called Strength Coaching for It's well, or whatever the title will be, Strength Coaching for Youth.

Jimmy: For youth. Awesome. Strength Coaching for

Daniel John: Youth. Yeah.

Jimmy: Great. Well, so I see the art of coaching right there behind you. My got my copy right here. What do you think? I loved it.

So I've read it now twice, maybe two and a half times through, enjoyed it. First question I have for you, I gotta ask you about the cover art. Tell me tell me what this means to you.

Daniel John: Okay. So the cover art, it's me sitting in a coach, a carriage, and I'm taking you from here to there. So you start the book with this idea of

Jimmy: the definition of a coach and what that used to mean, which is a carriage that would take somebody from here to there. And so yeah, elaborate on that. Love to hear you talk more about it.

Daniel John: Yeah, and I talked about it in the book, but the hardest thing about being a coach is we sit down. Okay, Jimmy, what do you want? I wanna run a sub four mile. Oh, okay. First, we have to find a track meet that has the mile.

Okay. No problem. Because we'll they'll do it. You know, it's still a big enough thing. Good.

Okay. So what we need you to do is go back to back to back six, pardon me, four sixty second or less four forties. Okay. What do you what can you run a four forty in now? Eighty three seconds.

Okay. Good. Okay. So you can run one in 83. So we got to lop off twenty three seconds off of that and then do that four times in a row.

Okay. What how long do you think that's gonna take, Jimmy? Oh, I don't know. Couple weeks? Yeah, exactly.

Couple weeks. So here we are today. You run an eighty three second lap. We gotta get you to four sixties back to back to back. Here's here, there's there.

Two weeks into this, all of a sudden I go, why are you limping? Oh, I did a CrossFit workout last night, and I pulled my hamstring jumping up on a wooden box, and, I fell off of it. Or I hurt myself rock climbing. Or I was drinking and I fell off my BMX coming home and it really hurt my face. Why do I say that?

Because I had an athlete give me that in a four year period. Those are three stories. Amazing. So here's the here, there's the there. Most of my job as a coach is to take my hands and keep slapping your head back inside so we can make the journey together.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Daniel John: Because the second we get going, what's that? That's shiny. Let's go see that. No. That's not the goal.

Oh, how about if we did that? Again, that's not coach, can I do a power lifting contest? You're trying to run a mile under four minutes. I don't think a 700 pound deadlift's gonna help you. I could be wrong, Jimmy.

I have never seen anyone over three hundred pounds run a sub four mile. I don't think so. I'm throwing the challenge out there and if anyone I don't think I don't think anyone what? Probably one eighty, one seventy. Peter Schnell was one hundred seventy six.

He was as big as discus throwers back there. That's the cover of the book. And that is the Arctic much of the Arctic coaching is slapping heads back inside.

Jimmy: Yeah. And so there's three things in there. There's point A, point B, you talk about that in interventions as well that your book kind of defining point A trying to help set that up with the with the assess and then you describe slapping people back into the cart, keeping them in the cart along the way. Do you feel like that is has that gotten harder with, like, social media and things like that?

Daniel John: K, Jimmy. I'm just so disappointed with that question. Yes. So when I was young, up here are my strength and health for my youth. Okay?

Strength and Health magazine came out once a month. I trusted Ironman also came out once a month. And every time I I read Ironman magazine, I ended up spending money on something stupid or doing something stupid, but it was only one stupid thing a month. So 12 times a year, I only did so in a year, I only did 12 stupid things. Eric Subart and I read a thing in Ironman one time that if you took two hundred desiccated liver tablets a day and two hundred brewer's yeast tablets a day, It was the same as taking anabolic steroids, a lifetime.

So we did that. I will say this, you could not be in the gym when we squatted because the foul orders coming out was stunning. And it didn't work. It didn't work at all. Except I tell you one thing, I I could put people in instead of putting someone to death, just have a just have a workout in the gym with me.

They'll they'll confess to all their crimes and sins. Yeah. Social media can give you a stupid idea probably every twenty eight seconds. Your brain can't keep up. And everybody's yesterday, I was talking to a guy named Ohithu who I've got great respect for.

And I was talking about there was this documentary I saw about a thing called Fire Island or something like that. This influencer Yeah. That went terribly wrong. Yes. Well, fortunately, see, I'm I wouldn't say I'm immune to influence.

I don't I don't you're not immune to anything that's a dopamine hit. But I can just look at it now. Yeah. I don't need to do that. I don't need that.

You know, I can do that. My athletes can't. When I was at the Utah State University, we're driving up to attract me, and someone mentioned that Playboy Playboy magazine had said that Utah State was a top 10 party school. You know, you remember school. I don't know what it's like where you're from, but where I'm from, bus rides to track meets are, I mean, to Wyoming and Montana, Montana State, Idaho State was short.

It was like three hours away. So you spend a lot of time in buses, you know? And I bet you we talk for five or six hours about if this is a party school, what are we missing every weekend? You know? When it was like, that was probably the last time I ever had that tang of, oh, what am I missing?

And it was a good lesson for me because when I came home, none of my roommates really looked like they had the Hugh Hefner lifestyle. And Yeah. Social media, it is really hard. You know, the hard thing for me to do is to get my discus thrower to train like a discus thrower and my 800 meter runner to train like an 800 meter. Because my female discus throwers, they also you know, there's a lot of pressure for the female athlete to also look a certain way.

Somebody told me that there's this NIL thing. I tell you what, I'd have done great on NIL money. I would I would have sold my soul for money in college. But, you know, somebody told me that the that the NIL money, the corporations are quickly turning to gymnasts and female track and field athletes and swimmers because they they look more like models. Mhmm.

Don't take this wrong. And and I and if I hurt anyone's feelings, I apologize. But what it takes to be an elite shot putter or discus thrower isn't exactly the cover of Sports Illustrated generally. Okay? So I have to deal with that.

And then the guys, coach, I wanna get all bulked up and keep a six pack. Get back. Get back. You can do a lot of things and you can spend the rest of your life getting in pretty good shape. But for these few years, you're a division one athlete.

Let's let's focus on the prize here.

Jimmy: Yeah. Keep the goal the goal is what you say. Yeah.

Daniel John: And that originally came from keep the mission is to keep the mission the mission. And that was a piece of advice I picked up. It's interesting because it comes from both religious traditions and the military. And then the mission is to keep the mission the mission. The goal is to keep the goal the goal.

And what happens is you get all these, and that's why you're constantly slapping their heads back inside the carriage. Yeah.

Jimmy: Yeah. So it makes me think of a couple, like, athletes. I so I I've been coaching for ten years eight to ten years, way less than you, but in the age of social media where I feel like there's constant distractions. And I think of, like, marathon runners that want to do CrossFit as part of their training that doesn't really fit with it, like you said. But there's an appeal to it, and it's really hard from a coaching perspective to have those conversations.

And they for some reason, I always feel, like, slightly uncomfortable. Do you have any tips for making them more comfortable?

Daniel John: One of the nice things about coaching American football is if someone doesn't pay attention, the game corrects them in a way that they're gonna remember if well, they might not remember what happened, but they're gonna remember how they felt the next day because they're gonna get or your grandmother's up in the stands saying, why did why did you let that guy run past you? Mhmm. You know? Another reason why I love wrestling. Everybody knows when you lose in wrestling.

Yeah. Everybody knows. You don't have to know a thing about American wrestling, our style. But, you know, you hear that pin.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Daniel John: Yeah. The other kid's hands in the air. So when it comes to something like a marathon running and wanting to do a power lifting contest or a CrossFit thing or, you know, whatever. Using a ski to get ready for a marathon. You know what it is, if you don't mind, it's the curse of more.

And one of the things I constantly fight and of course, by the way, hi, I'm Dan, and I I had the curse of more. Hi, Dan. Welcome. Tell us your story. I was always trying to win the weight room, and I got stronger and stronger and stronger.

We didn't carry over the discus. Yeah. You've gotta get to enough. And when you get to enough, the next thing you have to do is trust the process. And that's coach Maun's very famous thing.

I asked him, what's the secret to discus throwing? He nodding goes, lift three days a week, throw four days a week for the next eight years. I'm reading a new, new, book on prefontaine on pre. Oh gosh. Brendan is his first name.

It might be Brendan O'Rourke. And, Brendan, I'm sorry. I forgot your name. But, you know, when you read, the story of pre and you look at his high school workouts, he pushed himself really hard. But it's funny because his workouts were probably more reasonable than what I've seen at some of these better track and field high school programs here in the state of Utah.

Those kids on paper do more than pre, but I doubt there's gonna be a track meet named after these kids.

Jimmy: I would say, like, my college coach, I was a five k, 10 k runner. Like, there was nothing was enough. It was just more, more, more. And he was fortunate enough that we had maybe 40 distance runners on the team. So if half of them got hurt, it didn't matter because he still had a full squad.

Daniel John: Right. Well,

Jimmy: yeah. But yeah, this concept of enough is like I also I have that problem and I see myself wanting more and try having trouble figuring out where enough is. I'm currently training on a road like for a two ks rowing event and love it, but I can quickly get distracted with the barbell next door and want to go over there and see how like. Yeah, it's very hard to stay focused. We live in this world of distraction.

And then from the coaching perspective, it's like like you said, just how do we keep people on task?

Daniel John: So my brother Gary and Pri were pretty close in age. Gary went to Vietnam and came back a different person. But Bowerman's coaching ideas hit where I was. But Bowerman's ideas were hard, easy, hard, easy, hard, easy.

Jimmy: Yeah. He, yeah, he made that famous. Yeah.

Daniel John: Well, his high school coach pulled the easy's out because they wanted him to get there faster. So Gary used to do all cover meets in the summer, you know, a month after, you know, the league and the conference and all the rest and drop I mean, this is track and field. I mean, so, you know, if you drop time or throw farther or jump higher, it's right. And he would drop significantly at these summer meets. Now, I mean, obviously, he was going against college and open runners and all that, but that still doesn't matter.

You don't drop seconds in track and field and not go, And, like, he took him years to figure it. He he finally was doing the easy part, and his body had I always use a rubber band analogy. You know, if you wanna hit little Susie in the front row with the rubber band, you pull it and then you let it go. You don't keep pulling it and pulling it and pulling it till it snaps you in the eye. You pull it.

You gotta let it go. And I think when we look at elite performance, very often, it's the ability to literally let it go. Yeah. You know, I had a great conversation. In fact, in my notes, I was just looking at them again.

That's funny. I called up. These are my notes with, Al Fjerbach, world record holder in the shot put two fourth places at the Olympics. And, he was so candid with me on the phone. He said, I was ready to be the gold medal since '72, and then I just kept going.

He had gotten to enough and then did more. Interesting thing. Brian Oldfield, same Olympic games, took eighth place. And by the way, it was only this far out of first. It was it was the most and, of course, they screwed up the measurements.

Cole Marsh isn't the one. It should have been Woods, but we'll stop her. And Brian told me basically similar stories about how you just you're ready to go, so let's do more. I I one of my athletes should have won the conference easily. And the day before the conference meet, we had a we had a tradition of 80% for a single in two or three lifts.

And what that does, it just kinda fires up the nervous system for a thrower. 80% for a single is I mean, when I was doing that in college, oh, I I mean, from the moment I walked into the weight room till I left, even dinking around and, you know, pretended to strangle people and, you know, played touched you last and, you know, said, hey, the girls. I think the workout took fifteen minutes. I mean, there was nothing to it. He comes in and he's just flat.

And I go, did you do the work, Hass? He goes, coach, the weights felt so light and all these guys were around me. So he I think he benched four zero five for seven to show off and it cost him the conference championship. Enough was enough.

Jimmy: Yeah, in those scenarios I call them like self sabotage. It's like a lack of I used to do it all the time. That's and it took me a long time to realize that's what I was doing. It would be the week of a big meet, lack confidence, you're trying to cram in the last little bit of fitness and you're just making yourself tired and then you flop at the event.

Daniel John: So I'm stiff today, I can't pat myself on the back. But as a student, I never crammed. I in college, I never had to cram because I really love the topics I study. So I was always taking notes, asking questions. I would read extra but I had a whole bunch of freshman teammates and, of course, guys in the dorms would f around all semester long.

And then I I don't know how many days are in a semester. I know it was ninety two in high school, but say ninety two. And they try to make up ninety day ninety one days of work overnight. And it never I mean and maybe it worked. Maybe they passed their classes and all that, but I guarantee none of the information stuck.

And it gets us back to coach Mon. Little and often over the long haul, can you dedicate eight years to master this craft? But I'm only lifting three days a week and those guys are getting ahead of me. Okay. Let's come back next year and let's see.

Oh, next year. But that's the way it goes. And when you read biographies of great athletes, very often, you'll you'll get you'll start to see that I see it in the Prefontaine book. Andrew Gunn, this is the great this is the great track and field coach. Yeah.

Jimmy: He's great. Yeah.

Daniel John: Well, this is a new book by Andrew Gunn, a friend of mine. In fact, the forward is so good. William Shakespeare crawled out of his grave, stood up, and said, all my writing is straw. That's how good the forward to the book is. Do you know who wrote

Jimmy: the forward by Daniel or something?

Daniel John: There you go. But, you know, when you read Percy and you read Andrew's book, sometimes you think this guy, you know, just everything. But it was the idea that we're gonna train hard over time. We're gonna take care of things over time. And we're gonna take and and we're gonna do things in a certain way.

So over time, we're gonna be great. And I tell you, if you have a distance runner, I don't know. You you sat down with a 13 year old, 14 year old boy or girl and said, if you give me eight, nine, ten years of your life, you will be a division one runner. I mean, I I know talent's a big a big factor. I know.

You'll pay for your education. In track and field, you put the work in, you can compete. You can compete. Now there's monsters and, you know, I mean, there's just there's just people who are better. I mean, that does happen.

But if you give it to eight to ten years, amazing things can happen. You know, when people ask me like, sometimes people say like, they think that somehow I I write a lot of books. I think I'm well over two dozen now. And they think it's like some kind of magic, you know, Harry Potter. Here's a book and here's a book and I mean, you could you know, I'm sure like poetry, I remember Earl Nightingale talking about years ago, but, you know, I wanna be a great poet.

Well, what poetry have you read? Oh, I just think I have a gift for yeah. Well, yeah, you're a hallmark card writer. You're not a poet. You know, you gotta read great poetry.

You have to have you have to dig a little bit to be a great writer, poet, playwright, screenwriter, you know, artist of any kind.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Daniel John: And I think artists and athletes always get along because we share so many of the same qualities. And the biggest quality I think we both share, artists and athletes, and this is a tough one. And I don't like to tell my athletes this. Everybody only remembers your last performance. Well, if you're a fill in the blank, I don't know.

Who's had a dog movie in the last few years? I don't know. I can't think anybody, but, know, if you're if you're Cher who's had, I mean, an Oscar for Moonstruck and, you know, lots and lots of good if she comes out with a dog of an album, everyone's gonna go, well, she's lost her stuff now, hasn't she? You know? As an athlete, if you bomb at the Olympic trials, that's all people can remember about you.

But you made the American Olympic trials, which is one of the hardest things you can do on the planet is make our track and field trials. The trials. It's very hard to make our trials. You know? The number that it takes to do you ever look at the Olympic, standards to make our trials and just go I did.

Yes. Yeah.

Jimmy: Yeah. That's right. Back when I was younger and trying like, thinking about that stuff. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Mind boggling. Yeah.

Daniel John: That might stunning. Can I just add one more thing? I like what you said about so in intervention and the tool the new book on tools of coaching covers all this again. But I just finished a fashion course. You wouldn't tell today, just a t shirt.

But I took a gentleman's course and a fashion course. I took a dance. I've taken dance lessons on the last year. I took a chakra course, you know, just to learn. But one interesting thing about this, and I just want to to you to think about this.

In the style and fashion course, the first thing you're supposed to do is you go into your closet and you take everything out and you put it on your bed or your couch or whatever, and you see everything at once. The next thing you do, you've got that orange shirt shirt that says party on '26 that one go that one goes in the bin. You've got clothes that haven't fit you since, you know, the 09/1971. Goes in the bin. Just ugly stuff.

You didn't wanna throw it away because you got it as a joke gift or a Christmas gift or whatever. Clutter step two, declutter. And then step three is look for your gaps. Every class I take, I've been noticing it's the same thing. To me, I'd like I kind of wish I'd write the art of coaching again because I would add that the first thing you do, and I I always say this, you assess.

Yeah. What's your a? So you're taking inventory. When it comes to fashion, it's inventory.

Jimmy: Yeah. When it

Daniel John: comes to the athlete, it's your height, your weight, your background, your weakness, you know, then you declutter. And what does decluttering mean? Well, for the you you as a runner, decluttering as a runner. To me, you get rid of the if you if you have a six month goal, you're not rowing anymore.

Jimmy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not running anymore. To be clear, my I have pretty bad hip arthritis.

I can't run.

Daniel John: No problem. My my point is, you know, you declutter. You you you've got all these exercises you're doing. You're doing the arm curls, tricep extensions, Zottman curls, concentration curls, wrist curls, reverse wrist curls, skull crushers, lat pull downs, reverse lat pull downs, 12 different variations. When's the last time you did a hinge or a squat?

What? There's your gap. There's step three.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Daniel John: What are your gaps?

Jimmy: Yeah. So if we if we zoom in on this for a second and use the the generic runner because I do again, coaching a lot of runners, trying to strength train for runners in particular. There's I feel like what a strength a traditional runner strength training program looks like is a lot of clutter. But it's a clutter and it's clutter and I don't know that it gets recognized as clutter. So how do you how do you help them take that inventory and recognize that this is probably clutter and that the hinge and the squat, maybe something like easy strength is a better fit.

Daniel John: Push, pull, hinge, squat, loaded carry. You do those five, you got it covered. Serrity, Percy Serrity's training. He expected you as a marathoner to bench body weight, double body weight deadlift, curls, but they were cheat curls. Cheat curls, you know, with a lot of like a power clean.

Pull up variation, a chin up variation, or a hang. He did he had him do sit ups because that's that's what they did at the time. And he he is the the inspiration for easy strength, you know.

Jimmy: Oh, wow. Yeah. I didn't know that.

Daniel John: In two sets of five. By the way, Sears, Ted Williams program, the the one was two sets of five. Percy Serrity, two sets of five. You get in the weight room, you do the work, and then you get the hell out of there and go do what's important. Yeah.

But I do wanna mention, he expected marathoners to bench body weight and deadlift double body weight. So I don't wanna hear that, you know, that you're the strongest guy in your gym when you deadlift body weight, that you're not even as strong as a marathoner for god's sake.

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If you're lucky, it will be with me. I feel like, again, the hard part is convincing people of this. Like, it's like, I guess from a coaching perspective, it's easy, like, recognizing it. And then there's this in your book, the art of coaching. You I think you define the art of coaching as being able to make a complex concept simple.

Daniel John: Yeah. I do say that in the book and it's brilliant and, the most important thing ever said. But I have a follow-up to it that's going to break your heart. Breaks mine. Only one out of twenty Americans exercise.

Only according to my dentist, only about one of twenty of his patients now these are people who go to the dentist, you know. Do want my Virginia joke?

Jimmy: Let's hear it.

Daniel John: Why do we know that the toothbrush was invented in Virginia? I don't know. Anywhere else it had been called a toothbrush. Okay. There you go.

That's I use that for every state. Only only one in twenty people floss their teeth that go to the dentist daily. Only one in twenty Americans can survive retirement without Social Security. So I keep bumping into this one in twenty number. Brad Pilon had a funny thing of 500 people who use gyms, almost all just use the cardio machines and only one in 500 people use weights.

Now I don't know if that's still true true. Yeah. But it was true not terribly, you know, you know, in in the past decades that was true. Yeah. Yeah.

Only one in 20 people are probably gonna hear the message of appropriate decluttering appropriate. To get an athlete that you can say all this is nonsense and here's your gap, here's your weakness, here's your enough.

Jimmy: Mhmm.

Daniel John: We can hear that. That's the athlete you want.

Jimmy: Because you want them to trust in the process if they buy into it and then if they try it, they're probably gonna see this. Like you said, the outcome will will be there. We'll get them to point b, and then it speaks for itself.

Daniel John: Yeah. My national high school champion, Paul, his senior year, we were done. He started throwing for me in the eighth grade. Some kid in his school had won the state championship in the discus with like a the eighth grade big eighth grade boy, women's discus, and he threw it about 70 feet and he won the state with a standing throw. And he just got really angry at his mom.

Said, why don't you talk to me? He goes and he said to me, how long would it take me to throw that for? And I said, well and I didn't wanna coach anymore, which is funny because here I am, you know, three, four decades later still doing it. And so we started in eighth grade and he did everything I ever said. His senior year, we had such a backlog of things.

The only lift he did in season was the snatch. One lift because he didn't need anything else. We had built in just simply five years. We had built up all of his capacities and his qualities so he could throw the national leading throw as a senior. And he's only about that tall.

He's not he's not he's not my height. Really. It was so happens fast, but he's one of the few athletes that ever bought in. If you come to my gym and you're more than welcome, Jimmy. I have him on the wall and then I have another one, my all other all American this last year, Emily.

And in season, she just does snatch and suitcase carry. And that's all she did. And her competition said, what about this and this and this and this? And then she get freaked out and go, coach, what about this and this and this and this? I said, know, again, the idea is it's it's more.

Jimmy: Yeah, it's

Daniel John: not better.

Jimmy: Yeah, but you're there, the coach is there, you're there to help them see that they have enough, that enough is enough. This is the thing they need to work on, there are enough of all this other stuff, the noise is gone and you could be the person that's like reassuring them of that.

Daniel John: Yeah. So I'm going through this massive body transformation the past couple years. I've been basically losing about a pound a month, for about four years. You know, I competed at two seventy three and I weighed one ninety eight today. Okay?

So I was still two thirty, two thirty five maybe, oh, three years three or so years ago. I could look it up. I got my journal.

Jimmy: Yeah. No. You you look great and you can see it in your YouTube videos from yeah. You've that that you've lost weight and you look great.

Daniel John: Oh, thank you. Well, people ask me my secret. It's like, okay. I walk 10,000 steps a day, every day. I lift three days a week and I keep tight reins on my calories.

I I'm I was at twenty five hundred. Now I'm at 2,400, which by the way, if you don't eat bread, pasta, and pancakes is a lot of food. Okay. Raise your hand and you're gonna start asking me about what about this and what about that? Because we can't help ourselves.

But if you dedicate four years to walking 10,000 steps a day, lifting appropriately three days a week, and keeping your calories in check, you lose a pound a month for four years.

Jimmy: But that's not fast enough. That's not sexy.

Daniel John: It's not sexy. And you're I was gonna say sexy too. We're almost at the same time. It's not. In fact, I I posted this up on a thread up on Reddit.

This one guy said, you know what? What a pound a month. That's nothing. You know, my clients, I can get them to lose. Truth is, gentle listener, when I was in The Middle East, I lost 40 pounds in two weeks.

I had a liver parasite. I was just about to die. Yeah. I can I can get you some of the water I drank? You you pound that down.

Trust me. The weight will come off in ways I don't wanna discuss in a public forum, but it and it took me years to overcome it, but it didn't last. And, yeah, you can lose 40 pounds doing the magic magic weight loss 5,000. But it's pretty obvious to me it's not sticking. You know, I went to my high school reunion, my fiftieth my fiftieth high school reunion.

Quick point, kinda interesting. When my dad went to his fiftieth high school reunion and it was the same time I just come back from The Middle East. This is why I remember so clearly. He was the only surviving male from his class. Oh my gosh.

Yeah, World War II. Yeah. And smoking. Yeah. And smoking.

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I'm there at my fiftieth and I'm looking around and I'm not seeing a lot of my friends. You know, a lot of them aren't with us anymore. So I would rather ease my way into my body composition than, you know, take a take a stack of pills and do all these other things that will get me lost quickly, but it might also damage stuff that I can't I don't have the I'm sneaking up on 70.

How much more time do I have to like, I say this a lot. I have one more injury in my athletic career. I don't have one more.

Jimmy: Yeah. I like this idea of of of patience because I do I see it as something that we like a lot of my generation is lacking and the people I coach, they want yeah. Like, I I coach a lot of ultra runners who will literally just get into the sport and decide they wanna run a 100 miles, but they've never done a five k or something.

Daniel John: So we get the same people, just different sides. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Hey, I saw this guy deadlift a thousand.

You know, what what's the program you're do? Oh, thousand. Oh, that'll take that take that can take up to three or four weeks. I mean, we were at the same. Good program.

Jimmy: Yeah. But it's hard. It's hard because you want to be supportive of of the ambition and get them into the sport and help them along the way. But then it's recalibrating the expectations. Have you heard of this idea of like unteachable lessons?

Daniel John: I know the concept. Explain what you I I

Jimmy: So basically, there's maybe maybe there are things in life that we all know are true, but we have to do it wrong the first time to understand it fully. We have to make the mistake to actually, like, correct in the future. We can't just you can't tell me the right thing. I I have to experience the wrong thing to say you're right.

Daniel John: In the Western United States, what part of the human body is most often struck by rattlesnakes? Ankle? Yeah. Yeah. I would think that hand.

Don't poke rattlesnakes. Interesting. Don't do that.

Jimmy: But yeah, so this idea of like unteachable lessons, it almost seemed That's an unteachable lesson. Yeah. With the the people who think more is more, like they need more, it's almost it almost feels sometimes like you just have to let them do it and have it backfired to then let them move on to the right course.

Daniel John: Yes. Yeah. And there's a corollary to it, but you're exactly right. And the thing is, you know the woman I'm talking about. I'm sure of it because you guys but she's struggling in many ways of her life right now, and she's doesn't sleep.

She's really struggling. So her answer is to do instead of five high intensity training sessions a week to go to 10.

Jimmy: Oh my god.

Daniel John: And 1,500 calories a day was too much, so she told me she's gonna drop to 12. Yeah. Of course, we know that when you, when you drop to 1,200 calories a day, you can do it short term, but very quickly you begin. This is that's the Minnesota starvation study. You begin to lose your mind.

You literally go. I hate to call it insane, but you might as well say insane. You go crazy. On the other hand, one of the things I learned in my coaching career, and I'm I'm thinking of you, my little field general, Pat. I used to tell people I knew when we were gonna win football games is when I would start to send in a player, start to send in, you know, an athlete to send in, you know, either you know, you can either send it in with your hands.

Well, now they have other ones, but and I'd see Pat would go like this. I got it. I got it. That's when I knew we were gonna win is when the athlete took the onus for success, when the athlete owns it. And when when when someone of your clients waves you off and says, I know.

I got this. What I'm gonna do is, and it sounds just like what a Jimmy ism, you know, it just it's like you feel like someone has been recording you and they shoved it back in your face. You know? Yeah. That to me is when I know that we've got it.

We're done. We're in a good place now.

Jimmy: Yeah. It reminds me of the us saying, do you know well, there's a there's a running coach, Steve Magnus, young he's prime yeah.

Daniel John: Or a Saint Mary's, University Touginean professor quoted me in one of his blogs. Yeah. I know Steve.

Jimmy: Yes. Well, he has said something along the lines of a good coach makes you want to have him around but not need him. A bad coach makes you need him but not want him around. So it's like you're you're yeah. What do

Daniel John: you think about? You've said that? Yes. He must have stole it from me. I'm kidding.

Jimmy: It's like that you're you're you're teaching the athlete, the athletes picking it up and assume once they've, like you said, once they've internalized it and they recognize how to make these decisions, your job is kinda done, but hopefully they still want you around.

Daniel John: One of there's two things. I hate and loathe. What I hate and love, loathe, hate. The tradition in track and field is that track meets we're not supposed to talk to our athletes. In fact, that is a rule I still think happens.

And I hated that one gymnastic coach who always put himself forward. Worked with 20 I think he worked with Mary Lou Renton and all them I don't know. Whatever his name is. It was he was always in the center of everything. One of my goals one of the things I tried to do as as a as a coach, and I I might talk about it in the art of coaching, but one of my favorite things is get a call at 9 on a Saturday morning.

Hello. Hello. Hello. Hi, coach. I just won the state championship.

What? It's me, Billy. I just won the state My favorite thing is when my athletes go to a big meet and they perform without me there. Bondarchuk who just died, and Yuri Sadik was his athlete. And I was I actually knew Yuri really well.

He was an oddball, but I liked him. Very famously, one time, Yuri was, like, at the world championships, and Bondarchuk was someplace else. And someone said, don't you wanna be with your athlete? And Bondi said, Yuri's a big boy. He knows what to do.

And to me, that is where we want to get as track coaches, that we don't have to be there. And you see it at meets a lot of the time. They'll they'll pan up to the camera, the coach, they'll go to the athlete on the field, up to the coach, up to the thing. And I get it, and it's a good thing. Part of me hates it though because I think it's my job as a track and field coach to completely prepare you.

Now this isn't a first year thing. This isn't a second year thing, But you have all the tools you need to perform without me going, put the in your put your discus in your right hand. Okay? Yes. My coach, Dick Nottmeyer, who just died, he just died.

He was in his mid nineties and he was a great coach. He he was a great man and and I and I dearly miss him. He he always realized that I would I would get too fired up, so he was always trying to bring me down. And he would just say funny things right before I'd get on the platform in a weightlifting knee. Nothing.

It would be like, you know, like before the snatch, you know, that he'd say, hey, hey, I go guess. I go, yeah. He'd go, it's the one with the wide grip. Oh, and it'd be like, I'd go, but the thing is my arousal level, my anxiety levels would come down, and I'd make the damn lift, you know. Yeah.

Jimmy: Sounds like he knew he knew the right thing to get you in the right state.

Daniel John: Yeah. I was at a meet one time and he was judging and my mom was this is a long time ago, obviously, forty seven, eight years ago. And my mom was back in a few rows. And just as I walked up to the platform, she could hear him say, it was just and he was like this. And he said, pull the bar high and back to you.

And my mom could hear it a few rows back, but he barely he just whispered it, you know? And at that time in my career, I needed that. And it's funny because he used to sign letters to me, pull the bar high and back to you. And at that time in my career, I needed to be reminded that the first thing you gotta do is get the bar up there. Yeah.

Later in the career, it was like, you got this. Let's make it funny. Bring the arousal down. Same coach, two different periods, different approaches.

Jimmy: But maybe a common theme in there that it's like the the advice is simple.

Daniel John: Oh, man. If you ever watch it, watch go to a typical high school and watch them coach out of a book, the discus or shot or pole vault. There is nothing more fun. Put the discus in your hand. I had a kid win a sophomore freshman track meet.

Okay? He had been with us for about two months. On the way to the event, he turned to another one of our athletes and said, hey, how do you hold the discus? He had been with me for two months, and he never used the discus. We had done medicine the medicine balls with hand the cold power balls with handles.

Jimmy: Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel John: He had done more throws, turns than any of his competitions. But because of the well, you know the weather here.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Daniel John: If you're in Utah, it just depends. You know, you don't know what you're gonna get. And it was that kind of year. It was snow and rain and sleet. So it was a lot of indoor throwing against walls.

And the first time he ever threw a discus was at a track meet throwing the discus and he won because he went stretch one, two, three, and let it go a long ways. To me to me, that's one of the highlights of my coaching career because that's when I realized that if you stick with the fundamentals, the basics, and you do the whole, part whole, part whole, part whole, part whole, that's the secret to coaching. But if you go part, part, part, part, part, part, part, part, part, part, you you miss it. You know? So this idea about racing a 100 miles, you better try a five k first.

And then maybe pretty soon try to go a day without sleep because then a 100 mile race, how many days without?

Jimmy: Twenty four hours. Yeah. Most people over.

Daniel John: Yeah. So can you go twenty four hours without sleep? Sure. I had babies. But can you do twenty four hours while running?

That takes a little bit more prep than running a a bagel five k, you know. I used to call them bagel five k's, you know. You barely burn you barely burn 50 calories in the race and then eat a thousand calories.

Jimmy: You got a carb alone. No, but it's always fun when you have like the the 100 the guy that wants to run a 100 miles and still be in shape to run a fast marathon.

Daniel John: Yeah, that makes more sense to me. It's like a guy who wants to throw the discus and the shot, but to me, you're also right that, you know that's a different

Jimmy: Three hours over here, twenty four hours over here. Different different skills.

Daniel John: Hey Jimmy, I just went to to the Telluride Film Festival. I think it's Telluride. And they had a video of that. There's this race near Nashville that some years nobody completes.

Jimmy: Yeah. The Barkley Marathon.

Daniel John: The Barkley. Oh my god. What a fascinating video that was. If you get a chance to see the movie, I'm sure it's probably gonna be available soon somewhere.

Jimmy: I'll look it up. There's like I've I've seen one or two documentaries on it. It's yeah, it's a wild wild event, but again, such a unique thing. So I mean training for something like that.

Daniel John: Yeah, And and the woman, she's British. It was it was phenomenons. It was so fun to watch. Yeah. But again, how do you train for an event that literally changes its mind?

Jimmy: Yeah. And that guy, the guy that puts it on, did they go into him much? Was it Lars?

Daniel John: The fact that he smokes.

Jimmy: Yeah. He's chain smoking the whole time.

Daniel John: The start is when he lights up a cigarette. Yeah. I love it. It was just and just how few people finished just.

Jimmy: Yeah, I think this year, I think no one finished this year.

Daniel John: No one

Jimmy: finished this year, yeah.

Daniel John: Yeah. The record's five I think. I'm abysmally low. Yeah.

Jimmy: Yeah. So one of the one of your one or maybe like the Dan John truisms is like keeping things simple, avoiding the fluff you the push pull hinge carry kind of combo of like sticking with that with your easy strength. It sounds like when I read your book, you also talk like when you're 14 years old, you told your your future Dan John that you should be able if you could do these two things, would be good, right? Have you always had this like mentality of like keeping things fairly simple and straightforward?

Daniel John: You know, I can show you my lecture notes on topics from, you know, medieval studies to Genesis, Mark, Luke, the Iliad, the Odyssey, Gilgamesh, anything. And it's funny because even when I lecture on extremely complex topics like epics and things like that, I still strive to keep things simple. I will summarize all the great books and all the epics for you. Love slash lust, life, death. There.

There. They're all about that. You change the names, you change the stories, but there's the epics for you. Yeah. And what and once you understand that, then everything starts to happen.

I used to push back on it when people said I kept things simple. But now I understand better what they're trying to say. I believe that in battle, that the side that is more fundamental, more sound, more basic is going to win. That there are certain weapon systems that are gonna keep working no matter what happens. You know, like a knife isn't very high technologically.

Real hard for the, for the Russians to hack a knife. You know, it's real hard for them to hack a knife. So when it comes to discus throwing, I mean, I wrote down for one of my former throwers is now coaching the throws, and she asked me to go through all the stuff. And let me tell you, I wrote words on the board. Stretch, one, two, three, spanky, x a b c.

The and she goes, yeah. I know all that. And I go, that's all I taught you. And we just and she went, what? Isn't there more to that?

And I said, every drill was to emphasize the combinations of one, two, or three of those.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Daniel John: And as you build that up, as you take those nine words, they quickly become four words. They quickly become three words. They quickly become one. And when they see you when they saw you throw, everyone thought how complex it was, but actually how simple it was. We have 26 letters in the English language, in the alphabet.

A couple of them are worthless. They're redundant. But how many words can you make out of those 26? How many poems and books can you make out of them? It it literally is countless.

In fact, that thing you might have heard that if an infinite number of monkeys had an infinite number of typewriters, they would produce the great works of Shakespeare. It's statistically not true. Even infinity doesn't have enough time to make that happen. Yeah. There's not enough time in infinity to make it happen.

Infinity is not long enough for that to happen. And I saw the math on it one time, and I'm not gonna go into it because it still makes my head shake.

Jimmy: You're making your yeah. You're making my brain hurt, Dan.

Daniel John: Yeah. So I have push, pull, hinge, squat, loaded carry. In the push, the pull, and the squat, do two sets of five in the hinge, find an appropriate exercise. If it works for two sets of five, do it for loaded carries, do them. I just gave you a bulletproof training program.

Jimmy: Do you would you would you I'm gonna just dig down real quick. Would you tell a runner to do that, a distance runner?

Daniel John: I wouldn't, but one of the greatest distance coaches in the history of the world would.

Jimmy: Yes. Yeah. But then

Daniel John: just stealing from the best.

Jimmy: Yeah. I was gonna ask you if you were gonna give the listeners, let's say like runners or coaches that work with runners or therapists that work with runners, one piece of advice to simplify their training. Would it be that? Would it be what you just said? Or

Daniel John: Yeah. I mean, let's do it. Let's make it even simpler. Overhead press two sets of five because I think the and and it could be dumbbells, kettlebells, it could be barbells, it can be anything you want. It can go single sided or or two anything.

Two sets of five. Hanging for most of your runners is probably what they need first. It's it's great for grip strength, and it also stretches all this out. Goblet squats is where you wanna start on the most goblet squats are by far the most important exercise ever invented. The man who came up with it was a a genius as as everyone knows.

Two sets of five or more doesn't matter. I would suggest a deadlift variation. For most runners, probably off of boxes or off of a racks or just hinging it up. Don't teach them from the floor to the knee. Just start from the knee and go.

Jimmy: What about a trap bar?

Daniel John: A trap bar is great. And if you wanna go with the high handles for a long hold, even better. Okay? It's it's you know, and just make sure they're hinging. And then a loaded carry.

And for most runners, you start with farmer walks and maybe move the suitcase carries and just do them. Just make

Jimmy: sure they're I think that was four exercises.

Daniel John: Push. Yeah. Overhead press, hang, hold, two sets of five in the goblet squat. The trap bar variation that you've said, two sets of five in the suitcase or firmo. That's fine.

Jimmy: Yeah. Perfect. Love it.

Daniel John: I love it, Jimmy. You're questioning me how to work out. I love that. That's the pushback I get on by everybody. See, that's what I was everyone's always doubting.

Yeah.

Jimmy: No. I love it. And that I would like I think I don't know how how much you know about the running world, but it's just funny because the the amount of fluff that gets added to that would get added to a program like that where oh, what about my glutes? Where where where we're not I need to do something for my external rotators or my glute med.

Daniel John: Well, if you've got this hundred and forty pound runner, you know, deadlifting 500 for 2¢ of five, trust me, those muscles are coming in. Yeah. I know. Yeah. They're gonna be there.

Jimmy: They're and But what about the influencer doing that fancy exercise I saw?

Daniel John: Well, that's good. I hope my comp who was the coach who said that? So in the nineteen twenties, these two coaches had it out. I think one was at Princeton and the other one was, I think, Stanford. And that they had their national meeting back when all the coaches used to go.

And one of them said, the Stanford coach, I think it was if I get it wrong, I'm sorry. He goes, you know, to Jimmy the principal coach. You know, Jimmy, it's fine that you write all this nonsense, but my athletes at Stanford read and they're reading this junk, know. It's not nothing new. That's a 100 ago and we're in this thing.

I used to always say that I hope my competition are doing that. Yeah. I hope they are, know, but geez, you know, please, you know. I was at a track meet one time and a kid came over and he goes, hey, you're Dan John. I go, yeah.

And he goes, we're doing a Dan John program. And then told me the biggest paragraph of nonsense I've ever heard in my life. It was like 10 push exercises and half squats, but it was calm. And it was like, again, and I thought to myself, well, no wonder we're doing so well in these track nights. We're trading, you know?

So with the influencer stuff and, you know, like, it's a rare week. Like, there's a thing out called peptides now and, oh, yeah, I'm gonna do peptides. There's no research that supports peptides. And by the way, collagen is a peptide. Collagen from Costco, I don't know what I I mean, it's

Jimmy: $40. 30

Daniel John: With 300 servings.

Jimmy: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel John: And and if you put it in your cup of coffee, dissolves instantly. It's 20 grams of protein, and it's got peptides. There. But it's not sexy to drink Costco collagen in a cup of coffee. I take it because the guy with Physiogenics says to do what it's good for your skin health.

And I gotta tell you, oh gosh, I know this is an n equals one, but Costco collagen and a cup of coffee has helped my skin health as much as best thing I can do, is sunscreen moisturizer. Yeah. And I wouldn't have believed it if I it's working. Okay? But and just say whatever you wanna say.

It's gonna be something next week because once Costco or Walmart starts selling it, the supplement companies have to switch over to something that you know, they're gonna Yeah. I follow a guy who was against supplements for other forever until he had his own brand. Now he pushes them past them. Now I'm against supplements, but folks, the Dan John supplements are different.

Jimmy: The Dan John supplements are sleep more, drink more water, walk more, right?

Daniel John: Well, yeah, try to make money on that.

Jimmy: It's funny because I get a lot of runners asking me about recovery tools and modalities and when I tell them eat good, what you say eat like an adult, I think is your what you said.

Daniel John: There's an adjective before the word adult.

Jimmy: Eat like an adult, drink more water, sleep eight hours. Like if you want to recover well and do that. Train reasonably.

Daniel John: Yeah. So, know, the other day someone quoted, I've quoted Rob Wolf for a long time as more and more and more diet, more protein, more fiber, more fish oil. And what's interesting about that is I, if someone wants to go to the next level, I tell them to do that. You know, once you you know, for me, I it's you know, I read the Tufts newsletter. I read the AARP stuff, and they both recommend point eight two grams of protein per, per pound.

So for me, that's one forty to one fifty because I weigh one ninety eight, you know, two hundred. You know? I'll say two hundred because math's easier. But that's that means I gotta I should be at one sixty.

Jimmy: Yeah. That's a lot.

Daniel John: Yeah. I mean, I struggle to get I struggle to get one forty a day at but if I move up to 200 grams of protein a day and say 60 grams of fiber and maybe eight to 20 expensive fish oil, good fish oil cat. Couple things first, I'm not taking a long Greyhound bus ride first. There no. That's simple.

I am gonna be struggling to get that food in me. Yeah. And I'm half of it saying, oh, I I looked at this and I coach, I'm eating 3,000 calorie 3,500 calories a day. And I look and it's white bread, pancakes, pasta, and they're or, ramen. Ramen.

How can you build an athletic body on ramen? I'm not being angry. I'm just saying there's there's a lot of calories. I did this thing with my athletes one day as kind of a lark, and I and I should do this on a video. I have this bag of I think it was Tostitos, and it's a 170 grams per serving.

And the bag said there was, I think it was 17 servings. So I cracked it open and I black jacked out the the chips.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Daniel John: A serving that's a 170 calories is about that much. It's like five.

Jimmy: Yeah.

Daniel John: Five chips is a 170 calories. My protein drinks are a 100 well, the one I like best is a hundred and thirty thirty grams of protein, a 130 calories. It's the Costco coffee protein drink. Nah. I can eat a bag of Fritos.

I'm not bragging. Done it. I'm proud of it. I haven't put it in my know, it's not in my vita, in my resume, but I can do it. No way I can eat whatever 17 times 170 calories is of protein drinks.

Jimmy: Yeah. What's interesting, Dan, that was working with distance runners. I'm having to do, like the opposite problem is coming up trying to, like, get them to eat more and more carbs, and they almost can't. They're under. We're having a lot of problems with like under fueling in the distance running world.

Daniel John: What do you use as as your number? Do you have a fancy formula or a simple formula?

Jimmy: Don't know. It's I think like I I actually refer to the dietitian for athletes. Yeah, But I think the biggest thing, especially with my in the physical therapy world with runners is seeing a lot of stress fractures because people are just under eating and it's weird. It's because it's so context dependent, like the numbers you mentioned, like 0.8 is great. But if I have like a 140 distance runner doing like people were doing like a gram of a gram per pound body weight, and then they couldn't get enough carbs to fuel their runs.

And they were getting stress fractures because they're under fueling carbohydrates because of this push for protein, which is in the strength world, we need it and it's good. And then as we age, obviously with sarcopenia, we got to have it. But then you take this small 20 year old runner and they're under the it's for it's putting them in this weird state. Yeah.

Daniel John: Now the other thing too is I think you have to sit down with them and talk, you know, long term about things and it's it's I I I know once you get into running once you get into distance running, you know, we use a number in our world, your bowl weight times 13. So, if I wanna get down to two hundred pounds, that's 200 times 13, which is 2,600 calories a day. Now what's interesting, cause the old RDA recommendations for a typical male was 2,500 calories a day. And I don't know of a single male in my life who eats 25. They all eat more.

More. Yeah. But if I do 13 times one eighty, it's 2,400 calories a day. So a 180 to two hundred pounds. If that's my goal, I wanna get my body mass down to that.

Yeah. That's only 200 calories a day. But here's the money. It's 200 calories a day for three hundred sixty five, three hundred sixty six days a year. Yeah.

And that's where people get lost. Yeah. You still have that crash diet mentality.

Jimmy: Yeah. Like the woman you mentioned earlier dropping to whatever fifteen, twelve hundred calories, whatever it was.

Daniel John: But if you if you read Percy's dietary, you know, advice, I mean, some of it I mean, he had his own opinions, but they were they were consuming massive amounts. They muesli is the word he and it was, you know, there was yogurts and there was saltines, which is that other style of banana. Yeah. There's a lot of fruit. There's a lot of veg.

The one of the reasons I like maffy tones work so much, you know, Phil maffy tone. Yep. Really good man. You know, when he talks about like he had, that's when I really got into this thing called pure vegetable soup. And I was finding that as an athlete, as a strength athlete, that vegetable soup.

You'll hear bone broth kicked around a lot now. All questions. And anytime someone goes traditional, I'm always like, yeah, okay. I agree with you. But I was surprised how restorative for me these vegetable soups were.

I found it much better than some product you get at seven Eleven, you know, that comes in a, you know, neon color with tons of sugar. I found that that that veggie soup was very restorative for me.

Jimmy: Interesting.

Daniel John: You're not gonna get very many calories out of it.

Jimmy: Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel John: But I do get satiated on it. And whatever those whatever that combination of minerals and salts are that comes out of all that veggie broth, my body and of course, the vegetables itself. My body liked it to the point that we still I would say the bulk of my meals are still root vegetable protein, and then I have a love affair with garbanzo beans. I'll throw garbanzo beans in there. Nice.

So, you know, it's I'm surprised your athletes have a hard time getting calories. When I travel America, it doesn't look like many Americans are struggling getting their calories in.

Jimmy: No, yeah, I think it's it's like it's a unique problem. Think to a lot of these like competitive semi elite distance runners in a sport that so that is like has an image that you're trying to maintain and a look that's you look at the winners of the marathon. Are like the healthiest people out there.

Daniel John: When the women's running boom first happened, if you go back to those runner world magazines, I think it would be inappropriate to mention specific names of the women. But how many of those women died of cancers? And I'm thinking about two specifically. And I'm not gentle listener, I did not say long distance running causes cancer. I did not say that.

What I'm saying was that, you know, it is interesting. I think that in the eighties and nineties when, I knew people were still using laxatives before races so they would lose

Jimmy: Oh my gosh.

Daniel John: A pound or two of feces, which Yeah.

Jimmy: That sounds terrible.

Daniel John: Which is not an efficient way to prepare yourself. No. And then going to races basically at a level of dehydration.

Jimmy: Yeah. Just depleted. Yeah.

Daniel John: Which makes and we're both sitting here going, that makes no sense. But it does when you're talking to an everything makes sense to an athlete because they are they they're they're trying to get that they're they're seeking that 1.5% and ignoring the 99.5. Yep. Yeah. Focus on the 99.5.

Yeah. But but what if I did this? I they they said it, you know, this whole they're they're back to taking baking soda.

Jimmy: Yeah. The yep.

Daniel John: When Michael Coughlin talked about that thirty, forty years ago, remember thinking, oh, I can guarantee no one's ever run after doing baking soda. The the lord in his infinite wisdom did not make us to swallow down arm and hammer baking soda and then do a a forty nine second 400 meter. I can I can guarantee it?

Jimmy: Yeah. Well, yes, it is. I I've noticed that I had an athlete last month asked me about it because, yeah, I guess it's I didn't realize that it was becoming a thing again, but yep, sure.

Daniel John: That's the point five

Jimmy: it is.

Daniel John: Yeah, that's an athlete. You know how many hours did you sleep last night? What is your meditation like? Yeah. Meditation's free.

Sleep is free. Are you drinking? I don't know if you say a gallon. Whatever you say, free. Whatever your water.

I

Jimmy: mean Yeah. A big believer. Glasses.

Daniel John: It's perfect. There's nothing. Yeah. We we know that it's funny. There was this this guy shot off.

I said eight glasses of water makes sense to me a day because it just sounds right. There's no science behind it. You know? Well, they've done studies and people only urinate five ounces of water a day. And I thought, five glasses of water a day.

And I didn't wanna re because I thought I didn't wanna make the guy look like could complete it. Every time I breathe, I blow, a combination of things that is basically water vapor. And I also do this thing called sweat. And of course, feces has water. I just it's just like Sure.

Yeah. Eight glasses is great. A gallon is wonderful if that's what you do. I mean, basically, I could just get people eat protein and fruit every meal, I'd be a happier camper and down that veggie soup or salads or whatever it did.

Jimmy: Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel John: It's all simple.

Jimmy: Yes. And that's what Dan, I think that's what I I love about your work is that it's in a world that I feel like is full of lots of noise and quick fixes and gimmicks and overcomplicating stuff, you present an alternative that just feels good. And if anyone is interested, they should try your stuff. The easy strength program that you mentioned or sample program that you mentioned was a great start. That's what I have most of my runners do.

That's what I've been doing. But, yeah, I think maybe that's a good place to wrap it up.

Daniel John: This was great. Yeah. Thank you. It's to talk to you on the track guy. Yeah.

You know, we're both working with numbers. And gentle listener, I want you to remember that. You know, I'm not 22. How old are you? 40.

Yeah. Neither of us are 22 year old influencers. Like I always say, if you're, you know, I don't wanna see your six pack when you're 22. Of course, you have a six pack. I mean, if you wanna see six packs, go to a division one track meet, especially when the weather heats up.

Everybody's got everybody looks like models. You know? It's easy when you're 22. At 69, I gotta tell you, it's a little bit harder. And the thing is, I don't wanna brag, but I have a six pack.

And the reason I have a six pack is because I walk 10,000 steps a day for the last four years. I lift weights three days a week for the last four years. I'm almost always in my calorie zone. I'm almost always in my protein zone. And I sleep well every single night and I meditate every day.

Almost everything I just said I can't make a nickel off of.

Jimmy: But it works.

Daniel John: That way it works. Hey, want to talk again sometime?

Jimmy: I'd love to. Yeah, no, this was amazing. Really appreciate your time.

Daniel John: Oh, it's great. Again, like I said, man, track guys. We're the best. I mean, those fine people are are the best. Yes.

Yes.

Jimmy: That's it for today on the Physio Insights podcast presented by Runeasi. Would you like to share an interesting case, insight, or have a thought about the podcast? Comment below and don't forget to follow us for more episodes.