REVIEW OF DAN JOHN’S "MASS MADE SIMPLE"

 **INTRO**

Rather interesting how similar these two are...

* Greetings once again and welcome to another program review.  I endeavor to keep this one a little on the shorter side, as I’ve done a lot of the set-up for it in this post . My intent here is to specifically review Dan John’s “Mass Made Simple” program vs the combination that I’ve been running.

* But, in THAT regard, I must re-disclose that I did NOT run the FULL Mass Made Simple program: only the “important parts”.  That would be the complexes and high rep squats.  For the upper body work, I relied on daily Easy Strength workouts to carry me through, along with a daily prescription of 300 push ups (and 300 bodyweight squats…but that’s not upper body).

* All that said, I’m going to just hit some wavetops here and leave it more open for discussion/Q&A.

**HOW I MADE IT INTERESTING**

You wouldn't try that against Andre the Giant though...

* I did exactly like Dan said and came into this stupidly lean

The before photo was me at the end of Super Squats on 2 Mar, and the after was around 2 Jun, which is actually not quite my starting level for MMS.  

This is a bit closer

taken after my second Mass Made Simple workout, wherein I’m looking pretty damn flat and small.  

Here is workout 1

 so you can see a live action documentation as well.

* I changed my squatting style.  

Here was the 20x405 Super Squats Workout

Contrast that with the Final Mass Made Simple workout

 

This was legitimately the first time in 23 years I tried high bar squatting, and I imagine that being at a lighter bodyweight honestly helped there, as I had less “body” to get in the way of the squat.  I finished Super Squats at 201lbs, and started Mass Made Simple at 166.  I was simply a “new” human, and, in turn, ready to learn new mechanics.  But I ALSO changed up my squat style so that I wouldn’t have any old numbers to compare against and freak out over.  This was going to be totally uncharted territory for me.  Going completely beltless factored into that equation as well.  Plus, in the book, Dan says to go deep.  Roger that Dan!

**WHAT MAKES MASS MADE SIMPLE “DIFFERENT**

Aside from getting to eat like a King!

* HEAVY complexes BEFORE high rep squatting.  When you read the program, it just looks pretty vanilla.  Bench, press overhead, rear delts, abs, complexes and squats.  When you actually DO the program, the sick, brutal logic sinks in.  The complex that Dan prescribes is simple, and it’s BRUTAL when performed at the level he demands.  You rarely go above 5 reps, and, in turn, are often moving very heavy poundages (relatively) on these complexes.  If you keep your rest times honest (I aimed for a minute), you will come into your high rep squats with a significant amount of accumulated fatigue.  Along with that, all the “missing volume” of the program suddenly reveals itself.  On top of your upper body work BEFORE the complexes, you now get in 6-30 quality heavy reps of a wide variety of movements.  It was actually because of this that, the next time I tackle this, I’m going to use a horizontal press (most likely dips) during the Easy Strength portion of lifting: the complexes will get me enough overhead work.

* The reps BEFORE the high rep set.  Again, you don’t notice that they’re there UNTIL you have to do them, and suddenly you realize Dan was a real jerk and has you hit a hard set of 10 before tasking you to take your bodyweight for 50 reps.  This is all part of his master plan to turn you into a squatting machine by the end of the program and it absolutely works.

* Lifting every other OTHER day.  This is 14 workouts in 6 weeks, which means you go Lift-day off-day off-Lift vs the traditional Lift-day off-Lift style that you see with 3x a week programming.  You have some weeks where you lift 3x and some where you lift twice.  It’s absolutely the right prescription of frequency for these workouts.  That said, because I don’t lift on weekends, I had to tweak it a little bit, but I did so by hitting a MMS workout on Fri and Mon, with an occasional one on Wed when my schedule required it.

**MY NUTRITION**

You are what you eat

* I did not abide by Dan John’s prescribed Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches protocol.  I think they would absolutely work and anyone who wants to get after it can go do so.  My nutrition is really pretty nutty these days, and if you want an indepth read on it, go back to this post

* Simplest explanation is Jamie Lewis’ Apex Predator diet.   Whenever I eat food, it’s carnivore.  Otherwise, protein sparring modified fasting using protein shakes.  I would train fasted and drink shakes/eat pure protein until either my midday or evening meal.  Weekends would have 1 pure carnivore day with 4 meals and 1 Rampage day with a carb-up meal.  I also employed Jamie’s “Feast, Famine and Ferocity” protocol, and spent the first 4 weeks of the program in a feast status and finished in a famine.  Ideally, I’d have reverse that, starting with a 2 week famine and ending with the feast, but this was just how my schedule shook out.

**RESULTS**

Certainly felt this way

* I started the program at 166lbs and weighed in on the 5th week at 171.2lbs.  5lbs in 5 weeks: I like it, especially when I was merely eating to satiety vs forcefeeding.  I also stayed lean as hell through it, primarily because those complexes make you WORK!

* I added 8 reps to my 192lb squat, going from 50

to 58

and added 13 reps to my 212lb squat, going from 27

to 40

**WHAT I WOULD DO DIFFERENT**

Try to have cleans this strong WITHOUT looking like this...

* Either learn how to clean or use a different implement/complex for the complexes.  The clean was the primarily limiter I ran into, followed by the press.  If you watch some of the videos of my complexes, I often can’t get the bar into the rack position to start the front squats.  I MAY have been able to solve this by resting slightly longer and coming in fully refreshed, but the REST of my body was fine: I was just lacking in the ability there.  I DID make a point to try to focus on moving as fast/explosively as possible, but I feel like switching to an axle and continentaling the weight would have been a better call.  Otherwise, I could just do a different but still heavy complex to accomplish the goal.  I give myself permission to do so next time, now that I’ve run the program in full as much as I could.

**SHOULD YOU DO THE PROGRAM?**

"Is this a joke?"

* Oh my goodness yes, AND buy the book that goes with it.  It’s another fantastic “all in one” read for only $10 and contains SO much Dan John goodness in it.  I’m so excited to have finally had a chance to run it and realize Dan John’s genius yet again.