ON INSURANCE

This was something I came up with this morning as I was getting ready for my 7th of 18 Super Squat workouts for my third run.  Anyone that has ever run this program knows that it beats the holy hell out of you AND that the only way to survive it is to eat.  I’m not going to lie or be humble here: I looked at myself fin the mirror and thought to myself “Holy f**k I look jacked for being in my 3rd week of Super Squats”.  And that statement was significant BECAUSE I had been eating my face off since starting this program, primarily because I’m not doing the gallon of milk a day, primarily because I’m 37 and have a kid and don’t need them seeing me living like that.  BUT, even more profound, as my mind meandered even further, I got to thinking about the fact that I really can just eat completely unrestricted for this 6 week training block and realize some insane potential, and it’s due to insurance.

I relate too much to this

And no: I’m not talking about having health insurance that will be able to take care of me if I make some terrible mistake (although that IS worth having, be sure to write your blood type on your Chuck Taylors before your widomakers kiddos!).  No, I’m talking about the insurance of knowing what I am truly capable of when I dedicate myself to it, and being able to fall back on exactly that when I need it.

Why can I eat as much as I need on Super Squats?  Because I have the insurance of knowing that I know how to lose fat when I need to.  I’ve lost fat SO many times that I’ve gotten pretty good at it, and I must point out that I’ve done that as someone that DOESN’T count calories or macros or track or log stuff.  If you make use of all that stuff, you should REALLY have some insurance there.  And each and every time I engage in fat loss, I come into it with the background of knowledge I had already accumulated which gives me an opportunity to learn even MORE about the process, so I get better and better at it, making it easier and easier.  In turn, this allows me to have even greater insurance as I gain, because I know that I KNOW how to reverse any of the “damage” of the process.  I can just focus on eating to recover and getting huge.  Which absolutely boggles my mind when I see so many young trainees who DID lose a bunch of fat post online about how they don’t want to go “on a bulk” because they’re worried about “getting fat”.  You’ve demonstrated that you KNOW how to get un-fat: you need to go prove to yourself that you can put on some muscle!

The fact you can make it into a video game is proof that the process is so fast and simple it can appeal to the shortest of attention spans

Going off a little bit more on a rant there, trainees have this other weird fear about how, if you get fat and then have to go on a fat loss phase, that’s time spent away from gaining.  When someone presents that argument to me, I can tell without even looking at them that they’ve never put on a serious amount of muscle from training.  Anyone who has ever undergone a TOUGH muscle gaining program knows that it’s entirely unsustainable over the long term.  You will WANT that fat loss phase, because you NEED a break from gaining.  And trying it back to insurance again, those fat loss phases of training are some of the best FOR experimenting and finding new things that work, because all you really need to worry about with your training during fat loss is training hard enough to keep muscle on your body.  The pressure is really on when you gain, but when you lose?  Just lose the RIGHT tissue and you’re fine.

Which ties into another fun bit of insurance: non-optimal training.  For some reason, trainees have it in their heads that they MUST train in the absolute most optimal way possible…OR ELSE!  …or else what?  What is the consequence of sub-optimal training?  Sub-optimal results?  Oh my: how awful!  What do they call the guy who graduated last in his medical school?  “Doctor”.  You can still get REALLY goddamn big and strong with sub-optimal training, and going full tilt INTO some sub-optimal training will teach you just that.  You learn about the 3 principles of effort, consistency and time, and realize that, once you have those in place, the finer details are going to account for maybe a 1-2% variance in outcome.  If it’s worth training in a way that just plain does not gel with you so that you can get that 1-2%, cool, but for anyone else: train sub-optimally for a while, observe that your results are “just fine”, and suddenly you give yourself a LOT of freedom to explore, play and LIVE.

The man on the right didn't even make the Olympic team and apparently never won against a big name.  How sub-optimal!  The man on the left is technically classified as jello.

And my absolute favorite: the fear of injury.  What insurance do we have here?  Many trainees go about this the wrong way: trying to create artificial insurance by “doing everything right”.  They have PERFECT form, they have dialed in their fatigue management, they stretch AND foam roll AND do mobility AND are properly hydrated etc etc.  Injuries STILL happen.  Life is a full-contact sport: wear a helmet.  No: the insurance from injuries is GETTING injured…and then recovering…and learning that we CAN heal and recover and come back better, faster and stronger than before.  And just like fat loss and sub-optimal training, through injury we LEARN.  I never would have discovered ROM progression if it weren’t for injury, or the value of good mornings, or the degree of body control I have to shift emphasis away from a wounded point.  And through semi-frequent injury, we get GOOD at BEING injured: I know how to wrap a knee wrap around a torn muscle to fake connective tissue and get through a set of squats.  I know the difference between “this is healing me” pain and “this is setting back my healing” pain.  Just like fat loss: I get better and better, which heals me faster, which gives me MORE insurance against injury.

But again, the comedy of trainees: in attempting to avoid injury, they avoid pushing themselves hard enough to REALLY grow.  Well why do they NOT want to get injured?  Because an injury will prevent them from training hard enough to grow…hey wait a minute!  In attempting to AVOID the injury, we already suffer the consequences OF the injury.  What irony!  Fear itself IS the injury.  But when we can operate without it, with the insurance of knowing that nothing can TRULY stop us, we can achieve great things.  And should we get injured, we know it will just be a matter of time and patience before we are back even better than before, and in the time between we can learn and grow.

LESSONS FROM POKEMON: IF YOU WANNA BE THE VERY BEST, YOU GOTTA CATCH ‘EM ALL!

Oh my god I already love this blogpost.  

It should shock absolutely none of my regular readers to know that I totally bought into Pokemon when it first came stateside on Gameboy back in ’98 with the corresponding anime.  I first learned of the show at my best friend Mike’s house at his 13th birthday party while I was in the 8th grade, as he had some VHS copies of the show that we binged while eating Pizza Hut (the only way I could make that more 90s if I said they were personal pan pizzas).  I was mandated by Mike to buy the blue copy of the game, since he had the red, and this way he could get all 150 Pokemon (we had no idea about Mew at the time), and I dutifully complied.

It should also shock absolutely no one to know that I immediately fell in awe of the Machop/Machoke/Machamp pokemon, and made a team out of them that got absolutely slaughtered by the psychic gym.  But reference my blogpost on “playing the game the way I want to play it” to understand the significance of that.

My life motto

I’ve already alienated my non-Pokemon playing readerbase here, but let me continue.  In the opening them of the English dub of Pokemon, the first words are “I wanna be the very best”.  This, in turn, is the goal of SO many trainees.  NO one is willing to be “good enough”, everyone wants to be optimal, absolute most perfect, completely flawless, no wasted effort, etc etc.  I’ve rallied against that SO many times, and in truth, if you’ve PLAYED Pokemon, you know just how handily you can beat the game by NOT being the very best.  It was a game built to be beaten by 10 year olds: strategy is not required for victory, only persistence is.  Holy f**k: I kinda wish that was the direction I was going to go with this post.  You know what: we’re calling that a lesson right now.

Folks, I’m building this airplane as I fly it: please bear with me.  

So yeah, there’s a lesson learned from Pokemon: you can overcome an absence of strategy with a surplus of persistence.  If you just make all your Pokemon level 100, it doesn’t matter if they’re all Magikarps and Dittos: you will f**k up the elite 4.  PLUS, you get the joy of watching the faces of those trainers when they lose to a goddamn level 100 Magikarp.

I don't know what the word is to describe the simultaneous feeling of delight and disappointment that this image exists, but I bet it's in German

But I more want to get into how the theme song tells you EXACTLY how to be the very best: you gotta catch ‘em all!  

I LOVE this, I really really do.  Because, so often, trainees want to know the ONE move they need to do.  “What is THE best exercise for pecs?  Lats?  Biceps?  Should I do high bar or low bar squats?  Conventional or sumo deadlifts?”

"Oh, you didn't mean all at once?"

Folks: you wanna be the very best, you GOTTA catch ‘em all!  There’s no reason to pick JUST one movement.  There’s a reason your pokemon team is a team of 6: there’s a time and a place for EVERYTHING.  And as my failed experiment of a team of Machokes demonstrated: he who fails to diversify…fails.

Right away I know people are going to chime in about some Soviet lifter that only did the snatch and the clean-and-jerk for 20 years and ended up putting a Buick over their head at the age of 40 and has a resting heart rate of 6.  Cool story: you’re not him.  For us non X-men, there’s a lot of value in doing LOTS of things in our pursuit of physical transformation.  Precisely because the process of transformation requires a stimulus placed upon the body that forces it to adapt…and if the body is ALREADY adapted…what the hell is it going to adapt TO?  

It's how you end up staying puny like a Caterpie

Convoluted?  Yes.  Let me explain.  You start barbell benching on a flat bench.  First time you do it, you look like one of those inflatable dancing tube arm men in front of a used car lot: zero tension, flopping all over the bench, strength leaking everywhere.  You keep benching, your body starts adapting: it says “we are a being that benches a barbell on a flat bench: let’s become GOOD at that”.  You learn how to create tension, how to be stable, how to maximize force output, how to be strong.  Your body begins to prioritize the strengthening of the muscles that will best suit getting strong in the barbell bench.  And, eventually, the body ceases to adapt.  It says “We’ve adapted enough: we are a quality being that benches a barbell on a flat bench”

Well now what?  Well NOW we incline the bench.  And back to inflatable tube man we go!  And from there, muscles grow strong from different angles, or perhaps even brand new muscles get recruited into the process.  And we repeat the process.  And one day we can even cycle all the way back to that barbell flat bench, and THEN guess what?  All that strength we built from crazy angles and different movements can get recruited and help us bypass whatever initial plateau we hit when the body decided it had “adapted enough”, and we can get even STRONGER…until we don’t.  And then we know what to do.

It's amazing how WADA has the same motto

It's why I constantly say the phase “no reason to pick only one”.  “Some cycles one way, some another”, is my other go to.  Most people are in a rush to pick just ONE movement because it obviates them of the obligation to actually THINK, but, unfortunately, physical transformation requires a smart kind of stupidity.  I constantly talk about how people are overthinking their training, but here is a special kind of overthinking where folks are trying to out-think THINKING!  They’re trying to front load all the cerebral work.  They think “if I can just figure out the absolute most best move FIRST, then I’ll never need to think about training again!  I can just do that one move forever!”  

Going back to my Pokemon analogy that I started this with: it’s like wanting to know what ONE attack you should use for the rest of the game in order to win.  Or which ONE Pokemon to pick so you can win.  We know the game doesn’t work that way.  Yes: you can win the game with JUST persistence…but the other part of that is by having FUN with it.  The game was built to be won by 10 year old who picked a team because they LIKED the Pokemon on their team.  They weren’t slogging miserably through the game trying to put in the minimal amount of mental effort in order to win: they were enjoying the experience.  They were LIVING.  They were playing a game and having fun.  THAT’S what this is.   And that’s coming from the dude that fully admits he hates training.  I hate exercise, I hate exerting myself, I’d rather play Pokemon NOT as an analogy, but I have fun PLAYING this game of discovering just how many different and unique ways I can go about affecting physical transformation in myself.

Ok, "fun" might be the wrong word

Try a MILLION different things in your pursuit of physical transformation.  Catch ‘em all!  Run Super Squats into Deep Water into Building the Monolith into Korte’s 3x3 into Conjugate into Mass Made Simple into Tactical Barbell into Dogg Crapp into Smolov into whatever else you see fit.  Do a 6 week cycle of reverse grip bench pressing.  Try my patented “Super Good Mornings”.  Wanna do lateral raises with the pinkies up for some cycles and pinkies down for others?  Cool!  You wanna be the very best?  You gotta catch ‘em all!  If you try to take this game on with just 1 Pokemon who only knows 1 move, you’re gonna get stomped by the first trainer you find who is actually out there having fun.

  

LIONS AND SHEEP: BE THE SHEEP

  

In my typical contrarian fashion, I’m going take the trite “lions and sheep” expression and reverse it.  For anyone somehow NOT aware of what lions and sheep gets at, it’s your typical 1980s Gordon Gecko-esque metaphor talking about how the majority of people are sheep, meekly following the herd without question and with no real means of defending themselves, whereas the “apex predators” of the world are the lions: living prideful at the top of the food chain as the “king of the jungle”, carving their own path and doing things on their terms.  From this, we even get derisive terms like “sheeple” used to describe the majority of humans that just go with the flow and do what they're told, whereas WE, the “enlightened”, need to break free and embrace the powerful lion inside of us.  Bah I say!  Yes: pun-intended.  I’m here to argue in favor OF the sheep, and why we should embrace such sheepdom.

I was pretty close to going with this

 

What makes the lion so great?  They’re apex predators, cool.  What does that mean?  As predators, they hunt and kill the food that they eat, and as apex predators, they live without any other threats to their existence (outside of, of course, humans, which are such “good” predators that we’ll kill animals we have NO intention of eating…but I digress).  They are on top of the food chain, and anything they want: they take.  When they’re hungry, they know that they can just waltz into the savannah, find an animal, kill it and eat it.  And the lion is SO sure of its ability that it will even leave some meat behind!  The lion helps itself to the prime cuts of its kill and leaves behind the refuse for the scavengers: hyenas and the like, who possess the proper digestive enzymes to consume carrion without experience life threatening illness.  Isn’t biology and evolution a hoot?!

 

The sheep…is not that.  The sheep is the complete opposite of ANY sort of predator: apex or otherwise.  The sheep is prey.  The sheep is a vegetarian: its “prey” is grass and grain.  If you’ve ever mowed a lawn: you’ve engaged in the cat-and-mouse predatory game that a sheep engages in when it goes for the kill.  Lions live in prides, with a head male that sires heirs with a harem of females.  Sheep congregate in herds with no real social order.  Sheep seek the protection OF other animals FROM other animals, relying on a sheepdog or a shepherd to protect them from the very apex predators that make up the ranks of the lion.

 

But what I find admirable about the sheep is its eating habits.  Whereas the lion will eat until it is satisfied, then move on and nap for 18 hours until it’s time for the next kill, a sheep will literally eat until it dies. 

Amateurs!

 

That is not hyperbole: if left unchecked and unregulated, a sheep will eat until the point that they overload their digestive systems with too many calories and too much lactic acid and die from it.  They will die from the very act that is supposed to keep them alive.  The job of a shepherd is to PREVENT THE SHEEP FROM EATING TO DEATH.

 

FIND ME an animal more aware of its “purpose” than the noble sheep.  You wanna talk “biological imperative”, you wanna talk “will to live”, you wanna talk survival: the sheep.  The sheep is SO committed to living IT WILL DIE FROM IT.  Because the sheep ISN’T an apex predator.  It does NOT have the assurance of the lion that food will ALWAYS be available to it: all it has to do is go out and take it.  The sheep does NOT know when its next meal is coming, so when it HAS that meal, it takes it for ALL that it is worth.  It abandons all sense of self-awareness, self-preservation or basic comfort.  Marinade on that last point (Hah!  A food pun).  You ever eat a little too much at Thanksgiving and feel uncomfortably full?  Can you even fathom what it’s like to eat to the point you literally die from it?  Can you imagine how much agony you would have to be in prior to that moment, yet you STILL keep eating?  The sheep is admirable!

It's like this, but eating cheesecake

 

The lion quiet literally rests on its laurels!  It has grown lazy and complacent FROM its apex predator status.  It has no challenge, so it does not rise to meet any challenge.  It lives a life of resting and feasting: that is the life of most modern westerners!  But the sheep?  The sheep lives in such constant existential fear of annihilation that its drive to live overwhelms its biological governors!  This is the sheer manifestation of “will to power”: to engage in overcoming to such a large degree you exceed your actual capabilities and expire from it.  Look at how “game” this fear of destruction has kept the sheep, whereas the lion spends 7/8ths of its existence unconscious and unaware.  Which animal is truly living?

 

The sheep inspired me in my last run of Super Squats.  I was given a bar, a rack, and an objective: squat the weight for 20 reps.  I knew what squatting the weight would do for me: achieve physical transformation.  I know what I had to do.  And I remember feeling my hamstring tear on the eccentric on the 20th rep, just to hit the bottom and finish the concentric and rack the weight.  Because like the sheep: I was going to squat until I died.  Think of when you’ve seen someone pull a 15 second deadlift single, not even inching the bar up by MILIMETERING the bar up.  They are blowing out every blood vessel in their face, but they are GOING to get that rep, because they are the sheep, the food is there, and they must live.  Hell, consider taking a direct lesson from the sheep, and all the times you’ve observed a trainee that is CLEARLY uncomfortable with how much they are eating, but they continue to do so because they have goals.  John Berardi spoke about eating his post lifting meal IN THE SHOWER, because there was a fair chance he was going to throw up SOME of it and he wanted to be able to clean it up quickly. 

There's a reason I review this book so positively 

 

Do you have the dedication of the sheep?  Will you keep going until you literally die from it?  Or are you some sort of lazy, spoiled lion: going out for the kill only when it’s on YOUR terms on YOUR time, and merely eating until you are satisfied?  Try living so hard you die from it sometime.  You may find, in your pursuit of that limit, you reach some INCREDIBLE outcomes.

YOU AREN’T THAT OLD

 

Once again, my slumming on forums around the internet has allowed me to build up a headful of steam and rant about something.  Today’s discussion centers around the age-old desire to grow up too fast.  We see this with young children all the time.  Qualifiers on age (I’m 6 AND A HALF), attempts to jump to new milestones before they are ready (crossing the street too young, staying out too late, getting to that coveted “R” rated movie), dressing/acting older, etc.  The comedy being that, once you reach “of age”, you cling desperately to your youth, with many people aging without grace and denying their birthdays.  But this phenomenon extends into the realm of training as well, with young trainees RACING to be “just like the old dudes”…and in doing so co-opting habits, patters, quirks and traits that are not just ridiculous but actively destroying their opportunity to actually reach “of age”.  Allow me to explain…

How you look to me

 

Where I primarily observe this quality is in the realm of “injury”.  And I put it into quotes because, really, these are phantom injuries.  There is no source for them, they cannot be seen by MRI, there’s no diagnosis and, in turn, no treatment.  But despite all of this, I constantly observe trainees as young as teenagers bemoaning their “bad knees”, “elbow pain”, “junk shoulder”, etc etc.  These trainees, in turn, have written off a whole HOST of movements that are “no longer possible” due to their “injuries”.  No more back squats (god I hate writing “back squat”): our “bad back” will only allow us to do front squats.  Gotta give up all straight bar pressing because of our bad shoulders.  With my elbow pain, I gotta stick with just machines.

 

Jesus people: what did you do in your first 16 years of existing to wear out your connective tissue so quickly?!  Are you a Soviet era acrobat, recruited from age 1 into a rigorous training program paired with an unsustainable touring schedule to entertain the nobility?  Are you an impoverish Thai child that got roped into the world of Muay Thai prizefighting, boasting a record with a combined 367 fights as a means to put food on the table?  Are you one of 15 children performing manual farm labor in pre-industrial era America?  Did you have an illegal job working as a child coal miner?  HOW DID YOU GET SO BROKEN?!

Carpal tunnel doesn't count

 

These young trainees are in such a rush to grow up that they’re co-opting the brokenness of their idols…but forgoing to co-opt the breaking PROCESS.  You might see a 1000lb squatter talking about how they can’t use a straight bar at all in training because their shoulders are junk and they only save it for the meet: what you AREN’T seeing is the 10,000 squat sessions they did WITH a straight bar beforehand before they reached that status.  Or how the herniated disc that forces a lifter to rely on the Romanian deadlift for their hip hinged herniated on the 400th deadlift workout with 800lbs.  Folks: for Icarus’ wings to melt, he had to fly close to the sun FIRST!

 

You’re not going to achieve greatness through the mimicry of failure: you achieve greatness through the pursuit of the HUBRIS that eventually led to the failure.  The reason you’re watching these great athletes overcome their own injuries in the first place is because THEY ARE GREAT ATHLETES, and they achieved greatness due to a willingness to push their bodies WELL beyond the limits, to the point that they encountered disfigurements and injuries that are unfathomable to an average person.   They EARNED the right to be broken, and the “reward” is the option to compensate with alternatives, work arounds, and substitutions so that they can continue to push themselves stupidly hard, because they only know one way to live.  If you watch Ronnie Coleman these days, he will crutch himself to a machine and STILL give 100% of his soul into a set.  David Goggins ran to the point of passing blood through his urine on MULTIPLE occasions.  THAT’S how these people got so broken…and, before that, so fantastic.

More effort in this one set than some trainees put into a whole life

 

And, consequently, you’re not going to get so BROKEN by living a very average life.  Is that a threat or a promise?  So very few people are at risk of their reach ever exceeding their grasp.  Do you know how often I have to explain to someone what it means to eat to recover from training?  These are people who have literally NEVER “under-recovered”: they have ALWAYS trained so little and recovered so much that they were in a state of full recovery, to the point that they cannot wrap their brains around what it feels like when they are NOT recovered.  If you’ve never felt that feeling, you’re at NO risk of being so broken that you can’t actually do a proper barbell squat or bench with a straight bar. 

 

Growing up and growing old really is the perfect lens to understand this phenomenon from.  You need to get some age on you before you get to be so old.  And you can be old in calendar age and young in training age, and vice versa.  Mark Felix got into strongman at 37, which meant he was a child in the sport at an age where Kevin Nee was well into retirement.  And both were incredible athletes, simply hitting their primes at different points in their physical lives.  There’s even something to be said about the value of maturity as it relates to training, and a more “grown up” trainee may be able to make more intelligent decisions that prolongs their longevity…but there’s ALSO something to be said about the recklessness of youth allowing us to push STUPIDLY beyond our limits due to a complete lack of self-preservation instincts or sense of danger.  But, in either sense: it requires a willingness to GET broken before one ACTS broken.  Before you start babying your junk knee and garbage shoulders, go out and earn them.  

 

BOOK REVIEW: DAN JOHN’S EASY STRENGTH OMNIBOOK

**INTRO**

 

Dan John has been teasing the release of his Easy Strength Omnibook for months now over various podcasts and I’m just going to flat out say: it was worth the wait.  Folks: buy this book.  I’ll go into details shortly, but I want to lead with the conclusion.  I pre-ordered this book as soon as it was available and was able to download it on Christmas Eve and could not put it down until it was finished.  This is Dan in top form.

Here is where you can get it

https://danjohnuniversity.com/bookstore

 

**WHAT IS THE BOOK ABOUT?**

Almost...

 

Fundamentally, this is a 300+ page e-book on the Easy Strength program, which, in turn, is a program comprised of 5 sentences from Pavel Tsastouline relayed to Dan John a few decades ago.

 

“For the next forty workouts, pick five lifts. Do them every workout. Never miss a rep, in fact, never even get close to struggling. Go as light as you need to go and don’t go over ten reps for any of the movements in a workout. It is going to seem easy. When the weights feel light, simply add more weight.”

 

That Dan is able to write 300 pages on 5 sentences speaks to a few different qualities.  One is that Pavel is amazingly talented at taking a complex idea and boiling it down into a simple executable plan, and Dan, in turn, is amazingly talented at taking simple executable plans and digging VERY deep into the “whys” and “hows”.  Alongside that, it speaks to how, it doesn’t matter HOW simple you make the plan: people will STILL screw it up.  And Dan admits to doing just that a few times while running this on his own, going too heavy sometimes, too high in volume on swings, the many many MANY failed attempts to include squats into the program, etc.  And he does a great job of detailing all these adventures, and many more discoveries, through the book.

 

**WHAT THE BOOK ISN’T ABOUT**

This shouldn't be happening

Unlike Mass Made Simple (another fantastic read), this is not a book about putting on mass.  It’s not a book about maximizing conditioning.  It’s not a book about improving sports skills. 

 

Easy Strength, the program, is about doing exactly what is needed to ensure one has the necessary strength TO PERFORM.  One must remember that Dan coaches ATHLETES: not lifters.  And yes: you can lift AS an athletic activity (and Dan DOES have an Easy Strength with Olympic Lifting program in the book), but one has to approach the book and program with the understanding that lifting is the MEANS: NOT the end.  And strength, in turn, is a means to an end in the whole spectrum of how Dan approaches training.

 

As much as I (and many of you) would love to be superhuman strong, it’s worth appreciating that, for sports, there comes a point where enough strength IS enough, and the benefit of pushing strength further will not be worth the opportunity cost that comes with spending that time and energy in other venues (specifically, doing those things that get us BETTER at the sport).

 

By Dan’s admission (and demonstration), and Easy Strength workout takes about 15 minutes.  This is the amount of time dedicated in a whole athlete program toward the specific goal of developing strength to support athletics.  This does not necessarily mean that the athlete’s WORKOUT is only 15 minutes: it means we’ve streamlined the process of strength building down to its most essential elements so that we can now spend MORE of our time improving ourselves at sports.

 

**HOW WOULD I APPLY THIS?**

Keep in mind my track record...

 

I am not reviewing the Easy Strength program, because I have not done it.  What I am writing is merely my understanding, and a “what I WOULD do” approach.

 

But say you were an MMA athlete.  You have a demand to improve your conditioning, striking skills, grappling skills, and strength.  That’s a LOT of demands, and many struggle trying to balance all of them.

 

With Easy Strength, you could start your daily training with a 15 minute EASY workout that achieves the objectives of building strength to support MMA.  Dan picks basic, fundamental human movements for his 5 here (upper body push, upper body pull, hinge, ab wheel and loaded carry), which will cover all the basis of strength needed for an athlete.  As trendy as it is to have some sort of incredibly complicated and overly specific strength training protocol with bosu balls and stability training, those qualities can be developed through the actual ATHLETIC training of the athlete.  Here: we’re just making ourselves stronger.

 

After those 15 minutes, one can then move on to whatever objective needs covering that day.  Striking, conditioning, grappling, etc etc.

No

 

And, of course, you can see how to extrapolate that to other athletic realms. As a Strongman competitor, I could start my training day off with an Easy Strength workout to make sure I am strong ENOUGH for my sport, and from there spend time doing conditioning drills, working technique on the implements, or even turn it around and do some muscle building work if I’m in an off season.

 

The other application of Easy Strength would be in line with Dan John’s “bus bench-park bench” protocol, along with his discussions on minimalism.  Easy Strength is a “minimalist” program: it’s the lowest dose needed to still get results.  These protocols are great to follow after periods of MAXIMAL training: were we’ve been pushing the volume and intensity hard in order to accomplish some sort of radical physical transformation.  This is balance, it’s duality, it’s basic periodization.  And, typically, after that really intense training, a program like this allows us to REALIZE all that we’ve built, which is just a fantastic experience.

 

One could easily do this with some of Dan’s programs.  6 weeks of Mass Made Simple, 2 months of Easy Strength, 4 weeks of the 10k swing challenge, 2 months of Easy Strength, etc.  Dan even lays out a schedule just like this in the book. 

 

**WHY I LIKE THE BOOK**

 

It wasn't just the slick marketing

Dan John personifies signal-to-noise ratio and this book is in top form for it.  At 300+ pages, there is no filler.  Points get repeated, yes, but differently enough that they ENHANCE the understanding of the reader, compared to Stuart McRobert in “Beyond Brawn” who is just brow beating the reader with the same point, or Brooks Kubrik in Dinosaur Training (a book I have STARTED multiple times and simply cannot get through because of the writing style).  I never wanted to put this book down, and I was sad when it was over.  As soon as I’d finish a chapter, I’d see the title of the next one and think “Oh damn, THIS chapter is going to be even better than the last!”, and I’d get sucked in and discover I was right.

 

And I say all this as someone with no intention of running the program in the near future.  I was the same way with Mass Made Simple.  And I re-read that book constantly too.  That’s because Dan is able to take local lessons and apply them on a global level.  SO many of the lessons on Easy Strength that Dan shares are lessons that can easily be applied outside of that specific arena, to include training for athletes, balancing of workloads, an appreciation for what qualities matter and what don’t, talks on nutrition and fat loss, a fantastic discussion on what makes the squat a great mass building movement whereas the deadlift is more a strength building movement, etc. 

 

Dan took 40+ years of coaching experience and put it into 300+ pages of written word, broken down into easy to read and digest 2-4 page chapters that are laser focused and hard hitting.  This book is a gift to humanity. 

 

**WHO WON’T LIKE IT**

These people

 

If the only reason you read training books is for a spreadsheet and photos demonstrating how to do exercises, you will not enjoy this.  If you want a book on extreme transformation, you will not like this.  If you do not like to read in general, you will not like this.

 

**SHOULD YOU BUY IT?**

 

Yes.  100% yes.  It’s currently in e-book format: get it as an e-book.  If it gets a hard release: get that too. 

 

Be happy to field questions about my experience reading it.

7 DEADLY SINS, SLAVE MORALITY AND ASCENDING INTO THE OVERMAN

 Continuing on with the Nietzsche theme, let’s go full “anti-Christ” here and examine how the famed “7 deadly sins” are, in fact, aspects of “slave morality” intent on preventing you from achieving your goal of physical transformation, which is, in turn, to ascend to the overman (I avoid “ubermensch” because guys with shaved heads and high socks have totally ruined that).

 

But this DOES look pretty cool...

WHAT IS SLAVE MORALITY?

It doesn't refer to the karma hit you take when you get this trait

To quickly summarize: Nietzsche presented an idea that there are truly TWO different classifications of morals: slave and master.  This coincides with the differing classes of people: those who are ruled, and those who rule.  With two classifications of peoples, you need two systems of morality, for the qualities that make one a good peon do NOT make one a good leader, and vice versa.  Good leaders need aggression, ruthlessness, cunning, ambition, and an ability to operate within the morally grey in order to make the tough decisions to keep civilization in tact, but if a member of the ruled class develops these qualities they run the risk of attempting to topple over society via a revolution, so they, in turn, need to be meek, subservient, chaste, moderate and pacified. 

 

Nietzsche goes on to discuss how Christianity is a prime example of slave morality.  It emphasizes chastity, peace, equality, love, etc etc.   Fantastic qualities for a ruled class to be cohesive and manageable: not great qualities for someone with a job of leading people FORWARD and, eventually, allowing for the arrival of the overman.  The overman, of course, being the next phase in human evolution: that which we are ASPIRING to be.

 

With this established, allow us to examine the 7 deadly sins: Gluttony, Sloth, Wrath, Avarice, Pride, Envy and Lust, and how they apply positively to the qualities of physical transformation.

 

GLUTTONY

It can save your life!

Starting with the simplest here: gluttony stands in opposition of moderation and temperance.  The glutton is all consuming, traditionally considered with foodstuffs and beverage but, in truth, gluttonous behavior can manifest in all variety of manor.  We can be gluttons for entertainment, social media, adulation, punishment, etc etc.

 

Those seeking physical transformation, those seeking to ascend, must ABSOLUTELY engage in gluttony.  And whereas gluttony tends to be in opposite of the balance of temperance, we seek a balance IN gluttony by being gluttonous in MANY avenues.  We SHOULD be gluttons for food and drink…but that is primarily because we will be gluttons for TRAINING.  We will absolutely slam our bodies with hard, rigorous intense lifting and conditioning work, and then feed it copious amounts of food in order to facilitate the recovery from the training.  And again: we are gluttons.  We do not eat to FUEL the training: we eat in celebration of the training being DONE.  The food we are gluttons for is in response for the training we are gluttons for.   And how else will we recover?

 

SLOTH

The Superman shirt just made it too perfect

How interesting that sloth will be the opposing force of gluttony in order for us to find some sort of harmonious sin to achieve our overcoming, but here we are to discuss that.

 

I took a LOT of heat for a post I wrote a few years ago, and I’m going to die right on that hill again: if your goal is to get bigger, stop lifting weights 6 days a week.  PLEASE READ THE WORDS THIS TIME.  “Bigger”, not “stronger”.  “Lifting weights”, not “training”.  I train every day, and twice a day tends to be my standard, but I lift weights with a goal of growing muscular size 3-4 days a week.  I’ve been writing this blog for over a decade now: I’m VERY particular about words, and it’s for a reason: words mean things.  In this instance, my point is clear: lifting weights 3-4 days a week is a far superior approach compared to 6 days a week for most trainees.

Ask yourself this question

Those with the slave morality of “work ethic” BRISTLE at the idea of only lifting weights 3-4 days a week.  They only feel satisfied when they are ALWAYS working.  How else will they achieve their “reward” unless they are constantly at their Church of Iron, dutifully performing worship with work and acts of penance?

 

Meanwhile, the slothful sinners get by only lifting 3-4 days a week…and in doing so, transform into something monstrous in the process.  Why is that? In truth: these individuals NEED this sloth and gluttony paired together in order to recover and grow.  Why? 

 

WRATH

Because these individuals are the masters of the sin of wrath.  They bring wrath INTO training.  And no: I do not mean that these individual get hopped up on pre-workout and nose tork and crank up the thrash metal and slam their forehead on the bar before a set.  Those “in the know” recognize that this is FEAR, NOT wrath.  These are the acts of a trainee terrified of what lay before them in the training hall, and they are doing everything in their power to “scare the fear away”.  Fear is not what we seek.  Fear is what controls “the slaves”.

 

No, wrath in training is that ability to take that burning and seething that exists inside of you and pour it into your training in white, hot, pure concentrated unrelenting force in order to absolutely destroy what’s in front of you.  And once again, this is not about slamming bars and throwing plates: this happens on the INSIDE.  This is about being able to pour EVERY OUNCE of yourself into a single set.  Those without wrath, those who are peaceful, they can spend an entire training session never once actually accomplishing any sort of meaningful training reps or sets: training so painfully away from their capability that they do nothing to spark change.  Those who have mastered wrath can do just ONE set for a workout and, in that one set, pour every ounce of their wrath into the set that they have done more than enough to grow.  These individuals will require a substantial amount of sloth and gluttony in order to support their wrath.

 

What, in turn, fuels this wrath?

 

ENVY

Oh my god thank you!

I, to this day, STILL do not understand the big deal about “unrealistic expectations” as it relates to achieving physical greatness.  ALL of my heroes, idols and role models have been unrealistic.  From the ones that actually existed, like Arnold and Hulk Hogan, to cartoons and comics like Juggernaut and Colossus, to myths and legends like Hercules and Samson, I’ve always wanted to be just like these people.  And before I go on any further: stop getting upset about people in the spotlight using steroids.  Even if these dudes were natural, you would STILL never come close to them, because they picked better parents than you did.  You want to talk “unrealistic expectations”, how about we talk about how unfair it is that some folks are simply going to be born better than others.

 

But onto envy: it is BECAUSE I envied the success of these individuals that I had the drive to make myself INTO something “greater than”.  Envy is good: covet the success of others, because it is this covetous activity that will fester that wrath inside of you that is the driver of progress in your training.  Those told not to envy, to find “realistic standards”, to be satisfied with mediocrity…are mediocre.  Slaves.  Those that want only the best will set their sights on obtaining the best.  And once again, on that subject of genetics: they may not rank AMONG the best, but they can be the best that THEY can be.

 

And what should that result in?

 

PRIDE

It's working well for this dude

Much like how gluttony and sloth become the two balancing forces of sin, so too are Pride and Envy, for envy gave us the catalyst to pursue greatness, pride allows us to maintain that pursuit.  And just because we have pride in what we’ve accomplished does not mean that we cannot still have envy as we pursue even greater feats. 

 

But what pride ALLOWS us to do is actually train appropriately for the goal we are in pursuit of.  Oh my God (HAH!  Lord’s name in vain!  Let’s break some commandments too!) can you dudes running beginner programs for over a year PLEASE drop the false modesty and call yourself a “non-beginner” so that you can FINALLY start doing some REAL training?  Your unwillingness to take pride in your work is actually causing you to have results you SHOULD be ashamed of: it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy!  Instead, have the pride necessary to say “I know enough that I can train for real now”, and give yourself permission to run those programs that are going to get you results that OTHERS will envy.  Do your 12-16 weeks of a beginner program and then move immediately on to Super Squats, take a deload, then go after Deep Water.  Oh my God, if a beginner actually did that I would be so ENVIOUS of them, because that’s one HELL of a foundation to start kicking sand in the face of others on the beach.

 

And exercise that pride when it comes time to challenge those whom pride is their downfall.  Engage in that metaphorical sand-kicking.  When someone who has NO business offering advice is out there corrupting the youth with their own slave morality and mediocrity, ask them how much they bench.  Question why they are not big and strong if they know so much about how to accomplish those results.  Ask them why they have not TRAINED anyone to be big and strong if they respond that great coaches are not always great athletes.  Flex your pride and rob them of theirs.

 

And in that robbing…

 

AVARICE & LUST

I'll let you decide which is which

I’m going to combine these two, one reason being that this post has already gotten long, but the second being that both of these serve the function of driving us forward and being the balancing force of wrath.  Avarice and lust are both forms of passion and compulsion, and stand in contrast to the virtues of charity and chastity.  Once again, the “life denying philosophy” of slave morality shows through, in telling the ruled class that they must share amongst themselves their material goods yet keep to themselves their flesh.  An interesting bit of paradox there, but a ruled class that shares does not look to the ruler for wealth, and a chaste ruled class encounters far less instances of the dramas that result from too much promiscuity.

 

Well that was a wild tangent.  Let me bring it back to physical transformation: greed and lust are what compel us to continue toward this pursuit and, again, the balance to wrath.  Training is awful.  Eating well is awful.  In truth, these activities tend to be more associated with the virtuous than the sinner, and engaging in them with such frequency and regularity is sure to drive us to be wrathful.  We will grow to resent these activities rather quickly, and the repeated impact of performing them grows our wrath…but then why do we keep doing them?

 

Because we greedily lust after the RESULTS of this training.  We obsess over these results: we covet them and drool over them and fill our minds with them and will ourselves to perform all manner of nastiness in order to achieve them.  Our lust compels us to chase these results, and our avarice compels us to get more and more and more, with no end in sight.  There’s no satisfaction, there’s never “enough”.  But that is what is needed for physical transformation.

 

Those that are satisfied are those that are ruled.  The rulers are those constantly seeking more.  They expand their empires rather than maintain their households and they, in turn, are the bridge to the overman.  Going for a light walk after a light dinner is the journey of the chaste and the charitable: Super Squats and a gallon of milk a day are for the lusters and the misers.