Dan John: Wandering Weights, Our Epic Journey Through All Things Heavy, Issue # 33
Basically, all I do now is travel and teach. I was talking with my group the other day about being careful with our goals. In junior college, I told my counselor—the only counselor in my career who ever really helped me—that I wanted to teach at a JC, coach and travel the world.
I teach at Columbia College now, coach as much as I want, and travel more than I ever expected. Goals are funny things: they can happen. Let’s talk about this a little bit.
We'll start with another nice article from Adam over at physionomics. Quoting the bullet points:
· Establish the goal, and then get to work on achieving it.
· Shift your mindset from passive to active.
· Have faith in your plan and whatever you are doing right now will work out as long as you stick it out.
· Focus on the things you can control and don’t stress about the things you can’t.
· Enjoy the journey — it means more than the goal itself.
· Focus on the small things you can do everyday (the processes) to keep you motivated and moving forward.
Taylor Lewis pinged me a great article. It's about more than just motivation, and I like Adrian’s insights on Tony Robbins. I often hear critics of Robbins argue that he just recycles old information. Frankly, that sounds like me, too. But, Robbin’s enthusiasm makes the difference. A great point:
“There is so much life hidden inside every single person you meet.”
Although this article is about fashion, the points holds true for everything in life. I recently had an unintentional “paring” of many of my friends and I'm amazed how much easier some parts of my life are now. Pare down your life, training, and options.
Is there a simpler lifting program than not lifting? Well, isometrics is training without movement…so to speak. A lot of people have forgotten isometrics. On the list of things that work really well for about six weeks, including machine training and insane training, isos have that great ability to push through a plateau. Andrew Read does a nice job here with the basics.
If you want more complexity, let’s give you five things to do. I'm a big fan of Bret Contreras’ work and in this article, he gives a template I think we can all agree on.
The “what you need to know” is a nice start for all of us. Quoting:
- The deep squat is an essential movement pattern that you'll lose if you don't perform it regularly. Just squat as deep as you can go with your own body weight.
- Glute contractions, hamstring stretches, and pec/shoulder stretches can be done daily, especially if you have an office job.
- Stressed-out? Do 3-5 minutes of diaphragmatic breathing.
Now, that we have exercise dialed in, we'll read about nutrition. I've known Jerry Trubman for a while—we bump into each at events a lot. I liked this point:
“I hear many people who are budget conscious say that it costs too much to eat healthy. First off, I don’t buy it (more on that in a future post). Secondly, I think this is short-sighted. We need to factor in the other aspects of these poor nutritional decisions. Since just about all of the top selling prescription medications are to combat what even medical professionals consider “lifestyle-related” ailments, I often wonder what the health care industry would look like if no one was overweight and real food were the only options available at grocery stores and restaurants. I had a weird thought the last time I visited my local pharmacy: In the very back of the store (the actual pharmacy) they sell pills to treat the symptoms caused by consuming the things they sell in the front of the store (alcohol, tobacco, soda, junk food, etc). This thought has bothered me ever since, so I thought I’d let it bother all of you too. I’ve also heard it said that instead of asking why high quality foods cost so much more, maybe instead we should be asking why poor quality foods are so cheap?”
Now that you have goal setting, fashion, exercise and nutrition dialed in, let’s talk about changing the world.
Leadership and talking about leadership is a popular subject. We might all be just paraphrasing Cyrus the Great. When Cyrus and I played high school football, he was just pretty good. Here is a quick summary from Ryan Holiday (I'll keep this short):
“Brevity is the soul of command. Too much talking suggests desperation on the part of the leader. Speak shortly, decisively and to the point–and couch your desires in such natural logic that no one can raise objections. Then move on.”
Hmmm. That’s enough!
Dan
DanJohn.net
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Publisher’s note: "This is a book that is sharp, clear, new information about how to make a bigger impact on the people you personal train or coach. It’s hard to adequately describe how much clearer and more intelligent than what you normally can find in the health and fitness space."
~ Josh Hillis, author of Fat Loss Happens on Monday
Click to get your copy of Can You Go? today.
In stock in print, all ebook formats and audio
~ Josh Hillis, author of Fat Loss Happens on Monday
Click to get your copy of Can You Go? today.
In stock in print, all ebook formats and audio