Stronger for Life: The 5 Foundational Lifts, Essential Recovery Rituals, and Key Fitness Markers for Strength That Lasts a Lifetime.

Ageless Athlete Recording - Dan John
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Kush: [00:00:00] Dan, I always, always like to start off with this question, which is, where are you right now and what did you have for breakfast 

Dan: Okay. So I'm in my office, which is, I'm a, I have a three story house. This is the on the bottom floor. I've used this as an office for a long time. My sauna is right next to me and my weight room is just up the stairs and outside.

So it's a, it's a, it's really easy to get to. Uh, for breakfast today, I had two scrambled eggs. I had cottage cheese. I had a protein drink with three different berries in it and cantaloupe and about 500 cups of coffee. And then I had to go do some. I'm, I'm, I'm drinking a diet beverage because I was in the car and I, it's freezing, but inside of a car, it turns into a little terrarium and, uh, so I got thirsty as I was walking down the stairs, so there you go.

So I know you mentioned 

Kush: recently you were in South San Francisco, [00:01:00] close to where I am, but where are you right now? 

Dan: Oh, I'm sorry. I'm in Murray, Utah. So, I, Murray is a, well, I hate when people say we're a suburb of Salt Lake. We're our own city, but Salt Lake is growing around us, but we're a very proud town.

But originally I'm from South San Francisco. Yeah, the industrial city. Yes, 

Kush: sure, sure. Amazing. You know, uh, I heard from somebody else that Salt Lake is now a bit rainy and, uh, cold. I spent some time there this summer when the season was the opposite. I was there for a couple of weeks and it was touching a hundred and the heat drove me further up the Rockies.

But I, I love Salt Lake. I love all the outdoor recreation and all of the Yeah. All of that stuff, right? Yeah, right on the Rockies. It's, it's a great place to live. 

Dan: We're supposed to, we're supposed to be a desert, but we just had, we're, we're in the middle of the, it's, it's, we already broke the record rainiest, uh, October of all time.[00:02:00] 

Most, most water. So, but, uh, you know, I know a lot of people don't believe in climate change, but when it stares you in the face, it's a little hard to argue with it. Yeah. So 

Kush: That's right. That's right. When you're getting either, uh, drenched or you're getting baked, then the, the reality kinda gets you, and yeah, I love that you have your, uh.

Your weight room and and did you say your sauna, like right next to you? 

Dan: Yeah. I have a sauna. I spend quality money on recovery tools and Oh, you know, I, I, I take it all pretty serious, but I've also been, this is my 60th year, uh, in weightlifting. So I've learned, during this time that you, you can go cheap on some things, but it going cheap adds up over time.

And I keep learning that lesson over and over. if you're gonna buy equipment, do your best to buy the best equipment you can. Uh, if you're gonna buy, uh, I mean, if you're gonna take supplements, don't go cheap. It's [00:03:00] not worth going cheap. If you're gonna buy, food, try to, try to buy qual. So that is a life lesson I keep bumping into in every area of my life.

Buy quality, uh, and I know it's hard, but it's worth it in, in the long run. 

Kush: Yeah. 

Dan: Yeah. 

Kush: I can't agree more. And I also think that somehow, you know, we will go and spend resources and precious money on so many other things, but when it comes to some of these fundamentals to help look after, honestly, like the only asset we really have on this planet, which is us and our body, we sometimes can get, very budget oriented and frugal.

And the other thing also is that, you know, we'll buy whatever equipment we have and then we store this stuff in some dank corner of our house or a garage where we never look at that stuff, right? Yeah. So the fact that, you have all of this stuff, high quality gear, very [00:04:00] accessible to you, I think points to the fact that you live your philosophy, you inculcate it in your lifestyle.

Then before we go too far forward. Those of us who don't know much about you, can you, can you tell us how do you describe yourself? 

Dan: Well, you know, thank you, uh, cush. It, it, it's, it's funny, I, you know, I, if I just have to throw it out, I just, oh. I'm a strength coach and walk away, but, uh. So I've been a professor in, uh, religious studies, and strength and conditioning.

probably the only person to ever do both, both those two fields. I have, uh, a couple of master's degrees. I was a, a Fulbright, uh, and that's when I went to the Middle East. Uh, I travel a lot. I'm very proud of my two daughters. I have fr five grandchildren. Uh, I was a very good student, a very good student.

If you go to my, uh, website, I just recently shared, uh, my first [00:05:00] article, which was on the Anglo-Saxon poem, Beowulf. And then my second article was I discussed the, uh, the 27 different deaths that I could find of King Arthur. and then I've written, oh gosh, uh, it would probably in the neighborhood of thousands of articles on religious education and, you know, uh, being a dad and things like that.

And then I've written. I think, we think it's 27 books now on weightlifting, uh, uh, and discus throwing, uh, uh, but mostly weightlifting. I, I love to write, just before we got on here today, I talked to my weightlifting coach, Dick Meyer, he turned 94 last week.

so I met him when I graduated from high school. So we've known each other over 50 years, and he's, and I, and I, I still check in with him and talk about weightlifting and, and he was a great role model for me, when he was 44, 47 years old. He looked like he was, could have been in his twenties. I always [00:06:00] give advice to the young people.

Two things, and I'll probably get sued for both of these, but, uh, don't get fat. Don't get debt. Debt, the second one, you know, stay out of financial debt as best you can and try not to get fat because both of those, it's easy to do. It's easy to get both of those. It's really hard to get rid of both of those.

So that's, that's served me well when I'm doing well in life. Those two, those two pillars work well. 

Kush: Dan, you are a rare specimen, indeed, a scholar who is also an athlete and curious. you, the fact that you keep in touch with your coach of decades just speaks to maybe another quality you have is just, let's say consistency in relationships, which is, I think also such a huge part of what keeps us healthy is our community to what you said about, [00:07:00] uh.

financial health and physical health. I think, we live in a country that needs just more of your messaging. 

Thank you. 

We live in debt and we live with obesity. 

Dan: The two of them dance together. how much easier it would be if you ate that extra piece of cake and instantly you saw the effects of it.

You know, I ate this piece of cake and my button pops off and goes across the table. You know, I, I drink those two extra beers and I can't fit in my chair anymore. That's the same way. Both of them are insidious. They, they, they, they, they're like, they sneak up on you. You know, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're cats, you know, trying to sneak up on you.

Kush: Dan, unfortunately, you know, the, the, the button pops and the zipper, tears. Those don't happen anymore because all of us wear this stretch clothing [00:08:00] these days, you know, the athleisure or whatever, because the clothing, the clothing unfortunately expands, you know, with our midsection.

Yeah. you know, you probably don't know much about the ageless athlete audience yet, so just briefly. Our listeners are outdoor athletes, rock climbers like myself, but also trail runners, cyclists, and hikers, paddlers, all of those people. And these are people who are trying to stay mobile strong and, and injury free, let's say past the age of 40, 50, 60.

yeah, I would love to get some of your wisdom and pass it on. So just to start off with, uh, just to, just wanna learn a bit about your background, because you have been an athlete of Reput for a long time and Yeah. What I learned about you. Yeah. Olympic lifts, throws different strength games, and then you [00:09:00] gradually moved into teaching.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

And I'm curious, at what point did you realize your role was shifting from.

To guide. 

Dan: Well, I'm still, in fact, I was talking to Dick Meyer on the phone today. Uh, I haven't yet found out, but the state weightlifting championship is coming up and I'll start changing over, start prepping for that again. I've been on the same team as a weightlifter for 45 years. I've been on the same team for 45 years.

Wow. So, I, so I often will read things and people say, the problem with Western Sie is everything is, you know, separation, separation, separation. And I think have the very, very poor reading of, so I've always believed in the unity of the body, mind, soul, and spirit.

You know, it's, there is no difference. So I, every good athlete I've ever worked with, like, for example, I just, I was just with [00:10:00] him today. My mortician is a former student of mine. My lawyer is a former student, the, uh, student and athlete of mine. My lawyer is a former student and athlete of mine. My doctor is a former student and athlete of mine.

one of my greatest discus throwers is a professor of art in, uh, Texas. So one of the things I've always tried to emphasize with my athletes is there is no, you, you got, you can't compartmentalize your life and say that. Okay, I'm gonna sleep tonight. Well, because I have a track meet tomorrow.

I'm a, I'm gonna, I'm gonna eat really well this week because I've gotta do this mountain bike race on Saturday. No, you can't be an idiot in one part of your life and be a genius in the other. At least that's what I've discovered. you know, I say this a hundred times a, a week, I swear to you, you Kush the word fit.

FIT comes from the old Nordic, and it means to knit. And for me, I've always tried to emphasize with [00:11:00] my athletes, with my daughters, with my family, you wanna be well knitted. you don't want to be the, and it happens all the time. Sometimes you just, you're just a great athlete. But when you leave the locker room, the whole team goes, Ugh.

Thank God, you know? You know, and so I, I think it's real important that, like, for, in my case, I, I, I don't know what I would say. I cook at least two of my meals a day. I, I have a girlfriend, her name is Erica. She obviously the, maybe she'll pick up one or, but I, I cook my own dinners. I, I, I can do recipes. I have my own recipes.

I do my own shopping. I, I, I check out my own fruits and vegetables. You know, I, I look at prices when it comes to the meat counter. Um, I don't think you can just say, well, I'm gonna turn my life around and I'm gonna start eating better. And, and by the way, I'd love it to [00:12:00] hear if you're doing that, I'll support you.

But let's get back to the basics. You gotta learn how to put the dishes in the dishwasher, how to wipe off the counter, how to, you know, how to cook, how to cut vegetables, how to cook. So for me. I always try to see everything very holistically. And so that, so in my world, a fit person, I, you wanna be my neighbor, Kush.

You wanna be my neighbor? When it snows, I'll plow your sidewalk. Okay? if you leave for a couple weeks, I'll watch your house. If I see someone hanging around scaring your kids, I will take care of that for you. Your, your children are safe in my neighborhood. Um, if you break down, I'll pick you up. I think those are just as important as being able to clean and jerk a whole bunch of weight or throw the discus for, because how you do one thing in life is how you do everything in life, and you do [00:13:00] get breaks.

You know, I'm not a handsome guy like you, so I had to work really hard on, on all this, okay? But you can be the, you can be the most beautiful girl in school. Yet you win 1, 2, 3 years, but then life happens. And how you did life here is how you're gonna do life there. If you cheated your way all through school academically, you're gonna continue to cheat on everything.

Somebody asked me the other day how to train after 55 years of age, and I gave a very, it was over on Reddit and I gave a very detailed thing of what I believe, and then someone says, just go on TRT. And I thought, oh, so when you hit 55, start, start injecting yourself because, but I guarantee the guy who wrote that, probably a guy, I guarantee there's been shortcuts the whole life.

If you take shortcuts here in your life, you're gonna take shortcuts there in your life. So I guess Kush, and I [00:14:00] hate to beat this to death, but for me, I guarantee your most successful listeners are probably. Good neighbors, good friends, they, they probably know, like if you're a mountain biker, they know how to fix their own bike.

They know how to store their own bike. They know how to, you know, they know it's you. You can't be shoddy in one area of life and then try to turn on and be excellent ever. And I think that's what I learned. I am a classic NC two, a scholar athlete. That's what they used to call us. Then they started calling us student athletes.

And I really liked scholar athlete better. We were expected to be good in the classroom and good on the field to play and show not cheap in the classroom and be sportsmen, sportswomen on the field to play. Boy, that was a long rant, but I think you understood my point. Yeah, 

Kush: Dan, that was some deep wisdom there and I can't.[00:15:00] 

Agree more and what you said the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. Like you can't be an athlete on one side and be disjointed and a different person. It's sort of this life philosophy that you are swimming with and you have to stay with that current that you have designed for yourself.

So yeah. Great preamble to start this conversation. So I thought today we could perhaps do a couple of things in this call. We, yeah, I wish I could keep you forever, but we have limited time with you. So I thought I would ask us to begin with talking just about some essentials and adaptations with strength coaching and associated.

Okay. And then I thought we could focus a little bit on some of the realities. And [00:16:00] tradeoffs and something specifically for, for, for, coaching the aging athlete, you know. Oh yeah. The, uh, the key listener. And then I thought we could maybe finish off with talking about just some vision, some purpose, and maybe some next frontier stuff that, uh, I could engage you with.

So to start off with kind of jumping, jumping right into it. So

let's talk about some go-to movements. 

Oh, okay. 

And, uh, and I thought maybe just to give some direction, and so what were some of your go-to movements and patterns that you trusted earlier in your training, and how have those evolved over time for somebody? Training in the forties and beyond.

Dan: Absolutely. That, you know, and I'm, so, I'm 68. I worked out this morning. I, I left three [00:17:00] days a week. I walked 10 to 15,000 steps every day. So we're, we're gonna, I'll, I'll be at, I'll be at a good place to explain this to you. Okay. So ideally, every one of your listeners, when they were 13, 14, 15 years old, they had an excellent physical education course where they learned the power lifts, the Olympic lifts, all the kettlebell moves, all the calisthenic moves, the rules of every sport and every game, even cricket, which still throws me off.

No offense, I, every time I watch a Cricket match one and Twicking in London, I always have to lean over to the guy watching it with me and say, now, okay, I'm lost here. What the hell just happened there? but that's not the way it goes. So let's just pick up, uh, the first thing is that, There are more lifts than you can even imagine.

bill Pearl's book, I think, has someone told me, is 25 different variations of the curl for God's sakes, you know, which you only need one. what I do, I'm gonna, lemme just do this in a general sense, [00:18:00] and then I'll spread it out for age groups and then I'll spread it out for other reasons. So I break, I break down the weightlifting world, what I do for a living into five parts plus one.

Okay? So push is anytime you, the separate from the environment. So if you and I are wrestling, I will push you and that's a push exercise in the weight room. I maybe bench press and I push the barbell off my chest when I do a pushup or a press up, probably what you were taught, uh, press up. I am pushing the floor, uh, their earth away from me.

Right? So pushes are wonderful because they're great for general hypertrophy. It makes you look good and there are, I don't know, of a sport that you don't need. Some level holes are when you bring the environment to me. So you and I are wrestling. I, I grab you here, pull, pull up, chin up, row, all those movements.

We [00:19:00] really in America anyway, overemphasize the push and the pull. We do way too much on both of those. Then there's a whole strange push pull. Then there's an exercise called the Hinge, uh, a movement called the Hinge. Uh, it is the standing long jump. It is, well, really it's jumping, but then that morphs into the deadlift, the, the Olympic snatch, the kettlebell snatch, the kettlebell swing, uh, the Olympic clean, uh, the kettlebell clean family.

So it's the big hip movement with small knee movement. Then there's the squat family. To an outsider, they might look the same, but it's the big hip movement with the big knee movement. I think after, I don't think you really need to pursue heavy squats, uh, to be happy and healthy. do you know what the Govett squat is?

Yeah. Who invented it? Yeah, 

Kush: yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I do. I'm not sure if all the listeners do, but Yes. 

Dan: You know who [00:20:00] invented it? 

Kush: I do not know who invented it. Oh wow, 

Dan: cool. 'cause I, I needed to come up with a way to teach squatting faster. But if, if your listeners are only using, uh, for the men 20 kilos, 44 pounds, and doing the movement of squatting, they're getting most of the benefits of squatting.

You don't have to use 400 pounds, 182 kilos to enjoy the benefits of squi. Okay, so those are the first four of the most recognizable. Then the fifth is what I call loaded caries. That's when you pick up a weight or you put a bag on your back or you drag a sled or you push a car. These are loaded gate, GAIP patterns.

You put weight on. This morning, I have a little tiara. It's a five pound head weight that I do a whole bunch of my marching with in the morning because the head weight forces me to stay vertical. 'cause if I look down while I'm doing it, of course, that [00:21:00] it's only five pounds. But the forces are so high because of levers.

So. Wearing my little five pound tiara. Doing my marches, uh, is, is a loaded carry. Then there's sometimes I put a lot of weight in each hand and I carry it. Sometimes I just use one hand. Then there's the sixth movement, and that is everything else. Okay. Basically with the sixth movement, I'd like to break it down into horizontal and vertical.

So horizontal would be anything where you, uh, you're, you're crawling. Uh, a Turkish getup would be a, a a a sixth movement. Uh, if I said to you, lay down in your belly. Stand back up. Lay on your back. Stand back up. Lay on your, get on your left side. Get back up. Get on your right side. Get back up. Those would be the sixth movement.

Uh, rope climbing, uh, monkey bars, which I don't think we should call monkey bars, humans. Bra eight too. Let's take that back. monkey bars, uh, you know, any those little, your, all your [00:22:00] climbers understand this intuitively. Your climbers. Probably, probably. Or a person who takes climbing seriously outside of the maybe falls and some other small, I mean the it ha and it's not small, but it per, it doesn't happen as often, right?

Your climbing population is probably as healthy as any population we have because they're of this kind of, this vertical crawling, they do, you know, they vertically crawl, they radiate, they, they monkey bar, they, they use their bodies, you know, their whole body to get wall or uh, or health. So. Those are, those are how I break out the movements.

Then from there, then you can go as simple as you want. Uh, and I usually start if, if you've never trained before. I start with planks, uh, isometric moves. So, you know, we, there's one I love a lot called the pushup position plank. You get in the up [00:23:00] pushup position, and I just hold you there. Now, I might reach and try to pick your hand up off the ground to teach you tension.

I might, oh, I, I put a band around one of your legs and tug on you to teach you a very, a great one for an advanced athlete, not a beginner. You pick up both feet and you make 'em just stay. For the pole. Uh, I like exercises that teach, especially North Americans. If you're not watching folks, I'm putting my thumbs in my armpits and trying to squeeze my elbows together against the load of some kind.

That could be barbells, uh, uh, dumbbells, kettlebells, suspension trainers, or just me putting my hands on your elbows. For the, for the hinge, I teach what's called the glute bridge. It's the top of a hip thrust, and I, I have people stay down there as long as they can, and again, move the hands around. For the squat, we just do the gobble squat, and then for the loaded carry we do farmer walks the goblet squat and [00:24:00] the farmer walks are kind of moving planks, and it's a good way to think after that.

Once I see that, you know how to, the mistake a lot of people do when they first lift weights is that they don't yet understand that the core principle, that the body is one piece. So they think that. If I do a bench press or military, it's an upper body exercise, but if I stick a fork in your calf, it's gonna affect that bench press.

You know, I've never seen an bench press. Sure. I've never seen one bench press 400 with a fork in their calf. I've never seen it happen, you know? so then, then that gets into classic weightlifting. And, but you'll notice it's, it's the first step up from planking is the classics. So you could do pushups or bench press.

You could do military press, you could do pull-ups, chin-ups, or rows. You can do hip thrusts or, you know, dead lifts. Uh, you can do front squats, back squats, overhead squats. You could do all kinds of, you know, drag [00:25:00] sleds. Then comes what I think is the, the real key for most people I work with. One of the things I'm constantly trying to teach people to do is that the body is one piece.

So we know, we know from the research, you know, we know that this side of the brain, you know, works with the left, the right side of the brain works with the left, left side of the brain works to the right. But we also know that the core to to walking is in a sense and crawling and rock climbing. Funny how all, once you get one thing, the all just start.

My job is to bring my right shoulder to my left hip, and then my left shoulder to my right hip. And at the same time, I can also coach the opposite of it called anti-rotation. So the next thing I teach, so that would be one hand pressing, okay, or bench pressing. One arm rose. And then from there it does change a little bit.

Don't, but just stick with the concept. I'm trying to [00:26:00] teach, for asymmetrical work with sprinting. Very often I'll have people, uh, run up hills, but I'll have them hold two sticks in their hand. Maybe, you know, like a three foot, four foot dowel. Hold it in the middle. So if they have any asymmetries, they'll hit themself in the face.

Okay. And even the dumb people figured that out pretty quickly, not to hit themselves in the face when they're running uphill. for squats, it's weird to say this, but crawling is very squatty in my world when I see, uh, so very often I'll see people who really struggle to just do a traditional bear crawl.

But then you realize when they squat, they're as they're, they're wonky. They're, I, I don't wanna say asymmetrical, but they're, it doesn't look right. You know, and then of course for asymmetric, the 

Kush: squat is not really a good squat. Like they are not really going down all the way. They're not all their, uh, lower, lower body 

Dan: turn.

Yeah. Or they start to turn or twist and one [00:27:00] leg does this and the, and then the other. And then for loaded caries, the two best things I think every listener should do. The first is suitcase carry. That is a heavy one-handed walk in a suitcase position or it's cousin, the overhead, the waiter walk. Once you get those down, then I add speed to things.

And now I'm just gonna go through as quickly 'cause it might not apply to your audience, but that's the overhead, like the push jerks from the Olympic lifts, the kettlebell swing, some other variations. And of course the Olympic lifts the snatch and clean and jerk. Okay. So there is my whole vision of how I coach people.

You're an elite athlete, Kush, you just finished your season. After a week or two of just, I don't even want to see your face, no offense, but it's fine. We need a break from each other. When you come back, I might spend a week or two doing planks with you to remind yourself I don't have whole body stiffness.

Now you're an elite athlete. Maybe you only need 1, 2, 3 days of that. Other people are [00:28:00] coming off maybe injuries or not even injuries. Just sometimes seasons. Just break it down. You know, the, the step underneath is so, you know, there's, there's hurt. You gotta be able to play hurt, right? You just hurt, means you're hurt.

Then there's injury, and then there's kind of agony. You know, agony means, we call it ambulance. Agony means surgery. Injury means you, let's, you know, we maybe rehab tape, soft tissue work hurt. Is Monday, Wednesday, Tuesday? Yeah, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, compete Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. You're hurt most of the time when you are bleeding.

Hurt is, you know, if your mountain bikers, they know, I mean, hurt is when you're going up a hill. If you can't handle being hurt, going up a hill, go find another sport. 'cause you're not gonna do very well. Right? Yeah. So after that, we might focus on the traditional weight lifting moves, and then depending on what you're doing for, you're a discus [00:29:00] thrower.

We're gonna move into this, the Olympic lifts. If you're an American football player, we'll do some of this and some of that, and some of this. 'cause you need so many qualities and we just keep, we try to match the exercises with what you want. Okay? Full stop right there. I've been talking about athletes and there's nothing wrong with it, but let's talk about the reality now.

We'll slide up. If you're over 22 years of age and you're not being paid for your sport, you are an aging athlete.

A 24-year-old who's not getting paid for a sport has to start thinking like a master athlete. They, they're, you know, if you're, you know, if you're 15, 16, you can do all kinds of stupid stuff. So I break the ages down very simply. I go about 17 to 35, and that is when, ideally, ideally from 17 to 35, uh, you find the things you love in [00:30:00] life.

Uh, I suggest strongly you, you make sure a lot of things are in your rear view mirror. So if you haven't graduated from high school and you're 30, let's take care of that. If you're in your seventh year working on your bachelor's degree, come on, let's take care of that. If you don't have your driver's license at age 31, come on, let's take so.

From 17 to 35, you wanna be in a place where you're taking care of things. You're, you're, you know, you're checking off the things and you want a lot of these things in your rear view mirror. I got my first master's when I was 22, and, and I'm not bragging, but, you know, and the nice thing was, is that for the rest of my life, I never had to get another master's.

You, you, you follow? I learned the Olympic lifts, as I was saying earlier, when I was, uh, 17 years of age. So once I learned the Olympic lifts, I never had to relearn 'em again. I learned kettlebells only about two decades ago, but that's okay [00:31:00] because I went to certs. I listened to good people, I listened, I learned, I listened.

I learned. But it had been nice to learn kettlebells in 1974 versus 2004. If you're falling, you're falling the point. Sadly, modern cattle kettlebell wasn't there yet. So from 17 to 35, you should learn how to cook for yourself, clean up after yourself. sometimes joke, wipe your own bottom for God's sakes.

Uh, you should, you know, mow your own lawn, you know, that kind of stuff. And then in the athletic field, since you're still young and pliable, your focus should be on, you can probably handle more ballistic work, more explosive work, and you could probably keep learning new things cush and I, we start training together.

You say, I wanna learn the Olympic lifts. I teach you the Olympic lifts. Okay, good. Then the next one is the tough one. That's 35 to 55. And I always tell the people this, this is probably the biggest [00:32:00] investment you'll make in your life, physically. Ideally, you show up at 35. Not too broken. You know, not too many.

all your joints are still your joints. They're, they're not titanium. I, you know, you don't have a bunch of metal in your body. You don't have a bunch of scars. I did, but you don't need to. so what I try to teach people is that the best time to invest for retirement is probably ages 18 to 23.

If you can put $10,000 a year at age 18 into your retirement, 10,000 at nine, 10,000, at 20, trust me, you don't have to worry about retirement. Compound interest is gonna take good care of you. So, yeah, sometimes in life, 'cause you know, life kind of o is opposite. You should save for retirement when you're 18.

You should probably take certain things that at, but at 35 to 55, this is when you set yourself up for success in your later years. And there's a concept I call everyday straight. and the research [00:33:00] has been clear on this. In fact, I think I have the book right here. I think I might, or maybe I don't.

Um, I was just looking at it the other day, but it's the physiology of strength by heider from, from research from the 1940s and fifties. If you lift weights, and let's say you lift weights for a year, if you for some reason get, you can't train for six months, it might, it'll take you this long to get your previous strength back.

Then you train for a year and then you take a year off. It'll take you less time to get back to your previous strength. If you take another year off, it'll take even less time to get back to your previous. The body seems to remember strength. So what I tell people, this is the time to build up your everyday strength.

if you take six months off from training of any kind, whether it's bike riding, rock climbing, weightlift, I don't care, your first, [00:34:00] second, and maybe third workout back, that level you're at, that's your everyday strength and that's gonna last a really long time into your life.

Deep, deep into your life. So, uh, Kush, how old are you? 

Kush: 47. 

Dan: Oh, you're a baby. You know, age 47 was the best year of my career as a disco store. That was my single best year. Of course, difficult stores tend to do better as age, but still 47 is a good age. So if you were to take six months off, you, you had a surgery, you had a we, some kind of family travel issue, and then you came back first, second, third workout.

Wherever that, wherever you are in that second or third workout, I can almost guarantee at 68 you'll be able to keep those strength levels. Okay. Beautiful. And that is a, so what you're doing from 35 to 55 is you're making that great investment into those later years of your life. [00:35:00] Sure. so that's why I tend to tell people 35 to 55.

Okay. Two things, right? Don't get fat, don't get debt. Right. Okay. Do that and get as strong as you can and show up. Don't get hurt. Be smart. After 56. The rules do change, and I'm at it right now. So what I tell people, and it is funny, uh, um, lean body mass just seems to sprint from your body after 56. So I, I tell people if possible, this is when you should finally train like a bodybuilder.

This is when you should chase lean body mass. Uh, I'm very, I mean, I'm very happy. Uh, I just went to my high school, 50 year, year reunion. People say I look good. Thank you very much. It means a lot. But it's because I focus on trying to keep my lean body mass and fight that body fat as hard as I can back down.

So lean body mass after 56, number one. Number two is [00:36:00] mobility. The free movement around every joint. And then the third thing, it's not very sexy, but you gotta walk every day. I have this habit of rolling out of bed and I get 3000 steps generally, almost. Exactly. 'cause it's a loop, uh, every morning before I even have my first cup of coffee.

And I'm not saying gentle listeners, you have to do what I do. 'cause I am, I have real clear, I have a real clear vision of what I want. I'm gonna tell you something personal. Okay? And, and I want, and, today, I, I went to the, I went to the mortuary today because, um, I'm having to deal with, uh, Tiffany's, uh, creaming.

It's not a great story. I don't like any of it. But, you know, I, I, I have the box with Tiffany's cream eggs in it, her, her ashes for those of you know what that means. And, uh, you know, I hand the box to Jason. And, uh, he goes, this has to be emotional. I go, it is. But what it also did for me [00:37:00] was remind me how precious life is.

And so when I roll out of bed and get those steps in, I try for 10 to 12,000 a day because I don't know when I'm gonna die. I really wish I didn't know 'cause it would make my, uh, financial decisions much better. But, you know, we have a limited time here, you know, on this planet, you know, and I want to make sure that I have as much time as I can with my grandkids.

So rolling out a bed for me and getting those 3000 steps before the cup of coffee ties in with my major real goals of where I'm at at 68. Okay. Does, does that, does that make sense? 

Kush: yeah. Thank you for both zooming in and zooming out on not just.

The foundational exercises, but just the lifestyle and philosophy one needs to adopt as time passes. I thought I [00:38:00] would ask you a few things from what you just shared, so maybe some specific things. So a lot of listeners of the podcast, you know, they already are fit by most, most types of definition.

They are out there, like I said, doing outdoor sports out activities, but I think we recognize that just going, climbing or running or paddling, that's not enough to be able to, able to stay strong and mobile through through life. So I'm curious, I read this grid essay that you wrote, I think it's called the training for 55 plus.

Yeah. And 

yeah, and then you advocate, you know, strength three times a week or maybe, maybe even twice a week. And then you also talk about mobility work between every set, which I'm [00:39:00] fascinated by because most of us, you know, either we are like doing some kind of, yeah, we are doing like super sets with other things or we are just resting between sets.

But I like that you are trying to optimize that time to do something else. 

Lemme ask you this question, which is for somebody who's already out there doing their sport two to three times a week, and that is, let's say, yeah. Mileage endurance work in this sport. How do you advocate for mixing in strength training and this sort of quote unquote maintenance work, knowing that one wants to also stay fresh, so the morning of the day they're gonna go for a long run or go for a full day of rock climbing outside 

Dan: generally in its, so what kind of 

Kush: programming?

Yeah. What kind of programming would you, 

Dan: let's say you got someone doing rock [00:40:00] climbing Monday, Wednesday, Saturday. Okay. We'll just, we'll just make that up. I generally tell people, okay, now after 55, I tell people then when you get home, you don't go home right away. You go to the gym. You push, you pull, you hinge your squat, you do some suitcase carries, uh, two sets of five, three sets of eight.

Some boring program use machines so that the other four days a week you can recover and enjoy. The downside of post 55 is that you just don't recover. now, I mean, I've been, I've been doing this method for a while and I'd be really beginning to accelerate because I still, by the way, I still walk every day.

every day is every day is a walking and mobility day. Okay? Every day after 55, every day is walking and mobility. Okay? Now, if you're 35 to 55-year-old people, you can probably do [00:41:00] like. I'm lifting on Monday. I'm climbing on Tuesday. I'm lifting on Wednesday. I'm climbing on Thursday. Okay. You could probably get away with that.

you know, one of my favorite authors, uh, one, uh, pardon me, uh, see, uh, one of my favorite mentors of my entire career is, uh, so there's a new book coming out on him. His name is, Percy Certy, C-U-C-E-R-U-T-T-Y.

my buddy Alistair Gunn just wrote a new biography. Um, I wrote the Forward and I, and I love, uh, Percy. Percy is really the person that gave us the concept of easy strength where. You know, he, he expected his marathoners, marathoners to bench body weight and double body weight, dead deadlift. So if you weigh 130 pounds, he expected you to deadlift two 60.

Uh, and I, you know, [00:42:00] um, and I have, since I first read him, I, I have been more and more convinced since then of the importance that everybody who's listening probably gets some benefit out of a press, a chin up or pull up a deadlift variation. Maybe the ab wheel and suitcase carries. And if that's all your listeners did, they would get the benefits.

Most of the benefits from weightlifting, if they don't want a deadlift, do hip thrust. So, uh, let me simplify it even more overhead press. If you can't do a pull up, just hang or a chin up, just hang, uh, hip thrust. Wheel and suitcase carry there. And I think when you're between 35 and 55, what you want to slowly do is nudge your strength up.

So you don't wanna be in a program that promise you, you know, um, you don't wanna, you, [00:43:00] none of your listeners, uh, especially the sports, you told me they don't want to have the size to bench 400, squat 500 deadlifts, 600. I'm not sure a 600 pound deadlift is gonna help much. I mean, might, I mean, I dunno if you get attacked by a bear or something like that, it'd be better to be a, you know, 600 pound deadlift hundred.

But, uh, get as strong as you can, as easy as you can. And the way to do it is just come in when the weights feel light, add some more. If the weight feels really light today, do some more reps, write it down next time, try to get another rep next time. Try to, you know, just nudge yourself up slowly and give yourself a lot of time to get strong.

Nothing wrong with taking your time, getting strong. And that's what I learned from Percy. I'm looking forward when this new book comes out because it's really gonna be exciting It's. Andrew Guns. Percy Sir. life Lessons from a Remarkable [00:44:00] Coach. Uh, that's just funny, funny. I can't find things when I'm looking for 'em. Happens to me constantly. Uh, I'll pull, so I'll do a podcast and I'll pull books out that I want everybody to read, and then I'll put 'em down, not where they belong, and then I lose 'em.

Uh, that could be, 'cause I'm 68 and it could just be 'cause uh, I need to do a better job putting things away. 

Kush: No, that's not just you. That's me. And many, many people are listening now, Dan, you know, I, I, sorry. But I appreciate you talking about the programming the way you did because honestly, it endorses the plan that I am in.

And I think in my younger years, let's say twenties, up to maybe early thirties, I could like do alternate days of I would climb one day and the next morning I would go surf and, and lift weights. And then I would. Plan the next day. And then I would just do that. And then one day I would basically be just, yeah, completely zonked.

And now I find that doesn't work [00:45:00] because, because a lot of people who are listening, you know, when they're out there doing the sport, they wanna be, they wanna be operating fresh, they don't wanna be powered down from the prior day. So I think a lot of the work I do, and many people listening, I think are slowly starting to at least, understand and respect is, is just loading in your sport and the, the, strength work on the same day.

So it does end up being like a long day, you know, maybe you're doing like two or three sessions that day because some of these sports, you know, they, they take time, right? Because maybe you're driving to. The trail. Yeah, yeah, sure. So like, basically by the time, like, you know, you start in the morning, you like, yeah, start in the mor like I, I start in the morning, I stretch, then I go and spend the whole day out in the mountains.

Then I come back and then I have to put another, like certain amount of time. But I think the benefit of that is one is the next day I wake up [00:46:00] feeling completely sore, which is a great feeling. Don't feel guilty about not moving too much. But then after that, when I come back to train, like, uh, sorry, come back to do my sport a day or two later, I, again, I'm feeling fresh because I'm rested.

So sounds like that is also the philosophy you're advocating, 

Dan: yeah. Yeah. and I gotta say Kush, most of your listeners don't, won't agree with us on this because they're different, they're special. Every, everyone I've discovered this, everyone is special and uh, but the truth is once you get older recovery.

Recovery changes. And it is hard, you know, it is just part, you know, uh, Tommy Kono, the great American weightlifter, he, he always talked about, he, he, he showed that he used the beaker and he said, every time you train, you empty that beaker and until you fill it back up again, you shouldn't train again. But if you get the beaker down three quarters, then you train at [00:47:00] that level.

Now you're down to a quarter. Now you can't be surprised that you got sick or injured because you didn't give recovery a time. And, uh, I think it's, in one of my more recent books I talk about, a lot of people don't agree with Tommy Kono on that. But the idea is if you lift weights three days a week for 10 years and you don't get ill and you don't get injured, at the end of 10 years, you're gonna be insert the adjectives strong.

You're gonna be strong because you've got almost 1200 workouts in, in your vi in, in your system. And that's a lot of workouts. And that's what makes you great. It's not today that's gonna make you great in two days. That's not, the workouts gonna make you great. And it's not the, it's the accumulation of quality sessions and that's the key.

and it's not cha it's, it's still true [00:48:00] and it's not gonna change for a long time. 

Kush: Dan, let me ask you this one or two specific things I wanted to ask you around, strength work, which is, what is your recommendation on loading and on, on, on programming your workouts? Are you, is it like high weights? And low reps, like where do you stand with oh, oh, oh, oh. That type of uh, 

Dan: okay, so just the hardest thing to remember. This everything works. I want you to memorize that for me. 

Kush: Everything works 

Dan: for six weeks. 

Kush: I see 

Dan: every stupid idea that you and I come up with is going to work over time.

You've gotta let things play. So right now I'm in a little bit, so it's interesting 'cause my, I have a coach, uh, his name Scott. So this week I am back to much less volume because I was starting to, it [00:49:00] wasn't working. I mean, the, I was doing, so we dropped my volume by about a third and I'm, so what happens today?

I go into the weight, weight workout today and I beat my lifetime, lifetime best in chin up. Now I'm not very good at chin up, so it's not, it's, it's only 15 so you don't have to put me on the Mount Rushmore of chin ups. Okay, I get that. I'm not the best, but for me, 15 is one more than I did in high school.

Well, why did that happen? Because we cut volume in a couple of weeks, four to six weeks. We're gonna. We're gonna cut reps down and go load up four to six weeks after that, we're gonna try maybe a week or two with volume and load, staying up, knowing that I have a short, I lit the candle on this end and I lit the candle on that end about two weeks.

And then we'll go back to, oh, probably [00:50:00] lighter weights, higher reps. You have to swim through all of this. So the answer, so the answer when I, I remember when I was young, we used to answer the question, uh, this way, what's better? High reps are high load, and the answer is high reps with high load. Okay? But you can only do that for so, so long, you know, if you're squatting 4 0 5 for sets of 25.

That's high load and high, uh, high reps, you can probably do that for a while until the wheels fall off and you can't walk up a flight of stairs. So you have to say, okay, we're gonna n we're gonna nudge up load for a couple weeks. Well, if I'm nudging load up, then I have to have to bring down volume. As I start to lose the value of this program, I'm gonna let my load come down and let my volume sneak back up.

Now if I, if I just wanna really change things. So here we [00:51:00] are, uh, here we are now what I can then do is add the third component in is density. So you've been resting three minutes per set. Well, let's just have you rest two minutes per set, or one minute percent. And by bringing the workout denser, uh, same work less time, that adds a new level of progression.

When you get to the end of that, then I would say, then I fold my arms and say, well. Let's just change exercise selection. You've been bench pressing for two years. Well, let's see what happens when you incline bench press. Do that for six weeks. Go to military press. Do that for six weeks. Go to dips. Uh, six weeks of gobble squat, six weeks of overhead squat, six weeks of front squat, six weeks of back squat.

So progress is not just the bar going up if you're an Olympic lifter or a power lifter. Yes. 'cause that's what the sport is. [00:52:00] But for the rest of us, we need these other qualities that the weight room can provide us. Okay? Uh, in the same way I'm sure someone could come up. I remember years ago it was believed that Purina Monkey Chow had all the nutrients a human needed.

Now I. Purina had to change their formula. 'cause a lot of monkeys were getting diabetes because the formula was wrong. But anybo, any of your listeners who really says, I, no matter what I do, I put on weight, just buy, go buy yourself. Buy six bags of Purina Monkey Chow and put the scoops, you know, put the scoops in and that's all you're gonna eat for the next 12 weeks.

Kush: Hang on. So Monkey Chow is, is, is, is it for monkey or is it like, because Purina makes like dog food. I have a small dog. So is it, 

Dan: yeah, it's, it's 

Kush: dog food, right? 

Dan: It's dog food, cat food, Guinea pig food, monkey food. Yeah, yeah. Monkey Chow. 

Kush: Right? Right. 

Dan: So now, now here's the [00:53:00] thing, I, I challenge our listeners to do that for the reason that there's no way a human could eat a human living in the United States with an adequate, adequate income with McDonald's and Taco Bell and pizza places, and, uh, sushi.

There's no way in hell. You could just eat Monkey Chow for 12 weeks. 'cause we're not, we're not wired that way. So in the same way, so the same way we can't have a one food diet, even if it's fine, we can't have a one approach to our strength training.

Kush: No, a hundred percent variety is important in so many ways. it's good for our body, but it's also good for our mind to keep the, uh, you know, the, the psyche up. Another tactical question, which coming again from your, uh, from your teaching, which I love is mixing in mobility work during, because I mean, if [00:54:00] yes, if we can do that successfully, that is just one maybe less thing one has to do separately.

So can you give us some practical ideas on how we can accomplish that? 

Dan: So I used Tim Anderson's original strength. Uh, but I'll, I'll just give you an example. Uh, I've noticed this in, uh, but whenever we do pushes in my gym, we always do neck nodes in between. Now many of the athletes I work with are crunchy up here because of American football, um, or because of all the big poles like that.

So between every set. Of pushes, we might do these neck nods. After sets of pulls, we do neck rotations. And you only see, I, I, I call what I'm doing here 'cause I'm seated, seated twisty. So I put my hands on my outside of my right thigh and I look over my right shoulder and I get a little bit more mobility between sets of squats.

We get on our hands and knees and [00:55:00] we do this thing called rocking. We just kind of, we do like, it's like a floor squat. Okay? We just hands and knees and you, it's like a baby trying to get ready to crawl. They do that little thing like this for hinges. We tend to do bird dogs and some, some other things.

And then for loaded caries, uh, we march. Taking my right hand hits my left knee, my left hand hits my right knee, and you kind of march like this, called Cross cross. Okay. That's the most basic that, that those are the most basic. Every Thursday we spend an entire hour going through an, a whole hour of mobility.

And it's fascinating doing these check-ins. 'cause all of a sudden I'm those, when did my lower back get so stiff? Well, that's why you do Thursday. Thursday is tonic Thursday in my gym. And all we did was mobility work. And it's just a check-in and it's, it's, it's like taking your car, you know, you're, uh, if you're an athlete, you're not a Toyota, okay?

You're a Lamborghini. [00:56:00] Okay? And you gotta, you gotta take Lamborghinis need more checkups than, uh. Was it a Tercel, uh, than Tercel? Okay. Uh, they need a lot more under, they need a lot more time. first you can do a little bit between every set of an exercise. Second, weekly. I would suggest having a one full day of mobility and an hour is just about right.

If you go to my YouTube channel, I've got a couple of follow alongs you can do with me. Um, the other way is in your warmup. In your warmup, you can have a dedicated when I warm up, actually, but you can do a dedicated mobility section in your warmup and, uh, a lot of it should be big and global and kind of checking in.

Personally, I think the best is between sets of exercises because. What I notice, uh, Kush is that, so like today I was doing my military presses and I was [00:57:00] struggling. I've been, so I was in Australia then I was in South San Francisco and I just got back from North Carolina. So I've been gone almost the entire month of September and almost all of October.

So I didn't lose a lot, but I did lose my military press because that you lose it. And I noticed when I was doing my middle military presses, I was getting a little frustrated, you know, and I was responding poorly. So turn the engines down, get those mobility movements in. Breathe through your nose, keep your tongue on the roof of the mouth.

Calm your eyes, let your eyes lead the movement. Two minutes of that. And I had reset everything. I had reset my whole system to be me not this frustrated, travel tired guy. I was back to being me in the weight room for the upside of doing mobility between sets of weightlifting [00:58:00] exercises. Is it, it resets those dials, most of your listeners, probably too young to remember am radios, but you used to have to really spend time trying to get the, the, the right, you know, you had this one tuner and then of course you had to change the antenna depending on the station in, uh, in San Francisco, if you wanted to listen to one station, you had the antenna point that way and you had to just, mobility work, tunes you back in, which is part and tune and tone are from the same exact route.

So that's why we call it Tonic Thursday. We are tuning ourself. 

Kush: uh, no, I love this, uh, dedication or dedicated, uh, session on mobility and we will put links to your channel on the show notes for sure. But for now, could you just maybe quickly just, uh, talk us through what that time might look like.

Are we doing, let's say static [00:59:00] stretches? Are we doing like dynamic work? Are we doing something in the middle? Like what is like a good like, uh, let's say, uh, program for somebody who has an hour a week to spend on mobility, which can hopefully cover like all these different bases. 

Dan: The first thing get on the floor, uh.

We start off, I mean, just in a general way, we start off in the prone pos, think about babies. Okay. In fact, a great way to do it is just find a baby and just do whatever the baby does for an hour. You'll get a, I'm telling 

Kush: you, I used to look at my little niece, you know, when she was like two years old, and honestly, I, I, I adored that little girl, but I would be secretly envious of her agility.

I mean, she could go from like lying to sitting to bending over sideways to being in a squad. So, yes, I, I would agree so much with that, which is, uh, emulate what babies do if you can. 

Dan: Okay, so the first thing, okay, I'm just gonna give you a [01:00:00] general template, folks. Uh, if you come train with me, it might not look like this, but this is general.

First thing we're gonna lay on our bellies. Gonna drive those elbows into the ground, get a nice tall head, and maybe spend up to two minutes just nodding. Then two minutes looking over our shoulders, trying to find our shoes. Then maybe we move our hands over and we do a, a roll here. And then we come back and roll to our back here, maybe two minutes now we're in this for six minutes already, and I can guarantee I've already had to remind you to keep your tongue in the roof of your mouth and breathe your diaphragm because that has stressed you out.

After that, we'll slide up onto our hands, knees, and feet. It's called six point and we'll do some rocking. We'll do some more neck nodding, we'll do some more finding in the shoes. Uh, there's one we call earthquakes, where you, you do rocking this way, which is wonderful for the shoulders, we'll stick [01:01:00] one leg out.

Uh, that's called a kickstand, and we'll do more rocking. It really stretches out the adductors. Bring our legs back in, stick the right leg out. Do some more of those kickstands with the right leg, then bring that leg back in, bring the left leg up into that kind of lunge position, do some rocks and circles in that position, really loosen up that hip joint and all the associated stuff.

Um, from there, uh, well, nowadays, uh, it's hard to describe this one, from there, we, so you, the, the left leg remains in the lunge position and then we sink down onto the right shin and stretch around there. Then right leg comes forward. And then we do that stretch I was telling you about. Now, now you have to start getting creative and which is my favorite part.

Uh, we'll do bird dogs in these and reverse bird dogs where the hand goes this way, which are called, uh, speed skaters or froze zones. we'll get on our [01:02:00] backs and we'll practice our anterior interior chain work. You know, we'll, we'll do these reverse. Reverse cobras where you squeeze your neck in, put your chin in, and then slowly bring your shoulders off.

You, you lean your eyes one vertebrae at a time trying to remind your, uh, this whole system had it move. there's a position in, uh, we call, it's called butterfly position. Spend a lot of time in butterfly because, uh, you know, you, you probably know Ayurvedic medicine, right? 

Kush: I mean, not intimately. I'm familiar with it.

Dan: Most of the athletes, if you're gonna use Ayurvedic medicine, uh, most of the athletes I work with are petita. They're really, I I clearly would. I'm just always, and we tend to be very tight in the groin area. That's, that's, if you read Amatic medicine, that's the one of the things that we circle with, with, with the pettus.

So we do a lot of, groin flexibility work. We would do more rolls called egg rolls, We'll spend some more time just, [01:03:00] just moving around on the floor in different ways. lay on our backs and do these things called windshield wipers. You know, it's where the knees go back and forth. Then we finish off by doing very hard specific stretches on our wrists, fingers, toes, feet and ankles.

the wrists, fingers, ankles, toes, feet are extremely complex systems, and very few people spend any time working on them at all. If you look at, uh, Grey's Anatomy, not the TV show, but the anatomy books, you'll just see how many things are in the, in that area. we do, dedicated stretches for a wrist like this, uh, like this.

Uh. This and this, uh, we mix them, those with the, shoulder stretches where you go like this and go like that. And then we, we sit on our feet with our toes laces down, it's called. [01:04:00] And then we do the toe breaker position very seriously, my Jim. And when we're doing the toe breaker, we ski to get the toes even more stretched out.

And it's interesting because, uh, the biggest pushback I get when people first do that is how much it hurts their feet, wrists, toes, uh, and ankles because they're so bundled up most of the time. And then after that, we go for a walk and go have breakfast. 

Kush: Yeah. Very comprehensive.

And for those of us not watching this on YouTube, Dan was demonstrating these exercises as he was instructing us. So I believe we can find. Videos of what you were just showing us on your, what's your YouTube channel again, Don? So listeners 

Dan: might be Dan John, strength coach, but I never Okay, perfect. So I never looked at it.

I encourage, 

Kush: yeah, we'll put the links on the show notes so [01:05:00] people can just go there. And then after watching or listening to this, , conversation, you guys can go and follow along the ANS program. Yeah. Then related to this, , we find that as we get older, we start losing mobility, right? Like starting from this baby who can do, bend their body in all kinds of plet ways to getting older where like years of sedentary work and bad habits , and all of that stuff starts catching up.

So I'm curious, what are, let's say some mobility non-negotiables, we don't all need to be gymnasts or do like, you know, front splits, but what are so things that are so important for us to be able to, against a limber? Like are there any like red flags or green flags that you look for?

Dan: So I just got back, uh, from Tim Anderson's Pro Reset and he, we, I mean, honestly, getting a deep [01:06:00] squat and touch your toes. Um, those are, those are the. Two of my favorite assessments. But, uh, let me take you back to yonder real quick. Uh, he was this great Czechoslovakian, uh, physical therapist. He had an issue with polio as a child that came back, but he said something interesting.

It's, and it really helped my whole career. As you age or get ill or injured, there are certain muscle groups that weaken and that's why doing the overhead press and any kind of glute work and the glute work could be deadlifts, hip thrusts, squats, sprinting if, if you don't wanna lift weights, sprint, and then lip, well do military press.

But it was interesting because he talked about what exercises tighten as you, what muscles tighten as you age, get injured or ill, and it was the pecs, the biceps, the hip flexors, and the hamstrings. But if you [01:07:00] go to a typical gym, you'll see men doing bench press. Curl leg press three exercises that are literally binding them up.

So the first defense we have about losing mobility is to start training with your body versus at odds with it. So I, I work with a lot of people say, Dan, I can't overhead press. Well, why not? Well, I got a bad shoulder. How'd you get a bad shoulder? And there'll be this story. Well, before you get that bad shoulder, you should have trained this way.

Uh, I, I, the, I can't drive me crazy, just so you know, but you know, I can't do this. I can't do that, I can't do this, I can't do that. Well, okay, you did a lot of these things in life, but then you, you know, you sat in a chair too long, you know, you ate way too many donuts. You ate way too many chips. I can't fix that.

Your bike riders, uh, maybe not your mountain bike riders, but the ones that are in, uh. Racing bikes, you know, speed, [01:08:00] uh, you know, this, this here, that's one of the worst positions you can put a human person in. It's very efficient for riding a bike fast, but it's not a good, uh, you're gonna have issues and that you have to undo.

So that's my job. Hi, I'm Dan. I see you do that exercise. Let's do this to give you a little bit of balance. So non-negotiables when it comes to mobility work. I think you should maintain your squat until the day you die. You should be able to drop into a squat until the day you die. 

Kush: just putting a pin on that one.

I think that a lot of us in the western world who have had sedentary jobs, I think they have lost the ability to squat. And yes, I mean, there are people in the world who can fall into a squad and play a game game of chess for two hours. Yeah, I think most of my listeners are not quite there yet. Uh, so what is the hallmark of a good squat?

And if [01:09:00] one doesn't have that, are there some basic things one needs to start doing now? 

Dan: So you gotta be a little careful when you talk about a good squat because the one thing you do pick up on. So my background, uh, you know, my mom was Irish, so I have the classic Celtic hip. So I, I was put on the earth to knock people down and throw things, but I wasn't put on the earth to get into a deep, deep squat and love it.

So the first thing is, my body is not on my legs. My, this part of my body is slung between my legs. So the first thing is this. Stop thinking that a squat is a knee bend. And start thinking of squat is a way I slide my body between my thighs, between my knees.

Now when I'm down there, when I'm down there, I might not have yet the ankle flexibility to support that, but maybe I do. Now, maybe I have a rounded back. When I first do that [01:10:00] as a coach, I look at that and I do this because six weeks from now you might not, we might be able to repair that. Uh, maybe you have to take your elbows and drive your knees apart, which is, by the way, folks.

If you're gonna try to squat at home, take your right elbow, push your right knee out, take your left elbow, push your left knee out, and then squat down because that will force you to squat between your legs and you'll find out it's not ankle flexibility, it's the fact that you had a bad vision of how to squat your lower back and everything else.

We'll learn after a few times to come up to a tall chin. It might take six weeks, it might take one day, but y you've gotta give your body a chance. So I recommend two things every day. Everybody does. Number one, you should sit at the bottom of the squat for 30 seconds every day. This is my warmup, by the way, and then you should hang from a bar for 30 seconds every day.[01:11:00] 

If you just do those two things, you'll get most of the benefits. I don't know what percent I don't know. But you're gonna get most of the benefits of the things I'm trying to teach you with my mobility work. And so you sit at the bottom for 30 seconds, hang for 30 seconds. Uh, the Kauai study supports this, uh, that was a study they did in, uh, Hawaii, uh, to, uh, help people with bad shoulders.

it's very little, but it's every day. And that's, so I've lost a lot of weight over the last four years. Uh, I probably sneak it up on, well, I used to say 48 pounds, but it's more like 54. And people ask me the secret and I say, well, I lift weights three days a week. I eat less than 2,600 calories. And I walk 10,000 steps.

Oh, I can do that. So how long did it take? Oh, about four years. And that's when the switch goes off. They [01:12:00] don't want to hear anymore. When I say sit at the bottom of the golf, uh, sit at the bottom of the squat and hang for 30 seconds every day, both of those, it might take six weeks to feel the benefits. It might take two days, but most people want the instant fix.

Folks, I'm not making fun of any of you, but we know statistically that 19 out of 20 Americans, don't exercise at all. 19 out of 20 Americans can't retire without the health of social security, which is gonna be a real eyeopener in a few years for a lot of people. My dentist says, only one in 20 of US patients, 19 outta 20, only one in 20 floss their teeth.

I would suggest my interaction with people. Only one in 20 people actually get enough sleep, enough water, enough protein, exercise, and floss. For those of you are still listening and you do any of that, [01:13:00] you're, you're a five. Yeah. You're an unusual person. And I always feel like when I do workshops, I'm speaking in a room full of mirrors.

These are people that are, are all in, they do everything I say and then a hand will go up and they'll say, Hey, I'm trying to get my mom to work out. What should I do? And I wanna say, there's nothing you can do. Your mom has chose not to work out and she's gonna keep not working out because that's what she's gonna do.

And she's gonna bitch and complain about how terrible she feels. And your job to sit there and go, yeah, it is. And then, you know, bla, blame some, just blame me folks. A big guy, big shoulders. I can carry the weight. It's Dan John's fault. There you go. You, yeah. 

Kush: Dan, uh, another tactical question to ask you and walking every day and maybe walking more on those rest days. And I'm curious, uh, what makes walking so great? Like why is walking maybe superior [01:14:00] to running or maybe riding your bicycle? I mean, maybe, yeah. Okay. Bicycle requires a bicycle, but why is walking 

Dan: okay, 

Kush: such a good? 

Dan: So I live in a world of power laws, uh, power laws, uh, n nasa, Talib, uh, sports.

So for me, I think you should sprint or walk Sprint. How far, how far can you sprint? Well, I mean, someone's gonna say, well, I can sprint 400 meters. I was a track coach for a long time. Not very many people playing 400 meters. 

Kush: Yeah, 

Dan: sprinting is probably the biggest bang for the buck you to get.

Your training, if all you could do is one thing, it'd be sprint and there's a downside, most of your listeners will pull a muscle. So a power law is a check mark. So walking, so I believe in walking and sprinting, any of that middle stuff I'm against. Okay. Uh, jogging is brutal at my, at my size [01:15:00] every time I, I come down on a jog, it's 2,600 pounds of force on each foot over a while that's gonna do damage.

We are designed to be walkers so that we can carry things. The the great advantage humans had over everybody else is that we had our hands free and we could see above. And of course we have hair on our heads to keep some of the sun off. And also too, we have this marvelous thing called sweating, which is very unusual for mammals.

So we have certain advantages and our. So our bigger advantage over a cheetah, for example, or a leopard or lions, is that not only can we stand and face them, but we can stand and face them with a stick in our hand or a rock in our hand. Okay? So walking is what we're designed for Stu McGill's great book, the Gift of Injury.

He talks about the best thing you can do for your back is walk [01:16:00] 10 minutes before every meal. Uh, I have another book right there that says The best thing you do for diabetes is walk 10 minutes after every meal. Okay? You ready? Here's my advice. Walk 10 minutes before and 10 minutes after every meal, and you're gonna be go ahead and eat six times a day.

If you're gonna walk 10 and 10 after, before and after each one. 

Kush: Dan? Uh, just, uh, questioning, uh, questioning a bit further on this. So what about, like, is it important how fast you walk? Uh, do you need to walk up and, I mean, I, I guess I'm coming. Do you as a bit of a skeptic? 

Dan: Okay. Show what's in my pocket. You ready to see what's in my pocket? I'm an analog guy, so that's my pedometer. Ah, so I'm almost at 9,000 dad's holding 

Kush: up like this, this, uh, pedometer device. Uh, I, I, I think most of us have not seen that for a long time. 

Dan: Yeah. Uh, you're gonna tell me, oh, it's on my phone and guess what my response is?

Get off your damn phone. [01:17:00] Why are you, are you some 14-year-old girl trying to keep up with sissy and Sally? Get off your damn quit. Tell I hate it when people, like, right now I'm currently reading 1, 2, 3, 4, 8 books as we speak. I'm in the middle of eight books, eight. Eight books. People say, where do you find the time to read?

Now Tell 'em it's 'cause I'm not doing this with my phone all day. Get rid of your phone. See this thing on my wrist? It's called a watch. How often are you looking at your, at your phone to tell the time and then find yourself doom scrolling for 20 minutes. I walk 10 to 12,000 steps every day. And I listen to this Kush and go ahead and disagree with me.

I'm fine. I'm right and you're wrong. But, uh, you know, okay, I walked 10,000 steps a day. In a hundred days, how many steps will I have walked? 

Kush: You would've walked a million not steps. Yeah. 

Dan: Is there a chance that doing something a [01:18:00] million times in three months is gonna make a difference to my body? So why am I, why are you letting, why are you asking these questions about intensity and all these different things?

I'm, I'm not ripping on you. 

Kush: And so 

Dan: you walk to 10,000 steps and I'm up. Uh, I'm almost 2, 3, 3 years without listen, I'll get, I went to a funeral in San Antonio and I was a suit and a tie, and I walked up and down San Anto. If you've ever been to San Antonio, Texas Airport, you'll know why this stuff. I just kept making loops until I got my 10,000 steps in, because that important to me.

How fast was I going? Well, I was dragging, you know, I was in a suit dragging my, uh, uh, overnight bag. Uh, it doesn't matter. I got my 10,000 steps in the next day. I got my 10. You know why? I am stronger than most people. In 1965, I started lifting weights. My brothers came home from Vietnam. [01:19:00] My brother came home from Vietnam.

We got some money from, uh, our aunt dying. They went to Sears and bought a barbell set since 1965. I probably have missed a few weeks here and there. Life happens. I've been consistent lifting weights since 19. This is my 60th year lifting weights. So why am I strong Kush? Because of what I did this afternoon, this morning in my weight room.

What I did two weeks? No. So for me, I don't want to hear consistency is the key. We, you, you mentioned this really early in our talk today, consistency. So you're gonna tell me you're gonna run a marathon good. And you finish the marathon. God bless you. Good for it. And then you say, I'm never f-ing running again.

Is that better? Or 10,000 steps? 

Kush: No, I think your message is, uh, is rather and clear. Uh, no, I, I appreciate your patience with my question here. I mean, it makes so much sense that it's not what you do today. It's not what you did yesterday or [01:20:00] tomorrow. It's what you can do honestly, like every day. And walking, I think, checks those boxes for most of us.

Dan: And, and one, 

Kush: it's, it's one thing you can do at an airport in a suit. With luggage is you can walk around the airport. I mean, some of us will even take a yoga mat and put it on a corner and try to stretch, which is great. But if you cannot do that, or in addition to doing that, just get your steps in as you are waiting for your next leg.

Dan: So the most important lesson I've learned in the last few years, and it's a, it's a tough lesson. I'm not gonna start doing something, but I don't see myself doing for the rest of my life. like, there's a, there's a thing called, I think it's called Squat hobert, where you're supposed to squat every day.

Well, I won't do that because, I don't see myself squatting every day the rest of month. Now I do the movement of squatting. Uh, better example. Uh, I like alcohol. I'm a big fan of alcohol. like I always tell [01:21:00] people the more my girlfriend drinks, the better I look. Uh, but when someone says, , let's do a, , we're gonna do dry January.

My thought is, well, unless I can not drink alcohol the rest of my life, I'm not gonna do it. I have a, I'm a very regimented person. I know what I can do and I know what I can't do. So for me, I know that I can lift weights three days a week. I know that I can fast. Okay. One thing you, I, I should have maybe mentioned earlier, but, for me anyway, I get out of bed and I get my 3000 steps in, then I drink coffee. But unless I get every email read and responded, every form question answered and responded, if I have to do a podcast, I do it. If I have to lift weights, I do it. I have to get my walk in, I do it, then I eat. I only eat after I've gotten my workout, my walking and my work done.

And it, you can call it fasting if you want, but for me, that's how [01:22:00] my brain likes to do it. After that, uh, my afternoons are always delightful. I mean, I'm talking to you right now. I mean, how, how great is that? You know, this has been a wonderful conversation, by the way, and I thank you, but. So for me, I like to have rituals.

I was about to say habits. I have rituals. You know, the, the joke is, I remember Archbishop Auer, he would get on me because what, whenever I tried to quiet down a Catholic crowd, I would always do this in the name of the fall and they'd all shut up and fall along. He goes, you can't use the side of the cross to quiet down a crowd.

And then I said to him, well, you don't like me. Tell 'em to shut up. So, but when you're with Catholics and you say in the ni, they know what to do. Exactly. If you're at a national football game and you hear Ho Jose, you'll stand up, you'll take your hat off and you'll put your hand in your heart. Rituals, I believe the most important thing, let's go back to that guy whose mom doesn't wanna work out the 19 out of 20.[01:23:00] 

She doesn't have the rituals for her going for 10,000 steps for. Is like doing the 400 intermediate hurdles at the Olympics. It is just, all she's gonna do is tell you that there's 10 hurdles and it's 400 meters and I'm, and I'm gonna, and I'm gotta, and where am I? Do I have to buy clothes to work? Do I, I need to buy a pair of shoes, A hurdle, hurdle, hurdle, hurdle for me.

I get out of bed and I go for a damn walk. I listen to podcasts. I, I, today's walk, I talk to my coach. Uh, today's walk, I talk to a friend. There's no hurdle when I'm talking, when I'm talking on the phone to my coach Dick. Not my, there's, that's not a hurdle. It's me talking and walking. Yeah, 

Kush: yeah. No, Dan, I, I actually love this, uh, phraseology, uh, between using the term rituals versus habits, because I, [01:24:00] yeah, for me.

Habits means some compulsive activity that I am signed up to do, , like I have to do and rituals just seems something I've earned, something I, I want to do. I think just that like shift in mindset I think changes things because you know, honestly for us living in the west, being able to indulge ourselves in things like fitness and longevity, I mean it's a blessing.

I think people forget that most of the world doesn't think like that. The fact that here we are obsessing over like these things that can keep us healthy and moving and keep doing our sports, it is such a blessing. another, let's say corollary to this question, which was we talked about mobility check marks. These things one should be able to do. And I'm wondering if you may have a similar, uh, type of benchmark for strength. [01:25:00] 

Oh, I do at 

this age. What, uh, uh, quote unquote, like, this is such a general thing, but like, what should a healthy adult, let's say an aging adult who's between the ages of 45 and 60, what are something they should be able to do successfully, both men and women?

Dan: so this is a, this is a spectrum answer. Okay. There's, there's a wing boat answer, but let me just give you a couple. Just, I still agree with Percy. Okay. You should be able to bench your body weight and deadlift double your body weight now that you should I have others too. I think you should be able to pick up your body weight and walk with it.

So, so if I weigh, I weigh 195, so we'll just do, I should be able to pick up two 100 pound dumbbells and walk with it. Okay. So now, so let's take [01:26:00] those three, let's take those three and just say that that is something I'd love to see my male, uh, listeners do. I would like to see that. Okay, that would be great.

Let's channel over to, over here now you should be able to stand on one foot for 10 seconds. Okay. Seconds. Ideally, your waistline should be under half your height. Okay. You should be able to standing long jump. Your height, not, not jump over yourself, but, so I'm six foot, I should be able to stand in long jump.

Six foot. Okay. This you follow? I'm sorry, 

Kush: just to, just to, just to, uh, be clear, standing long jump is from a standing position. 

Yeah. 

One should be able to leap forward and clear distance. Equal or more than the height. 

Dan: Yes. Yes. Okay. [01:27:00] If you can stand on one foot, your waistline is underneath, you know, ha, half your height, standing long jump.

And then the other one, the last one. And this one sounds weird, but you should sleep with one or less pillows at night. This is something I've been, this is my own information. Uh, it was interesting because there is a doctorate degree that proved that I'm right on this. But that one really does indicate mobility if, and a lot of our listeners, uh, uh, very angry, uh, I often get this from, uh, women who do yoga. Well, I do yoga three days a week and I just, I just like to have a pillow under my neck, a pillow between my knees and a pillow under my shoulders. And my point is, they're always why?

Well, 'cause otherwise they'll ache. And my point is, you're doing a lot of things for maybe this part of your body, but you're maybe missing this or that. Okay. So those would be my big ones. Those would be my, so the, the lifting [01:28:00] ones would be, I would, something I expect from someone who lifts, obviously someone's never trained before.

Double body weight deadlift is a, is a bit of a, a grind to get to, but it's reasonable, doable. 

Kush: Dan, you took like this really amorphous question I had and you kind of broke it down and I think you gave us a few, few drills which are honestly very practical to try out. And I encourage all of us, including myself, to go and try these and see how much work, of how much data there might be between what we should be doing versus what we can do today.

I have a few final questions for you, Dan. 

Dan: Can, can I just one quick first one? 

Kush: Yes, 

Dan: please. Please. Yeah. The way I monitor my jet lag is by standing on one foot. so it's a very, for those you have to travel a lot. And I do, when I got back from Australia. One of the first things I did is just tie myself on, on standing on my left foot.

I barely could stand because [01:29:00] of the, the flight and the time zone changes. Well, that's fine. What that would mean is if I had to compete, that means I probably need a lot longer warmup. So it's a fun, the nice thing. And the other thing folks, uh, using that stand on one foot thing, measure yourself. uh, on a, uh, and, and, and look over a week's time, two weeks time, it might be all you need.

You can get a real sense of how you recover by simply how you're staying on the one foot. 

Kush: Fair enough. Yeah, 

Dan: it's hilarious how much information you get. So if, if you, you, you worked out hard on Friday, you took Saturday off, you took Sunday off, but you also slept really well in those two days and you ate well and you know, you and I had a wonderful brunch and uh, uh, we went, a bunch of us went to a movie and we went to bed at eight o'clock and slept through, stand up in the morning and you stand on your left foot for 45 seconds.

To me, that tells me that you are fully recovered [01:30:00] and you're in a good place. 

Kush: Excellent. How good is that? Because yeah, I can see it standing on one leg. You know, it tests so many different things across the spectrum. Address strength. Yeah. Preception balance. Yeah. All of that. 

Yeah. 

Okay, great. Dan, thank you.

So in decades and decades of coaching, what does. One, let's say a hard held belief about strength or movement that you still defend and maybe one that you have changed your mind about or softened. 

Dan: Well, so I'll, I'll do the second first because it, it bumped into my head. when I first coached, I was an Olympic lifter and I thought the answer to all questions were snatch and clean and jerk.

Okay. And so, and by the way, it's a pretty good answer. The o and, and clean and press [01:31:00] it. It's a pretty good answer. Uh, it requires a lot of flexibility, a lot of mobility, coordination. Then I started working with people who didn't have my background. Um. The hardest thing I've learned in my career is to be open and humble.

Uh, like when I first saw the, the hip thrust, this is back in 84, I thought it was the stupidest thing I ever saw in my life. And now it's a fundamental tr part of my training. So a lot of times you, you have to be, when I first saw suspension trainers, I thought they were stupid. Uh, T RX is we, uh, from where you live there, do they still have the big TRX building in San Francisco?

Uh, 

Kush: I don't know about the T Rx building, but I will say that I do use suspension straps. I've been using them for like decades. Yeah. 

Dan: I thought they were stupid. And then I did with my, uh, heels together, a single arm row and I said, that's really good. [01:32:00] So I would say the, the biggest. The biggest mistake I made as, as a young coach is I was still American football track and field coach.

So the answer to all questions was, we're gonna just beat you in every, I'm gonna beat you in every aspect of the game. I'm gonna outward later, oh, as time evolved and I work with more and more people. some of my favorite workouts, uh, double kettlebell press, single arm, row, hip thrust, goblet squat, suitcase carry, none of that existed when I first started coaching.

my point is I was Oh, loaded carries, geez, loaded cars, answered everything. I, I would say the biggest thing is that I'm much. I, I lean in now with things I don't understand to at least to try to use them.

And that's so obvious what I just said, but [01:33:00] I'm much, I'm much more likely to go uhhuh. Mm-hmm. I'm gonna try that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna give it six weeks. Let's see what we can do with it. 

Kush: Beautiful, beautiful. Dan, okay, this is a fun one. If you, you have done so many different types of, uh, sports and you have POed, so many types of athletes.

If you could design a lifetime athletic event, which combines 

Yeah, I heard that. Hiking, 

walking, mobility. Oh, and for somebody age 60. What would it be? Uh, what would excite you? 

Dan: Well, so there's a, in masters track and field, there's an event, and I think I have this right, but it's the, uh, the, the pentathlon and it's the javelin, the discus, the sta uh, the, the, the running long jump, the 200 meters and the 800 meters.

[01:34:00] And I remember now I have some, I have some long-term physical issues that don't, don't help a lot, but I remember being at the, the nationals, this was a long time ago with my brother saying, you know what, that is the perfect event because you have to express explosiveness in the discus of the javelin, staying long trip, the 200, you have to have a very interesting kind of endurance training to do the 800, but you'll also have to have an interesting endurance to do the 200 meters, you know, have half of the furlough well.

You also need to have a certain kind of spring to do the javelin and the, and the, and the, and the long jump. And you need to have a concept of rhythm for the discus, the javelin, and the standing long jump. you and I thought those five events. Oh, and you also, you have to do 'em in one day. Those five events express about every quality I think you need for a long happy life.[01:35:00] 

Now having said that, since then, of course, you know, there there've been a lot of these invented programs and races and stuff, but you know, I've always had this weird idea that I've always wanted to walk to hike the Appalachian Trail. and I'm not going to because it doesn't fit with my other goals.

But, but you know, to me, when you look at the Appalachian Trail hike, the, the, the con, you know, the straight through one. Sure. When you finish that, one of two things are gonna happen. Either you're gonna turn around and just keep walking because that's what you've been doing for six months or you'll never hike again in your life.

And I think Sure. So I think when you get an event like that, pentathlon, I was telling you, when you finish that day, you'll go, I don't, I mean, you'll go, probably, you know what? I need to improve this. And to me that's always, that's always the key. The key is when you finish an event [01:36:00] and the, your first thought is, I need to adjust this so that I can get that, so I can get this, my 800 meter.

You just don't get enough points from that to worry. I'm fine there, but man, I need to be better at this. I'm gonna work on. My long jump more That's, that to me would be a, whatever you guys come up with, I agree with it. As long as at the end you have this idea of, you know, it's like when, uh, you, you review a chess game, ah, I lost that game on move 12, not on move.

I, you know, I let that night fork me, 

Kush: take all these trade-offs Basically you have to figure out what the optimal trade-offs are to be able to ultimately not just win the skirmishes, but to win the war. Yeah. And that, that makes the, yeah, I, I guess that makes it pentathlon so compelling.

One thing I remember, I used to be a huge fan of the Olympics growing up and I used to love watching the Decathlon back then, which is [01:37:00] kind basically the expanded version of the pentathlon. And I, I remember they used to call the. Decathlon gold medal is like in some way the fittest person. Yeah. Because of the variety of strengths across discipline that requires, I mean, it just, it's incredible.

Like, then, uh, last question, and this is something I wanted to ask earlier. We talked about so many things. We talked about fitness across , different needs. We talked about, what one should do with mobility, with strength. We even talked about just the importance of like a well-rounded, consistent life outside.

one thing we didn't talk about is if you had any, I'm sure you do, but your views on some of these ancillaries or let's say supporting blocks to a good life, a good fit life, I'm talking about things like, [01:38:00] Diet. Yeah. Sleep, hydration. And again, I know we are out of time, but if you wanted to leave us with some quick thoughts on these that we can take with us.

Dan: Yeah. Okay. I, I, I do talk about this a lot. A lot. So one, one of the things you have to do is organize what you need to do. So I have underneath my sink and in my bathroom right over here, I have my morning basket. And in my morning basket I have floss sticks. I have, uh, oh oil delay. I have some different things I use and it's in that basket.

And I, when I, in the morning, I put that basket and I do my morning basket. It's got my morning supplements. After I'm done combing my hair, makes some beautiful, I put it down at night, I bring up my evening basket and it's got the things I do at night. What I'm trying to get across is if there, if you have things in your life that you want to do, you have to [01:39:00] spend some time thinking about.

How does that work for me? I mean, I'm pretty famous for the fact that inside my car, and I did it this afternoon, I always drive with Flo Sticks in the, well on the driver's side. So when I drive, I floss my teeth, I floss my teeth while I listen to usually uplifting podcasts or books on tape, usually murder mysteries, Agatha Christie.

You have to set your life up in a situation so that anything you add has to be part of the system that you're going to use. So, you know, in my book, uh. This one here, the art of coaching. I talk about developing systems because to me, systems are far more important that we used the word rituals earlier, and I have, I guess I have both systems and rituals.

it's real hard for me not to do certain things because that's what you do. So what I would recommend to any of our listeners is that, you know, the first question, someone who's [01:40:00] never trained to ask me is, what, what should I wear? And I'm always like, anything, but where are your, you know, for me, I always keep my tr I, I have my training gear next to my bed.

When I roll out of bed in the morning, I already have my pants on before I even have a conscious thought. You know, I'm already, I, I keep my p so when I go to bed, the pants that I'm gonna wear on my morning walk already have my pedometer in it. It's already there. I don't have to think about my pedometer 'cause I did it the night before.

So for me it's, it sounds, and again folks, some of you might think I'm a lunatic, but, but I get a lot of stuff done because I don't think about a lot of stuff. Yeah. I'm not spending going, did I, should I floss? Uh, should I put on oil valet? It's, I don't even have, I mean, it's just there. It's in my eyesight, it's on, you know, I'm listening to a podcast or or [01:41:00] Q Perot, you know, mystery.

And you know, I'm listening to the thing, just doing the stuff 'cause it's right in front of me. And if I could give you any advice in the area, and I break things down into health, fitness, longevity and performance. But for me to be able to perform at a high level, the health, the longevity stuff has to just be built in.

Sure. I don't have to think about that for fitness. Yeah. Maybe I have to think, I have to call my coach and say, Hey, I'm getting broken down by this program. I need some love. No, it's built in. So that, that'd be my advice. Okay. 

Kush: Dan? Uh, well you have a fellow Agatha Christi aficionado. I used to love, love reading those books as as a kid.

Yeah. 

And you would love this as well. That, so currently, if you haven't noticed, I am in a van. I've been traveling in a van and, uh, adventuring across North America for the last one year. And I have my, [01:42:00] my morning kit, my evening kit, and my yoga mat, and I have these hooks on my ceiling. So the first thing I do is I wake up and I do scapular hangs because that's good for me.

So it's all, just all set up, which I so agree with you that, you know, the, the more we can simplify these, let me put it this way. When I want to eat ice cream, I will go down to whichever corner of my house or garage. The ice cream is hidden and I'll get at it. But, but the, the things that are important, like flossing, like stretching, like, uh, yeah, all of those things, you have to kind of just take away the friction and make it as simple as possible.

Dan: Great word. Friction. That's the word. So you're not rubbing up against, you're not working extra hard just to flush your damn teeth. That's really that. I like that word. That's a good u Yeah. I like, and I, 

Kush: I love that spin. I'm gonna start doing that, which is keeping those frost sticks [01:43:00] I use, you know, uh, I use the frosting, but I'm gonna keep the frostings because, you know, one part about this country that I love is like how many things we love to do while we are driving.

So instead of just drinking coffee and eating a donut, if we can floss our teeth, then it's been amazing to have you. On the podcast. Any final thoughts you wanna leave us with? 

Dan: Well, I'd like to do this again. I really enjoyed our conversation. Uh, and, uh, one thing I'd like your listeners, you know, if you don't mind, uh, I got my first trophy in 1967.

And what year were you born? 1978. Okay. When you were born? I was a Division one disc store at Utah State University. Uh, and, uh, uh, I just, folks, when you talk about ageless athletes, the, one of the things I want you to think about is I'm, I'm walking with you on this. Uh, I, I have the same issues. [01:44:00] Uh, sometimes, uh, sometimes my mind says, go and my body says, where, but not today.

Uh uh, you know, so, yeah, I'm, I'm walking the path with you. Uh, if I can be of assistance you, any of you, just let me know. Okay. 

Kush: Thank you so much again for coming on the show. 

Dan: Thank you. And let's stay in touch. Okay.