Dan John: Wandering Weights, Our Epic Journey Through All Things Heavy, Issue # 25

Home » Dan John: Wandering Weights, Our Epic Journey Through All Things Heavy, Issue # 25

I had a wonderful few days working with the Ninjas at Mark Fisher Fitness in New York City. There's nothing like a dinner with professional strength coaches, Broadway stars and movie stars to make for a great conversation. When I talk about coaching, I often reference Josh Hillis and Mark Fisher as people “who get it.” They understand that the journey to physique goals includes mastery and community in addition to results.

My training partner Marc Halpern has been pumping out some good material on nutrition recently. This article takes a long look at dental health. Look at this part:

“However, there are some things about how we consume sugar that have big effects on how our biofilm reacts.

Frequency of sugar consumption seems to be more important than total amount. So, having one sweet food a day is better than having three or four small sweets over the day.
Have sweets before a meal (if you must have them). Sounds weird, but a regular balanced meal will help offset the decrease in pH (more acidic) caused by the sugar.
It appears sugar and starch together is the worst-case scenario. Cake desserts and sugary cereals come to mind here. The starch can cause the food to stick to the teeth more.
If you consume a sugary drink, consume it quickly and be done. Sipping is worse. We see this problem when babies fall asleep with fruit juice in their bottles.

We can always trust Dave Tate to hand out some truth. I think one’s system—one’s philosophy—is core is establishing a route to the goal. This is the million-dollar quote:

“Every day you hear a lifter in a slump saying how he 'has to go back to the basics.' Why is that?

"It’s because they never had the basics 100% right to begin with and tried to advance prematurely. That always catches up to you.”

Coach G adds the other side of philosophy: understanding programming.Like peaking, I think programming is a swell idea, but nearly impossible to pull off.

Memorize this line: “You'll never write the perfect workout. It doesn't exist!”

This little video is just fun. It’s an interesting contrast to making little Billy plan for a team. Rather than pushing kids into one sport, make them memorize Hamlet!

Laree Draper sent me this article on reading, but it can be applied anywhere to anything. This stunned me: “Smokers who are the most optimistic about their ability to resist temptation are the most likely to relapse four months later, and overoptimistic dieters are the least likely to lose weight." ~Kelly McGonigal: The Willpower Instinct

Josh Hillis follows up this concept to action steps. It's about what you DO,not where you've gotten—

“So if your best version of yourself would do intelligent, reasonable workouts three times per week, then do that. Be your best version of yourself, today. If your best version of yourself would have a reasonable nutrition program, and you'd plan your meals weekly, you can be that best version of yourself this week.”

John Cleese has been making me laugh for most of my life. No wonder I stay in such good shape!

“It’s almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you’re just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy.”

Finally, an article from Mark Watts that made me laugh and maybe sob a bit. He makes it sound as bad as it can be in strength training. This point should get people typing in forums:

“But, you are lucky because you have a number of people like Mark Rippetoe criticizing how you and all of your colleagues train athletes, although they have never actually seen how you train athletes.”

Long travel days ahead for me, but it's always easy to stay up with the things on the internet. My best to you.

Dan
DanJohn.net

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