Can You Go?: Assessments and Program Design for the Active Athlete and Everybody Else

by Dan John

“If it took twelve years to put it on, at least give me a few weeks to help get it

off.”

“little and often over the long haul.”

Warmups and cooldowns really do play important roles.

make my warmups and cooldowns seamless,

Sometimes, the whole workout can be “only” a warmup.

twice a month just to get the body feeling in tune again.

Playfulness is valuable in the warmup, and perhaps even more importantly, in the cooldowns as it helps keep clients coming

5. Train for volume before intensity.

workouts that feel good. Intensity can make a person nauseous.

twelve fifteen-minute walks with one rule: Go farther each time, but never jog

6. Cycle the workouts.

Train in a community.

success leaves tracks.

community increases i...

I’ve expanded my understanding of correctives and my ability to teach using heart rate monitors.

Train the mind.

“90 percent of it is half mental.”

I’ve used affirmations, guided meditations, right- and left-brain work, goal-setting work and other methods

Keep the training program in perspective.

more important things in life than six-pack abs.

Fundamentals trump everything else.

endurance athletes face a cascade of issues from joint stress to organ problems.

“The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else do it wrong without comment.”

spend my coaching time working on movement.

keeping my mouth shut and allowing the process of learning to happen is the hardest part. It’s

repetitions and time, and oftentimes the biggest obstacle to mastery is my big mouth.

clear, concise and correct.

proper, repeatable quality movement.

“What’s your goal?,” is “What’s your system?”

Addition by subtraction. Additional components must improve the overall organism. The system survives the loss of its founder.

what seems to work for me?

“I seem to make my best progress training hard three days a week and very easy the rest of the time.”

Thom Plummer is right, and I think he is, 86 percent of the American population doesn’t belong to, attend or join gyms, community centers or fitness clubs. After high school, most people opt out of organized fitness.

Even rarer is the person who goes to the gym.

“Don’t make me look stupid!”

I love elegance, mastery and grace above all in sports and life, and making fun of someone for not having had the time, opportunity or genetics to succeed is against everything I ever learned from the quality people in my life.

goal setting and ongoing assessment.

Appropriate Community

safety,

cleanliness and a vision of training

community ou...

rich people cheer the success of other rich people. It

I see results, community involvement and Don’t make look stupid! as the three looping concepts that

Oscar Wilde

“The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

addition by subtraction. When my young discus

Additional components must improve the overall organism.

fat-loss client, changing from goblet squats to single-side squats might zap off a few extra calories due to inefficient movement for a while, but, honestly, we usually make changes to the program because of boredom.

combating ...