Strong and Smart: How to Avoid Injuries and Train for a Lifetime

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to condition specific protocols. I've seen firsthand the difference Neutrodyne makes in my patient's health and in practice. Everybody, Dr. Rob Silverman here. I have Hall of Fame, weightlifter, gentleman who was a Fulbright scholar, Mr. Daniel John. Dan, how are things going today? Hey, really good. Already got, I think, 6,500 steps in, you know, my daily goal of 10K, and I don't lift on Tuesdays. Okay. Trying to add a little extra walk on those days. feeling good, watering the plants. I cannot get over how gorgeous the day is.

If today's a day you bring an out-of-towners and you say, yeah, every day's like this. It's just gorgeous. sell your house and get out of there. Yeah, it's absolutely gorgeous today. It's a lovely day. Outstanding. What a great way to start off. I want to give a little bit of your background. You have a very impressive resume. Mr. Daniel John has been lifting weights since 1965. And has won national championships in the discus throw, Olympic lifting, highland games, and weight pentathlon. You were recently awarded a lifetime achievement award from Great Britain for your contributions in the field of strength and conditioning.

As I said before, you're a Fulbright Scholar. then you have vast experience in scholarship, academics and athletics. You're a grandfather to five and you continue to write, coach, train and lecture to practically every fitness and performance level. Wow. So Shammy, I mean, 1965, you gave away how old you were. Sure. When you're about eight years old, seven years. Who does that? uh me uh so my brother ray had just come back from vietnam and my aunt died and uh she left i don't remember who she loved it too but there was money not very much like 500 bucks and so, my brothers went over to sears sear's roebuck and bought a 110 pound barbell set and i still have the booklet back here wow and uh i just fell in love with it i Just fell In love With progressive resistance exercise i love the booklet i wanted to do the exercises and um you know my brothers lifted off and on we used i mean that weight set that So years later I bought an incline bench press and I donated that to my cousin who played professional rugby.

He gave it to our other cousin, who play in the NFL. So these weights and the benches and stuff stayed in family for decades. It's just kind of fun to think about. I started lifting and, I can remember like in eighth grade, hoping to get home from something so I could get my night workout in. And I was only in eight grade. In the ninth grade, I started getting a little bit smarter about training. I made my own bench before I purchased one and it was five cinder blocks with a two by four on it. And I would clean the weight, squat to the bench, lay back, bench press, Do a curl up, drop the weight.

And I was disappointed because my bench press wouldn't go up. But my thought, I look back now, it's because you had to do this massive whole body exercise before you even got your first rep. I have journals just behind, just on the other side of that, that go all the way back to 1971, my weight lifting journals. They tell you what I would do in April 1971 in the Weight Room. 81, 91, 2001, 2000. I can tell you 60 years of weightlifting, basically. Yeah. Wow. You know, you're shaking up some memories.

When I was 15, I needed to get a little stronger to play high school basketball, so I bought a Marcy bench set. Yeah, yeah. I remember that company. Yeah. So 15, I think it was 1980 for me. Amazing. And you've used exercise as a backbone to expand your career both personally, professionally, clearly academically. You have an email that says, make a difference, live, love, laugh. balance work, rest, play and pray, sleep soundly, drink water, eat veggies and protein, wear your seatbelt, don't smoke, floss your teeth, all great stuff.

But it also says pull weights overhead. Why don' you take the baton and say which weights, front, behind the head, or back? Put weights over head. So that goes, so I have a three part, when people ask me to simplify weight lifting, I say three things. Put weights overhead, pick them up off the ground, and then carry them for time or distance.

Dan John's Background and Training Origins 6:34

Most people, when I wrote that, never did loaded carries. In fact, if you ever used the word loaded carriers, you can thank me for the name. A loaded carry is a carry, usually we also add vests and sleds when we do them. But it doesn't, I don't care how you put weights over your head. I think if just did those three, so let's just, You got a barbell at home, military press, duck style deadlift, that's where your heels are together, you know. And then you pick the barbell up and you do dead lift walks.

I think you cover the basics there. You'll feel better, look better. Your posture definitely will be better all you have is kettlebells, well then overhead press, swing and suitcase carries. Whatever you had, if you're doing those three things, I you hit the most important Aspects of weight training. Okay. Now if you want to be cute you Olympic lift you snatch the weight overhead You couldn't jerk it overhead you clean and press it over head If you wanted the nice thing is But if you're not doing those three, let's not talk about all the rest, push, pull, hinge, squat, load, and carry.

I get questions about rotation and anti-rotation and all these different things and this cross stuff and it's like, well, do you do suitcase carries? Or do do farmer walks? No. Well, before you get to rotational work, why don't you to suitcase carry which will develop the same muscles as rotational works. without the worry of blowing a disc out, which I actually worry about. I'm a funny guy because I've seen way too many people hurt themselves doing kind of dumb things, or not necessarily in the gym dumb, but when they get into real life.

One of my favorite, my old teammate is a chiropractor and he says he can't wait for when it snows in Utah because his business explodes after the first two weeks, you know. So, Rotation work is great, but it still doesn't prepare you for a snowstorm and shoveling. So pull overhead or push overhead, either one. Put weights overhead. Pick something off the ground and carry something. Yeah. Push military press, push press. One arm press kettlebell, dumbbell, barbell band. You don't care. In fact, I think resistant bands, especially those cool ones with the handles, is a really underrated way for people to get into weightlifting.

And it also teaches you almost a perfect kettlebell press, because when the band is pulling you down here, you notice my shoulder's in a nice, healthy spot. As I start to push, i got a little option to find that groove and then lock up. It gets harder here. The reason I like chains and bands, this might be too much for your audience, but the reason like using chains in bands is because it does teach that acceleration that you need in life. You know, very, even when you're pushing a car, you know you get your car stalled.

Let's go back to the 1970s. You're driving a 1970's American car which by definition has to stall. So your friends get out and they push. As you up to speed, it gets, I wouldn't say lighter and lighter, but it get as you go, as your accelerate, if you wanna be in the weight room you'd like it to be harder. The opposite of what you want your to do. What about a rowing machine? That's a good cardio device. If you're going to row, I'd much rather you go to a lake or a river and row personally. I've got nothing against treadmills and indoor cycles and all that, but my hat goes off to people who can train with that stuff.

Personally, don't know how you can put up with the monotony of it. If you're gonna be one of my athletes, walking becomes one your cornerstones. By the way, this cutting edge information comes from 1936, the University of Southern California head track coach who said that you should walk at least two miles a day as part of your training. And this is brand new stuff from 36, but I have discovered if you are lifting, walk is your best friend. Is nothing new under the sun? Is that what you're implying in reference to some of the data out there now?

Kettlebell's 1930s? Oh, even before that. This is my foundational book that I always reference. It's Heidegger's Physiology of Strength, the American edition, came out in 1961. There's not a thing in that book. People keep doing the same studies that he and Thomas DeLorme, Captain Dr. Thomas Delorm, he was the one who had to get all those American GIs out of those beds in World War II, and he came up with the concept that we call, He named it progressive resistance exercise. If you read Tom Dorm's book, Progressive Resistance Exercise, you'll read Heidegger's Physiology of Strength.

I don't know how much... I could argue that almost nothing has come out since those two books. Amazing. Yeah, and it's true. And I'm sure we have more and more great discoveries about the human body. But honestly, the human body hasn't changed since I was born, as I understand it. Our levels of understanding maybe have changed some. But I will say this. The fitness advice my mom gave me is still as true. anything i've ever read in online especially yeah so let me ask you we'll do it uh rapid fire scale from one to ten instagram style universal machine what do you say the idea that you could get 40 boys in a a room at once and all train we used to do that 30 seconds on 30 second off method and then you you'd lift for 30 you would swap to the next exercise, whistle a go, you swap, circuit training, universal, if that's what you have, You can make huge, huge strides using a machine like universal.

Perfect? No, because nothing's perfect. Everything has flaws, everything has problems, but it's pretty good, yeah. Arthur Jones loves hearing that. No, no, you're thinking Nautilus then. So universal machines are the, Nauilis is those massive $20,000 each machines that did leg extension, leg curl. I don't like his methodology of a single set to failure. Uh, I think training failure is, is works for about six to eight weeks, and then you run into the problem of training to failure. So for bodybuilding, I don't mean to interject, because this is a hot topic.

The guy who has been resurrected, Mike Menser via Dorian Yates. I know you're not necessarily a bodybuilder, but you are in the fitness genre. Yeah. No. Here's what I would do as an interesting study, even though they could afford to do it. If you could honestly put over a four year period, people doing the traditional Arnold methods, you know, the barbell dumbbell calisthenic method versus people that nautilus high intensity system, give it four years though. I'm so sick of research in my field, that's six weeks.

This is a lesson. this is lesson for you doc. Everything, everything works for six week. Everything, every idiotic idea you can come up with today will work for six weeks. So when any, they do a study that ends in six. My first thing I do is ignore it completely. The next thing. I hate is they always take untrained people to do the studies. And then they prove that people get, so if I have a whole room of people who have never used a typewriter, and then I teach them to type over six, weeks, They all get better in the, in typing, right?

Yeah. Right. Learning to type and getting stronger are both neurological adaptions at the first light. So in six weeks, all you're doing is studying the body, figuring out like when you first do even a machine bench press, you probably do something for those. If you people listen, I'm moving my elbows all crazy. You know, that's how you first do a machine bench press, right? After six weeks, it's right. Right now. Did you get stronger or did you learn how to do it better? You take a bunch of five-year-olds and you teach them to ride a bike.

And we use 20 different methods to teach him how ride. Within six months, they're all gonna ride bikes. It didn't matter the method because they are learning the adaptions. So would it be fair to say that you don't like to train to failure? Me? Oh, the only time I think you should fail is on the platform with three officials and a crowd and something on line. Because I have never been injured on a make. I've only been injury on misses. That's a great takeaway. You've only been injured on a miss, you never got injured in a make.

So this really breeds a bigger question. What really bothers you about the fitness industry the most right now? We've always been filled with malarkey, as my mom would say. There's all kinds of rounders and people who will do anything to get money in the mailbox, right? I like the Charles Atlas, but dynamic tension, basic ice, But we're to a point now, one of my friends pointed out she's a fitness influencer. and she hasn't posted a new photo, a knew, gotta be careful when you say that, new, N-E-W, it sounded like nude when it first came out of my head, A NEW photo of herself in years.

She had a couple of photo shoots and shows those same pictures every single day. Join my club, buy my supplements, get my jersey, Buy my hat, you know. And then the other thing is most fitness influencers don't tell you how many drugs they take. Okay, I'll tell you everything that you need to know about what I take anytime. So, you know, this one person I know the person is on Clen and clenbuterol and Tren something or other. Well, of course this person's going to lean out.

Core Lifts, Carries, and Training Principles 17:28

You're on two drugs. you can also lean on rat poison if you but it's of, course the problem is the dosage as we found out in Ratatouille. I would just say we are to the point now. Here's another thing too, Doc. If you're 22 years old and you have six-pack abs, you know what my response to you is? Well, of course you do. You're twenty-two. I'm 68 and I have abs. I wouldn't say six pack, I'd say a four pack. Getting a 4-pack at 68 is miles harder than just showing up at 22. Of course you're leaning and in shape at twenty-two.

So you got to be very careful about how you pick your fitness influencers. Okay, you can go here in the state of Utah and watch me weightlifting meets. It's and people walk up to me at meets and go, You're Dan John, the guy on the podcast. I'll go Yeah, then they kind of have this moment of like wait a sec you're the same because people are to the point now that podcasters and influencers are like in some special magical world that and it doesn't really exist agreed so that that would be the thing that gets me the angriest second is uh very few people online have any understanding of the tradition of weightlifting so they act like they're inventing something every single day.

For example, this is, it's funny, I'll even say this on podcast, so I invented the goblet squat. You know the Goblet Squat? Yeah, of course with the kettlebell. Everyone uses it, right? Yep. Well, years ago I came up with it as a faster way to teach the squat, and it became famous with The Kettlebell, in about 2007. And I'll get little statements like, you're so full of it because I said I invented the goblet squat. They don't even know that we were lifting weights 20 years ago. Hell, I think they didn't know we're lifting weight 10 years.

So there's this total lack of understanding tradition. Inside my downstairs bathrooms I have all of Bosco's workout programs in these nice little frames. It's kind of a nice, they're old timer stuff. And when people use my downstairs bathroom, they're like, oh my God, what years is from? And I'll say, well, these are from, you know, Harry Paschal, 1954. And they'll go, These are great workout programs. Well, yeah, because since 1954, the human body has not changed that much. They were doing, Pascal was doing clean and press, bench press row, squat, deadlift curl workouts in 1954, which are that what I just said right there is better than 99% of the stuff you'll find online.

Easy. And do that three days a week. Go for a walk after. Have some concept of how many calories a day you eat. Get some sleep. Eight or nine hours of sleep every night. Flush your teeth. go to the dentist, go the doctor. Know what your numbers are. Measure your waistline. That's so much better than all the other nonsense combined. you told everybody how long you've been lifting. You told them your age is 68. So the typical question I get at 59 is how rapidly did your strength decline when you hit 50 plus years?

Because that seems to be the spot. That seems just be spot also that everybody says, and we'll get into it. Take the HRT and HRTs and steroids. It's HR T all that. What'd you do at 50 when your strengths started to decline? At age 47 was the best year I ever had as a discus thrower. It was by far my best. I was throwing 180 foot throws with the real disus, the open, you know, international implement. And I had beaten college kids, I'd beaten elite athletes. After that, for the next two years, 48, 49, focused on the Highland games and then I hit 50. For me, now you have to be a little careful here.

So when I sit back and I go, oh my God, yeah, and then my strength is shot down. That's the nice thing about having 18 years of journals between when i turned 50 and this morning when it wrote my work at it, okay? So I have 18 of evidence to look at versus just a feeling. Here's my feeling, Doc. My feeling is this. I hit 50 and my strength just fell right off the table. Boom. You know, like when you, you have a glass of milk and you spill it and it hits the floor and the crashes. When I look at my journal, it is a law to quote the Beatles.

It was a long and winding road as my weight came down. and it tended to come down and kind of waves, okay? I have a, I was born with a thing called pistol grip hips. So I, was destined from birth to have total hip replacements and I had both. Well, the reason my squat declined quickly is because I always bone on bone oatmeal in my left hip. Okay, so that declined quickly, but my hinge stayed up. My deadlift and my, not necessarily my power clean from the floor, like from that hang, stayed. Up my overhead work, nothing went nowhere.

I was still strong as an ox. Then after that got fixed and I kind of got back into squatting, I, ah, let's be smart about it. So what I noticed is this, is that, now I have a theory. Do you mind if I just give one quick thing real fast? Oh yeah, go for it! So two upper body movements, the push and the pull, and two lower body movement, squat and hinge, okay? I feel that I put this into a quadrant and I fell that personally I'm a push-hinger. I was stronger in high school in the bench press than probably every listener you have.

No offense, I am sure there's a few outliers. Um,I never had to train the deadlifter. Now I've always been as strong as a dead lifter because I have been put on this earth to push and hinge. When it comes to doing pull-ups, i'm pathetic. and my squat is terrible. So I explain this to Pavel Sasselin, and he goes, that's interesting, he says, I'm a pull hinger. And when you look at his tactical strength challenge, it's a a snatch, a kettlebell snatch and a deadlift. Three exercises that a pole hinger would pick if he had a choice.

Me, I'm like, where's the presses, you know? Then there's a whole group of people who'd be natural, like rock climbers. They're more pole squatters because you don't hinge up, or you squat up a mountain, okay, when you're rock climbing. And then there are those people that basically now Olympic lifters, they're the push squatters, okay? And what I've noticed in my life, so there's a, I'm putting an asterisk on this 50 year old thing, for me, the things I, my strength, The push and the hinge stuck around a long time and I am still good at them.

The things that I'm not good, the pull and the squat dropped off a lot quicker. So in my training now, I maintain the squad. I do goblet squats three days a week. Only two days week I pull exercises. And I chin ups, rows, and I some of those shoulder thingies to make face pulls and stuff to keep my shoulders happy. So I know that I've got to maintain my squat. So, I squat movements three, actually, it's more seven days a week, really. I do the movement of squatting every day somehow. Tim Anderson's rocking is something I can do a single day, which is the moment of squadding.

A goblet squat three days, a weak. Do some extra stretches three a days week for the squat, so I want to nuance this off a little bit, if you don't mind. When you hit 50, your strengths seem to stay awhile. The things that you've either ignored or have always had issues tend to drop off. So my recommendation once you hit 50 is fold your arms, nod your head and be the big kid and say, I gotta make sure I keep an eye on those things I'm not naturally good at. And if you do that, I actually think it keeps your strength levels up.

So have my strength level dropped? Oh yeah. I mean, struggle to clean and jerk over 200 pounds now. Uh, need a weight lifting me to have the courage to get on the platform to a clean or jerk 200. That's, that's I can't believe it. And I still snatched in the mid hundreds. Like I think if I really train, train I could get back over two hundred, but I, at the same time, The risk to reward on that doesn't pay off. Like I said before, I've never been hurt on a make. I worry about the miss. A phrase I use a lot is this.

''I know I have one more injury, but I don't think I'll have more recovery.'' Trying to avoid that injury. So you have to be a little smart. And I'm not saying 68. Please. And I still, if a bar fight breaks out, I think you want me on your side. But at the same time, you know, doing something that doesn't have a real big reward tagged into it. So I said a lot of things there. your strength does decline. We know it. The research is crystal clear. It's my age. it's 68, 70 years old information from the studies, okay?

That's true. You can argue with me, but the research has clear on it, what I would argue is look where your weaknesses are and do your best to get up. If you're gonna lift three days a week, try to hit your weak points three day a weak. and on one or two days a week, hit the lifts or the exercises or movements that you feel really good about. We compete with our strengths, we work on our weaknesses. Great takeaway. So I'm gonna ask you a lift and you tell me yes or no. Sure. Barbell deadlift. Oh yeah, sure.

Every one of these has a caveat and the caveat is done correctly. Without question. And I'm going to give you one more caveat. Barbell deadlifts for women.

Critiquing Fitness Trends and Research 28:28

Oh, yeah. In fact, when I first came online, I met a group of women who'd all lost 100 pounds doing Adkins. But they also lifted weights. It was interesting because they agreed about, in the weight room, one of two workouts. either overhead press and squat or overhead, press, and deadlift. I think they naturally tied into Yonda's idea about face and tonics. If you keep yourself strong in the overhead-press work and you your glutes alive, good things happen. In 2025, I have more tools than that. There's Brett Contreras's hip thrust.

I love the half kneeling. That's when you have one knee on the ground overhead presses, because that stretches out the hip flexor area and it demands proper posture. So if you were to do hip truss and half-kneeling presses and that's all you did and walk, part of me would go, I like that. So anything that works the glute hard and the muscles that push weights overhead, I think those are primary. Deadlift without question. How about a glutes ham raise? Well, that's a bit done correctly. When we first got them, they just became a hamstring pull exercise.

You really need to take your time getting into those and learn. So I'm a big fan of hyperextensions, the old stuff. Which we still do in the gym and at home. Yeah, I think those are wonderful. the the issue with the glute ham raise is there is that little you know there's that like that gear change where it becomes like a nordic furl or what we used to call a sprinter's curl that's my issue. If you don't build yourself up to it you could once you hurt a hamstring It causes, I mean it causes digestive and elimination issues.

It's hard to walk, it's to sleep. So anytime we talk about anything that might bite a hamstring, and lower backs, you can work around practically any injury except lower back and hamstrings. They're awful. I am opening up a home gym for myself, hypothetically. 59 years old, I need to hold on a muscle mass. I'm not like you. It's not, like, i look at a weight and I get stronger, put muscle on. i'm a slow grower. Okay. What would you recommend? Kettlebells, TRX, bands, chains, dumbbells barbell. Yeah, okay.

We have a concept in my philosophy, it's called the killer application, the Killer App. So if you're going to get a kettlebell, the killer apps, The reason you get to kettle bell is for goblet squats, swings, Turkish get ups. You get barbell for the classic power lifts and Olympic lifts. you'll get suspension trainer TRX for T's, Y's and I's. And the best exercise I think you can do with the TR-X the single arm row. I that's the exercise. Hold the plank. You hold it like a plank, you don't move.

It's a whole body workout, and you'll also get a chance to assess your strength side by size. Ab wheel, of course, the ab wheel. And then if you have a bar to hang on, I think hanging is great, And you can do pull ups and chin ups. Now, if all you did was bought a 16 kilo kettlebell and just shoved it in your corner and that's your home gym, then you took it seriously, You can have great workouts. My home gym is pretty expansive. Men's Health called it America's Top Gym, which was kind of fun. But, you know, so I have an Olympic lifting platform, I've got power racks, two hip thrust machines, 36 kettlebells, three Olympic bars, bumper plates.

I mean I got a lot of stuff in there. What I would recommend, okay, this is important, like to do this first. I like to give you the big view of everything and now come right into it. For most of the people I work with, including most the men I worked with if they just went to Sears and bought the 110 pound barbell set and did what it said, what Ted Williams told him what to do back in 1962, they'd be okay. 110 pounds, 50 kilos is probably enough for most people. I interact with most at the time.

the 20 kilo kettlebell for most men, the 10 kilo Kettlebell from most women. That's what you need. Once you outgrow those lifts, well, don't throw it away because you're still gonna be able to use those. But for me, family of exercises with that 110 pound barbell, you gonna do progressive resistance training. Don't go online too much and don' Don't look at too many 21-year-old Olympic athletes because it's just going to ruin your day. There's an old joke in weightlifting. Somewhere in China, there's a 14- year- old girl warming up with her max.

That's the standard joke we make in the weight rooms. The most important thing is to have the equipment and number two, you got to use it. If you're using your equipment three days a week for a year and you feel like you've outgrown it, You have my blessing, to get more. If you buy $100,000 worth of home gym and you never touch it, you've just made somebody at the store happy, but it's just a waste. A lot of people do that. Let me grab you now. I got to get you on this. You talked about walking, I concur with you.

Zone 2 is the zone that most people will achieve when they walk. So, Dan, it's cold out in New York in the winter. It snows. it rains. Its too dark at night. Too late. What do I do if I can't walk outside to hit zone two for my exercise requirement? Okay, first off, I wish we would just get rid of this phrase zone 2. Every couple of years a new word shows up. I remember not long ago it was core. By the way, zone2 is Peter Tia's term. He uses that a lot. Yeah, oh, I know he uses a lot of terms a lots and doesn't ever reference where the terms came from.

So there's a lotta options. First off, and it's too, it is harder if you live in a place like New York, but if ya live on a high-rise, you have a stairwell. And I tell ya, climbing up and down the stair well will give you probably one of the greatest workouts of your life. I remember when I was at Utah State and the elevator broke in the high rise. and all my friends who lived on the seventh floor said after about a week they were in the best shape of their life. So you can go walk around a mall.

One thing I think that's really underrated, it's something we do in my gym. Now remember we have snow here where I live too. We hosted the 2002 Olympics and we're going to host the 34s so we get a lot of snow where i live. One of the things I think people forget is marching in place. And I'm a, one of things we do, Jim, in fact, it actually from this, we developed a whole series of exercises called vertical bird dogs. It's a fun, standing bird dog. So if you take a 24 kilo bell, you'd take up a 50 pound dumbbell and you put it in your left hand and Every single time you step, your body is doing a suitcase carry and I don't know of a better exercise for the core or what we used to call the column than that.

Marching in place with a single dumbbell is eye-opening. And if you want to make it harder, slow down. If you wanna make even harder stop. Stop with one knee high, stop with the other knee. It works your balance, it works, your abdominal wall. It really helps your shoulder because this retraction and holding is great for all those little teeny guys up in your shoulders who just get beat to death all the time by American sports. The collisions and the throwing are just hell on the shoulders. but it reboots them and so that's what I always recommend, marching in place.

And if you know you're Tim Anderson, if your marching place and you doing your cross crawls, so as my right hand hits my left knee, my hand left hits right knee. Boom, boom, Boom. Not only do you get your heart rate up, but you are also making your brain do the extra work through the sets. So that's what I recommend. And that is what we do. What is the Dan John Rule of Ten? I've heard it thrown around so much. Oh, well, it's almost exclusive to the barbell and real high-strength world. Basically, you probably have about 10 good reps in you in a workout.

I'm not including warm-ups, and I am not included in all the other stuff, but if you're doing like the Olymp, well, if your doing singles, then you might only have six good rep in your. It's this idea that when I say these workout numbers to a strength athlete, most of them will nod their head and say, yeah, that's a good idea. Three sets of three is kind of a, Stephen Court has this great three by three, by, three program, which I just think is one of the best. So you do the three power lifts, squat, bench, deadlift, for three sets a three three days a week.

Strength After 50 and Training Weaknesses 38:18

When that gets, and then he has his little progression you deal with. And then when that get's easy, you add a fourth day. When that gets easy, you had a fifth, when that get easy you have a sixth, seventh, then you start doing double sessions. I love the idea. If I said, we're gonna do two sets of five, by the way, this cutting edge workout comes from Ted Williams from 1962 from the Sears barbell pamphlet, two set to five. That's 10 reps. For most people, to sets a five hits you right in that good little zone where It's going to get you a little stronger, it's gonna excite, you know, the changes in the hormone system.

It is going excites maybe even hypertrophy downstream. You can flip that to five sets of two, which is a wonderful strength workout. Or if you wanna go heavy, you do a set of five, You do set a three, but you have to make that last double, that two. All those are 10 rep workouts. And when you're working with big weights, big engine people, That's about enough. If I was gonna say one thing in life that saved me the most heartache is understanding what enough is. What is strong enough? What's enough money?

what's a enough cake, what enough whiskey, What enough sleep, whats enough calories, Whats enough protein? And when you answer the enough questions, Very often you go, why am I in the weight room for three hours a day when 30 minutes of just this stuff would get me so much farther? My training, I mix my barbell exercises and then my rest periods are Tim Anderson's original strength. So when I'm in the weight room for 30 minutes working out, I am doing about 20-21 minutes of original strength, plus these bang, bang movements, and then I go for a half hour walk.

I have discovered that's enough for me. Wow. And I still am fairly strong, fairly lean considering, you know, do I look okay? You look good, man. Are my shoulders thinning? I'll tell you what I told my wife this morning. I said, he's 68 years old. This guy looks great, you know, because I tease everybody. The reason my podcast is growing is I'm Brad Pitt's twin brother with dark hair and everybody laughs. like you are now. But I mean, yeah, you look great. I don't see the age which speaks to the takeaway for those people who can see or are listening.

It's a clean lifestyle, drug-free, basically alcohol- free, whole foods, exercise, stress-Free, challenge yourself intellectually. So it's funny that we're talking on lifestyle. Give me the five best foods for health for a lifetime you recommend. Five best I often will share, I have this super food list that I'll share. But the interesting thing, let me just, come into the back door on this. Every time I love collecting lists of super foods, i have one from Better Housekeeping, Best House Keeping.

I got one form the AARP. i've got from Muscle Media Magazine from the year 2000.I love superfood lists. but at the end,i love this next part. where I pull the ones that are in every single list. And here are the four that make every list, okay? Water, that's cheating, we cheated there. I could also say air, but that is cheating. But water is always on the list! Olives always make the lists. An olive has four or five calories. Trust me, folks, go out of your way to get fat on olives. I want you to eat 3,000 olive-only calories a day.

Call me about two days from now and tell me what mistake you made. The next one is coffee. Coffee makes every superfood list. Oh, well, I'm drinking my smoothie. Well, it was drinking a smoothie, But yeah, usually it's coffee for me. And then the other is the salmon. So just by compiling the super food list, and I'm gonna keep water on there because I work way too often with people who don't, they don' get enough sleep. They don''t drink enough water. and then they're wondering whether or not successful.

If you're trying to live on four hours of sleep, first off, what the hell are you doing? And call me up, cause I wanna have that lifestyle if it''s that exciting. So get your sleep, drink your water. The problem with this, Doc, is that how much money can you make on telling people to get more sleep and drink water? Would you tell me how money that gets me? Probably not a lot, only a console, which gets into my next question. Oh, wait, let's get through the list. Let's go through it. Okay. So water, coffee, olives, salmon.

Now from there, it depends on what direction you want to go, but let us do it this way. I think I try to eat veggies at every meal, but I will say this, if you can, the next thing I am now putting on the list, I'm gonna go to two directions, okay. I wanna go health over here. fermented foods. I would include the kimchi's and the sauerkraut's in there. Of course, beer is fermented, wine is fermented, tea is ferment, coffee's fermented. Miso is, I mean, the number of fermented food that you probably eat in a week are quite high, okay?

But I like the idea of saurkraute or kimchi or something like that. Uh, Okay, I know that calories in, calories out is the first level of body composition, fat loss, if you will, okay? I knew that. But I still believe that the gut biome is kind of the unexplored area. And then the third thing I actually do believe in the insulin hypothesis, but I think if can help those first two, that third one controls itself a little. I do think eating too much sugar does cause long-term issues, but you won't see it in six weeks.

And that's when most studies end. Does that make sense to you? Absolutely. Then on this side for performance, I would go steak, turkey. We already have salmon on the list. And then on this side, on the health side we said fermented fruit and then fruit. I think fruit, now listen, I'm a veggie guy. Veggies, mass amounts of veggies, but I thing fruit is really underappreciated. And I gotta tell you why, it's because we screwed up how we explained sugar. 30, 40, 50 years ago. Apples have sugar, they're sweet.

Again, try to get fat eating 3,000 calories a day of apples. Just let me know how the next day goes for you. You'll get your exercise as you sprint to the toilet over and over again. Fermented food, apples, and then over here, the steak, poultry and the eggs for performance. And when you put that together, those are my perfect foods. Supplements. Okay, I never believed in creatine until my doctor put it on for my concussion issues. Yes. Creatine aids in concussion for post-concussion, for short and long-term amnesia, has a great cognitive effect, even more effective for women.

And I wrote my thesis on creatine. I'm happy to hear that you sound like you're a converter because... When I first took it, when it came out in the 80s, I took and all it did was bloat me up. But back then, who knows? But I take my creatine with something I recommend for everybody every day, sugar-free orange flavored Metamucil. And I think, so I'm a big believer in digestion and elimination, but I I think, now you can probably have other, I'm sure there's other fibers that are just as good.

Home Gym Essentials and Walking for Zone 2 46:38

I'll tell you why I do the Metamucil is it tastes good with the creatine. And that maybe is not the most scientific thing you've heard all day, but that little, and I put it in a shaker and knock it down first thing in the morning. So I those are two supplements and like them together. so I start my day off, if you will, with a brain health and a digestive elimination health to start my day. Other supplements. In fact, I'm not selling this. I'll just show you. It's right here on my desk. This is a supplement I take, it's called Hibernate.

HiberNate Labs. And I get nothing from them. but it's got the zinc in the, I'll take it right before I go to bed. It's the got zinc, which is great. Interesting thing about zinc folks. So I have to go a skin doctor because I'm fair skinned and I was a track and field and highland game athlete. I've had massive sunburns, so I had to deal with some skin issues. My skin doctor is wonderful and he's a big believer that head and shoulders. So when you take head shoulders because it's got he says putting here and then any weird spot you have on he said he should rub it into your face too.

And I go why goes well because of the zinc. And that's when I finally put together the zinc. It's just good for humans. Zinc is good humans, magnesium is the master relaxer. When I work with special forces, we have to be careful about what we say. They'll ask for cheaper supplements. And one person one time said, well, milk of magnesium, is a great thing to take for magnesium. Problem with the special force's community is, If you, Doc Rob, take one tablespoon, I'm elite. I'll drink half the bottle.

Well, that was the problem for a few days. They had massive, massive diarrhea. But magnesium does relax you. I don't know if this is still true, but they used to want heart attack patients put magnesium into them to help kind of calm the shutters down. That's still through. And I read that in a book, I dunno if it's true. Oh, and there's also just a tiny bit of melatonin in this too. Just, oh, in vitamin D3. Okay, I'm gonna tell you something I think is hilarious about vitamin D, okay? Do you know when vitamin d was first pushed as a big-time supplement?

this book here the physiology of strength from 1961 the research was done in the early 1950s there is nothing new when people say we're not getting enough vitamin d my first thought is uh yeah that research is older than my brother and he's 80 so right so the creatine and the metamucil kick off my day The zinc, magnesium, D3, and that tiny bit of melatonin finished my day. Outstanding. So I'm going to recap what you told me, all right? So it's going take me about 45 seconds. You said a person has about 10 good reps in them per workout.

you want to pull weights overhead, you wanna pick weights off the ground, You wanna carry weights. Sleep is a critical hack. Nutrition, eat whole real foods. Basically. Consistency was critical for you. Be very wary of some of the brand new aesthetic fitness influencers. If a study's for six weeks in weightlifting or performance, throw it out because everybody's going to improve in six week, certainly if they started from ground zero. The supplements that you like are creatine, zinc, magnesium, vitamin D3, melatonin.

Foods that your like, are olives, filtered water, wild salmon, organic coffee, fermented foods, good quality protein, fruit. And some of the concepts that we think we should discuss more would be the gut microbiome, I wholeheartedly agree on that, and the insulin resistance hypothesis. which without question is the number one reason why we're too inflamed today. So would that be a summation of what we got from you? Yeah, yeah. Well, I got a question for you. I've got buddy of mine. He's in Switzerland, watches all my and listens to all of my podcasts.

And he says, Rob, one thing at the end of the podcast to do on Monday to make my life better. What are you telling him, Mr. Dan John? One thing. Yeah. Put your clothes next to your bed. uh you know just a pair of sweats when you wake up put your pair sweats on and get 2 000 steps outstanding he does that is not far but the momentum you get from those 2000 and then you push the coffee maker push, the coffeemaker as you walk out the door get your 2000 steps in when. You get in you'll have a completely different experience about that day Monday it'll be three or four in the afternoon and you'll like, how did I get all this?

You'll so far ahead in everything you do. And it will be like everything smells better and tastes better. You're just miles ahead. I hate to say your competition, but you're miles head, everybody else you know. 2,000 steps and folks, 2 thousand steps is not far at all. for longevity weights or cardio weights oh well you gave me an either or i would still go with weights uh and uh my belief in cardio is you lift weights which elevates your heart rate and then you go for a walk after it i always walk After i lift or do stretching always that little bit of elevation so you know if you use mafiotone's numbers gosh i It's hard to believe, but you know, my top number now is 110 to get into that zone.

Wow. Well, I can get it to 110. I mean, you get that, when I'm doing set of incline bench presses, and get to one 10, But if I get my heart rate up to that and then go for a walk, as I walk as, walk I stay at that high range and drift down for the entire duration. So that's, um, I don't know, I know we're kind of coming to the sun now, but one of the things the fitness industry does that's so horrible is the answers that we give people, the reason you got fat, gluttony and sloth are sloths. You were lazy and you overate.

All right, so the answer is, is we wanna make you burn fat which I think is possible unless you actually pull the person's skin open and hit it with a blow torch. But the answer is probably understanding where your calories are. What calories do you need? Having a mild, mild restriction. Okay? I mean, 100 calories a day under what you project you needed. And then going for a couple of walks. That is so much better prescription than try to go into the gym or diet or drink all those idiotic concoctions with maple syrup and all this stuff.

A reasonable caloric restriction, reasonable walking, lifting three days a week, and feeling good about it is much more important than trying to burn yourself up. I mean, there's enough stress in your life, don't add it by Don't add more stress. More stress is not gonna be the answer to your body composition issues. Which goes to what you said, don't train to failure unless it's on a competition platform. And I'll close with, there was a study that came out in the last month that talked about 1,000 IUs of vitamin D3, not enough.

One gram of EPA, DHA, algae, which is the weakest form of algae. Not enough, 30 minutes of strength training three times a week. made a profound mark on longevity markers. Everybody, you've got the Hall of Famer. Mr. Dan John, Dr. Rob Silverman, Proven Health Alternatives, always yours in health.