Dan John: 10,000 Kettlebell Swings and Strength Origins (Podcast)

 …and the feedback we get for our athletes and your experiences and my experiences, that’s what makes great coaching.

To me, that is one of the missing components in some of the people in our area today. They’re not having those conversations that allow their experiences to be shared with other experiences.

Welcome to the “BarBend Podcast,” where we talk to the smartest athletes, coaches, and minds from around the world of strength. I’m your host, David Thomas Tao, and this podcast is presented by barbend.com.

Today I’m talking to renowned strength and conditioning coach, Dan John, one of the most widely respected individuals in fitness. Dan’s been in the industry for 40 years and has coached countless athletes across a variety of sports, though he’s perhaps best known for his work with track and field.

Dan takes a straightforward approach to strength and conditioning, and his programs, often called minimalist in their approach, have laid the groundwork for an entire generation of strength protocols.

Dan is also well known for his 10,000 kettlebell swing program, which has been adapted many, many times across the Internet. I even did my own version a few months back. Dan is among the best at identifying what works and what’s just fluff in getting stronger.

I hope you get as much out of this conversation as I did. I also want to take a second to say we’re incredibly grateful that you listen to this podcast. If you haven’t already, be sure to leave a rating and a review of the BarBend Podcast in your app of choice. Now let’s get to it.

Dan John, thanks so much for joining us. The first thing I have to ask about is a social post you put out a few days ago as of this recording about the 10,000 swing challenge…the 10,000 swing program, I should say. It’s making a resurgence. Why do you think that is right now?

The quick answer is, all you need is a single kettlebell or a dumbbell. You can do it anywhere, anytime. I’m looking around my office right now, and I could easily do it in here.

What’s interesting about it is there’s a story behind it, and I have just a real quick tip to tell you.

Of course.

A few years back, “T Nation”, Testosterone Nation, the publisher and the editors called me up and said, “There’s a whole bunch of people doing stuff about kettlebells but we want you to give your insights.”

I’m like, “Well, what do you want?” They go, “How about a 10,000 swing challenge?” Here’s why this is interesting. Mike Brown and I went into my basement and on day one, we figured, “10,000 swings, 1,000 a day, 10 days. Nailed it.”

We did 1,000 swings on day one. Day two, we get up to swing 800 and famously, I looked at Mike and I said, “We have to stop.” He goes, “Why?” I go, “Because I can’t move.”

From my hamstrings all the way straight up north to my spinal rectors was just like a rock. [laughs] We lightened it up to 500 swings in 20 days and then we came up with all the little things as we went. By the time I wrote that article, we had done 40,000 swings to find the best ways to do it, and oddly, because of all the feedback…

David, I live on feedback. Any good coach does. Feedback is the key to progressing anybody. Now we’re to the point where I just tell people, “Do as many swings in a row as you can and then put the bell down and just pick up from there.”

“Start off with 13 swings and then the next round you start at 14 and go to 31 and then next round 32 to go to, I don’t know, 48, and just build up to 500 swings a day.” The feedback I’ve gotten on this, people have lost noticeable amounts of body fat. The grip strength is amazing. The funny thing that keeps coming up is, “I feel taller.”

Of course, if you do hinges correctly, that’s going to help out. David, I got to tell you, honestly, it’s a bit of an honor…

 …because in times like this where people are scared, people are worried, and I know that physical exercise is going to do some good, it’s quite nice to see so many people join in in these Internet challenges, these Instagram things, Facebook meet-ups, to do the 10,000 swing challenge.

I got to tell you from the heart, this is the kind of thing I’d love to be able to sit down with my mother and father and say, “Here’s what I did, guys. In a time of crisis, something I did made a difference.”

I have to say — and this was before we went into the age of social distancing and social isolation — in late February, I reread that article on T Nation and I decided to try and complete 10,000 swings in March on top of my normal training, just do it as a supplement.

I have bells, I had recently moved into an apartment with a nice backyard, I wanted an excuse to get out of the routine, make myself get outside every morning. I start off on this and as things progress over the course of March 2020, it becomes clear I’m not going to get access to my normal gym facilities.

The swings became a solace for me. Something I knew that was going to be consistent every day I was doing before quarantine. I was going to be doing it after that had already started. I have to admit that I didn’t do the original program, the original 10,000 swing challenge as it appears in its original form.

I chipped away at it, averaged 345, 330 a day and did some bigger days, did it in the middle of some metcons. Everything you say about grip strength, loss of body fat, body recomposition, and feeling taller, I experienced. I was talking to some friends about this and I said, “I feel bad. I didn’t do Dan’s original program.”

They said, “Dan would probably be fine with that.” I wanted your thoughts as far as my non-official 10,000 swing challenge.

What’s your last name, David?

Tao.

Well, [laughs] as long as you’re on the way, you are doing the right thing.

Well, [laughs] as long as you’re on the way, you are doing the right thing.

 You set that up so well.

his is when I talk about feedback, the importance, the beauty of feedback. You told me you do 330 a day. My correct response is, “That’s fantastic. Did you get results?” You said, “Yeah, I feel taller, just like people said.” That’s what we want.

It’s nice to have the 10,000 swings and to be able to write up…Very often people drop the F-bomb, “F-bomb you, Dan John. I finished the 10,000 swings.” I see that a lot. If I had feelings, it would hurt them.

It’s great to have that goal, but I just have to argue that the process…and this is one of my key coaching points, is that the journey, the process is always more important than some imagined result.

What’s nice about what you experienced is you got a basic understanding of everything that I wanted you to get out of the challenge. It doesn’t have to be the finish line of 10,000 swings, 10,000 horrible swings will probably do more damage than good for you.

I wouldn’t even say this is a nuance point. To me, this is just the way good training goes. You get yourself on the path, the way, the dao and one day you wake up and it’s like, “I feel pretty good. I look pretty good, and I’m happy I did this.”

You’ve been in the industry for a long time. You’ve worked with so many different types of athletes. Not to date you too much there, by the way.

That’s OK.

I meant that in a positive way. The thing about the fitness industry over the last 10 years, we’ve seen so many cycles up and down. At least from my perspective here on…

No offense, David. You have no idea.

‘ve been lifting weights and reading about lifting weights since 1965. I’ve been paid as a coach since 1979. I am shocked sometimes that people will come out and say, “This is my original work.” I can pick up Irving Dardik’s book from 1984 and say, “Well, it’s your original work, but he said it in 1984.”

I can pick up Phil Maffetone’s book from ’86 and say, “Yeah, I know that you said this is original, but he said it before.” There are stretches that people name that…When you put your own name on a stretch. I can pull up John Jerome’s “Staying Supple” and say, “Listen, you are literally following the exact same set of exercises.”

Certain things keep coming back. The whole new thing that’s come back is, the one set only program has come back. I keep thinking, “We keep burying the zombie and it keeps coming back.”

High intensity is the answer to all questions. By the way, high intensity works. Density works. Volume works. Everything works, but you have to have some concept of where to put it appropriately into everything we do.

What do you think is the concept that today in the first half of 2020 people are over-complicating too much when it comes to strength and conditioning training?

Oh, this can sound [laughs] a bit of a vapid answer but everything, that we have taken a very simple concept. Let me give you nutrition real quick — veggies, water, protein. OK, good. Let me give you a recovery — sleep. Let me give you training. You should train hard sometimes. You should go for long walks sometimes. You should train medium sometimes.

There you go. I just summarized it all for you.

[jokingly] That’s it. End of the podcast, Dan John. Thanks. No, I’m kidding. [laughs]

Here’s the problem, David. I can’t make a nickel off of telling you to drink more water and to sleep more. Here’s one nice thing about this quarantine, this in-place thing, is that a lot of people are sleeping more. That’s the one biggest bit of feedback I get. I’m getting people going, “I’m sleeping nine hours, and then I take a nap. I’m drinking water.

“When I train, I only have this one kettlebell. I’m doing the 10,000-swing challenge.” “Uh-huh. How are things going?” “I look great. I feel great.” It’s like, “Right, because you stopped. You took stupid out of your training and just went with simple.” I will say this. The last few years have been better. I found it took a major dip probably in about 2004.

Oh, it probably snuck into maybe a decade, maybe ’14, where everything was, “I can do 300 burpees faster than you can do 300 burpees.” That stuff is starting to vanish a little bit. I think that’s a real step forward. For the record, I hate burpees. I hate lunges.

Some of this stuff I [laughs] see just cracks me up.

I got to ask about the burpee, which is not a new movement. It’s named after the inventor of…

Royal Burpee.

Royal Burpee. People think burpees are something that was invented in the early 2000s. They’re as old as time basically.

Here’s a good question for you, David. How many did he recommend?

Oh, I used to know this. We have an article on BarBend about the history of the burpee. What is it? [laughs]

Four, and all it is is an assessment. When I was young, we did the burpee as a movement assessment. Then we did the Harvard step test for our cardiovascular test. Then we’d do one or two other things. The problem is all these things then just got honestly polluted. Royal Burpee, an impressive young man from a great tradition of strength and conditioning.

I should have named the goblet squat the Dan John squat. Actually, sometimes I’m glad when I look online that it’s not named after me.

It’s just the Dan squat. You got to make it nice and short.

The Dan. Yes, the Dan of the Dao. There you go.

[laughs] Speaking of the goblet squat, this might be apocryphal. You need to correct me if I’m wrong here. I once read that you said you could get athletes so strong with just a goblet squat with I believe it was a 32 or a 40-kilo bell. That you’d see some athletes transfer that strength over fairly quickly to a 400-pound back squat with the goblet squat being the primary movement.

Is that correct?

There’d be more steps to that, but yes. 400 would be high. The idea on that, David, is there’s a lot of us who had these conversations. You got to careful. A bunch of us who’ve been around a long time who threw the discus far, threw the hammer far, threw the shot far, coached a lot of people. We’ll sit down at a gathering.

I’m talking about a real back squat where you go down and up. There’s no knee wraps. [laughs] You just show up in your t-shirt and shorts. You squat it, and you go deep. After about 400, we don’t really see a lot of benefit in going heavier. You got to be careful here. You’re going to get a thousand emails from people who say they squat seven, but it’s a quarter squat, eighth squat.

What we found is, with that ability to just do goblet squats with the 24 or the 32, work on form. Work on what I call anaconda strength. That’s that internal pressure that you stand up with moving to the overhead squat, moving to the front squat. Very quickly we’re finding with high-level athletes, we didn’t really need those big back-squat workouts anymore in a year or longer.

They just didn’t need them. My friend John Powell, former world record-holder in the discus, once told me, “The only regret I have was having back squats.” He said, “I would have just done 225 for 10 and real snappy and get my squat strengths from running hills and doing stadium steps.” Here’s the problem, David, and a lot of your listeners are going to miss this.

We’re talking about people who already had in the bank years of appropriate strength conditioning. Then you get to a point where you say, “We just don’t need to keep slamming your face against the wall.” That’s when that statement would come out.

Having said that, if I work with a 9th grade/10th grade freshman/sophomore football team, if we focus on the goblet squat and then the overhead squat just with broomsticks in the beginning, we can get the same benefits against an opponent doing a pseudo powerlifting program in the high school area. We’re also working on mobility, flexibility, and total body movement.

That’s going to pay dividends downstream twice on a used door.

[laughs] It works. It certainly paints a picture. Let’s talk a little bit about mobility and flexibility work. In talking about that very basic strength and conditioning program, for example, a high school athlete, you mention that as an integral part.

Yes. Let’s make sure we have the words straight. I use joint mobility as the free movement of the joints. I have two concerns as you age — the loss of lean body mass and the loss of joint mobility. I like to introduce joint mobility as early as I can just so that the person knows a toolkit that’ll carry on when they’re in their 60s and 70s. They’ll have this memory of what to do.

Now we used to say “stretching the muscles.” Now we’re not even sure about what we stretch. What flexibility is is elongating those other tissues that are between the joints. I used to be a lot more specific than that. What I’ve been told by really smart people is we’re not even sure what that means anymore.

Flexibility tends to be a neurological trick, so if I was to put you on our anesthetics, you would have absolutely perfect flexibility in everything we test you on. The moment you start become two, you would start to stiffen up, so does feet.

Flexibility is often tricking the nervous system into letting go, but there’s great value in some of these. As you start to get our athlete bigger and stronger, literally larger, they also need to make sure everything is still in a bit of harmony, since they’re a kind of a yin and yang, if you will, of strength on the one side and power on the one side but also with mobility and flexibility.

You want to make sure you have a knitted athlete. I like the word tapestry but that doesn’t always help some people. I want a knitted athlete. An athlete that is clearly stronger, clearly larger but also their joints move a little better.

Their flexibility hasn’t regressed at all. Even though they’re maybe 20, 30 pounds heavier, they still have the same basic flexibility they had before. As they get larger, they don’t get tighter.

How are you making sure that’s emphasized and prioritized in a holistic strength and conditioning program? Are you doing…

That’s a great term holistic. I like that. First off, I suggest you pick movements that emphasize it. Now we use Timmy Anderson’s “Original Strength.” That’s a lot of groundwork mobility. For example, the goblet squat and the overhead squat, almost by definition insist on mobility and flexibility.

By emphasizing the deep position, the goblet squat, and the overhead squat and then we slide up to the front squat. While at the front squad you have to have upper carriage, flexibility and mobility, wrists, elbow, shoulder, flexibility, mobility. Sometimes just by picking exercises you can do that.

I think the bench press has great value, but the one-arm bench press makes that hand slide down and if you keep the other hand free, it turns the bench press into a full-body movement.

If you ever want to find out how your abs work, do a heavy one on bench press. As that weight starts to pull you off the bench, watch how you stay on, you stay on by lighten up the other leg and then the entire column or core.

By picking certain exercises, you can keep doing this. I’m a big fan of the one-arm press and the reason I like the one-arm press…well, there’s 100 reasons but I believe that done correctly, you get a real sense of keeping the whole shoulder girdle engaged. You can’t see my arm here, but I’m doing one-arm presses, and I’m moving through a whole range of motion.

Sometimes just by exercise selection…By the way…and David, I think that’s foundational. There’s two things I ask first. First is what equipment do you have? Number two is what exercises do you know?

I think exercise selection leads us to…proper exercise selection can deal with your mobility, strength, power, hypertrophy, body composition, all those things by just proper exercise selection. If all you do is you go to a gym that just has…and you do the same nine machines every time, you’re going to have some serious gaps. Was that helpful?

That was extraordinarily helpful. You answered not only my original question, but the next two I was going to ask, so I’m here scrambling [laughs] to find my…No, I do have a next question queued up.

Given that foundational basis of movements and understanding that exercise selection is crucial to one’s development as an athlete, not only with strength and power but mobility flexibility. Let’s talk a little bit about training frequency, your approach to recovery, it’s quite simple eat well, sleep a lot, take some long walks, and carry the intensity of your training.

When it comes to training frequency, a big question that I’ve seen pop up a lot since a lot of us went into shelter in place and quarantine or training at home is, does my training frequency go up if I’m lifting lighter weights more frequently?

What kind of principles do you keep in mind when assessing training frequency for an athlete?

Well, you have to…let’s break it up just a little bit…

Yeah, please.

..because we’re going to have a team sport issue, and then we’re going to have an individual sport issue. Which one would you like me to cover?

Let’s cover the individual sport one, primarily, if you don’t mind.

Yeah, no problem at all. The first thing that I do when I work with…if someone says DM me, help me, the first thing we do is we map out how many hours a week do we want to deal with this? And let’s start like, a lower end athlete, and I’m going to say 10 hours a week, and that’s just because I picked that out of my head.

There is no reason that I pick 10 hours. Oh, I guess, could’ve said five hours. But five hours, actually…and David, remind me about five hours in a minute, and we’ll get back to that. If you give me 10 hours, basically what I would say, 80 percent of your time should be on your sport or what your goal is.

If you’re a fat loss client, 80 percent of the time should be meal preparation, planning menus, going shopping, coming home and chopping vegetables, chopping up whatever, the chicken or the salmon or whatever you got, preparing meals, preparing easy to make things because fat loss happens in the kitchen.

My good friend Josh Hills always talks about body…he says about body recomposition…you said recomposition, we call body composition. But the hardest workout of the week should be your shopping. If you’re going to take those drinks, the Monster Drink and all that nonsense.

You get your shopping list, you go shopping, you chop vegetables. That’s the most important work out of the week, is your shop and food prep, for body composition. But say you’re a discus thrower or a swimmer or whatever, 80 percent of your time should be in the pool or throwing.

The other 20 percent of your time would be in getting stronger, more powerful, more flexible, more mobile. Basically, traditional strength conditioning. Now, how you blend that through the week, though that’s going to be the realities of your schedule. That’s going to be the realities of your schedule, I’m not saying my schedule, but I’ll work with you on that.

All the sudden you sit back, and you go, we said the athlete’s going to work out 10 hours a week. Eight, are going to be doing the sport, which, by the way, is not bad in a week, and two are going to be training in the weight room. If we break that up into four sessions, that’s four half-hour sessions, which means in those half-hour sessions, I’m going to have to make sure we get a lot done.

We have to be very spot on, so ideally, if you’re a thrower, those days would be, Snatch, Clean and Jerk, Front Squat, Farmer Walk or Snatch, Clean, Farmer Walk, or ideally, we’d get some hill sprints out on the field to play. But that’s how I would break it out first. What you’re going to see is that the strength and conditioning coach is very supportive of the other goal sets.

And now the thing you’re going to say is well, wow, in that time, in that two hours a week in the weight room, we’re going to have to really be on task when we’re in there, and that’s when hard discussions about exercise selection…personally, I’d love to see you Snatch, and Clean and Jerk [indecipherable 26:41] .

Rest periods, well if you’re Snatching and Clean and Jerking, you know, we’re going to have to get really on target here, which is why I tend to move to things like the one lift a day program, with throwers, who don’t have a lot of time.

If you have four sessions a week, session Monday is Powers Match, Tuesday is Frog Squat, Thursday is Clean, and Friday is Bench Press or Press. And that’s how we’re going to train things, now that’ll be a little bit higher-end athlete than a new thrower, that’s how I do it.

You have to stand back first and look at the amount of time available. The amount of energy and resources going into practicing the sport or the dietary stuff. And by the way, diet, fat loss, that is one of the most difficult things the human body can do.

You need to look at fat loss like an athlete. I’ll tell you one thing, I’m going shopping on Sunday, bro. Yeah, bro, chop those vegetables. That’s right. It’s all you, it’s all you. Thursday when I go back to my minor shop, I need basil baby, basil. [laughs] Give me one more licorice root. Sorry, I’m laughing to myself when I should really shut up.

No, no, you approach it as an athlete, as I’ve…personally when I’ve gone through fat loss and some significant bouts, I think the most weight I ever lost when focusing on fat loss was about 90 pounds.

I certainly understand that mentality, that it’s that switch that you flip saying, OK, this is my goal, I need to train for this like it’s an event, like I’m preparing for a competition right now.

I’m not competing against anyone, unless you’re on one of those shows where you’re trying to lose the most weight. We could debate the efficacy of those, but that is a really interesting mindset, compete like you’re a fat-loss athlete. I do have to say, before we get too far away, you did ask me to bring up five hours a week.

 Yeah, what if you only have…For example, I taught at this very academic school and I made a deal with my athletes because of…For example, my lawyer, former athlete. My mortician is a former athlete of mine. My doctor is a former athlete of mine. Many of my former athletes are now professors.

One’s a professor at literature up at Boise State, a professor of ceramics in Texas. One of my former athlete’s name comes up every time they talk about a Supreme Court nomination. I’m very proud of that. That’s a little bit more important than throwing the discus at the high school stadium, right?

There was a time where I just decided that I was going to have one-hour practices. It was great, it was wonderful. One hour a day, the longest part of their rate week was track meets. I will tell them, “Bring your books with you and study on the bus.”

What we did is we came up with a program called the Transformation Program. It was three sets of eight with a minute rest of two exercises, three days a week. Then we do a little bit of ab work. Nowadays, I would do more Suitcase Carries, and things like that.

That workout took about 9 to 14 minutes. Practice started at 3:00. At about 3:15 we’d already gotten our weightlifting in, we walked down a hallway, went outside. My manager had already set up the videos, had all the equipment out and we did…it was Discus Shot Javelin, and we threw against walls, because when you throw against a wall, you don’t have to chase the discus.

We would get up to 500 turns in a practice every day. We would get up to 200 plus to 300 throws a day at around…On Tuesdays and Thursdays, we would do two hill sprints with a massive hill next to our school and about 40 meters, but it seemed like it was straight up, my friend.

What happened is with that, we had the National Champion in high schools come out of that situation, nine straight Discus State Champions.

We had coaches from all over the United States come to see what we’re doing, and basically what I did, David, this is the key, is I looked at the problem. I looked at what we didn’t have. I said, “OK, I’m not Harry Potter, I can’t get the wand, I can’t wiggle my nose like Bee-Witched, here’s what I can do. Let’s pour in as much thought as I can and fixed it.”

Between the Transformation Program, the throwing on the wall, and the hill sprints was the most successful coach in my life. I tell you one thing was funny, parents would come at about 3:59, and who had to pick up their kids or some other…

They would see what we’re doing, and they would applaud it because they’d watched their kids waste their time in Pee Wee football, Little League Baseball. Finally, it was focused, it was tight and it was a lot of fun because at four o’clock you were free to do whatever you wanted.

Some of my good athletes would go and train on their own. Some of my good athletes would go home and prepare themselves for the Supreme Court.

Well, Dan, it’s an absolute pleasure chatting. I really love, as many do, as you’ve become known for breaking things down into very understandable components and understanding that oftentimes the over-complication comes from within.

We like to overcomplicate things sometimes rather than actually be evidence-based and be feedback-based, so I truly appreciate that insight.

 David, there’s a concept called phenomenology. Basically, real quick, we go to a village and there’s a well. We go to a village and we’re thirsty. A man said, “Well, there’s a well over there.” I walk over to the well, and I look in there and I see there’s water.

You walk over, and you look down, you say — and there’s rocks in the bottom. The third person, Edna, looks in and says, “Did you see the frog that was on the rock in the bottom of the water in the well?” Which one of us told the truth?

Well, we all did. For me, when we get together as coaches, and we get together as trainers, we get together as people who love weightlifting and strength conditioning, our conversations, our sharing — I saw a frog, you saw a stone, I see water. Those conversations make us better coaches, and the feedback we get from our athletes, and your experiences, and my experiences.

That’s what makes great coaching. To me, that is one of the missing components in some of the people in our era today. They’re not having those conversations that allow their experiences to be shared with other experiences.

Understood. Dan John, thanks so much for joining us. Where is the best place for people to keep up to date with the work you’re doing, your speaking schedule, and…

Well, that might be complex now, but where’s the best place for folks to keep up to date with what you’re doing?

I’ll leave you my speaking schedule, canceled, canceled, canceled. On Instagram, coachdanjohn, and then I have this new website, David, that I’m very proud of, it’s called danjohnuniversity.com. Folks, if you type in large letters, CORONA, we give you this.

It turns out to be like $10 a month for it, basically a third or a fifth of the price. But during this time, I want to make sure people are getting. There’s tons of essays, there’s tons of downloadable books, there’s tons of videos on there, tons of podcasts. There’s this great thing called the Workout Generator.

I’m not selling it, David. I’m just saying I’m so proud of…When this thing hit, danjohnuniversity.com is a great solution for anybody, a homebound trainer. All you have to do is push some buttons to tell me what equipment you have, and then we generate workouts for you. I love it.

Awesome. Dan John, thank you so much for joining us today, it’s an absolute pleasure. Really appreciate your time and hope you and yours are well during a series of canceled speaking events.

Canceled, canceled, canceled. Hey, David, you are an absolute joy, great interviewer. I appreciate your time.

Thank you very much.