8 Lessons I learned from Coach dan John About Home Gym Training

“8 Lessons I learned From Dan John About Home Gym Training”
By Kyle Battis CSCS, ATC, NSCA-CPT
www.HomeGymSecrets.com


Coach Dan John is a man who knows a thing or two about effective home gym training. I recently had the pleasure of interviewing this veteran home gym trainee and in true Dan John fashion, he had some interesting things to say (would you expect anything less?).

Below you will find some of the key concepts that Coach John shared with me during our interview. I encourage you to apply these pearls of wisdom to your own home gym training so that you can reap the benefits.

1. “Save Your Money on an Expensive Multi-gym, Buy an Olympic Barbell and Some Smaller Weight Plates To Get Started”

With this equipment alone you can do anything you need to. Dan told me when he first started training he had a bar with some smaller plates (two 25 lb. plates and two 35 lb. plates) that allowed him to train with a few different combinations of weight. He would perform exercises such as Front Squats, Back Squats, Power Cleans, Snatches, and Presses. You can start your home gym with a barbell with 300 pounds of weight and it can be purchased very inexpensively. I highly recommend checking out yard sales and talking to gyms as you can probably found one even cheaper 2nd hand.

“If you want to save a lot of money and a lot of headaches by yourself a bar.”

Dan says to not worry about buying the highest quality bar on the market, just get a cheap Olympic bar so that you can get started with the basics. Even a used bar that you can get for free is a great place to start. Which brings me to point number two…….

2. “Start With What You Have”

Many people focus on what they don’t have or don’t know. Dan says that you need to start with what you have and just start!

Dan said, “You are not going to start your gym with the perfect platform, with a Swedish bar, with all bumper plates, with the perfect rack, and with all of the equipment in the world.”

Dan stated that some of the best lifters in history started with a junky barbell (Tommy Kono for example). Dan and I also discussed the Pele, one of the greatest soccer players of all time. He started out training with a rolled up ball of rags as a makeshift soccer ball. Dan mentioned this adversity training builds tremendous mental toughness that will carry over to every other aspect of your life.


“Quit complaining, quit whining, quit looking at all of the problems and start fixing them.”

Doing something is always better than nothing. Dan said what has made him a successful athlete is that he will, “Leap into the fray, jump into the fight.” You don’t need to start perfect you just need to start. Do first, then seek perfection as you progress. Dan wrapped this point up by stating, “Name a part of life that works perfectly from the start without experiencing any pain? Childbirth is not like this, raising kids is not like this. Eventually, you’ll look back at all of this ‘pain’ and you’ll be happy.”

3. Make Your Training Part Of Who You Are

Dan gave me some great examples of how he makes training an integral part of his life. Here are some of the examples Dan provided:

Dan takes a daily walk with his wife and dog. Dan says that he’ll throw his Turbo-Jav, walk and pick it up, and throw it again while his wife is off investigating some item of interest in their walk.

Dan told me that he performs chin-ups in between passes while mowing the lawn.

Dan shared how his daughter had some friends over to his house recently. They set up a volleyball net in the back yard and played volleyball for three hours! Dan said that they had a blast playing and got three hours of exercise without even knowing it.

Dan says that he keeps a kettlebell in his office and performs kettlebell front squats in between answering questions while he is working online at T-Mag. These little mini-sets add up throughout the day and it is a great way to fit exercise into any busy schedule.

Dan says that he performs regular workouts in his garage gym or in his back yard. He says that everyone needs to ask themselves what it is that they need out of their training and design their program accordingly. Dan has boiled down his training to the following: Pick a weight up off of the floor, put it over your head, carry it for time or distance.

4. “Machines Are Not The Answer To Your Fat Loss Goals”

Dan stated that “You need chaos in order to improve.” The body responds to chaos by improving. What makes us human beings is chaos. “Humans thrive on chaos even through we strive for order in our lives.”

Dan said, “Athletes who train on machines don’t produce strength that translates onto the athletic field or onto the game of life.” There are many problems with machines. Lack of stabilizer muscle training, movement pattern overload, isolation training can lead to injury, etc. Focus on training “movements and not muscles” and you’ll be much better off. Think squat, deadlift, overhead pressing, pulldowns or pull-ups, horizontal rowing, clean and sntach.

5. “Most People Don’t Actually Train In a Gym, They Wave Their Arms Around and Talk About Training In a Gym”

“If you go to the local health club you’ll see guys between sets of benching and curling talking about the new pope, the stock market, and more,….everything but hard training.”

“You can always tell hard work because no one wants to do it for very long.” This D.J. quote is awesome! It is so obvious but so overlooked my most gym-goers.

“If you train hard you shouldn’t want to do anything else.” Dan told how some people can go the gym and do 8 exercises/muscle group and perform multiple sets for each exercise. He said these people can train for two hours straight and not work hard at all. More is not better. Better is better.

To learn about hard work try Dan’s “One lift a day program” or his Tabata Front Squats or Tabata Thrusters workout. You’ll find out really quickly what hard work is.

6. “If I had to Build A Home Gym Today The First Place I Would Go Would Be The Local Hardware Store”

Dan John trains out of his garage. He has a great set up that gets the job done and a great deal of this equipment is not fancy at all. Contrary to popular gym culture belief, every piece of equipment that you have does not have to be covered in shiny chrome and you do not need to spend $50,000 on equipment to outfit a gym. Take a look at Dan’s set-up to see how some common household items and hardware store pieces of equipment can really help you outfit your home gym.

A Sneak Peak Inside Dan John’s Home Gym Set-Up:

-Hooks (to hang equipment on the walls of his garage)
-101 Dalmations Clock (used to time rest periods and those brutal Tabata Squats)
-Barbells
-Weight Plates
-Dumbbells
-Kettlebells
-Rosenburg Bars (Farmer’s Walk Bar)
-Chains (to drape over the bar for accommodating resistance)
-Bench (old bench from house)
-Dragging Sled
-“Judy” (an Army duffel bag loaded with three 50 pound rock salt bags)
-BFR 2000 (A Big Friggin Rock that Dan carries for time or distance)
-Home Made Lifting Platform (thank you Home Depot!)
-Wheelbarrow
-Leaf Blower (Seriously. Dan says that he uses this to clean up the chalk and debris off of his gym floor. “30 seconds and the place is clean as a whistle.” One of Dan’s friends that saw him cleaning his gym told him, “That is the single best idea I have ever seen!”




7. “Simple But Not Easy”

“My programs are universally simple but they are not easy.” Simple but not easy is apparently the motto of Dan’s throwers. He said that learning how to throw the discus is conceptually very simple but doing it well is not very easy and takes thousands of repetitions.

When it comes to lifting weights many coaches and trainees really overcomplicate things to mask their lack of effort and to avoid hard work.

Dan says, “Forget about tempo. What is the temp for a Snatch: “Make it!!!!” Just lift the weights quickly. If it is a lighter weight lift it fast, if it is a heavier weight still try to lift it fast (it just won’t look as fast!). Simply lower the weight with control.

Dan gave the example of the Tabata Front Squats. The program is a relatively simple concept. Alternating between performing front squats for 20 seconds and resting 10 seconds for Four minutes is NOT easy to do.

Dan says, “Go to an Olympic Weightlifting Meet after performing this routine and what you’ll need to do during the meet will seem easy.” Just like the Marines, do more in training so that actual battle seems easy. This is the entire point of double and triple sessions in sports. That adversity training helps build confidence, shows you that you can do more than you think you are capable of.

Dan stated that he loves training people who have been through military bootcamps, were former wrestlers, football players, or track athletes because these groups of people typically have developed high levels of mental toughness. Seek to incorporate this into your training and you’ll see better returns on your investment.

8. “80% of My Training Never Changes, I Really Experiment a Lot With The Other 20%”

“I’ll keep the basics, deadlifts, front squats, snatches, dragging sled, I’ll keep doing these things all of the time. The other 20% of my training I experiment with. I keep what works and throw away what doesn’t.”

That statement is worth it’s weight in gold. This home gym training veteran has been ‘scientifically’ testing what does and doesn’t work for him in his garage ‘laboratory’ for years. This is a crucial step many trainees neglect to take.

If you want to see a better return on your results then pay attention to what does work for you and what doesn’t. Record it in your training log and over time you will be able to become more efficient with your training sessions by avoiding “garbage work” that has little to no benefit.


Closing Thoughts

Dan John is great coach and so fun to listen to because you can really appreciate the wisdom in what he shares. He is a walking example of “real world” experience and he does it all in his home gym. Dan has a knack for cutting the garbage and boiling it down to what is important and what works.

I encourage you to implement some of these points into your home gym training so that you can reap the benefits. If you would like to listen to the interview this article was based on simply visit this link to hear Dan in action: http://tinyurl.com/8cauc

Train with purpose,

Kyle Battis CSCS, ATC, NSCA-CPT
Concord, NH
www.HomeGymSecrets.com