Coach Dan John

Seeking inspiration, I've been reading some of Dan John's articles from his site and T-Nation. Dan is a very well respected participant and coach in Olympic and highland games style throws and also the Olympic lifts. As such he has a wealth of knowledge and experience to impart and does so in a detailed and entertaining manner.

One of the ideas that Dan explores is that of 'Work, Rest, Play, Pray'. This is Dan's expansion of the idea of balance in life, developed from a combination of his own experience and something that a nun talked about in his youth(!). The article is well worth reading, but essentially it presents the four words as points on an alternative compass. Those involved with sports or physical training of any sort will be familiar with definitions of the first two – Work and Rest – but how many of us really give any thought to the latter pair?

Reading logs and blog posts you'd be forgiven for thinking that those writing them were sometimes forced to train, where has all the fun gone? This is the play part. Maybe we all need to re-connect occasionally with the reasons for which we started training, that we love the sports that we play, that we enjoy the feeling we get from lifting and sprinting, we've made some good friends through our love of sports. We need to enjoy what we do. There's no doubt in my mind that, particularly for the amateur, losing the 'enjoyment factor' is halfway down the road to burnout and at least two steps towards giving it (whatever 'it' is) up altogether.

Ok Coach Dan, I get Work, Rest and, now, Play, but what do you mean by Pray? Referring again to the article, Dan talks about taking time to just be alone for a few minutes although he also counters this by discussing his own penchant for too much training alone – it's all about balance see. For me the Pray part can be any number of things – walking the dog, Zen meditation working on my bonsai trees – and whilst I need alone time, I often need to tilt the balance the other way and spend more time with my family and friends. This for me is also Play.

I'd urge you to head on over to T-Nation or to his website to look up some of Dan John's articles, and to think about your own balance compass, like me, you might learn something.

Look after yourself.....

That was the week that was....

This has been a hectic week with what little training I have managed sandwiched between work, family-life, meetings, etc. On the good side I have 'created' a bit of time on occasion by getting up earlier to pull the sled – Hopefully this is the positive start of a way forward. So training this week has consisted of:

Sled dragging:

'Pushing' using a Blast Strap-type arrangement, holding the handles out in front and pulling the sled behind. Really felt this the next day in my lats. Also pulling the sled behind by holding the strap handles behind me. Both of these are way tougher than using a harness. Also, pulling forwards and backwards. The grass in the meadow where I drag the sled is getting long now and pulling through some sections of grass three feet high ain't fun but wonderful when it ends.

5/3/1 weights:

This is a '3' week which has seen me augment the standard press, bench, deadlift & trapbar lift (substitute for squatting) with DB bench, DB row, hanging leg raises, swiss bar rows and power cleans. Numbers are looking ok and strength seems to be hanging in there.

As I say, I've had very little time and skill training has been limited to one session of heavy bag work, though this went well with power in the kicks especially good.

Looking forward to a good weekend of conditioning work.

Check out the videos of the recent FightUK event in Leicester. Leicester Shoot put on their usual good performance and of particular interest to me due to their weight category was the fight between Chris Miles and Adam Corbett. It's a good fight too.