234: Dan John on The Art of Letting Go, Relaxation, and Conquering the “Monkey Brain” in Power Performance

Our guest today is Dan John who is a strength coach, track coach, master’s track athlete, best-selling author, and all around sage of wisdom on all-things strength training for athletics and life itself. More show notes at just-fly-sports.com/podcast-234-dan-john/ Dan’s work has been profoundly impactful on my coaching, and training practice.  The older and more experienced I get as a coach, the more I find his reduction to the essentials, as well as global thinking, extremely valuable.  Dan appeared on podcast episode #96 with one of my favorite conversations since the start of this podcast series. If you’ve been around elite coaches and athletes for long enough, you start to realize trends that go beyond the sets, reps and training prescriptions that work their way into the results that are being achieved in competition.  Elite athletes are strong enough for their sport, as well as being (hopefully) adequate in general physical measures, but they also tend to have elite levels of relaxation and tension management.  Many times, the best competitors carry a different outlook on competition itself. For today’s show, Dan covers ideas on the art of “letting go” and achieving better performance through superior relaxation and tension management.  He also gets into some of the creative coaching practices he utilized for his throwers, such as playing unique games, “range” throwing, constraint based turns in the circle, and super-setting kettlebell work with throwing.  Finally, other important elements, such as the importance of being “deprived” of a good training environment, and elastic athletic performance are addressed in this conversation with a strength and track legend. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs.