"They want the secret, and the secret is little and often over the long haul," says Dan John, author of several books on strength and fitness, most recently The Fitness Forge: Master Coaching Tools that Build Real Strength.

Today we’ve got a bit of a curve ball, a backdoor slider, but not really. It’s Dan John, who is something of a Swiss army knife of wisdom and kindness and strength and conditioning. He’s been a long time strength coach and a master communicator of how to get real-life strong, not influencer, flash-in-the-pan strong, the kind of strong that allows you to fill out your shirt, carry all the groceries in one go, and shovel the driveway without leaving yourself in traction for four days.

I’ve recommended his books many times on this show and in newsletters, and his approach to strength very much rhymes with writing, so that’s a big reason why I wanted to invite him on to talk it out. You can visit danjohnuniversity.com to learn more about him and to buy books like the Easy Strength Omnibook, Easy Strength for Fat Loss, his two Armor Building Formula books and his latest The Fitness Forge: Master coaching tools that build real strength.

The real crux of easy strength is that it echoes what Percy Cerutty, the Australian running coach, had his runners do in the 1950s, and it’s an approachable system that doesn’t feel like you’ve been put through a wood chipper. I spent most of my 30s training like I was a juiced up bodybuilder, hobbling around most days with that deep, bone ache. As I’ve aged, training in that manner is unfeasible and, well, fucking stupid, plus easy strength is awesome for running, which I’m doing quite a lot these days.

So Dan John has been a champion discus thrower coming up on the coattails of the great throwers of the 1970s, guys like Brian Oldfield and Mac Wilkins and Peter Shmock. His lifting approach has always been geared around utility, not aesthetics, by and large. He has written many books like Mass Made Simple, 40 Years with a Whistle, Can You Go, Never Let Go, and several others. Some are only available on the big A, others are available as PDFS through his website.

They imbue a sense of possibility, that things are achievable, and that little and often over the long haul is doable and repeatable. If you’re into fads, Dan is not for you and he often injects so much personal anecdote and wisdom from a life of nearly 70 years into his work and his podcast, the Dan John University Podcasts where he answers listener questions every week.

He’s very centering for me. Even hearing him talk through something as simple as his daily pirate map, which is a collection of daily habits, and merely hearing him so often articulate that defrags my computer, if that makes any sense.

So in this conversation, we talk about:

Parasocial relationships
Marvel and Greek heroes
The spiderweb effect of his brain
Open Culture
Little and often over the long haul
The secret
Being a slave to habits
Parallels between lifting and writing
Collecting the links
Getting small, easy wins out of the way
Inspiration is for amateurs
Having skin in the game
And community making us great

You’ll find dan @coachdanjohn on instagram and of course visit danjohnuniversity.com to see if his books or his inner circle is right for you.

Episode 529: Dan John says, 'Inspiration is for Amateurs' … and He's Correct

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O'Meara

Episode 529: Dan John says, 'Inspiration is for Amateurs' … and He's Correct