Dan John & "The Gable Method"

Dan John, if you haven't heard of him, is a strength and conditioning coach and RKC instructor residing in Utah. He is a great writer and has written articles for Men's Health, T-Mag, and his free newsletter "Get Up!". He has a website at danjohn.org and you can find many of his articles and all of his newsletters archived there. He also frequents Dave Draper's website and forum and shares his thoughts and answers questions there - Dan John Q&A Deck.

I am a huge fan, but I'll freely admit that I haven't read half of Dan John's newsletters, nor all of his many articles. With every article I read however, I am struck with a wave of insight and inspiration. The programs and recommendations he writes about seem like plain old commonsense but, as is often the case with commonsense, they are things that need to be (re)brought to our attention on a regular basis.

Often, while reading his writing, I think "Damn, that sounds like something I've written!", and then I look at the date of the article and hope people don't think I'm plagiarizing him. Dan John takes what others make convoluted and verbose and distills them into the bare essentials. Thoughts like, "Recovery isn't a drink. Recovery is sleep." require no interpretation or tweaking to implement.

I have many favorite articles by Dan John, but this one, The Gable Method is probably at or near the top of that heap.

"If it is important, do it every day. If it's not important, don't do it at all."

How true and so simple. Yet, I still frequently field questions from people who want their squat numbers to improve but don't squat more than once per week... For those people I say read and reread this article. Then watch this video: Dan John on The Video FitCast and these videos - Squat Rx Videos and get yourself to the squat racks!!!