Dan John Warm Ups

Everything I read by Dan John makes me a better coach. Dan’s book “Never Let Go” was a phenomenal read and I recommend it to anyone who lift weights, has personal training clients, coaches athletes, wants to perform better, or breathes air for that matter. It was his philosophy on “warming up” that had the biggest impact on me and next day I at work I decided to give his approach a shot.

Below are the excerpts from Dan’s book on “Warming Up” that got my mind racing….

“We use the warm-ups to attempt to do every one of the big moves. Currently, I have my athletes do this:

1. Crush Press Walk/ Horn Walk/ Waiter Walks/ Suitcase walks/ Crosswalk/ Farmer walk/ Seesaw Press Walk
2. Goblet Squat 2 sets of 8 w/ Hip Flexor Stretch
3. Bootstrapper Squats
4. Alligator Push ups
5. RDL Stretch and Deck Squats
6. Hurdle Step Overs
7. Pull ups 3 sets of 8
8. Ab Wall Throws 1 set of 25
9. Half turkish Get up 1 set of 25 ea. side
10. Ab roller & Windmills
11. Goblet Squats with pause at the bottom
12. Swings

Don't worry about specific exercises or names here. The general idea is to do every move, lightly, in the warm-ups. Lightly is of course a relative term. I have junior football players using 110 pound kettle bells on the goblet squats. Here is the point: I think all nine movements are important, so we do them every day" pg. 334

"The idea here: Keep your specialized training, but continue to keep in contact with the big general movements each workout. It's an easy way to have each workout become a full body session with an emphasis on a body part. Don't go crazy on variations; keep pounding away on foundation. From a strength coaches perspective, you'll get stronger and stronger in these basics, which can't help but make a difference in your other long-term goals." pa. 171-172

 “I like to note, "Hey, we're done with the warm up!" as my athletes fold over and look forward to something fun like max front squats or bench press. What? Yes, the warm up is the workout. pg 173

"With most athletes the movements need repeating... far more than most people think. At the elite level of track and field and Olympic Lifting, the total number of full movements is staggering. Many young people are out of touch with movements like squatting because they've used chairs their entire lives, and have been kept from deadlifting and rotating by the Safety Lifting Police." pg 335

Dan has a very different take on “warming up” then most and just reading that warm up above makes me tired. But you know what? He’s right again as always.

I get to see most of my personal training clients and athletes for one hour 2 times per week, at most 3 times. We’d of course all like it to be more but that’s just the nature of the beast. That means every time they come in we need to get in A LOT of “stuff” and if we want to cover all our bases our workouts will always have to be full body. These “Dan John” warm ups allow you to do just that, while only focusing on 2 or 3 main heavy lifts for that day. It’s a win win. You get in all your movements during the warm up, then you get to dial in on a few select exercises for the lift that day (clean, bench, squats, deads, chins, pulls) and master those.

Below are my results with the “Dan John warm ups”, how I began implementing them into my programs, and some suggestions that may help you if you want to try them out.

Cover Your Basic Movement Patterns Every Workout – Like Dan suggests, construct the warm ups with all your basic movement patterns in mind. Here are the eight movements I thought were most important, you can set it up however you’d like, but I found that eight exercises works best. Six is not enough to get the heart rate up in 2 or 3 rounds but ten is too many to get through in a timely manner in my experience.

1. Push
2. Knee Dom
3. Pull
4. Hip Dom
5. Core
6. Upper Body Plyo
7. Carry
8. Lower Body Plyo

As Dan always says “If its important, do it everyday”. So every day we will push, pull, hinge, squat, core, explosive, and a carry before we even get to the lift for the day.

Get The Heart Rate Up – It’s a called a “warm up”, not a “cool up”. Try to keep everything bodyweight and encourage them to move as quickly as they can from exercise to exercise. My average client is warmed up and ready to go after 2 rounds if they move at a good pace. Slower moving clients may need 3 rounds to be ready and on the other end of the spectrum your well-conditioned clients can usually handle 3 rounds.

Form Over Speed – I always preach good form first. Although you want them moving quickly from exercise to exercise it must never come at the expense of quality. Blasting out 10 fast shitty push-ups is not getting us what we want and it’s almost as painful as watching a Jillian Michael’s DVD……. almost.

None of these!!

Corrective & Mobility Work – These warm ups are also a great way to throw in corrective and mobility work as “active rest” between metabolically demanding exercises like jumps, medballs, and ropes. And when your mobility exercises are thrown in between tougher exercises circuit style they don’t seem as boring, the are actually welcomed.

Great for Off Days – These warm ups are great for deload weeks or days you or your client know you just don’t have it. Foam roll, stretch, run through one of these warm up a few times and go home. You keep the body moving, you get your heart rate up a bit, and you let the body recover to prepare for the next workout or training phase.

Regressions – If someone cannot do an exercise be sure you have a regression in mind. If you need to write down the regressions do it. The best example, in my warm up below, I have written “chin ups X 3 or TRX Rows X 10”.  In a group of 12 people I know probably half of them can do chin ups but the other half cannot. Therefore I write the regression next to it so I don’t have 6 people hanging from a bar and kicking their legs for 20 minutes trying to complete one chin up. A good coach knows and uses his/her regressions and progressions. Never let someone who is incapable do something just because everyone else is doing it, that’s how injuries happen.

Carry Over – By doing our warm ups like this we significantly increase the amount of exposures someone gets to certain movements. For example we may do 20 band squats in the activation, 3 sets of 10 overhead squats in the warm up, then 4 sets of 10 goblet squats in the lift. This means by the end of the workout they would have accumulated 90 total squats that day. And believe me good body weight squats make for better looking goblet squats. Good body weight single leg deadlifts make for much better looking weighted single leg deadlifts. Solid body weight push ups make all our push up progressions look better. You get the idea.

The “Dan John Warm Ups” I use - Here are three examples of the “Dan John” Warm Ups I’ve been running my clients through. Every 4th week I try to change 1 or 2 of the exercises on each list.  The exercises are not done in a specific order as long as all the exercises are done twice or three times through. Click on the links to see a video of the exercise performed by yours truly.

I write the “warm ups” on these nifty hurdles that also serve as whiteboards at work. They work great, especially for setting up circuits.

Day #1

1. Push – Push Ups X 10
2. Knee Dom – PVC OH Squats X 10
3. Pull – TRX Rows X 10
4. Hip Dom – SLDL w/ Knee Grab X 10 ea. leg
5. Core – Front Plank X 30 seconds
6. Upper Body Plyo – Battling Ropes X 20 seconds
7. Carry – Suitcase Carry (DB or KB) X Turf
8. Lower Body Plyo – Box Jumps X 6

Day #2

1. Push – Scap Push Ups X 10
2. Knee Dom – Lunge Matrix X 5 ea. way
3. Pull – T-spine Rotations X 10 ea. side
4. Hip Dom – Single Leg Hip Lifts X 10 ea. side
5. Core – Side Plank X 20 second ea side
6. Upper Body Plyo – Medball Side Toss X 10 ea. side
7. Carry – Farmer Walk X Turf
8. Lower Body Plyo – Sprints X Turf 4 times (no video pretty self explanatory… dig down deep, put one foot in front of the other, find your inner caveman & chase down your dinner)

Day #3

1. Push – Wall Slides X 10
2. Knee Dom – Toe Touch to Squat X 10
3. Pull – Chin Ups X 3 or TRX Rows X 10
4. Hip Dom – Lateral band Walks X 15 steps ea. way
5. Core – Lateral Crawls x 10 yards down and back
6. Upper Body Plyo – Medball Chest Pass X 15
7. Carry – Heartbeat Walks X Turf
8. Lower Body Plyo – Ladder X 5 times through pick any drill

Feel free to steal these warms up or just use them as a template for creating your own. Whatever you decide to do have fun with and never stop experimenting!

Please share if you like this. Thanks for reading!

               - Brendon