Workshop Report: Dan John Workshop in Manassas
From hanging out here, of course I knew who Dan John is. And, my trainer had done a workshop with him several months ago, subsequent to which I got introduced to goblet squats and OHSs and a few other things.
Still, when I heard that he was going to be giving a workshop in Manassas, I had a period of letting I dare not wait upon I would. I’m a middle-aged woman, not any sort of athlete, only started strength training at all less than two years ago. I really enjoy olympic lifting and want to get better about it, but I felt like I was going to be hugely out of place.
I’m very glad I did go.
I learned so much stuff I have the feeling I’ll be picking insights out of my brains for months. And, even though this was an o-lifting/strength training workshop, a good percentage of what he said and showed has far more application in life than just in the weight room or even on the field.
I’d say the single most important thing I came away with was to continually ask “is what I’m doing helping me to achieve what I want, and, if not, why am I doing it?” (That’s my summary and not an actual quote.) I mean, it sounds obvious, but how often do we do something because we think we should, even though it’s certainly not helping with our goals and may even be hindering them?
For me, I know of lots of times when that’s definitely been true, but even worse, because I haven’t habitually been assessing what I do, there are all sorts of places where I don’t even know whether what I’ve been doing helps or not. Gotta work on that.
Not surprisingly, we did a ton of exercises, many of which were unfamiliar to me. That was cool and I’m planning on adding a bunch of them to my workouts (I probably won’t do the entire warmup he has his athletes do, 'cause if I did, then I’d have to go lie down). But, what was really cool was how he went through and explained why those particular movements were useful. The other thing was how he works in some funny/silly exercises that work a lot of different movements that don’t get worked regularly, and you end up with your pants around your ankles (well, I stopped before I got to that point, don’t know about the others). I also think the bootstrap squats need to get renamed the drinking birds.
There’s a perception that, because the olympic lifts are very technical, they’re hard to learn. Getting good at them, that’s hard and I’ve got years (maybe decades) before I get there. But the way Dan did a graduated intro. to them made it easy to get a handle on them.
One of the things that I think is going to benefit me didn’t come from something that was said, but from what I observed. I really like doing the snatch, but I’ve always been limited by a fear of failure. Not in an existential sense, just you get a heavy metal bar moving at speed over your head, if you can’t control it, that has the potential for things getting interesting fast (although, I guess that is pretty existential).
Being with a group of people practicing the lift, I observed that yes, sometimes things go wrong and that mostly just means you need to let go and get out of the way. If that doesn’t work, looking on the bright side, that may significantly add to your street cred. later in life if you ever need to give a suicide prevention lecture.
The other thing that really impressed me - I knew, from what I read here, that Dan worked with high school athletes, and I thought, “that’s nice.” After meeting him, that boggles my mind. Seriously, after doing this workshop, if I had kids, I’d be exploring the possibility of moving to Utah, so they could train with him. Even if they weren’t athletes (and, having one set of genes from me, that’s a safe bet) I’d still think there was so much they could learn from him.
Overall, it was a great weekend. If you get a chance to learn from Dan John, take it.
Oh, and of course I need to give props to Dino and Ashley out in Manassas, whose facility used to be called “Inferno” but is now something else. Very interesting set up they have there - I’m definitely going to try to
keep in touch to go to other workshops they host.
