Physical Benchmarks Every Man Should Meet

As men, we all want to be physically capable. We want to be able to save our own life in two ways: in the more metaphorical sense of wanting to preserve it in healthy, fit form for as long as possible, and in the more literal sense of being able to make it through an emergency unscathed. How do you know if you do possess that kind of lifesaving physical capability?

It’s time to do more than wonder, and really check in with yourself. My guest today has some helpful benchmarks that guys from age 8 to 80 can use to see if they’ve got an operative level of strength, mobility, and conditioning. His name is Dan John, and he’s a strength coach and the author of numerous books and articles on health and fitness. Dan walks us through the fitness standards the average male should be able to meet from childhood to old age, beginning with the assessments he gives to those who are 55 years old and older, which includes carrying their body weight, a long jump, and something called “the toilet test.” We then reach back to childhood, and Dan discusses the physical skills kids should become adept in, which were inspired by a turn-of-the-20th-century physical culturist who thought every individual ought to be able to save his own life, and which can be broken down into the categories of pursuit, escape, and attack. We end our conversation with the physical standards those in the 18-55 range should be able to meet, including how much a man should be able to bench press, squat, and deadlift, and the walking test that’s an excellent assessment of your cardiovascular conditioning.

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Show Highlights

A few physical benchmarks for older men to strive for
The toilet test
Why the floor is the most dangerous part of older people’s houses
Georges Herbert’s influence on physical fitness
Why you should play more tag and hide and seek
What a 35-year-old man should be able to do in terms of weightlifting, bodyweights, etc.
Are there walking benchmarks people should be able to meet?

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Read the Transcript

Brett McKay: Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of The Art of Manliness podcast. As men, we all want to be physically capable. We wanna be able to save our life in two ways. First in the more metaphorical sense of wanting to preserve it in a healthy fit form for as long as possible. And second, in the more literal sense of being able to make it through an emergency unscathed. How do you know if you possess that kind of life-saving physical capability?

Well, it’s time to do more than wonder and really check in with yourself, and my guest today has some helpful benchmarks that guys from ages eight to 80 can use to see if they’ve got an operative level of strength, mobility, and conditioning. His name is Dan John. He’s a strength coach and the author of numerous books and articles on health and fitness.

Today on the show, Dan walks us through the fitness standards the average male should be able to meet from childhood to old age, beginning with the assessments he gives to those who are 55 years and older, which include carrying their body weight, a long jump, and something Dan calls the “toilet test”.

We then reach back to childhood and Dan discusses the physical skills kids should become adept in which were inspired by a turn of the 20th century physical culturist who thought every individual ought to be able to save his own life, and these skills can be broken down to the following categories; pursuit, escape and attack.

And we end our conversation with the physical standards those in the 18 to 55-year-old range should be able to meet, including how a man should be able to bench press, squat, deadlift and the walking test. That’s an excellent assessment of your cardiovascular conditioning. After the show’s over, check out our show notes at aom.is/benchmarks.

Alright, Dan John, welcome back to the show.

Dan John: Hey, well, thanks so much, it’s been… It doesn’t seem like it was that terribly long ago.

Brett McKay: Well, it wasn’t that long. It was October, so that was what? Three months ago, four months ago. The reason I brought you back on so soon, because we had a great conversation last time, wide-ranging, but there was this series of questions I wanted to get to that we couldn’t get to, ’cause it would… The podcast would have gone on for another hour.

But it’s based on this article you wrote for T Nation back in 2016, and it’s called, 10 Things Every Lifter Should Be Able to Do, and basically you just laid out some tests that you want lifters to take place. I think it’s gonna be applicable to just regular guys who wanna be healthy, strong, physically fit.

Dan John: Sure.

Brett McKay: But these tests are designed to highlight weaknesses that you can work on to… For longevity, overall strength, flexibility, mobility, etcetera.

Dan John: So let’s just start. Let me start. Let me start with plus 55. Is that okay? With my little standards there? And then I’ll…

Brett McKay: Yeah, so you’re talking about people who are 55 above?

Dan John: Mm-hmm. And then let me give you how I assess people, and then let me talk about how you can start with a young person and build these qualities up so that literally for the rest of their life, they have a handle on certain things. How does that sound?

Brett McKay: Sounds good.

Dan John: So one of the hardest things, I don’t know how old you are, but it’s weird, because you begin to pick up on certain things. I think athletes, that the bloom of an athlete is what, 16 to 35, and after that, things… And you do have a Tom Brady, and you have a Drew Brees, certainly George Blanda, but you… And of course, in my world, throwing, you have people stay around a long time, but that’s when people are athletes.

About 36 to 55 or so, you begin to notice, and it’s funny when you talk to somebody who’s 40 and they come 63 and they’ll say, “I feel like I’ve lost a step,” and you… I try to be kind. It’s like, “Yeah, trust me. You did.” [chuckle] But after after 35, 36, it’s when you start having those lean body mass issues that you tend to swell up a little bit. You become softer. Generally, you’re trading lean body mass.

You might stay the same on a scale, but your lean body mass is going in one direction, and sadly your fat’s going in the other. Your fat’s going up and your lean body mass is going down. But once you get to 56, then we have to really think about health and longevity. Well, ideally, from age 25 to 55, you wore your seat belt, you didn’t smoke, you didn’t say, “Hold my beer and watch this.”

But once you get to 56, here are the tests I use, okay? First, can you stand on one foot for 10 seconds? Yes or no. If you can’t, I send you to a doctor. Because I wanna find out what’s going on. In 1991, I was working with this guy, very famous developer here in Utah, and oh, out of nowhere, he couldn’t stand on one foot.

Well, it turned out he had prostate cancer. Now there was no correlation. And don’t worry about that. But the fact that I was so insistent he see a doctor, saved his life. I work with people with MS, and one… Four days a week they can stand on one foot, three days a week, they can’t. It would be nice to know if they have MS, or whatever the issue is. Does it make sense to you?

Number two is, I think it’s really important to be able to sit down on a deep squat, hold for 30 seconds, then stand up. That’s a test of mobility, flexibility, strength. I don’t know if you know what the toilet test is, but that’s the determining factor about what kind of elderly care you get, because if you can’t get up and down off the toilet by yourself, you have to have much more care.

Here’s another one I have, it’s odd, ’cause men struggle with this one, hang from a bar for 30 seconds. And I always tell people, “If something bad happens and there’s a flood or something, that 30 seconds will give me a chance to save your life. Without that, bad things can happen.”

So stand on one foot, hold the squat 30 seconds, stand up, hold on to a bar for 30 seconds, pick up, and it can be any way you want, your body weight and move it. So maybe have really, really high firmer bars, put body weight up, pick it up and be able to move it. That one, a lot of people push back on, but I still stick with it because that’s why I still… I’m the guy everyone calls to move couches, and I’m 63, because I’m a good couch mover and I’m very proud of that.

And then the next one you can argue with, but I still like it. This is post 55, be able to standing long jump your height. So if a rattle snake’s near your foot, you can leap away. And by the way, you don’t have to jump your height. You have to long jump as far as you’re tall. So those basic little tests… Oh, and the final one, I like to observe how you get up and get off the ground. Get down on the ground and get back up.

I have a drill called the “get back up test”, and of course, there’s also the “Brazilian get back up test”, or you can just do a “Turkish get up” if you’d like. But that little body of tests, if you can hold onto those, you’re gonna have a fairly… If you can do those at 75, 85, you’re gonna have a fair amount of independence.

Brett McKay: So again, this is for people who are 55 plus. That last one, the stand up off the ground test, we’ve written about that. And it’s interesting, there’s been studies that show that there’s a correlation between…

Dan John: Absolutely.

Brett McKay: Yeah, people who can get up off the floor with fewer limbs. So if you can get up off the floor without using your hands or your knees, your risk of mortality… Okay, everyone always calls on that, “Well, everyone’s gonna die, so mortality rate is 100%.” But it’s like your mortality rate is… You’re more likely to have a healthy, vibrant life if you can do that, compared to someone who can’t.

Dan John: And the way the Brazilian guy did it, it’s an eight out of 10. If you can score an eight out of 10. Because of my hips, I have to put one hand down, but at 63, I still score eight out of 10, and I always do. So on paper that’s… What is that? It gives me a 20-year buffer. So, yay for me.

Brett McKay: Yeah, and I think some people don’t realize that. As you said, as you get older, the thing that often kills people, if you don’t get cancer or some other, dementia or Alzheimer’s something thing like that, the thing that often… That slowly kills you is that you lose muscle mass. You lose the ability to, if you fall down, you can’t get up off the ground. That can kill you.

Dan John: Brett, the most dangerous thing, statistically, in my house for me is the floor. The floor is the most dangerous thing in my home, for me, at my age. The bathtub has… If I slip in it, obviously. It’s the floor, it’s the floor, it’s the floor. And I ask personal trainers when they say, “When’s the last time you saw your mother or father voluntarily be on the floor?” And most people say, “I don’t even remember that.”

Little side little story. Just a small little thing. I read somewhere, most people never remember the last time they picked up their child. So about a month ago at one of our family parties, I walked over my two daughters and picked them both up, just so I’d be able to say, “That’s the last time I picked you up.” [chuckle]

Brett McKay: We also have had… Going into this idea of longevity and quality of life as you get older, we had a guest on the podcast, I think it was last year, who wrote about longevity. One of the interesting insights that he talked about in that podcast, or shared, was one of the things that you can do to really increase your quality of life as you get older is to keep… Make sure you’re continuing to walk on complex landscapes.

Dan John: Oh, like on and off a curb, if you live in a neighborhood like mine.

Brett McKay: Curb. If you live in a rocky area, go hike a trail. Because what happens is, if you stop walking on uneven surfaces, you basically forget how to do it. And so that whenever an old person, when they haven’t… The only thing they’ve walked on is just really flat surfaces, they encounter that, they don’t know how to do it, and they trip and they fall, and they break a hip.

Dan John: Exactly. Now, I can even push that farther. We now know that that also is a major factor for issues of the brain, and so… Do you know what shaker plates are? Dave Asprey, he’s the guy that’s Bulletproof Coffee. And agree or disagree what he talks about, but he really emphasized using the shaker plates.

Now, I bought a real inexpensive one just to try it out and I fell in love, but staying on a shaker plate and doing one foot drills, even something simple as a speed skater. Or doing a goblet squat or a press on it, so that, okay, you can’t see my hands, but my feet are both shaking.

Well, because it’s such a complex system, if you’re following along, I’m simply doing a one-arm press on a shaker plate, but since the complexity is shot to the roof, my brain and my nervous system have to adapt instantly to all that crazy complexity. My bones, by the way, there’s a new argument about osteoporosis that by losing complexity is why… So your bones get simpler and simpler and simpler, and then they break.

So what you’re saying is tying right into the stuff I’ve been reading and learning in the last few months, is that the more complexity the world is, the better it is for the aging person. When Thoreau said, “Simplify, simplify,” the correct thing for him to have said was, “Complexity complexity for long-term,” I don’t know, survival or something like that, if you will.

Brett McKay: And just to clarify, a shaker plate, is that something you stand on and it vibrates you?

Dan John: Yeah, and you don’t have to buy the $15,000 one. I bought a, I think it was 200 bucks one. But now remember, I think it’s my job, Brett, to… I literally think it’s my job not to just go, “Oh, that’s a good idea,” but actually try it, drink the Kool-Aid, if you will. Go deep and then come on the other side and say, “That was a whole lot of nonsense,” or, “That’s a game changer.”

But I like what you said, you can also do complexity by walking on a balance beam, jumping rope, stepping up and down off the curb. Playing hopscotch is probably one of the smartest things you can do as an adult. So yeah, I agree 100% with that, very much.

Brett McKay: So let’s recap these test for people who are 55 plus. So the first one is, can you balance on one foot for 10 seconds? Then it was, can you do a squat and hold it for 30 seconds?

Dan John: And then stand up.

Brett McKay: And then stand up without any assistance, and that’s so you can get off the toilet.

Dan John: That’d be ideal, yeah. [chuckle]

Brett McKay: Then it was also, be able to bend over, pick up something that’s your… Was it your body weight? And then carry it around.

Dan John: Pick up your body weight and move it.

Brett McKay: Okay, okay, and then you also talk about the farmer’s carry as well.

Dan John: That could be the farm… That could be, obviously, it could be the farmer walk. But you could have really, really high trap bar and do it, or have the weight up on blocks. The idea that you can carry your own body weight, that seems to be important.

Brett McKay: That comes in handy, ’cause when you’re gonna have to carry stuff, you’re always have to carry stuff, even when you’re 50, 60, 70 years old. Long jump your height, it doesn’t mean jump up in vertically your height, but long jump your height. And then hang from a bar for 30 seconds. Did I miss any?

Dan John: Yeah, you missed getting up and down off the ground.

Brett McKay: Yeah, oh yeah, and then get up off on the ground.

Dan John: Some kind of assessment of getting up and down off the ground.

Brett McKay: Gotcha. Well, let’s move on to someone who is in that 18 to, I don’t know, 50 range. Alright, does it change as say you’re like, right now, I’m 38.

Dan John: A child.

Brett McKay: I’m a child, I’m spry. Does any of this change, is it gonna be any different for me compared to say, a 25-year-old?

Dan John: Well, tell you what, you know what, let’s… I’m gonna give you my full evaluation next, is that okay? But let’s slide back to little Brett as a happy little waif of eight years old, okay?

Brett McKay: Well, I wasn’t a waif. I was a big kid. I was husky. I had to wear the Husky underwear from Sears.

Dan John: Okay, so little Brett wearing his Husky underwear from Sears, Roebuck. The catalog came out and he went shopping. Okay. That’ll age you by the way. I would go… So I’m a big believer in the insights of a guy by name George Herbert, Herbert in English, Herbert in the French. He came up to a volcano that was… Blew up an island, and he started saving survivors. He couldn’t help but notice something about the people who survived.

They knew how to climb, they knew how to swim, they knew how to do a couple of different things. And so he started what we would now call “physical culture”, when he went back to France. And even if you’ve never heard of him, I guarantee you’ve heard of him. Are you okay with me going down this direction?

Brett McKay: Yeah, let’s go down this road. Yeah, this is good stuff. This is sort of like MovNat Natural Movement. I think they got their influence from Herbert.

Dan John: So let’s just break it down the way he did, and I’ll just… And then I’m gonna add two things. Because I can’t help myself. So the first is what he would call “pursuit”. And pursuit is walk, run, and crawl. And he would expect an eight-year-old, nine-year-old to be able to do those. I fell in love years ago when I found out that this Irish school taught proper sprinting techniques to their elementary school kids.

I thought to myself, “They’ve got it,” but walking, running, and crawling, here’s the funny thing, how often you see kids crawl in PE classes? Now, when I taught, we did tumbling and everything else, and crawling, because I listened to my Herbert. So pursuit, walk, run, crawl. And real quick, just a side note, but especially when I read your site, Brett, this might be a real valuable thing for them.

There are probably two games that are older than, maybe even language. One is tag, T-A-G, tag, and the other one is hide and go seek. Both teach you to be a very good hunter gatherer, both teach you to be a very able person in any kind of combat. So to me, if you wanna do Paleo fitness, just go out with a bunch of school kids and play tag and hide and go seek. And you’ll see that how in that pursuit one there, walk, run, and crawl, that is hide and go seek and tag. If that’s too weird, Brett, just say, “Dan, that’s too weird.”

Brett McKay: No, it makes sense. So this stuff you’re going not even 18-year-olds, you’re going like… This for kids, so if you’re a parent, you want your kids doing this stuff.

Dan John: Yeah. When is the best time to learn to crawl? Probably when you’re two. When’s the second best time to learn? Probably today. So there you go. And then there’s “escape”. So we had pursuit, followed by escape. And that’s climb, balance drills, jumping, and learning how to swim. And it’s interesting. I work a lot with the military. We’re gonna… That’s all we’ll say.

It’s interesting, because to get yourself off of almost any major problem spot in the world, if you can get yourself into the ocean, either by swimming or by sailing a boat, that’s usually the best route to safety. And that was true forever. So you need to practice climbing, or I call that “brachiating”. You need practice balance drills, because sometimes you are trying to escape. You’re running down a gutter on top of the roof, you gotta jump to the next roof, and then of course swim your way out.

And his third area was what he called “attack”. And this is more of my life. That’s throwing, lifting, and fighting. And all three of those skills should be addressed long before they need to be addressed. And if you don’t mind, let me add two others that he doesn’t have. I would include bike riding, because I think it’s much better to learn how to fall… It’s better to fall off a bike at five than at 55.

And the other area I would add is either what I call “tumbling”, but nowadays is more often called “break-falling”. Learning to take a fall. But when I give you this list; walk, run, crawl, climb, balance, jump, swim, throw, lift, fight, bike-ride, break-falling, you get a sense to see the importance of play in a playground.

Yeah, obviously, you need to learn how to swim and learn how to fight and learn how to bike ride. And probably you maybe learn how to lift and throw. It would depend. But how foundational important all this can be to a person’s life. If you have all these skills, in fact, it might be worth your time with your site to find people, say, “Hey, do an article on… ”

“Do an article on teaching kids how to… This is how you… This is running, with sprint mechanics. This is crawl mechanics. This is climbing mechanics. This is how to practice your balance. Here’s jumping, here’s swimming.” You probably already have the bulk of it on your site, from my memory, but it’s such a gift that you can give your children to be able to have that entire skill set.

Brett McKay: Yeah. We do have articles on all those things, crawling, we did one on balancing. Like a 2 x 4. Just having a 2 x 4 in your house.

Dan John: Yeah. I saw your article. The guy, that was ripped, that was excellent.

Brett McKay: Yeah, and it’s super easy. And there’s another thing, as a parent, what you can do is make sure you’re paying attention to what your kids are doing in PE. And if they’re not doing those things, well, join the PTA and use your public speaking skills to persuade them, maybe we should do some of this stuff. But if they’re not getting it, make sure they’re outside playing.

One thing my wife and I have done, is we found a guy here in Tulsa who does parkour, and he’s does, I think he’s done some MovNat stuff. Anyways, we take him to the park with our kids and he goes through things like rolls, how to fall. He’s a coach and he’s able… It’s been really fun to see our kids take to it, and the skills they’ve been learning from that.

Dan John: And then on the area of throwing, I don’t want your kid necessarily be a major league baseball pitcher, but it’d be nice to know all the throwing arts. Be able to do the basics of lifting, the olympic lift, the power lifts, kettlebells. Maybe the kettlebell basics, the calisthenic basics. And you can push back on fighting until it’s time to fight. You can agree or disagree, gentle listener. You can agree or disagree.

Last week, a bunch of thugs took over our capital, and one of our congressmen who’s a former ranger, started gathering things like pens and stuff like that to defend his fellow congressmen. And to me, you never know when it might be your time to defend those you love. I’m not a psychopath. I’m not. But there are bad people in this world, and it’s the job of those of us who are fast, which monsters, to protect them.

Brett McKay: Alright. So we’ve talked about guys who are over 55. We’ve talked about kids, who you say should only be doing basic skills, the George Herbert type of stuff, ’til about age 15. You argue that kids really shouldn’t be doing any specialized training before that age. So let’s turn now to the guys in-between. Guys between the ages of 18 and 55.

So I know as an introductory assessment, you want people in this range do the same kind of tests you do with the older guys. Stand on one leg for 10 seconds, standing long jump, farmer’s walk with body weight, the get back up test. And you do these same sort of tests to see where they’re at before you start training them.

Dan John: Well, you know, and I don’t wanna give you too many kudos ’cause I don’t want your head to swell, but the one thing I like about your site is this vision from youth. Well, youth to death. So if you decide to follow the teaching… If you did a Herbert youth and then had an elite like myself…

I had a Herbert youth and then I became a discus thrower, highland gamer, and I retired July 24, 2010. 11 years ago now. It’s amazing. 10 and a half years ago. But all that stuff I did then, I can hang from… I can hang for up to two minutes, I can… You know what I’m saying? If you have the foundations and build it up, you should have the same basic test core your whole life.

Brett McKay: Right. Okay, let’s say someone… You find you do these assessments on say, a 35-year-old. And you decide it’s a man, and they’re ready to focus on strength and mobility, and you get some programming going for them. At a certain point, you’ll wanna assess again, see how they’re doing and see if they’re reaching… If they’re getting strong. So do you have assessments for that as well? Do you have metrics or benchmarks you like?

Dan John: Oh, yeah. Okay, let’s go through the ones that are in my book, that start off in my book, Intervention, but now… I have them in a bunch. I have about 1000 different ones, but let’s go through a few for men. I expect a man to be able to bench press his bodyweight. I expect a man to be able to do five pull-ups. I expect a man to be able to deadlift 150% bodyweight. Okay, got that? You weigh 200, you gotta be able to do 300. That’s not very much at all.

I expect you to be able to bodyweight squat, and I expect you to be able to do a farmer walk with your body weight. Oh, one other thing, if you work with me, I expect you to be able to do a Turkish get up, both left and right, with a Dixie cup half filled with water on your fist. Instead of weight, the Dixie cup, ’cause that means if you can do… The water, we always joke when you get hit by the water, we call it “baptized”, but that shows mobility and flexibility far better. Is that okay?

Brett McKay: That makes sense. It sounds like something you’d see in a karate movie from the 1980s.

Dan John: Yeah. And it’s a good one.

Brett McKay: So we’ve been talking a lot of strength stuff, what about… I know you’re a big proponent of walking and hiking. You got similar metrics or tests that you like to put your clients through for, should they be able to walk without load in a certain amount of time, or with load, etcetera?

Dan John: Now, I’m a fan of Phil Maffetone on this. So when we do this, it’s gonna be a little bit more complicated. Don’t take what I’m about to say wrong, but I think you have to have some other things set. So I’m a big believer in what’s called the MAF Test. Okay, so it’s a three-mile walk. Alright, so do you mind if I explain it real quick?

Brett McKay: Yeah, go into that it. This is new to me, so I’d like to hear about it.

Dan John: So Maffetone numbers are, 180 minus your age is the top end for the test. And 160 minus your age is the low end for the test. Now, what you have to get… To do to get your heart rate in those numbers, I don’t know. For me, it’s really easy. If I put on five-pound ankle weights on both feet, and I carry six-pound heavy hands, my heart rate gets in that zone very easily. Because I’m 63, so it’s not that hard.

Okay, so mentally, you gotta figure out those numbers and your job is to stay between those numbers the entire test. Not above at all. And don’t cheat by running, okay? And what you’re gonna do is at the end of every mile, you’re gonna log the time you went through. So do you see how many factors are going on here?

Brett McKay: Yeah.

Dan John: So, it’s gonna be… For us, we do a 12-lap test. I keep my heart rate right inside those Maffetone numbers. Fortunately, I have a nice heart rate monitor that can tell me when I go above it. And I’ve got it set that every few minutes it says, whatever, “Heart rate 112,” whatever. So when I do the first mile, say it takes me 19 minutes. Second mile, it takes me 21, third mile takes me 29, just staying in my heart rate numbers.

I train for a couple of months, I do the MAF test again and my numbers are 17, 19, 24, for the mile splits. What we can guess from this is that my conditioning has improved. Because my mile splits have dropped with my heart rate in the same zone.

Brett McKay: Right, okay, so you can go faster without having your body or heart having to work harder.

Dan John: Yes, you follow, okay. Excellent. Now, I’m a track and field coach, so I don’t care what your heart rate is in the 400 meters, I don’t care. [chuckle] That sounds horrible but if you start off the first day I trained you, you ran a 75, six weeks later you run at 55 and the next year you come back and you run 48, I don’t care what your heart rate is. You’ve improved, you got that?

Brett McKay: Right.

Dan John: And that’s great for track and field, but it’s not great for lifelong cardiovascular training. And that’s why I like the narrow step by step of this. Does that make sense? You know what I’m saying? I like the fact that you have that narrow window of heart rate as a standard, the exact same test if you can do it, and then watch the numbers come down.

Brett McKay: One follow up question with these assessments. How often should you assess yourself? I imagine if you do it too frequently, you’re gonna get a lot of noise.

Dan John: Well, you gonna keep the test, is what’s gonna happen.

Brett McKay: Yeah, but if you don’t do enough, then you can’t see a trend line. So what’s the sweet spot?

Dan John: When I fold clothes and do dishes I practice stand on one foot. I actually even do it sometimes when I have an electric toothbrush and I’ll just stand on one foot. So I do try to cheat the balance test because I feel like that’s one of those tests that’s… Well, because if I’m doing my teeth, I’m adding a ton of complexity to my teeth brush, which I think is good for my brain, and who knows, even for my bones.

So the standing long jump, I see no issue with that, monthly, every six weeks. The farmer walk, monthly, every six weeks. And the get back up, probably should be part of your warm-up anyway. So yeah, the full test, let’s say every three months. Pieces of it, you know, it’s appropriate. That’s kind of a fun little thing.

Brett McKay: No, it’s something you can do to your kids too. We do the get up test whenever we’re bored…

Dan John: Yeah.

Brett McKay: Great fall back activity is, well, see if you get up of the ground without using your feet, and find different ways you can do it.

Dan John: Yeah, yeah.

Brett McKay: Well then, this has been a great conversation. We covered a lot of ground. Is there some place people can go to find these assessments and learn more about them and the complexities and nuances of them?

Dan John: Well, I have a YouTube video going through it. Yeah, so go to YouTube, find Coach Dan John. Good luck. I have, I don’t know, 1000 videos, 10, 15 workshops. It’s an honor, I give ’em away free ’cause I just… I love what I do now. I have a website called danjohn.net, which my God, if you decide to print it off, good luck, there’s 3000 pages of stuff to print off.

And then I have my pay site, and I’m sorry about that, but I have to pay people for doing all this other stuff, called danjohnuniversity.com. And I tell you what, let me give you a code right now, make it… And let’s do this, Art Of Man, okay?

Brett McKay: Art of man.

Dan John: And so gentle listeners, you’ll get… It’s usually 29 bucks a month, you’ll get for 29 bucks, you get for three months, and Happy New Year to you. Here’s the thing I think I like best about it Brett, if you haven’t been on the site, it’s called the Workout Generator.

You press what equipment you have, you press how many days a week you wanna work out, the intensity level. And you press a button and it gives you this wonderful spreadsheet with every… You just gotta play with it, you may never, ever use another. I know this sounds crazy, Brett, ’cause it’s my brain, I can’t coach as well as the Workout Generator coaches, okay?

Brett McKay: Alright. Well, fantastic. Well, Dan John, thanks for your time. It’s been a pleasure.

Dan John: Hey, and if you don’t mind, and I’ve said this before, I don’t know if you guys realize what a great site you have. I’m not blowing smoke at all. Your site is, it’s an absolute, and I mean this, it’s an absolute honor to be part of it. The quality of work that you guys have on there, the insights. I wish I would have come up with your idea, ’cause I think it’s just brilliant. So there’s a little bit of jealousy there. But it is really a phenomenal place, and I recommend it constantly, okay?

Brett McKay: Well, thanks so much, and we really appreciate that.

Dan John: You bet.

Brett McKay: My guest here is Dan John, he’s the author of several books, they’re all available on amazon.com, just check it out and just search for Dan John. You find out more information about his work at his website danjohn.net, as well as danjohnuniversity.com, also check out our show notes at aom.is/benchmarks, where you find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic.

Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast, check out our website at artofmanliness.com, where you find our podcast archives, as well as, thousands of articles written of years about pretty much anything you think of, and if you’d like to enjoy ad free episodes of AOM podcast, you can do so on Stitcher premium.

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M. Flores

Submitted by: M. Flores in Singapore