A Legendary Strength Coach's Secrets to Build Mass Fast Without Destroying Your Body.

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Foreign. Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And if you've been listening into the podcast recently or perhaps been following the Twitter feed, then you know that during this off season for my triathlon training, I'm actually using a new training program. It's a program called Mass Made Simple. And the reason I'm doing that is because I want to put a little bit of mass on my body. Not just mass, but power and strength and speed too. And for any of you listening in who maybe want to try a new workout or learn how to build strength, build power, or even put on a few pounds or put on some curves, the guy that I have on today's call is going to really fill you in on everything you need to know about how to do it. He's a guy that I personally trust quite a bit when it comes to this stuff. I own just about every book that he's written, and he's a real wealth of knowledge when it comes to getting, as I like to say, strong like a bull. So his name is Dan John, and Dan is a lifter. He was actually an all American discus thrower as well. And he's competed at very high levels in Olympic lifting. He's competed at the Highland Games, he's competed in pentathlon for weightlifting, an event in which he actually holds the American record. And he's not only a writer and a lecturer and a coach, but he's also someone who does quite a bit of studying too. He's actually toured the Middle east exploring the foundations of religious education systems, of all things. And his books are books that we'll link to in the show notes, but they include things like Intervention Never Let Go Easy Strength, which he co wrote with a guy named Pavel Zazolini, and then also this program that we're going to talk about today called Mass Made Simple. Now, before we jump into the show with Dan, let me mention to you that this podcast is actually sponsored by Audible. So over@AudiblePodcast.com Ben, you can grab pretty much any book. And since we're talking about strength today, I want to tell you about one of my favorite books that you can actually download on Audible. It's called that Hideous Strength. It actually doesn't have a lot to do with fitness, but it's a fiction book. It's part of a trilogy written by a guy named C.S. lewis. And I've personally read that trilogy almost 10 times. And you can actually listen to any book from that trilogy or the whole thing over@AudiblePodcast.com Ben. But that one's called that Hideous Strength. Check it out on your next road trip, your next airplane ride, or your next long bike ride. So, that being said, let's turn to John or Dan. John. Dan. Thanks for coming on the call.

Hey, my pleasure. Really appreciate it.

It's always hard to intro somebody who has two first names.

Yeah, it's been that way since I've been born. I cannot tell you how many times someone said, what's your last name? I say John. And they of roll their eyes and say your last name, and it's like, okay, yeah, you're the first on this. Okay. And then I get to, you know, be snotty back at them.

So it worked out right. It's actually not too bad. They're, they're, they're monosyllaballic, so that makes it easy. So, you know, there are a ton of mass gain programs out there, Dan. I'm sure that you're aware, you know, like, they're kind of a dime a dozen on the Internet. You know, put on muscle here and put on muscle there. But for you, I know you've been in this a while, you've been steeped in weight training and mass building, and I'm sure that you've seen lots of mistakes out there. And I want to start right there because I think that that's really important for people to know that there are ways to do this the right way and ways to do this the wrong way. So what do you think are the biggest mistakes that people make when they say, want to put on some mass, get a little bit thicker, put on some curves, put on some muscle, et cetera.

Right there. Number one, they say that sentence, but then they start using the word but, but, but, but. So if you're going to gain mass, you got to toss that, everything else out of. I mean, I actually feel that way about fat loss too. But if you're going to gain mass, you've got to make a commitment. Rarely more than six weeks. I'm just not sure you can keep doing it for beyond six weeks. Seriously. But you can't say, dan, I want to put on 30 pounds of mass, but I also want to keep my six pack, run a marathon, climb the Himalayas, learn to, you know, I don't know, and 12 other things. The hardest part, number one, is to. You have to circle the calendar and say, I'm going to build mass right now because you need, you need, you need to sleep heavy, you need to eat heavy, you need to train heavy. And so that'd be number one. Number two is people they fall in love with. Well, how would I explain it? When you first start any program or do anything, you have those, those loving first kind weeks where you make massive, massive improvements with the mass building program, you know, you're not going to, you can improve your mass doing leg extensions and leg curls, but the problem is you just don't have enough total load on the body. So what happens is you're going to get. So the problem with a true mass building program, it's going to hurt like hell. I mean, it's going to be a real. I mean, it's going to be. You have to put the body in a situation of alarm and then give it massive amounts of rest, nutrients. But to get the body under the.

Law, attest to that. Having started, I'm two weeks into your program right now, and my wife has commented that she's never seen me before as scared, so to speak, to go to the gym. So, yeah, it is uncomfortable.

And that's why I just say six weeks. You know, if I'm working with a football player, you know, we might get one a year and, you know, maybe high school or maybe a freshman, sophomore, college, maybe we get two of these in a year. But it has to be a big. If you're a football player trying to get bigger for the fall, you also can't be working on your sprint and you can't be working on your agility. At the same time, it's got to be all in. And that's number one. And then number two, of course, is it's not only you have to be all in, but you have to spend some quality time getting crushed by the movements.

Yeah. And you talk about that a little bit in your book. You know, I don't remember if you talk about it in Mass Made simple or in your book, I Believe Interventions. But you mention about how people who want to put on size, who want to put on mass, a lot of times have to almost be lazy and stop moving so much like moving and moving and moving and twitching and doing all these other things, just because you simply go so catabolic that you can't Put on mass that quickly.

Yeah. And, well, you know, I mean, like Dick Notmayer's famous advice to me during mass is always wear a sweater or a sweat top all the time.

So you're basically not engaging in like cold thermogenesis. You're trying to keep that from happening.

Yeah, you're, you're, I mean, and it's great to do at this time of year if you like college football. I mean, you, your job is to get on a couch and watch the whole game. And it sounds weird, but again, what most people miss on everything. It's like Mark and Mike, the guys. I'm interns, we joke about this all the time. We're doing a 20 day program right now. And Mark nailed it perfectly the other day. He said, well, you know, if it doesn't work, it's only 20 days. It just doesn't matter, you know, in the, in the big terms of things. I started lifting weights in 1965, so that's a while ago. And I always joke about, you know, these six week programs that come along. Two week programs, you know, I don't know how many years, it's almost 50, 48 years up in lifting weights. I mean, how many six week programs is that? That's, that's a lot. So I guess the big key is I'm trying to get across this. We've got to start having the courage to just say, this is a quality I want to improve. I'm going to dedicate the next 4, 6 weeks to improving it. Now, for example, if you have someone listening who wants to do a triathlon, but say they come from a running background and they're not very good at swimming. Well, my argument would be, well, why don't you hire, you know, get yourself on a swim team for, you know, a couple of months and really step up that real gap, Right? Won't my running go down? Of course it will. But you know how to run. You don't know how to swim. That's killing your triathlon. And it's funny because I say that and I'm sure you would understand that perfectly. But you say that, you look at people like, well, it's the same when it comes to things like mass building. You know, you can't hop on this. You know. Okay.

No, I hear you. And you know, of course there's, there's a big elephant in the room here because I know that some of our listeners know I'm going through your program, but I've still got, you know, I've got This three week triathlon camp I'm doing over in Thailand and I'm actually doing a couple of triathlons and they're kind of smack dab in the middle of the Mass Made simple program. And I want to tell our listeners two things. Number one, when Dan is talking about mass, he's talking about the best possible scenario. Putting on MASS as fast as possible. If you are trying to pursue two simultaneous goals, like I kind of sort of am doing right now, you know, it's going to be until after those triathlons where I actually get the true results that I really want when it comes to mass building. But I'm at least trying to familiarize myself with Dan's program leading up to that. Now, the other thing is that I'm only swimming once a week, biking once a week and running once a week, and that's it. So I've, you know, I've cut my volume down significantly to the point where I'm just touching those triathlon disciplines as little as possible and then really focusing on this mass gain program. So, Dan, what are the main principles behind Mass Made Simple? It's a lot different than other workouts that I've been through. And I know that it's not just kind of thrown around willy nilly in terms of when you say to do what. So what are the main ideas behind the program?

Well, there's three in the weight room, there's three ideas. So let's make sure the. The big thing, of course, that everyone talks about is the high rep squats. At the end of the workouts, the goal is to squat deep, squat your body weight for 50 reps on the last day. That's kind of the. And everybody who's done it has gotten back to me, said, I couldn't believe I could do it. I never thought I could do it. High rep squats put such a systemic hit on your body that it's just hard if you haven't done them. It's just, it's a moot point when you're doing reps with a load, say 200, 225, whatever, for 10, 15, 20 reps, your body has to just constantly find new places to put the stress. And that's what we're kind of trying to do here. So what we're trying to do is have you under that bar. I mean, I think the first time I did 50 with 225, I think, who knows what it actually was, but I think it was about a four minute thing. I think it took because the last 20 reps just took so long each one. And I never seen anyone do it before. And so I was in uncharted territory and my spotters thought it was hilarious. So if you're under load for 2, 3, 4 minutes, your body has to step up at a level of adaption that's pretty unusual. Then the second element a lot of people miss. It's the middle part of the workout when we do that simple complex. The complex is a series of exercises followed with one bar. You never put the weight down, and you move through a set of eight doing, say, rows cleans, military back squat. Good morning.

Although I gotta say, these complexes where you're moving from one exercise to the next. You just said set of eight. I'm two weeks into the program. I don't think I've done as is more than five yet. So you start with fewer than that.

Oh, yeah, because eight would crush me.

Right now with the barbell complexes.

Right. And so what happens is that's another thing where here you are moving load again. You'll notice, I'm guessing you're probably around a minute and a half, two minutes to finish each complex.

I'm closer to four because it literally, like, I will, like, even with the. I think it was the Or. I'm sorry, I was thinking about the high rep squats, the actual complexes. Yeah, they're like, they're around two minutes or so.

Okay, so once again, you know, we're on those. You throw the load all over the body. And again, I find them very easy. I find complexes kind of mentally easy, emotionally easy. Because it's like, oh, I'm just doing three pull. I'm just doing five different.

You're splitting it up. And once again, for the listeners, what are the main moves in the complex, the main exercises that you're doing in a typical barbell complex?

Well, I actually write a lot about that. But the key is you're going to do okay. For example, you do five deadlifts followed by five power cleans, five military presses, bring the weight to the back, do five back squats, do five good mornings, flip the weight back over and do five rows. That would be a very simple one. And the thing is that you try to. You don't let go of the bar the whole time. So your, you know, your grip does rest on the squats. Your grip rests, you know, here and there. Your lower back is engaged a lot, but then there's moments where it kind of loses. Yeah. So what you're trying to do is really make that body swim through a lot of.

Yeah, it's, it's taxing. I mean I feel like I've run an 800 meter when I, when I put down the bar after barbell complex. Like it's, it's a full body burn. So.

Yeah, and it's, you know, it comes from the Eastern Europeans. Vasily Alexia, the great Soviet lifter, his coaching was based on, that was on just complexes. Those of us who've been in the Olympic list kind of rediscovered them a while ago. And they're fabulous. Way to train up to your. Until you start to peak for me. And then the third part though is just those upper body moves. We do a bench press every day and we do a one arm press every day and an exercise called bat wings. Make sure the rhomboids are still awake.

And bird dogs, bat wings is what they're called.

Yeah, the bat wings, that's where you pull them up, the weight up into your armpits. Yeah. And then the bird dog just every day. Because I think the bird dog has great value and I think you should do it every day no matter what. But we needed some kind of movement to kind of, you know, connect the parts. I like the bird dogs as an assessment.

It's also a nice break in the middle of the program too from. Because I believe you start with bench press and you've got your single arm presses and some other moves and then you've got your bird dog which is not loaded, so it's not quite as difficult.

So that's the exercise part, but really the other the main ingredients is setting it up so that you're constantly. You lift weights on day one and then you take two days off. You take one day off and then another day. I call it recharge, where you just kind of move around a little bit. Doesn't have to be much. But those are the two days I keep telling people are the most important. Consciously during those two non lifting days, focus on the process of bulking so that when you get into the weight room it's only 14 workouts in six weeks. But you have to wait on the line on those 14 workouts and you have to get yourself emotionally ready. So take the time off, don't get exhausted, sit around, eat your food, do what you need to do. Practice these little things, these little ideas like eat like an adult or wear a sweater all the time or eat excessively. That would be the third. And then the third element of a course is this idea of each week we have a little Tweak a little intervention. I think a lot of people miss that. In the six weeks you're going to try a different way of taking either protein. We do try creatine in the third or fourth week, for example. Protein before you go to bed, protein when you first wake up, protein before you train, protein after you train. Those are the basic tweaks we've all known about. But what I'm asking you to do is just add, you know, add one each week to see how you respond to it. Because we're individual enough that like for example, I've had people tell me this, this, I mean I, this protein before workout does. I get sick and I get nauseous. Okay, good, that's fine. Don't do it before workout then. Oh, is that it? Yeah. And what, what one works for you? Oh man. Protein before I go to bed. Good. Now the rest of your life, for the rest of your life, you've got this little thing in your pocket. For me, for example. For me, protein before bed, best thing I've ever done. But for you, you might say, well, protein after the training is the greatest thing. It's, everyone should do it, the whole world should do it. But there's a whole bunch of people that work for. So that does. You kind of get a chance to tweak and figure out long term what works for you. Now let me say one thing that's in the book too. The thing you don't think works for you might be something to revisit later on away from the program. For example, you get up in the morning and the first thing you do is drink protein shake. And during the six weeks you tell me it didn't work for you. Well, it might not have worked for you now, but it might work for you away from this six week experiment, if you follow. Sometimes when you throw, you just keep throwing variables on it and you can't really see it. But you know the research, I mean there's some good research about having protein with a half an hour weight gain is a good thing, but it might not be a good thing during these six weeks.

And for a lot of people it's the type of protein too. I mean I've found that a whey protein destroys a lot of people and some people actually do better on a vegan protein mix with pea and rice and hemp and stuff like that. And then some people are just buying $10 cans of protein at GNC that are full of crap and that's why they feel bad doing something like the Protein approach post workout. So that depends too. Dan, you have an interesting approach that for me, as an ex bodybuilder, we used to use a lot of medium weight, medium reps for hypertrophy, for putting on size. And in this book you've got heavyweight high reps. I mean, you've got things like 20 to 30 rep squat sets. Why is it that you went that route? I mean, when so many other manuals encourage more like a medium weight, medium rep, like a 10 to 15 rep range with a medium weight versus a 30 rep range with a heavyweight?

Well, that's just in the squat. It's interesting though. I mean, I go to gyms all the time and I see guys that do medium weights, medium reps, medium sets, and they look like they've never lifted weights in their life. You know, these guys read every magazine, they're on podcasts all day long and they look like they've never trained. Here's the key, and it's funny because it goes back in the day. It's Vince Garanda, he said it's not high reps with lightweights, it's not low reps with heavy weights, it's high reps with heavyweights. And I thought that was great. Hold on a second. Oh, sorry.

Bless you. That was good podcasting right there.

Yeah, sorry about that, but sorry. It's high reps with heavy weights and that's really the key. And I've always believed that to gain mass, it's going to. Here's the thing, it's going to hurt. Here's the thing about back squats. You can do one more rep. I mean, I don't care how many you've done, you can do one more. And I found this out when I was an Olympic lifter. My PR back squat is 6:05 for 3 reps. I always tell people it's a true story. The reason I never went heavier is that I could see in the mirror the faces of my spotters and they were freaked out. So I. When your spotters are afraid, you know, that's a sign.

That was some serious weight.

Yeah, but people say, why three? And I was like, well, I got it once and it wasn't that bad. They did it again and then I just did it again. And the funny thing is, you know, some of them throw it a hundred dollars right on the bar. I probably could have done the fourth one and really it would be a thousand for five and ten thousand for six. But, you know, you can always do one more back squat. But you Know, you ask a good question and, you know, back in the day with Delorme and Watkins, you know, they pretty well proved that 10 reps, 3 sets of 10 is the best thing to do for hypertrophy. But in their book, they also notice that they note that power athletes, and they can't believe it, do as few as five. So I think we have to be careful about saying that true hypertrophy work comes from those 8 to 12 to 15 reps, because frankly, we don't know. We still don't. And I think this is the key. I think that in a year, if you want to truly keep getting, say, more massive, you have to play with a number of things. First off, you have to be really strong going into a bodybuilding phase because you want to have weights that hit you hard. You know, for example, if we're both doing a bodybuilding routine and you're doing three sets of 10 with 135, and I'm doing three sets in the curl, okay. In the curl, and I'm doing three sets of ten with 225 in the curl. I mean, there's not a person listening who wouldn't agree that I'm getting a much bigger hit than you are. Right. So most people come into their, their mass building phase is sometimes too weak. And that's why I like that in the book. You know, there's the, there's week one, there's week two. You kind of tune it up a little bit with your squats. Right. Then you, you've done those. It's only £95 for set of 30. Right, right. We say this on, as we had this conversation, we both just 30, but you know that 27, 28 and 29 felt right, right?

Yeah, that's why I ask. I mean, I'm getting up into these rep ranges. Once you get above 20, you're. You're almost like standing there under the bar for 10 seconds, 15 seconds before you do your next rep, just, you know, mustering up the energy to go into the next rep.

Right. And think about how you feel 24 hours later. And that's the key, right? Yeah.

Well, you know, squats too. There's a lot of. I was wondering if you were, if you had kind of programmed so many squats into this just because of the endocrine, you know, the hormonal response to squatting. There's some pretty good research out there that, that shows a really nice testosterone and growth hormone response to the squat move specifically.

Oh, well, we've known this in the weightlifting world. I mean, you go back to Perry Raider back in the 40s and 50s, who was the editor of the original Ironman with his high rep squat and gallon of milk protocol. That was his answer. And then he, then he changed it to high rep cleaning jerks. And. But that didn't work out very safely for anybody. But yeah, it's, we've known, I mean, we've just known that for a long time. It's you. I mean, guys like Dick, not my coaches and stuff. That, that was. If, if there was a question about your body mass, it was to the squat rack. You go also, too. You mentioned this, so we'll run with it. But, you know, one of the things I found in my programs that work best is when you are a little afraid to go do the workout. I got an Olympic lifting program called the Big 21. And we've always joked that, you know, you got the weights right is when you can't sleep before workouts eight and nine because you're so worried about the workout. Right. That fight or flight response has value. Now how long does that have value? I argue two to six weeks.

Yeah, yeah. And I think, I think a lot of people hear that too. And, and you get crossfitters who are going through that every day. And I think that's where you get into dangerous territory is you have that, that defensive fear, cortisol running from a lion response. And you don't have that two to three days of recovery or easy work in between. It's just like every single morning rolling out of bed to head to the box to do that. You know, that wad. I think that's where it gets dangerous.

Well, and you can see it with them with those injury rates. I mean, even, even in scaled down tests, they have a 16% injury rate. I mean, and in the military, they were up to as high as 50% injuries. 50, 50. You know, that's, that's, that's civil war level of injuries for Americans for a workout. I don't. Yeah. When you get the 50% injured rate, I think we have a problem. Houston.

And you actually think this is interesting. I track my heart rate variability, which is a measurement of the strength of your nervous system or the stress response of your nervous system. And I've played around with it a little bit. I've worn my little heart rate to strap while I'm doing things. Aside from just lying in bed, which would be. Normally, when you measure something like this, I've measured it when I'm running. I've Measured it when I'm lifting weights. I've measured it when I'm walking around the house and when I'm working. And it's always low once you're out of bed. But the one thing that drops it rock bottom. Meaning that you get almost a complete loss of heart rate variability. And almost like this, this overworking of the sympathetic nervous system is the squat exercise, that single exercise. And I think it's because it's such a defensive position. You've got this scary weight on your back and you're dropping down, you're pushing your posterior chain out behind you. It's amazing. When I hook it up to heart rate variability, I can be sprinting up a hill and nothing comes close to the squat in terms of the nervous system, system activation.

And here's the thing too. And so what we're, this is important for your listeners. The squat stresses you massively, which is why I argue two to six weeks of something like this. Don't get yourself, don't try to extend it. I've had people say, if it's so good, why don't you do it again? Because I guarantee on week 12 you would be, for one thing, your body would just start to cheat. Your body would figure ways around your idiocy. But on the other side, is that what you're talking about right here? I think you can get away with it about six weeks tops. Tops. And then all of a sudden all those, what you mentioned, cortisol, Cortisol is going to start running its ugly flag up and try to win back.

And what I plan on doing is going through your entire six week program and then taking one to two weeks of complete cleaning up, recovery, detox, that type of thing and kind of do like an adrenal reboot. And then I actually would want to do another round of it, but I'm going to be putting in a break in between the two sessions.

No, I agree with that. When I do this with football players. Well, we have about, we call it two weeks of. And I think we call it, well, it's, it's called, you would just call it bodybuilding, but I have another name. I have other names for these things just to keep it, you know, exciting. But it's two weeks of just junk, really junk training. There's nothing, there's nothing. It's not like training. It's more like having fun in the gym, but. And then from there we would probably, we would try to move to something like working on speed or something like that. Another totally different quality so that that mass carries over a little bit, and then you do some more specific stuff, do another mass program, you know, have a little recovery, and then you're into it's time for the season, you know. Yeah. So it happens fast.

Yeah. Well, for. For people who want to check out Mass Made Simple, I'm going to put a link in the show notes. I also probably the other book that I'd recommend most for, for those of you listening in that I also really like by Dan is Interventions. That's another good one. But I'll link over to Dan's Amazon page so you can kind of check out all of his books. And also he's got a really good website too, over at DanJohn. It's DanJohn.net, right, Dan.

Net net. Yeah.

Yep. DanJohn.net so check that out. I'll put all the notes and resources for this episode over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com I would invite any of you who wants to, whether you're male or female and you want to put on some curves or put on some mass or put on some size during this winter season. It's kind of a perfect time because you can eat food and turn it into muscle, which is fun. Just head over there, grab the program, and join along with me as we do this. So, Dan, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.

My pleasure. I love your site. I like your. Those PDFs and, and the audio, the video, the how I start my morning, what I eat for lunch. I thought those were really fun. I thought those were really fun.

Yeah.

And how I get ready for bed. Those were pretty good. I got a kick out of those.

That's awesome.

You guys walk around the glasses and the dog.

Yeah, I'm glad somebody's watching that stuff.

I try to keep up. Yeah.

Cool. Well, folks, that's gonna about wrap it up. Remember to visit audiblepodcast.comBen to grab a free book of your choosing. And until next time, this is Ben Greenfield and Dan John, author of Mass Made simple, signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

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