Dan John discusses the 5 basic human movements: Push, pull, hinge, squat and loaded carry and prioritizes their impact on strength training.
Excerpted from Dan John’s Intervention
Whenever someone calls me with a strength training question, I always ask, “So, what do you do in the weight room?”
And the guy is a guy . . . He will always say, “I bench 500 pounds.” That’s always the first statement because that’s what every guy thinks.
“Then I do three chin-ups.”
Then I’m waiting for everything else. It’s never forthcoming.I never hear about allfive basic human movements.
I always hear about push first. I always hear about pull second. The third movement that you don’t hear very much is called hinge. The fourth movement is something I call a squat. (Now, I call it a squat and yet what I usually see is . . . not a squat. Knees out, hips stiffis not squatting. In fact, I don’t know how people can do that—that hurts my knee. The fifth basic human movement is what I call loaded carries.
In order, this is how I hear them: I always hear push. I almost always hear pull. Sometimes I hear a hinge movement—a deadlift or maybe a clean. Sometimes I hear a squat, though I usually hear, “It hurts my knees.” I never hear, “I do loaded carries,” which we will get to in just a minute.
If I were to put these in order as to how I can impact you overnight, the order would be like this:
1) Loaded carries— I can change your life in three weeks
2) Squat
3) Hinge
4) Pull
5) Push
I can guarantee that your kids—when they show up in the weight room—they want to bench press. They want to lay down and bench press. I know that because I worked with a Pac-12 basketball player years ago and all he ever wanted to do was bench press—a 6’9″ guy who walked around hunched overand wanted to bench press.
Intervention number one is this: Getting you to do some kind of loaded carry. I get that done and three weeks later you call me up and you say, “Dan, you’re a genius.” I practice blushing often. I go, “Oh please. Genius is a true but overworked term, but, yes, keep talking. Is there more?”
Because if I can get you to just farmer walk—just the farmer walk—in three weeks you’re better. I taught the farmer walk to a ballet dancer and a basketball team and they both worked. Why? Because they weren’t doing them. What? What you will find, too, are the things they don’t do and you make them do it. I will have them do it and three weeks later, they are better.
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