Editors Note: I asked Dan John,“What’s hap¬pening? How is the new job?” Below is the flow of consciousness from the Big Man himself!

I took a moment to look at the telephone. I couldn’t be hearing this right. Steve men¬tioned it again: “We really want you to take this job.” My thought was this: I’m a theo¬logian… a religious educator… an adminis¬trator… an old guy. Who would want me to take a position as a Strength Coach?

Just a few hours before, a group of people met at Juan Diego Catholic High School. An opportunity arose for a new strength coach and only one name came up: mine. Why? Well, I think I know now. Back in June, however, I had no idea why anyone would want an aging athlete to take over an elite program at honestly one of the finest high schools in America. For those of you who insist on envy: I inherited five full platforms, five squat racks, about two dozen York Olympic bars, more dumb¬bells than students, a full top of the line set of weight machines (which we hide), and two of the finest coach¬es in America working with me every day. Let’s also add a principal who visits daily and appreciates what we are doing, a great Athletic Director and a school that won SEVEN state champi¬onships last year. In hindsight, I realize that the greatest gift was Anthony Barbiero and Anthony Jefferies, the two young coaches who had been stifled for years. They visit¬ed me in Ohio while I coached at the John Powell Discus Camp and saw the “way I do things” and I think we all realized that “this is the way WE do things.”

Yet, we faced a mountain. Okay, a hill. First, the athletes had realized that in the past only certain students were monitored. “Weight lifting” became a time for many to look at themselves in the mirror, play cards or feign injuries. Cell phone calls were not only accepted in the class, but often the talker would leave… for good, and this in¬cluded the instructor! Second, the other staff members were completely shut off. Let me say this… the “Two Anthonys” are bright, knowledgeable, hardworking and caring. I still wonder why their opinions were ig¬nored in the past. Third, athletes were only judged on three lifts: Bench Press, Power Clean and Squat. Ninth Grade girls who cleaned 100 pounds after two weeks were told “that really isn’t very good.” (Nationally, this would be considered outstanding… maybe even great for a 120 neophyte ninth grade girl). Finally, entire files… all re¬cords really… were simply tossed in the garbage some time in May. Grades were not turned in, rewards were not given out and I still have a trophy and a box of medals that student-athletes deserve on their shelves and letter jackets.

There were no posters on the wall, no pic¬tures, no charts… save a record board of “suspect” lifts… and nothing motivational. The language used by the students in the weight room was certainly inappropriate for a Catholic high school… it was also in¬appropriate for a card game with longshore¬men. Fortunately, nearly all the changes were made in basically one day.
We simply held the students to a higher standard. I’m telling you, the athletes do NOT swear in class anymore. Why? Well, the fear of Bottom to Bottom Tabatas seems to be enough… even though they have NO idea what that means. Moreover, there is lit¬tle downtime in class. We move through each class with a purpose and there is a new joke on the campus that “the best word you hear in school is ‘time,’” knowing you have finished the day’s metabolic workout.

The first and best change was eliminating the old warm up. Oh, it was fine. Jump rope for some time, some stretches, some of this and some of that… but there was no intensi¬ty. We needed to step it up. Our daily warm up is simple:

. 3 sets of 8 Overhead Squat (so far, just with jump rope)
. 3 sets of 8 Push ups or Dips
. 3 sets of 8 Pullups
. 1 set of 25 Sit up Medicine Ball Throws
. A hip flexor stretch (basically the “Sam¬son Stretch”)
. A minute or so for the athlete to stretch or wiggle anything else that is tight. Of¬ten, we just skip this as nothing seems to need stretching after the warm up.

Now, we also take roll and begin with a prayer. My favorite prayer is, “Lord, the sea is so large and our boats are so small.” I have always found it fitting for all occasions… es¬pecially athletics.

After the stretch, we leap into the Workout of the Day. Each day has two parts: The “Cross¬fit Challenge” and The One Lift. Now, the One Lift will change as we move through… but, one of the con¬cerns of the adminis¬tration, Anthony and Anthony was that we did not fully cover the techniques nec¬essary for the class. So, we spend a lot of time with the athletes walking through the “language” and meth¬ods of all of our lifts. We spread ourselves about the gym with all kinds of weight choices on the Olym¬pic bars and walk through each move. Power Cleans with 65 pounds from the floor can be exhausting when you do rep after rep after rep after rep learning the proper ap¬proach. I won’t go into detail here, but these are the terms we use for the clean:

“Address the Bar”
“Heels”
“Up”
“Jump”
“Squeeze”

We literally repeat those words perhaps fif¬ty times in a session. Soon, it sounds like “Heelzupjump,” but a roomful of forty ath¬letes are all cleaning perfectly. Often, that is enough.

We always start with the Crossfit Challenge. Others will argue that we have it backwards, but we have to establish a “new sheriff in town.” So, the intensity from our CCs re¬ally pumps the class and preps them for the “easier” work of doing the technical stuff. One minor insight has been brilliant. We may offer a simple workout:

. 10 Deadlifts
. 20 Box Jumps
3 circuits for time

We expect with appropriate weight selec¬tion and appropriate box heights (we have about twenty various boxes), anyone can do the workout. But, we also add a “Chal¬lenge.” For this workout, the boys would be asked to deadlift 185 and use the high box. Girls are asked to deadlift 135 and use the medium boxes. We have had boys use more: one used 225 for all the reps. One boy finished the challenge in 3:03… that’s thirty deadlifts with 185 and 60 HIGH box jumps in three minutes, folks.

The reward for getting the challenge? You get your name on the whiteboard for a few days. It is purely voluntary, yet the athletes rally to get their names up on the board. This is the opposite of modern educational theory… I set the bar high here and give out very little back as a reward. Generally today, if the student shows up on time to class, he is given a piece of candy. I recommend my approach.

After the warm-up, the CC and the One Lift, we are struggling with realistically finishing the workouts. The plan is to do a sled drag, a carry (Farmer’s Walks, Rock Runs) or a com¬bination of Sled Drags and Carries each day. It just doesn’t happen. Time is a factor as well as an honest appraisal of the athlete’s ability to finish the workout. So, you guess at it. Finally, from the insights of Robb Wolf, we finish each day with an isometric ab ex¬ercise. We have come up with a few, but re¬ally we just keep it simple. We have built up to an “easy” two minutes and will hold it at three minutes. Cheating in a drill is expo¬nential as you get more and more away from reality. So, two to three minutes is great and call it a day. We are dealing with high school kids, not Olympians in their late twenties.

The number of parent phone calls and com¬plaints has dropped daily. I had one mother frankly amazed and told me that her daugh¬ter said, “We don’t stop doing stuff the whole class.” I told the mom “Thank you, we have been hoping for that!” The girl dropped out.