Book Review: Never Let Go (Dan John)

I recently just finished up Dan John’s excellent book, Never Let Go.

Never Let Go is a collection of articles that Dan has written about fat loss, training, philosophy, and life in general. It’s mainly targeted at the intermediate lifter who has a reasonable amount of strength (defined by Dan as a minimum of a bodyweight bench press and double-bodyweight deadlift), but lifters of all types can learn from his wise words. Dan writes in a humorous and light manner, using his personal anecdotes to highlight what he’s learned in the 30+ years he’s been training and coaching, but drives home very basic and important points. One of our favorite sayings around the facility at Driveline Baseball is Dan’s own: “I said it was simple, not easy.”

A great point he hammers home is that fat loss should be a temporary battle and not a year-long war of attrition – people are too likely to fail the long war, and even if they succeed, they’ll see serious atrophy in their strength and power levels. I’ll be following his advice as I head into the summer baseball season: I’ve been taking a training layoff because of a lower back injury, but it feels good enough to start front squatting again and doing intense interval training. The layoff has left me softer and a bit fatter than I’d like to be, so I’ll be spending the next four weeks (28 days) on an all-out war against fat by constricting my diet and getting a lot of Tabata / interval work in.

Go pick up Never Let Go from Amazon today. You’ll be glad you did.