Coach Dan King

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Coach Dan King Hello my name is Dan, how can I help you?

12/10/2026

Leaning into the cable? You stopped training your triceps three reps ago.

Watch anyone on the pushdown. They load up the stack, then lean their whole bodyweight over the bar and push it down with their chest and shoulders. The elbows flare out and drift forward, and the triceps never actually lengthen or contract properly.

The weight goes down. The muscle does almost nothing.

Here's the fix.

Stand tall. A slight forward lean is fine, pushing your bodyweight through the bar is not.

Elbows pinned to your sides. They do not travel forward. Ever.

Only your forearms move. Everything else is frozen.

Squeeze at the bottom for a full second before letting it back up.

Then drop the weight. Properly. Once your bodyweight isn't helping, the number you were using is nowhere near what your triceps can actually handle.

You'll do half the weight and feel twice as much.

Coach Dan, I got you.

08/10/2026

If you feel silly sitting down between sets, you're actually the only one in there training properly.

Everyone else is rushing because standing around feels awkward, or losing track completely because they've gone down a hole on their phone. Both wreck the next set before it starts.

Here's the rule.

Heavy compound lifts: two to three minutes. Squats, deadlifts, bench, rows.

Isolation work: sixty to ninety seconds. Curls, lateral raises, flys.

That's it.

Rest too little and you're not recovering, so the next set is limited by how out of breath you are rather than how strong you are. Rest too long and you go cold.

Set a timer on your phone and actually use it. Not a vague guess. A timer.

You'll do fewer sets, feel like you've done less, and lift noticeably more. That's the whole point.

Coach Dan, I got you.

07/10/2026

You can do chin ups and still be training your arms.

Which is exactly what was happening here.

The chin up looks like a back exercise. It only becomes one if your lats are the thing starting the movement. If your biceps lead, they'll happily do most of the job and your back just comes along for the ride.

Here's the difference.

Set your shoulders before you pull. From the dead hang, pull your shoulder blades down away from your ears first, then start the rep. Skip that and your arms take over immediately.

Drive your elbows down to your ribs. Not "pull yourself up." Think about pushing your elbows towards the floor and your body will follow.

Chest to the bar. Get your chest up towards it rather than just getting your chin over. That last bit is where the lats actually finish the job.

Control the way down. Three seconds, all the way to a full hang. Dropping out of the top means skipping half the rep.

Same exercise, same reps, completely different muscles doing it.

Coach Dan, I got you.

05/10/2026

If your shoulders are rolling forward off the bench as you press, you've lost the exercise before the first rep.

Here's what's happening. As the dumbbells come down, the shoulders round forward and lift away from the bench. Your chest goes flat and passive, your shoulder joint ends up in the most vulnerable position available, and the front delts take everything.

Then you wonder why chest day makes your shoulders ache.

The fix happens before you press, not during.

Pull your shoulder blades back and down into the bench. Shoulder blades in your back pockets. Set it, then hold it.

Chest stays proud the whole set. If it flattens, the set is done.

Squeeze your shoulder blades together on the bench and keep them pinned there. You're pressing off them, not with them.

Elbows at roughly forty five degrees, not flared to ninety.

You'll need less weight and you'll feel it in your chest for the first time. That's not a step back, that's the first honest number you've had.

Coach Dan, I got you.

01/10/2026

Holding a plank for three minutes doesn't mean your core is strong.

It means you're comfortable.

Watch anyone doing a long plank. Thirty seconds in the position is fine. After that the hips start sagging towards the floor or piking up towards the ceiling, and from that point it's just a waiting game. Your core stopped working ages ago.

A plank isn't an endurance test. It's a test of whether you can hold tension.

So here's what to do instead.

Squeeze your glutes hard. Like you're holding a coin between them.

Tuck your ribs down. No arching.

Straight line from your head to your heels and nothing moving.

Then hold it for thirty seconds and stop.

If you can hold that position for three minutes, brilliant. But almost nobody can, and everybody thinks they can, which is why the time is the wrong thing to measure.

Thirty done properly beats three minutes done badly. Every time.

Coach Dan, I got you.

30/09/2026

He was doing twelve reps in about eleven seconds.

That's not a set. That's a countdown.

The fly is the one exercise where speed ruins everything. It's an isolation movement with a long lever and hardly any weight involved, which means the only thing making it work is time under tension. Rush it and there's nothing left.

Here's what fast tempo actually costs you.

You bounce out of the stretch instead of controlling it. That stretched position is where most of the growth happens and it's the bit you're skipping.

You stop squeezing at the top and just let the handles meet.

Your shoulders start doing the work because your chest hasn't got time to.

What we changed:

Three seconds opening out. Fight the cables the whole way.

Pause in the stretch for a second. Don't bounce it.

Squeeze for a full second at the top before you let it back out.

Same weight, half the reps, and he had to sit down afterwards.

Coach Dan, I got you.

28/09/2026

Nobody has ever got in shape by being good at counting.

Ten bad reps and ten good reps look identical in your log book. They are not the same session.

A bad rep is one you swung, bounced or rushed. The weight moved, your muscle barely did. It goes in the notes, it counts towards your total, it changes nothing about your body.

A good rep is slow, controlled and in the right position from start to finish. It's harder. There'll be fewer of them. It's the only kind that actually does anything.

So before you add another set or another 5kg, ask whether the reps you're already doing are worth having.

Three things that turn a bad rep into a good one:

Slow the lowering down. Three seconds, every rep.

Pause where it's hardest instead of rushing past it.

Stop the set when your form goes, not when the number says so.

You'll use less weight and do fewer reps and get more from it than you have in months.

Coach Dan, I got you.

24/09/2026

If you feel silly doing lateral raises with the little dumbbells, you're the one doing it right.

Here's the thing nobody says out loud.

The side delt is a small muscle at the end of a long lever. It is not designed to move a lot of weight. The person next to you swinging the 15s isn't stronger than you. They're just doing a different exercise badly.

Watch what happens when the weight's too heavy.

The shoulders shrug up to help. The body starts swinging to get them moving. The dumbbells go well above shoulder height, which hands the whole thing over to the traps.

Three fixes:

Go much lighter than you think. Uncomfortably light. That's the point.

Stop at shoulder height. There's nothing for your delts above that.

No swinging. If your body's moving, the weight is answering the question for you.

Small dumbbells, perfect form, no ego. That's the exercise.

Coach Dan, I got you.

23/09/2026

She didn't fail the rep.

She racked it before she got to it.

There's a moment on most sets where it starts feeling hard and your brain offers you an exit. The bar's still moving. Your form's still fine. You're just uncomfortable and the hooks are right there.

Three things that help:

Coach Dan, I got you.

21/09/2026

Every gym has the air con set to one of two settings.

Off.

Or Arctic.

There's no in between. And you find out which one you've got about four minutes into your warm up, usually at the exact moment you catch yourself in the mirror wall.

Nothing you can do about it. No amount of chest day prepares you for this.

Wear a hoodie. That's the advice. That's all I've got.

Coach Dan, I got you.

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