MONS Athletics

Homage

The people who shaped MONS

Nothing here was invented from scratch. How we train grew out of other people's work, read, watched and tried on our own bodies for years.

This page names them, says what we took from each, and points to where you can learn from them yourself. We teach what you need to train well. They go deeper, and they are worth your time.

None of them is connected to MONS. We just learned from them.

Where it started

Alexander Stubb

President of Finland, and a lifelong endurance athlete with marathons and Ironman races behind him, Hawaii included.

This is where it started for Nico. As Nico remembers Stubb putting it, an hour of exercise gives you two hours of energy back each day. It's what got Nico into endurance sport in the first place, and years later it still holds. Training should make the rest of your day better, not take from it.

Where to start

Mladen Zagorac

Adventure runner. He ran 1,700 kilometres from Helsinki to the North Cape in 28 days, pushing his gear in a running pram, about 60 kilometres a day, and wrote the book Eleven Degrees about it.

He is Nico's friend, and he is why Nico signed up for his first marathon. You don't have to be a born athlete to do something big. You start, and you keep going, one day at a time.

Where to start

Born to move

Daniel Lieberman

Professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard. Studies how and why humans run.

Humans are built for long distances. His research on persistence hunting, our feet and running without shoes is behind the opening chapters of the book: you are a long-distance animal, and your body expects to move every day.

Where to start

Christopher McDougall

Journalist and author of Born to Run.

The book that made a generation of runners take off their shoes and run for joy. His story of the Tarahumara runners in Mexico, and of running as play, is behind our case for running in thin, flat shoes and letting your feet do their work.

Where to start

Endurance

Jack Daniels

Running coach and exercise physiologist, 1933 to 2025. Won Olympic medals in modern pentathlon in 1956 and 1960, then spent fifty years coaching runners.

Every session has a purpose. If you can't say what today's run is for, it probably isn't for anything. He sorts running into a few kinds of effort, each with its own job, and our efforts grew from that. Our threshold chapter follows his teaching closely.

Where to start

Strength

Pavel Tsatsouline

Strength coach who brought the kettlebell to the West. Founder of StrongFirst.

Strength is a skill you practise, not a workout you survive. A few moves, done well and often, stopping before your form slips. We took that whole. We also took his view on warming up: the first set of a move, done lighter, is the warm-up. And his advice to take your bells outside.

Where to start

Mark Rippetoe

Strength coach and author of Starting Strength.

A few simple movements, done well, are enough. No clever variety and no workouts designed to look hard. That is why our kettlebell routines are built from a handful of plain moves, and why they stay that way.

Where to start

Dorian Yates

Bodybuilder, six times Mr. Olympia, known for short, focused training.

Do everything that matters and drop the rest. No filler sets, nothing done out of habit, nothing there to make the session look longer. Every part of our sessions has to earn its place, which is why they are short.

Where to start

Chris Duffin

Record-setting powerlifter who often lifts barefoot. Founder of Kabuki Strength.

Strength starts at the ground. He lifts huge weights in bare feet because strong, spread feet give the whole body a better base. That shaped our chapter on feet, and it is why kettlebells and yoga are done barefoot.

Where to start

The body as one

Andy Galpin

Exercise physiologist who studies how muscle changes with training.

He splits what training can build into nine separate things, from skill and speed to strength and the ability to keep going for hours. Each one needs a different kind of session and a different kind of rest. That is why our week mixes short hard efforts, strength and long easy days, instead of doing one thing well and the rest by accident.

Where to start

Jeff Cavaliere

Physical therapist and strength coach, once head physical therapist for the New York Mets. The man behind Athlean-X.

Train like an athlete. The body works as one chain, so find the weak link and fix it, and always know why an exercise is in your routine. That is how we think about feet, core and hands: train the movement, not the muscle.

Where to start

Range

Ben Patrick

Coach known as the Knees Over Toes Guy. Founder of ATG.

Range you can't control is not much use. He trains strength at the very end of a joint's range, knees past toes and deep in the stretch, so the body is strong exactly where it usually gets hurt. That is how we think about range: length and strength together, not stretching on its own.

Where to start

Breath

Bas Rutten

Former UFC heavyweight champion and kickboxer.

Breathing is something you can train. He made a small device you breathe through against resistance, the O2 Trainer, and talks often about how much of a fighter's calm comes from the breath. We teach breath as the dial for effort: nose only for easy base work, harder breathing as the effort climbs.

Where to start

Rickson Gracie

Jiu-jitsu champion, famous for staying calm under any pressure.

Your breath is the one part of you that runs on its own and that you can also take over. Control it and you control how you feel in hard moments. His whole approach to fighting rests on that. It is the same idea we use when a long effort starts to hurt.

Where to start

James Nestor

Journalist and author of Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art.

Most of us breathe badly, and most of all through the mouth. He spent years on the science and history of breathing and makes the case for the nose: slower, deeper breaths that calm you and carry you further. It's why our easy base efforts are breathed through the nose, in and out.

Where to start

The long game

John Danaher

Jiu-jitsu coach whose students changed how the sport is fought.

A different sport, and the biggest idea on this page. He doesn't teach a pile of moves. He teaches a few principles, and the moves that grow out of them, and keeps refining every part a little, every day, for years. That is how we think about training: small steps, done daily, over a long time.

Where to start