John “Don” Wright is a strength coach, veteran powerlifter, musician and advisor to Tony Huge. He has 25 years of martial arts experience and served for 25 years in the Royal Air Force.
These are the heaviest things I have picked up, with the weight as I logged it on the day. I am filming them properly and the clip goes into each card as it comes in — uncut, one take, plates in the shot.
A gym lift reported by Don. His September update notes the use of straps; this is not presented as a judged competition record.
Don reported an assisted 180 kg front squat in his September 5 update. The amount of assistance and range of motion still need documentation.
Don reported 220 kg for three assisted negative repetitions on a Smith machine. This describes the lowering phase with assistance, not three unassisted full repetitions.
Don training with a reported 300 kg load. Watch the equipment and movement shown in the recording.
Filmed at Muscle Factory in Pattaya. Working sets rather than record attempts — the max lifts above are still being filmed properly, and these are not them. This is what a Friday looks like.
“I'm coming up to that big magic sensitive age of the big seven zero. But now I've got hold of this information, I'm hoping to live at least another twenty-five years — if not more.”
Don Wright · to camera, Muscle Factory, 7 August 2026
Not a shortcut. A frame that was built slowly enough to hold what I put on it now.
“I thought MK‑677 was a machine gun.”
Don Wright · on what he knew before 2025
The iron is the proof. The wisdom is the reason. Neither one is worth much on its own, and I have watched a lot of men spend a lifetime choosing between them.
I came up in the golden age — Arnold, Frank Zane, Franco Columbu, Serge Nubret, Sergio Oliva. Beautiful men, and a completely different set of principles to what you see now. I lifted through all of it. Powerlifting, then Olympic lifting, which is what eventually cost me. In my early sixties I damaged my shoulder snatching, and I exhausted every conventional option I could find.
I never really took anything. Not out of virtue — I simply did not know anything existed.
Twenty-five years of military service and 25 years of martial arts experience. Music. Teaching. And then, later, the turn most old fighters make eventually — tai chi, yoga, meditation. What I would call the peaceful warrior end of it.
My research toward a PhD concerns quantum mysticism: Taoism, the ancient rituals, tai chi, yoga, tantra. Which is how I ended up with a thesis rather than just an opinion — because the more I looked, the more obvious it was that the ancient practices were doing the same job, thousands of years before anyone had a word for it.
A lot of people take shortcuts. They do not do the work. And what I will tell you, from fifty years of watching it happen, is that you will not get the density by just hacking yourself.
If your joints and your tendons are not ready for heavy weight and you hack yourself straight into it, you will damage the joints, you will damage the tendons, you will pull things. I have watched men do it. So many people have not got that density, because they have not done the groundwork. They are pumping themselves full of things and skipping the part that actually builds a body.
Do the work, and you will get the maximum effect. Repetition is the mother of learning, and the mother of evolution. I had forty-five-odd years of hard graft before I touched anything at all, and that is the only reason any of this works for me now.
So if you came here looking for the thing that lets you skip the decade, I do not have it, and neither does anybody else. What I have is the thing that multiplies the decade once you have actually done it.
Everybody has a choice. I took a conscious one, and from my own empirical evidence it was one of the best I ever made. But I took it standing on fifty years.
I did not find this through an advertisement. I found it because I was handed a manuscript and asked to look for mistakes.
I had seen some clips on social media, and I was interested, because I knew nothing. I met Tony Huge at Muscle Factory in Pattaya in 2025 with one question: how could an old bull like me improve his game and keep going?
We found we had a good deal in common. I ended up as editor across his books — reading every page line by line, looking for the holes. That is the most sceptical way a person can read anything. I came out the other side convinced, and I have been learning since. Knowledge is power, and it turned out I had been missing a whole field of it.
In return I bring the half he did not have: the old school, the ancient practice, and fifty years of standards to measure the new science against. Sometimes I disagree with him. That is the useful part.
The foundation volume. The one that closed the gap for me — I did not really know anything until it landed in my lap.
The protocol volume. Structure, monitoring, and the discipline that keeps the whole thing honest.
Where my own thesis lives — the ancient rituals and the modern science treated as one subject rather than two.
This is the most useful thing I know, and it has nothing to do with motivation.
As an old bull getting older, you start to hijack your own belief system. Here is the mechanism as I understand it. Dopamine sensitivity drops. Your risk assessment climbs. Procrastination arrives. You run the threat assessment on doing something new, you do not clear the expected reward, and before you know it you have talked yourself out of it.
That is the prefrontal cortex making a decision on your behalf — the inhibitory side winning against the excitatory side. And you do not beat it with a pep talk, because a pep talk is exactly the thing it is designed to overrule.
You beat it by starting so small that the threat assessment cannot fire. A micro action. Something small enough to generate the dopamine that clears the gate, and then another one. That is the whole method.
Today I am off to do my shoulders. Without the right mindset and the right attitude I simply would not bother — that is the honest answer. Age really is only a number, but the number does change what you have to do to get out of the door.
Tell Don what you want to work on, your training experience and your availability. Ask about coaching format, fees and current openings before booking.
Programming built on the assumption that you intend to still be lifting in ten years. Tendons and joints first, load second, patience throughout.
Tai chi, yoga, breathwork, meditation. The recovery and the nervous system work that makes the training survivable past fifty.
The micro-step method for men who know exactly what to do and cannot make themselves start. Mechanism, not motivation.
Who this is not for. This is not for teenagers. It is not for anyone looking to skip the groundwork, and it is not for anyone who wants a protocol instead of a training history. I describe my own experience — I am not a doctor, this is not medical advice, and nothing here is a recommendation to take anything. Research compounds are not approved for human use. Talk to your own physician first. Everybody has a choice; make yours with a doctor in the room.
To enquire, send your main goal, current training routine and preferred session times. Don can discuss whether his coaching is a fit and what to do next.