Internal linking: Global Nav Bar obscuring link authority?

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I was watching Rand's whiteboard on how links in the headers/footers can impact SEO: moz.com/blog/links-headers-footers-navigation-impact-seo

If I understood correctly: 1) Google will use the first link in the html that it sees for a given page. Additional links will not be considered for passing weight. 2) Text links in body (carry more weight than) > image links > nav links > footer links

If we want to use a global nav bar, is there a simple solution for not obscuring the links in the body content?  (It seems very awkward to load the header nav last (and bring it up via css after the page loads), and this also goes against Google wanting people to load above-the-fold content quickly.)

If I internally link to a page that was not important enough to get a spot in the global nav, but I include this link in the body as a text link (for example, an accessory specific to that item), is this internal link really getting more weight in Google's eyes because it wasn't in the nav? This seems strange to me.

Thanks!