The 4-Hour Body_ An Uncommon Guide to Ra - Timothy Ferriss [177]
Depressing the shoulders before bending the arms. Compare the height of Mark’s elbows in both photographs. He’s lowered the weight 3–4″ and his arms are still straight.
10. Crush the bar with your grip and lower it to the sternum or highest point on your abdomen, tucking the elbows a little closer to your sides in the lowest 1/2 of the movement.
11. Press straight up in the shortest line possible. If struggling with the weight, you can flare your elbows slightly outward in the top 1/2 of the movement to bring the weight toward the rack, which will help with full extension.
End of Chapter Notes
17. I had, however, just set a personal record. It wasn’t technical improvement, nor was it from training—it was from doing max vertical jumps beforehand. This hyperclocking of the nervous system was precisely why DeFranco had me jump first. See “Hacking the NFL Combine.”
18. Tim: The percentages are provided to help you personalize the program. Take “140 (70%)×8, 1 set,” for example. 140 is 70% of my starting 200-lb. 1-rep max (1RM). But if your individual 1RM is 150 pounds when starting the program, you would simply multiply 150×0.7 to arrive at 105 lbs. Later in the program, if you see “133%,” it means you multiply 150×1.33 and use the resulting 199.5 lbs. for that set.
19. Please note that all weights are per dumbbell. For example, “60 lbs (60%)” represents 2 × 60-lb. dumbbells, which total 120 lbs., or 60% of the starting 1RM.
20. The movement is like an upright row, as if you were pulling the bar up to the top of your forehead.
21. I know some of you will do this anyway. If you do, DO NOT use collars. This allows you to dump the weight, one side at a time, if you get trapped under it.
FROM SWIMMING
TO SWINGING
HOW I LEARNED TO SWIM EFFORTLESSLY IN 10 DAYS
I always wanted to be Peter Pan, the boy who never grows up. I can’t fly, but swimming is the next best thing. It’s harmony and balance. The water is my sky.
—Clayton Jones, president and CEO of Rockwell Collins
Swimming had always scared the hell out of me.
Despite national titles in other sports, I could barely keep afloat for 30 seconds. This inability to swim well was one of my greatest insecurities and embarrassments.
I’d tried to learn to swim almost a dozen times, and each time, my heart jumped to 180+ beats per minute after one or two pool lengths. It was indescribably exhausting and unpleasant.
No more.
In the span of less than 10 days, I went from a two-length (2 × 20 yards/18.39 meters) maximum to swimming more than 40 lengths per workout in sets of two and four. From there, I moved to one kilometer in the open ocean, then onward to one to two miles. The entire progression took less than two months.
This chapter will explain how I did it after everything else failed, and how you can do the same.
At the end of January 2008, a good friend issued a New Year’s resolution challenge: he would go all of 2008 without coffee or stimulants if I trained and finished an open-water one-kilometer race in 2008.
He had grown up a competitive swimmer and convinced me that, unlike my other self-destructive habits masquerading as exercise, swimming was a life skill. Not only that, it was a pleasure I needed to share with my future children. In other words, of all the potential skills you could learn, swimming was one of the most fundamental.
I agreed to the challenge.
Then I tried everything, read the “best” books, and … still failed.
Kick boards? Tried them. I barely moved at all and, as someone who is usually good at most sports, felt humiliated and left.
Hand paddles? Tried them. My shoulders will never forgive me. Isn’t swimming supposed to be low-impact? Strike two.
It continued for months until I was prepared to concede defeat. Then I met Chris Sacca, formerly of Google fame and now an investor and triathlete in training, at a barbeque and told him of my plight. Before I had a chance to finish,