The 4-Hour Body_ An Uncommon Guide to Ra - Timothy Ferriss [70]
It was good timing.
Tracy had been a chubby kid when kids weren’t chubby. She’d continued to gain throughout life and ended up weighing 245 pounds at age 41. She had resigned herself to a dismal fate: she would never be able to enjoy certain basics, like wearing a tank top. That was just the hand she’d been dealt.
But her weight was creating health problems. She’d become a gourmet cook with the dream of visiting Italy, and that trip—almost within reach—was now jeopardized by her obesity. She was experiencing gastrointestinal problems that made it impossible to travel.
“Everything wrong with me had to do with the fact that I was fat. Every day, I felt like I was dodging a bullet. I didn’t want to go to the doctor because I didn’t want to find out I was prediabetic or that I had heart disease. I just liked eating and wasn’t ready to stop. I, of course, knew what I had to do. But that bet, that event, gave me the reason and the timing.”
Tracy responded well to challenges. She was somehow confident that she would win. The real question was: how?
The answer came, most unexpectedly, from strong men.
Michelle Obama’s Arms
Tracy was dumbstruck as she looked at the fitting room mirror in San Jose. She pulled up the new pair of jeans and turned around. Then she turned around again. No matter how many times she spun, the image didn’t compute.
“What? That’s me?!” She saw arms she’d never seen before. She also had her tank top.
Tracy Reifkind had lost more than 100 pounds (45 pounds of fat in the first 12 weeks) and won her bet. But the numbers alone don’t do her physique justice: this mom of two from a two-income family looked 10 years younger at 129.6 pounds.
The secret wasn’t marathon aerobics sessions, nor was it severe caloric restriction. It was the Russian kettlebell swing, twice a week for an average of 15–20 minutes. Her peak session length was 35 minutes.
She was introduced to kettlebells by her husband, Mark Reifkind, a former national team coach in powerlifting who also competed against Kurt Thomas in Olympic gymnastics.
“Every woman wants Michelle Obama’s arms. The truth is that you can have them, and a new body, in four weeks. The two-handed swing is the jewel. If you could only do one movement for the rest of your life, do the kettlebell swing.”
Body by design: Tracy removed the curves she didn’t want and added the curves she did. Notice the kettlebells, which look like cannonballs with handles, lined up against the wall.
I agree with Tracy 100%, though the path that led me to the swing was quite different.
In 1999, I made thrice-weekly pilgrimages from Princeton to Philadelphia where I trained at a gym called Maxercise. For the 45-minute workout that justified the trip, I was commuting more than two hours. Steve Maxwell, the owner of Maxercise, was a six-time Pan- American gold medalist in Brazilian jiu- jitsu (two world championships came later) and held a master’s degree in exercise science. His clients ranged from the FBI and Secret Service to the Phillies and the Dodgers. His singular focus was on measurable results. If something didn’t work, it didn’t last long with Maxwell.
I first met kettlebells on a frigid winter evening in Maxercise’s second-floor torture chamber. They were generally reserved for fighters and aspiring strong men. Most of the high-velocity kettlebell movements like “the snatch,”1 considered standard for training programs, didn’t combine well with my injured shoulders. I abandoned kettlebells after two sessions.
It wasn’t until six years later that I realized how simple kettlebells could be. One move: the swing.
From Jiu-Jitsu to New Zealand: The Kettlebell Swing
Long before I met Tracy, I met “The Kiwi” in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
In early 2006, he happened to be taking a private Spanish lesson in the same café where I was finishing the manuscript for The 4-Hour Workweek, and we quickly became close friends. He had competed