The 4-Hour Body_ An Uncommon Guide to Ra - Timothy Ferriss [74]
If you try this but start to miss workouts or postpone them, revert to the basic swings twice per week, as I do, which will still guarantee faster progress than most exercise programs.
To mimic The Kiwi, perform A on Monday and B on Friday, and glute activation raises (seen earlier) are performed before each.
Workout A
All exercises, except for kettlebell swings, are performed for 10 repetitions using a 13-Repetition Max2 (RM) weight.
1. Heavy dumbbell front squat to press (ass to heels)—squeeze glutes at bottom for one second before rising
2. One-arm, one-leg DB row
3. Walking lunges with sprinter knee raise
4. Wide-grip push-ups3
5. Two-arm kettlebell swings × 20–25
Repeat sequence 2–4 times.
Workout B
1. One-leg Romanian Deadlift (RDL)4 (10–12 reps each side)
2. Chin-up (four-second negative lowering portion only) × 10 or until you cannot control descent5
3. One-leg hamstring curls on a Swiss ball—6–12 reps each leg
4. Plank for abs (and gluteus medius on sides) → Progression: start with 30 seconds front, 30 seconds each side, working up to 90 seconds maximum
5. Reverse hyper × 15–25
Repeat sequence 2–4 times.
See the www.fourhourbody.com/exercises for photos of all The Kiwi’s exercises.6 Written descriptions alone will confuse more than help.
TOOLS AND TRICKS
Kettlebells (www.fourhourbody.com/kettlebells) Most men should start with a 20-kg (44 lb) or 24-kg (53 lb) kettlebell and most women should start with a 16-kg (35 lb) or 20-kg (44 lb) kettlebell. I suggest using a T-handle (see this page) to determine your 20-rep swing weight before spending too much.
Tracy never hit a fat-loss plateau.
She credits her success to two things: cheat meals and kettlebells. The cheat meals allowed her to remain strict more than 95% of the time, and the kettlebells allowed her to accelerate progress when diet-driven fat-loss slowed.
She scheduled one cheat meal per week, most often on Friday night, which was also date night with the husband. Her diet is otherwise the epitome of simplicity: eat the same meals each day, at least five days per week. She refers to her meal plans as “the luxury of no choice”:
“Especially if you have 50–100 pounds or more to lose, you have enough stress. You won’t be able to stop thinking about how overweight you are, but you can stop thinking about what to eat.”
Her advice and observations should sound familiar:
Two pounds per week isn’t the limit. “If you have 80–100 pounds to lose and aren’t losing five pounds per week for at least the first few weeks, you are doing something wrong.”
Avoid domino foods: “If I liked to eat a cookie here, a piece of candy there, I could fit sweets into my daily menu from a caloric standpoint, but my sweet tooth has no ‘shut-off sensor.’ Once I get started, I have a hard time stopping. I can consume 1,200–1,800 calories of dense sweets in no time flat. If I start to eat sweets, I know I will not be happy until I get my fill. And ‘my fill’ is way more full than the average person. It is not a serving of cookies or cake, it’s an entire bag of cookies, or half a cake … and that’s no joke. This I know. So I don’t try and fool myself into thinking I can eat just one cookie or just two pieces of candy. If I could eat two pieces of bread, as another example, I’d be fine, but I have to have four, so I don’t eat it at all.”
Organic food—good but not necessary: “I lost 100 pounds never eating a single organic vegetable. Do it if you can, but if you can’t—for budgetary reasons or otherwise—don’t create more stress because you can’t go to the farmers’ market or a high-class grocery store. Eat the right foods and you’ll be fine.”
Vegetables and protein: “The only reason I’ll never be fat again is because I start each meal with a base of vegetables that taste good. Then I add my protein. I don’t discriminate against protein, though my favorites are