I first encountered Timothy Ferriss when I read his excellent book – The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich. I recommend this book highly if for no other reason than it will give you permission to re-invent your own work rhythms. Ferriss offers strategies and permission that will free you from your email and phone tyranny.
But today, I want you to explore The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman.
The Four Hour Body
I was skeptical about what Ferriss could possibly know about the body, but it turns out, he’s a master at learning and devoted to the idea of doing anything more simply – like getting in shape FAST. Subtracting fat FAST.
Other Sections of this huge book:
- · Adding Muscle,
- · Reversing Injuries,
- · Pre-Hab: Injury Proofing the Body,
- · Perfecting Sleep.
He recommends that you don’t read the whole book as it’s daunting. Just start with the things you want to influence in your life. Later you can read it all if your want.
I’m writing the review now because I started to read the book cover to cover. In reading the chapter: Ultraendurance: Going from 5K to 50K in 12 Weeks, I uncovered something that might be profoundly useful for a friend. He’s not running ultra marathons, but he is walking a 500 mile pilgrimage route in Spain. The injury prevention goodies may be of help.
Obviously, I recommend injury prevention for anyone who wants to be active in their later years, not to mention next weekend.
I’m using his Slow Carb plan for subtracting fat, and some of his strength material comes right from the kettlebell geniuses I’ve been working with for a decade. I trust him and his sources.
Meta Learning
Meta learning is learning how to learn. It’s fascinated me for years. Ferriss opens the doors for you.
I’m still exploring The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life. Maybe the best of all three books. Why? Besides turning you into a powerful chef in a surprisingly short time, the book demonstrates how to learn anything quickly. His goal is to be in the top 5% of something in record time. He wisely doesn’t aim for the top 1%.
He uses cooking as a way to illustrate rapid learning. But just reading his language learning tips will blow your mind.
He uses his life as his laboratory. In The 4-Hour Body, he uses his body. I love that.
He has a playful spirit that makes me laugh. I frequently have to stop reading and go back and read sections to my wife Suzanne. He mixes his humor and sense of fun with a skeptical scientific rigor that I appreciate. He tests everything by using measurement. In fact that could be the most useful aspect of the books. Find out how to measure what you are changing. No measurement, no real results.
For example, if you want to lose fat and just measure your weight, you will be misled. You need to measure your inches as well. People often stop losing weight but drop dress sizes. If you just look at the scale, you’ll get discouraged. Measure. And measure the right stuff. Tim will show you.
Your Physical Potentials – Be Inspired
4-Hour Body encourages you to expand the idea of what you can achieve. Although you won’t be dong these standing jumps illustrated below, Ferriss increased his vertical jump by a large percentage and tells you how.
Watch these to whet your appetite of what humans can do. Mutants? You decide.
55’” box jump (1.39700 m) – Woof.
Ferriss’s comment, “No run-up, no expression of effort, and he’s in goddamn slippers.” Go back and notice the “no expression of effort.” Holy Moly.
My font of all wisdom, Pavel Tsatsouline shatters what we know about strength when he declares – Strength is a skill. Ferriss shows you the skills. (I recommend anything Pavel does too.)
I watched Pavel increase a student’s strength by 20% in ten minutes, teaching some simple skills that you can learn.
Another time, Pavel showed a woman how to increase her flexibility dramatically in toe touching. Initially, she could only reach a bit below her knees. Within five minutes, Pavel taught her how to hack into her nervous system to instruct the tight muscles to let go. Ta Daa! She could now touch her toes. 5 minutes!
Until I read the 4-Hour Body, I had no interest in swimming. Now I might try the Total Immersion System that changed Ferriss’s life.
I recommend all of these books as a way for you to live a life you love by breaking through your false limitations. It’s all about permission and possibilities. Do the impossible. You’ll like it.
Tip: If you buy the books, consider the Kindle versions – they’re easier to search through when you want to go back and find a gem. Again, you can read Kindles on any device.
Walk in beauty,
William
P.S. You can get my newest book Drawing the Sacred: Communing with the Sacred through Drawing – An Illustrated Journey as a Kindle now. Soon I will publish it as an 8 in. by 10 in. paperback. Très joli.
[…] been using the Slow Carb Diet from Four Hour Body for over two months. (See my Blog Post.) In that program, I didn’t eat grains of any kind six days of the week and then I ate whatever […]