Boom! This is Books & Biceps #323!

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BOOKS

Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae by Steven Pressfield

I bought this book a few years ago and after catching a couple scenes from the movie 300 the other night I finally pulled it out of the coveted “to read” pile and dove in.

First, the awesome movie with the famous scene/line: “This! Is! Sparta!” was inspired by the same battle of Thermopylae as this book, BUT the source material for the movie was Frank Miller’s 1998 Graphic Novel, 300.

This Steven Pressfield book is a more detailed, more expansive, more historical version - and I don’t mean historical specifically in terms of accuracy or research, I mean in terms of the context of the battle itself and how/why it was fought - as well as a lot more about the narrator’s story.

Now, with all that being written, this is by no means a softer or more tame version of the story. Quite the opposite. If anything, it’s more naked in its ferocity in the description of the horrors of war and the battle itself and the towns being ransacked and taken over along the way.

What I’m saying is that this isn’t the kind of book that you proverbially curl up to by the fire with a cup of coffee and dive into (though I’ve never done that in my life: neither read by fire or curled up around a book haha).

What this translates to for me is that after a few nights I realized this isn’t a book you read before bed to doze off to. Nope. No way. Not unless you want dreams of disemboweled warriors, blood-soaked battles, spears and javelins tearing through flesh and agony from pain and loss. There is a lot more than that to this book (I’m halfway through) including feats of bravery, leadership, selflessness and brotherhood, which is why it’s so great.

But it’s gritty and gruesome, too. So it’ll keep you up rather than wind you down.

This is a different kind of book, but one I’m very much enjoying. Also, there’s plenty of biceps, which is a win for our crew. Check it out here.

PS: I’ve read several of Pressfield’s non-fiction books and I really enjoyed them. War of Art should be read once a year by anyone in a creative field.

BICEPS

If you spend any time online searching for things like “back pain” or “knee pain” there’s a good chance you’ve come across a guy, Ben Patrick, whose handle is Knees Over Toes. The videos you may or may not have seen involve him exploding off the ground, dunking and then landing in a full squat with full range of motion (he’s 6’3” and in his early 30s)

He looks like he’s made out of rubber. You can watch his intro video here:

He used to have chronic knee and back issues and after doing years of research he developed this plan to improve your flexibility, mobility and explosiveness through the roof. There’s something like 20,000 reviews for his ATG training program, but forget all of that.

I am beyond leery of these kinds of things and I’ve never bought a program before, but three things made me change my mind:

1) After taking a week off recently because of a bad back, I realized that stretching and “supporting my core” was a bare minimum, scotch tape solution to my real problem, which is this: my flexibility and mobility sucks. I’m 46 and I legit get low back pain putting my shoes and socks on. Every time. My knees creak at almost any squatting type angle. My hamstrings and hips are so tight if I try a karate kick I barely raise my legs above my kneecaps. Not good.

2) Funny enough, taking all that into account, I’m stronger right now than I was at 26, back when nothing hurt. My conclusion: What the hell is the point of being strong if I don’t move like an athlete anymore? Benching 300 is cool… But bending and touching my hands to the ground with straight hamstrings pain free is cooler. So why not both?

3) Brutal truth: I have my first swim meet in 20 years coming up next month and I went to practice a start off the blocks recently aaaaand… I couldn’t bend all the way down to grab the block with my hands. I never felt older in my life. “I can’t do a swim start?”

That last point was my moment of clarity.

So I decided that it was time to refocus my efforts to be like this dude, Ben. I want a pain free back and knees. I want to be super flexible for the rest of my life. I never want to walk and bend down like an old man - even when down the road I am an old man. I have clear goals on this front that I’ve written down and am working towards. And I started his program two weeks ago.

I wanted to wait to see how I liked it or if it was BS to share here…. And I can tell you right now, it’s awesome. If I can extrapolate the results I’ll see in 3-6 months and even 1 year out from these 2 weeks, I will be thrilled.

The app is super easy to use and user friendly, with videos for every exercise and ways to make them easier/harder. At the end of every workout/routine (45 minutes or so) my legs feel alive and my hips feel open and my back feels great. I’m not even close to using weights for most of the movements now because I’m at Stage 1 for all the moves, meaning, I use every device to make it easier on me (blocks, chairs, etc…). It’s a long process. I’ve maybe improved 1% at this point, haha. But I can FEEL why I’ve been so stiff: I have balancing muscles long neglected; full range of motion that I rarely use. It was obvious after two workouts when I’d shake and struggle at simple balancing movements and reps.

This is what Day 4 looked like. Bare bones:

If any of this resonates and you want to try it, I did something I rarely do:

I reached out to Ben’s Knees Over Toes team and got an affiliate code. That’s how confident I am in this and how great it feels now that I’ve started.

If you’d like to sign up, please USE THIS LINK FOR BOOKS & BICEPS READERS.

QUICK FLEXES

The first Rambo movie came out 42 years ago this week. And I gotta say, the poster still goes hard:

We read the book this movie was based on, First Blood, in our Premium Flex Reading Crew this summer. One of the best action books of all time. You should read it.

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Designing book covers is one of my favorite parts of writing books.

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PS: You still reading Gus and Mallory? Thanks for getting through the whole thing! No skimming!