Boom! This is Books & Biceps #335!

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BOOKS

Blood & Treasure: Daniel Boone and the Fight for America’s First Frontier by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin

In last week’s issue I mentioned how every year I like to put myself through a crash course in a topic I’ve always been fascinated by.

And my strategy is simple: read a bunch of the best books on that topic. One topic that I referenced specifically was the American Frontier and several readers reached out to ask which books they should begin with on that front.

This was an easy one: Blood & Treasure

Let’s start with this:

When Daniel Boone was about 11-years-old, he was charged with tending his family’s livestock every day starting at sunrise, watching his younger sister, hunting white-tailed deer solo in the woods, shooting the deer, packing it out…and then corralling the livestock and his sister home before nightfall.

And my 11-year-old son complains about emptying the dishwasher and picking up the dog poop in the backyard. Ha!

This little juxtaposition between the 1700s and today is one of hundreds that came to mind while reading Blood & Treasure, which is enlightening, frightening and seems like it took place a thousand years ago, not a few centuries.

Boone lived a life unrecognizable today. He was an explorer, arguably the best rifle shot in the colonies before the Revolutionary War, and he was a long hunter… This means he’d spend months and months out in the wilderness, often alone, hunting meat for his family and community. He made his own clothes, living quarters and food. He lived outside, alone, for entire seasons. He could take down twenty white-tailed deer in a day. Then he’d have to skin them, dress them, boil the meat, make jerky, make clothes and more. He’d hunt, skin, cook and eat bear, raccoons, squirrels and elk. He’d trek a 700-pound elk carcass a hundred miles. His was not an easy life.

And we haven’t even mentioned the constant bloodshed, battles and bartering with Native Americans. Over the course of his life he befriended them, was nearly scalped by them, was captured by them, had his children murdered by them and went to war with and against them.

Prior to this read I knew next to nothing about life on the frontier for both Americans and Native Americans. This book was a revelation. Incredibly researched and entertaining…and bloody. Very bloody. If you’ve ever had any interest or curiosity in Boone or frontier life, I highly recommend this one. Get it here.

BICEPS

Performing heavy shoulder workouts while maintaining the flexibility and range of motion to toss a laser with a football or play hoops or more specifically to me, maintain a smooth butterfly form in the pool, can be challenging. In fact, if you want massive shoulders you’re going to have to give up some of that mobility that will help in those other areas I just mentioned.

I love training shoulders, but I need to increase my range of motion to compete in the pool as a butterfly sprinter, so I’ve made a point of not going too heavy in the gym anymore. Nothing below 6 reps or over 75% of my max.

In order to build up some endurance while working more of my total upper body with shoulder movements, I’ve been relying heavily on super sets, with one compound movement and then one more specific movement at a light weight and high reps.

After some experimenting, this is my go-to, favorite shoulder superset for now:

Landmines: 100 pounds

Dumbbell Shoulder Flys: 15 pounds

I do 12 reps per arm with the landmines, nice and slow keeping a strong base, then I go immediately into the flys. I go light weight at a medium/fast pace, with fifteen reps at my side and then ten in front.

I take 1-2 minutes between each superset and do it 3 times. Nice mix of medium/light weight with a great burn and feel. Try it and let me know what you think!

QUICK FLEXES

While I am proud of my garage gym, AKA, the Flex Factory, and I add stuff and rearrange things all the time to improve it, I am aware that there are levels to the home gym game…

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