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Boom! This is Books & Biceps #341!

Welcome to our hundreds of new readers this week and a special shout out to my fellow 90s dudes who bought Generation Griffey. It is the ULTIMATE 90s sports, gear & pop culture countdown book. If you dominated NHL ‘94, still wear your hat backwards, crushed Hot Pockets and can quote Tommy Boy, then:

(If you’re a new subscriber or missed my yearly book round-up, The 16 Most Memorable Books I Read in 2024, you can read it here.)

BOOKS

About a month ago I recommended a bad ass book called Sledge vs. The Labyrinth. And in 5 days I went from having never heard of the book to loving the book to having it be one of the most popular Books & Biceps recommendations we’ve had in a while. There is clearly a need - a desire - for action-packed books for dudes out there and SLEDGE fits the bill… But the story doesn’t end there.

The day after my recommendation came out, one of our OG readers and ultra sophisticated meathead, Travis (follow him here), reached out to Nick on Twitter and tagged me. Then Nick shared the post and soon Nick and I were talking and long story short, we both cut our teeth on reading Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels, we’re both ex-hoops stars, me on my fraternity’s B team my senior year and Nick at a little place called Duke, and we both read lots of books and have huge biceps. In short, we’re now best friends, which is why I’m so pumped to share this EXCLUSIVE BOOKS & BICEPS Q&A with you right now:

ONE

FINKEL: Let's start with your main character, 6'10" bad ass Sledge. I've been trying to think of a film, literary and NBA mash-up comp to accurately describe him and here's what I came up with: Sledge is a mix of Damon's brawling Bourne in the last film (yes, book character first, but still), Robert B. Parker's Spenser... and Charles Oakley. How'd I do? Who would your three be? I also thought fighting-wise he's like Hardy's Bane in Batman... So maybe throw that in.

HORVATH: I love this fucking question. I always tell people I've been searching for "that character" my entire life. A combination of all my favorite badass anti-heroes from a lifetime of action movies, comic books, video games, and of course, pulp novels. In the end, I couldn't find him, so I had to create him. SLEDGE is the result. To pick a single film or literary mash-up is tough, but SLEDGE's NBA counterpart is easy: the Darth Vader of the brutal 80's Bad Boys, Bill Laimbeer. Like SLEDGE, Laimbeer was slow, lumbering, but brutally physical and deceptively cunning.

I patterned my own game after Laimbeer in the latter half of my career and had my best years as a professional once I embraced my limitations as an athlete. SLEDGE does the same thing. He knows exactly who he is. And who he isn't. And he plays to his strengths. A film equivalent is much tougher, as there's no one quite like SLEDGE out there, but my love for action cinema and tanky badasses all started with Arnold, and my all-time favorite Arnie flick--and the one that was most influential in the creation of SLEDGE--is The Running Man, so I'll go with Ben Richards. A literary equivalent is even more difficult, so I gotta cop out and pick a few. SLEDGE gets his terse prose and wry humor from Robert B. Parker's Spenser, his pulp-noir from Frank Miller's Marv, his solitary heroism from Reacher, and his Pit-bred barbarism from Robert E. Howard's Conan. 

TWO

You've got a talent for writing awesome fight scenes that mix the action with the inner monologue of your main character. It's a tough tightrope to walk but you pull it off. David Morrell does something similar in First Blood with Rambo. How do you go about setting up the fights and who writes your favorite?

First off, thanks for the compliment. I take great pride in writing fight scenes that are fast, brutal, and exciting, yet don't out-stay their welcome. There's nothing worse than an action scene that drags out so long the reader gets bored and starts skimming. I have a few classic fight scenes I always reference. Robert B. Parker writes lightning-fast, easy-to-visualize fights in his Spenser novels, my favorite being Spenser vs. Zachary in the Judas Goat, the fight that turns Spenser and Hawk into brothers.

Another all-timer is the Logan Nine-Fingers vs. Fenris the Feared in The Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie. It's a climactic duel for all the marbles and I remember not having any clue how Logan could possibly defeat the seemingly-invulnerable Fenris. I also love Robert E. Howard's Conan fights. No one wrote a one-man-army slaughtering an entire legion of baddies better, and since SLEDGE is my modern-day Conan, I try my best to pay homage to the G.O.A.T of pulp action fiction.

THREE

Sticking with the fight writing (this is Books & Biceps, after all)... You've got some wild weapons and death scenes in here, including one involving a homemade chair and some shoddy carpentry... Do you have a list of cool/random objects for Sledge to bludgeon fools with before you start and then you use them, or do they pop into your head as you’re writing?

Another badass question. One of my favorite things to do with SLEDGE is to write him into a corner I don't know how to get out of . . . then figure out some ingenious (and/or disgustingly brutal) way for him to bludgeon or guile his way out of it. I do this on purpose, following Harlan Coben's advice of "if I, the author, don't know whodunnit, then the reader can't either." As far as the specific objects used, the scene tends to lend itself to what's available in the arena. SLEDGE is more cunning than he looks, and as a master of the physical laws of the universe, deceptively adroit at using the tools he finds lying around. He's also a tanky bastard who can use enormous objects no one else can lift. As a cool side note, all the over-the-top injuries SLEDGE sustains are real injuries a good friend of mine has witnessed in his life as an emergency room doc, including the knife through the forehead. (I have the x-rays to prove it!)

FOUR

The idea of 'The Labyrinth' is fascinating. Like gamifying evil and fighting and murder by horrible rich people. Kinda like 'The Most Dangerous Game', but where anyone at any time can become the hunted. Where did the idea come from for you?

That one's easy to answer. One of my long-time friends now works for the FBI. At the time of writing Sledge vs. The Labyrinth he was doing a lot of work on the dark web, infiltrating various clandestine chat groups. One of things he was investigating were various "hurt-for-hire" sites. I found them absolutely chilling and the list of "merchandise" was the seed that grew into The Labyrinth Depths for the novel. I love the "levelling up" trope and plan on working levels, depths, or ranks into every volume of the SLEDGE VS. series. 

FIVE

Your location for this book is the coldest parts of Minnesota in the winter. I was happily reading this book while it was 84 degrees out where I live in South Florida, but I love when authors choose a city and setting and make the environment a character. You nailed this. The icy conditions effect everything, from the clothing layers to being spotted while doing surveillance to calorie burning and recovery. How'd you decide on Minnesota and the dead of winter?

Again, thanks for the compliment. I'm super stoked on being able to evoke the "place" of the SLEDGEverse. I'm from Minnesota and spent a lot of time growing up on the north shore of Lake Superior, which is where SLEDGE lives. I wanted to take real places and sort of SLEDGIFY them, making them eerily similar to reality, only amplified, similar to what Robert E Howard did with his Hyborean Age of earth. The town of Gunflint Cove is based on the real town of Grand Marais, which is my favorite town on earth. My parents spend about half the year at a lakeside cabin eight miles north of there, and many of the locations in the book, including the incredibly ominous Stannard Rock Lighthouse, are real places. I even put the real GPS coordinates in the book, so if you're a Google Earth aficionado you can look them up. I live in New Zealand now, and I miss the North Shore greatly, so one of my life's great joys is getting to "live" inside the SLEDGEverse and re-visit all my favorite locales. 

Thanks so much for the opportunity to be a part of Books & Biceps, Jon. If ever there was a newsletter made for SLEDGE, this is fucking IT! And for anyone out there who likes the sound of my pulpy anti-hero, you can buy the book here and follow me here.

BICEPS

We have a rule here at Books & Biceps. Whenever a mainstream TV show or movie shows an awesome bench press, lifting or arm wrestling scene, we share it. In this case, we get all three. Reacher on Amazon is one of about 2 shows I watch right now and it’s because of scenes like this. It is all the way B&B approved.

Here we’ve got the massive Reacher talking bench with an even more massive villain. Then Reacher gets him with the leverage play. Check it out:

BICEPS 2

‘I’ve mentioned the Knees Over Toes program before to increase your mobility and flexibility. And I’ve told you how it has unlocked and released my chronic hip and back pain. But this week I had a HUGE breakthrough.

I removed all the blocks for the split squat and went up to 30 pounds (15 pound dumbbells in each hand)…. But that’s not the big accomplishment.

I did my first full set of ten of seated good mornings with a barbell on my shoulders, at 90 degrees, touching my abs to the bench while keeping my lower back straight.

I’m telling you, when I started about 4 months ago I had the bench set at 45 degrees and I was using no weight… And it was HARD. Here’s a video so you have a frame of reference. This move was THE KEY to helping me fix my lower back pain. Took a LONG time to build up to where I’m at. Watch how Ben does this move with 45s on the bar, which seems insane… But so did using a bar at all when I started. Watch the last movement. That’s the one I’m talking about. I highly recommend you add this movement into a workout at least twice a week. Start with no weight. Start at 45 degrees if you need to. Then keep going:

QUICK FLEXES

Olympic swimming races take place in a 50 meter pool. It’s about the size of a small local lake or a huge pond. Most swimmers who train for the Olympics train in a…. you guessed it… 50 meter pool.

But can you imagine if you had to train for the Olympics in a 15 meter pool? You’d take six strokes and have to turn.

Incredibly, a swimmer in 1971 did just that. Check this out:

A QUICK WORD FROM THIS WEEK’S SPONSOR:

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STRONG LINKS

1) My Twitter buddy Michael Girdley has one of the most unique newsletters out there (and 230k followers on X). He’s bought, scaled and sold a ton of small businesses (11) and he loves Chili’s and dad humor. I don’t always enjoy reading about business and you probably don’t either, but it’s important and one of the few dudes who makes it relatable and funny AND gives you useful advice is my guy Girdley. If you click on this link below, you’ll automatically be signed up:

2) I’m the Editor-in-Chief of MIDLIFE MALE, the fastest growing lifestyle brand for men over 40. You gotta subscribe. Here’s a quick summary:

If you’re a dude over 40 and you used to read Men’s Health or Esquire or GQ, and you’re looking for a digital magazine to get you on top of your game and keep you on top of your game, with incredible A-List interviews (Troy Aikman, Don Saladino, Gunnar Peterson and more), original columns and a curated list of weekly items second-to-none, subscribe to Midlife Male Magazine.

I’ve been helping build this publication from the ground up and it’s the magazine I used to wish existed - and now it does. We just passed 15,000 subs! Join us here.

3) This is the single most relatable newsletter about start-ups you’ll ever read. And it’s by the guy who founded Beehiiv, the platform host of this newsletter. His name’s Tyler. His newsletter’s Big Desk Energy. You’ll love it:

4) And if you love Underdog Stories in Sports, you’ll love this. One of my favorite new reads:

PS: Do you want to be the TITLE SPONSOR OF BOOKS & BICEPS?

I have a TWO SPOTS open for March RIGHT NOW. There is no better place to reach dudes and dads who read & lift. From watches to supplements and gear & software, we’ve had a ton of successful sponsors over the years. And I write all the copy myself. If you want to put your brand/product in front of almost 23,000+ sophisticated meatheads, reply to this email and we’ll talk.

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