Boom! This is Books & Biceps #351!

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BOOKS

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow

The Guinness Book of World Records just announced that when adjusting for inflation, John D. Rockefeller was the richest human being of all time, with a modern net worth of $631 billion, which is double Elon Musk’s current net worth.

But unlike Musk, Rockefeller came from nothing. He was a backwoods kid who grew up poor in a house with five siblings. Even worse, his father was a low-rent con man who regularly abandoned his family for months at a time, leaving them without money or food. His mother barely made ends meet.

At age 16, in 1855, after the family moved to Ohio, it took young John several weeks of knocking on doors in a suit, pitching local Cleveland businesses his services as a bookkeeper before he got his first job. His salary as an apprentice: $4/week.

This section in the book might be my favorite. Here we have the future wealthiest man ever cold knocking for 8 hours a day, day-after-day, trying to find work. He has a great quote about this, essentially saying that he was willing to knock and knock and knock through a thousand “nos” to hear that one “yes”. Big life lesson there.

From that first position, Rockefeller began the single greatest rise in wealth in the history of money.

By the time he retired, he’d bested Carnegie, Vanderbilt, JP Morgan and all of his contemporaries as the richest man on earth.

This book, as you’d expect from Chernow, is meticulously researched and loaded with anecdotes and cool stories. Entrepreneurs could pull entire master classes from how he built Standard Oil by controlling every aspect of his supply chain, from trains and barges to iron to barrels to every facet of production and shipping.

I was more interested in who Rockefeller was, especially outside of business. Like, what the hell do you do with all that money when you’re only 45 or 50 years old in 1903?

One answer: Build golf courses and hire maintenance teams to keep them open during the winter - even in the snow.

In one of my favorite stories in the book, Rockefeller would regularly call his friends to play snow golf on the 12-hole course he’d built in the Pocantico Hills in Westchester County, NY.

His friends would think he was joking, but they’d show up and “a team of workmen with horses and snowplows was assiduously clearing snow from five fairways and putting greens, carving out a shimmering green course in the wintry landscape… A full-time crew was charged with keeping the greens clear, and they went out in the early mornings to wipe dew or ice from the grass with special mowers, rollers and bamboo poles.”

He bragged that he played “Rockefeller rounds” in temperatures as low as 20 degrees.

In 1906 Rockefeller spent over $400,000 (in today’s money) on golf upkeep alone.

These are the kinds of stories I look for in books like this. And there’s a million of them. If you’ve ever been curious about Rockefeller, read this biography. It’s amazing. One warning: It’s about 700 pages.

BICEPS

First, a personal squatting success story:

Yep, that’s 55 pounds on the squat rack, baby!...

This may not look like much to you, but when I started Knees Over Toes, I was so off balance I couldn’t do a slow eccentric body weight squat on the slant boards without tipping and falling over. Not a single one.

I’d become so right leg/right side dominant I had no stability in my left leg to even my body out.

The thing is, it wasn’t about weight at all. I can obviously squat more than 55 pounds. It was about balance. Cut to six months later and this Tuesday I did a set of 3 x 5 of super slow (8 seconds down), controlled front squats with 55 pounds.

And I didn’t tip or veer or fall over. I know. The weight seems like nothing. But I’ve been slowly going up in 5-pound increments for months and being able to put full pressure on my left leg and not favor my right even with this weight was crazy. Onward and upward!

And funny enough, the same day that I did knocked out these whopping 5-pound plates, one of my favorite videos of Ronnie Coleman popped up on my feed.

I could watch him getting fired up to crank out 2 squat reps of 800 pounds every day. Light weight, baby! LIGHT WEIGHT! Watch this:

QUICK FLEXES

My column for Midlife Male this week tackled the viral-topic of 4AM and 5AM wake-ups to work out. It’s appropriately titled. Give it a read and if you’re a dude 40+, subscribe for free:

STRONG LINKS

In honor of our 350th issue I made a LIMITED EDITION POWDER BLUE Books & Biceps Official Tee! The response has been tremendous...

I was originally only going to print 25, but since so many of you liked it, I’ll extend ordering until June 1st.

Look at this beauty! Full Carolina blue with that glorious logo on the left lapel AKA the left pec for us sophisticated meatheads! Grab it before it’s gone!

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