Boom! This is Books & Biceps #354!

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Also, we just crossed 25,000 (!) readers this week and we’re soaring right now into summer. Thank you to everyone who has shared this newsletter with a friend or fellow meathead. In fact, if an awesome B&B readers shared this with you, add your e-mail with the subscribe button below:

If you’re a new subscriber you’ll love this profile that the New Yorker ran on us.

BOOKS

Adrift by Steven Callahan

Wherever you’re reading this right now, you’re likely comfortable. You’re probably in an air conditioned room. You have food and water nearby. You know where you are and how to get where you’re going. There are people around who can help.

Now imagine if you strip all of that away and you’re stuck on a rubber raft in the Atlantic ocean by yourself. Lost. With no water. No food. No clothes. Exposed to the elements. At the mercy of the sea.

Your assets: a small survival kit and barely working solar still for fresh water, a spear gun that breaks, a knife, some random items you grabbed from your boat before it sank and a sextant made from old pencils.

How long would you survive? 3 days? 7? Two weeks?

Do you think you could make it 76 days?

Steven Callahan did. And I re-read his book, Adrift, at the start of every summer to remind myself how good I have it with all this AC and available food and water.

If you haven’t heard of the book, it was a national sensation when it first came out a few years after Callahan survived his journey in 1982.

It’s a fast read and Callahan is a gifted storyteller. It’s one of the few books that you will be reading late into the night to find out what happened - even though you know he made it because you’re reading the book.

It’ll make you think about your own mortality and potential survival skills and you’ll find yourself assessing how you’d hold up mentally at certain points in his journey - like when he’s forced to eat fish eyes to stave off dehydration. Or when he tried to eat a raw bird. Or how he dealt with endless hallucinations and skin sores and near-sinkings.

I recommend reading it now, at the start of summer, while the weather is getting nice and hot, so you get the full feeling of dehydration, heat, desperation and courage-against-all-odds that Steve shares.

Grab it here.

BICEPS

This past weekend I entered a sprint swim meet at Florida Atlantic University with high hopes of breaking 1 minute in the 100-yard butterfly.

I’ve been knocking on the door since last August and in February I swam a 1:00:30 at the Swimming Hall of Fame Invitational. Waayyyy back in my prime in my late teens and early twenties I used to go around 54 seconds, so breaking a minute isn’t a personal best for me… But it IS a goal I’ve had since I came back to the sport early last year.

And through the first 65 yards last Saturday I felt GREAT. Long, smooth and strong. But about halfway through the third lap I felt my stroke tighten and I lost my rhythm a bit and I KNEW by the flags that I was going to mis-time my last turn, which I did by about a half-foot.

I reached to touch the wall and it threw off my foot position on the wall and my push-off was lower than I wanted and my breakout sucked. I knew it right then. I wasn’t getting under a minute.

I muscled through the last lap and finished .02 off my time from February: 1:00:32.

The turn cost me at least a half-second. Probably a full second because I only got a ½ push off the wall. It’s been a week and I’m still annoyed haha. Nothing humbles you like a sport timed in the hundredths of a second.

Yes, I won the 50 fly and 100 fly for the 45+ dudes… But I’m racing for times and Top 10 standings nationally as well and I’ve got a ton of work to do. If I can perfect my turns I think I can trim a second on each one and really drop some time. Summer goals, baby. Summer goals. I put together a short reel of the meet highlights here:

QUICK FLEXES

You all know Monday’s are reserved for Bench O’Clock Monday Morning in the Flex Factory (and if you don’t have your official mug, you can grab it here)… And so I wanted to share that I’ve been switching up my bench strategy lately, going from the traditional volume pyramid sets (12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2) to straight sets with lighter weights.

For me right now that means 3 sets of 225 for 8 reps each set, nice and easy.

I want to maintain my strength without losing flexibility in my chest/shoulders and one strategy I’ve been following is this one explained by Jim Stoppani.

In this video, he explains why some of the all-time great bodybuilders like Ronnie Coleman and Jay Cutler often trained their chests on bench and incline bench with half-reps. I’ll let my old pal Stoppani tell you why, but I’ve noticed a nice difference in my range of motion when I focus mostly on the bottom half of the lift.

Watch this. Fascinating to learn even for lifelong lifters:

I wrote my column for Midlife Male this week on the 2,400 miles I covered over 5 years biking my kids to school. They take the bus now and I’m so grateful for the time I got to spend with them. Read this then subscribe to the fastest growing newsletter for active, high achieving dudes over 40:

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. Which means…

YOU’VE GOT 2 DAYS LEFT TO ORDER!

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!

PS: If you’ve bought one and received it, hit me with a pic and I’ll share it here!

1) 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:

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

Generation Griffey is still the #1 Sports & Pop Culture book for dudes who grew up in the 80s and 90s… Get your copy!

If you still wear your hat backward like Griffey, think all the Prime flavors are dumb because Gatorade Citrus Cooler is the greatest sports drink ever, miss Blockbuster and Tower Records, destroyed your friends in Street Fighter, GoldenEye, and NBA Jam, can quote Tommy Boy and Billy Madison, and never missed Stu Scott on SportsCenter —this book, Generation Griffey, is for you.

I ranked 90 of the '90s things that made your dude childhood legendary. A rankfest, if you will. Ninety columns. By me. For you. For US.

Why Generation Griffey?

First, it’s a great name. We’ve got alliteration, “generation,” and the quintessential athlete of that era: Ken Griffey Jr.

Junior perfectly defines the era for late '80s and '90s kids because the apex of his career matches our childhood. From the day he joined the Mariners’ lineup in 1989 through the next decade, nobody embodied '90s style (the backward hat), swagger (the swing, the smile, the commercials), and coolness (the kicks, the cameos, the crossover stardom) quite like Griffey.
His reign atop the sports/celebrity pyramid (alongside Jordan) from his rookie year in Seattle to his move to the Reds in 2000 serves as the perfect bookend for all of us who grew up in the last decade of the last century.

See? Generation Griffey is a spectacular name for this book.

What are we ranking?

Everything. Well, noteverything, but the 90 most nostalgic things that make us dudes smile all these years later: the movies we quoted, the athletes we loved, the cards we collected, the foods we devoured, the shows we watched, and more. All of it. Got it? Good. Let’s go.