Welcome to today’s issue of Books & Biceps my fellow smart meatheads!

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BOOKS

City on Fire by Don Winslow

Confession: I’ve never read a Don Winslow book. I’ve obviously heard amazing things over the years, especially about his Cartel Trilogy, but for some reason I hadn’t pulled the trigger on one of his big best sellers.

Lately, I’ve been busy reading wrestling books for my upcoming Macho Man biography (out Spring ‘24) among a string of non-fiction books and I found myself in the mood for some high quality storytelling and crime writing and dialogue. Something Elmore Leonard-esque.

When I saw that Winslow’s second book in his new “City” series was coming out next week, I dove into the first and I gotta say… man… I hate to throw around words like ‘sweeping’ and ‘epic’, but that’s what City on Fire is. The book reads like a Scorsese movie.

The characters are New England mobsters. The storyline goes from Providence to Vegas to LA and back. The stakes are family versus family and brother versus brother. I’ve seen it compared to the Godfather but I’d say it’s more of a mix between Goodfellas and Casino with a dash of The Departed. Yeah. All that. It’s big boy, big time book. Read it.

BICEPS

I love doing pull-ups as I’ve written about here numerous times. They’re posture savers and power builders and muscle makers. I think they’re almost the perfect exercise.

If you can’t do a single pull-up but want to start, or if you can only do a few and want to get stronger, my buddy Jack Coulson is here to help. Jack is a bodyweight training expert and he’s helped hundreds of men and women get jacked over the years. We’re collaborating on an awesome garage gym program soon, but in the meantime, here are his 5-steps to mastering pull-ups:

The simplest formula for getting better at pull ups is two-fold: First, lose body fat. Second, practice them often. Now, whilst it IS that easy, there are some things you can do to speed up your progress in 5-steps.

1) Static hangs: Walk up to a bar. Jump up and hang. Brace your abs by keeping your legs straight and slightly out in front of you. And hang. Work up to 60 seconds and then work on one arm hangs. This will help your grip and overall strength. Do this multiple times a day/session.

2) When practicing pull ups, avoid training to failure. Seriously. You don’t need to. I ALWAYS leave 1-2 reps in the tank when doing pull ups. Why? Because if you want to get better at them you NEED to do them often. I’m talking daily for maximum progress. You need to be fresh.

3) Do them daily. Buy a pull up bar. Every time you walk past it, bang out a few reps or practice negative reps/hangs. You’ll easily build up to doing lots of reps every day. And guess what? As a result you’ll get better at doing them. Remember, no taking reps to failure.

4) Practice negative reps. Negative reps involve jumping up to the top position of the pull up and lowering yourself down slowly to a 3-5s count. These are HARD and will require a lot of effort. I suggest you do them a couple of times a week for reps of 3-5 and 2-3 sets at a time

5) If you can already do 8+ pull ups, this approach works well 1-2 times per week: 1 pull up (Rest) 2 pull ups (Rest) 3 pull ups (Rest) 1 pull up (Rest) 2 pull ups (Rest) 3 pull ups (Rest) That's 12 total reps. Aim to rest 5-10 seconds between reps.

And there you go! You should be cranking out a dozen pull-ups at a clip in no time. Check out Jack’s profile here.

Quick Flexes

Here’s a quick photo from the Flex Factory and my favorite day and time of the week:

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Strong Links

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Thank you all for reading.

Have a great weekend! - Jon