💪Books & Biceps - Issue 249

The Summer's Biggest Book, $500 Million Lessons, Ultimate Shoulder Superset

Welcome to the 241 brilliant meatheads who joined our Books & Biceps crew this week. That’s triple digit newcomers SEVEN weeks in a row. Love it and we’re pumped to have you!

If someone shared this with you, join nearly 3,000 of us getting smarter and stronger every week.

BOOKS

Every summer there seems to be one fiction book that rises above the other blockbusters and becomes the book everyone is talking about. You’ll see people reading it in airports, at the beach, around the pool, in coffee shops… It’ll be everywhere.

And since you’re a loyal Books & Biceps reader I’m going to tell you what that book is right now: Drowning by T.J. Newman.

T.J.’s personal success story is remarkable. She was a career flight attendant who wrote her first novel, Falling (which I recommended last summer), while her passengers were asleep on overnight flights. The manuscript was rejected by dozens of publishers until it finally found a home and became a massive NY Times bestseller and soon to be major film.

Falling was the perfect fast-paced, high concept thriller about an airplane pilot whose family was kidnapped just before takeoff.

Drowning is also about an airplane, only this time, the flight crashes into the ocean and a dozen passengers have to survive in a section of the plane that still has air 200 feet below the surface.

It’s a classic ticking clock / “how will they make it?” pulse pounder that has been endorsed by nearly every legend on the block: James Patterson, Don Winslow, Patricia Cornwell, Brad Thor, Meg Gardiner and me, your humble meathead writer (haha).

BICEPS

I love getting creative in the Flex Factory (AKA, my garage gym, for those just joining us) and I especially like to get creative with supersets.

This time of year, the garage is about 85 degrees with 85 humidity here in South Florida so I like to do a lot of supersets to get a sweat going, get my heart rate up and eliminate any standing around.

I came up with this shoulder superset Thursday morning and it’s bad ass and I wanted to share it with all of you.

After doing about fifteen minutes of jump rope to warm-up (one minute on, one minute off), I set up a barbell for single arm landmine presses and laid out two of my chains.

I did one set of landmines with each arm for 12 reps, then I immediately did standing shoulder flies to failure, holding a chain in each hand. I waited one minute and then repeated this five times. The set looked like this:

Single arm landmines 12 reps each arm

Double arm chain shoulder flies to failure

1 minute rest

Repeat 5x (dropping two reps off the landmines each set)

NOTE: If you don’t have chains readily available (and who doesn’t?) you can use cables, bands or even dumbbells for the shoulder flies… it just won’t look as cool. Ha!

Quick Flexes

A while back I ghostwrite a book for a guy worth just under half a billion dollars. Here’s a few things I picked up:

This story I shared about my first day on a construction site for my summer job has almost 250,000 impressions so far and hundreds of responses with people agreeing with the life lesson. Check it out:

🔥BEFORE YOU GO, SHARE BOOKS & BICEPS 🔥

All it takes is ONE share and you get the free e-book, How to Read a Book Every 10 Days Like Bruce Lee.

Here’s all the cool stuff you can win and how many referrals you need for each:

Strong Links

🏋️If you’ve seen pictures of the Flex Factory, AKA, my garage gym, you know I’m a fan of Titan Fitness equipment. It’s durable as hell. It lasts forever. And it looks cool. Amazingly, through the magic of Books & Biceps, I’ve been in touch with them and they’ve made me a partner. Incredible, right?

Right now they have the exact power rack I have in my garage gym on sale. You can check it out here.

If someone shared this issue of Books & Biceps with you, please subscribe here:

Thank you all for reading.

Have a great weekend! - Jon

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