Conk Out

I used to hate naps. Falling asleep in the middle of the day meant I was missing something -- no matter how insignificant -- and I always overslept, which means I'd be all foggy-headed and parched whenever I'd jerk awake.

But that was before I had kids. Now, I'd kill for a nap. When the boys are running me ragged, I seriously contemplate walking out to my car, reclining the seat, and dozing off in the driveway.

Turns out napping's good for you. In fact:

Humans are among the few animals that take their sleep in one shot. The rest of the animal kingdom consists of polyphasic sleepers; they alternate sleep and wake cycles throughout a 24 hour period. Cavemen likely slept in multiple phases too, so someone was always up to keep an eye out for saber tooth tigers. While experimenting with a return to polyphasic sleep has become trendy in recent times, the ideal pattern for human sleep is biphasic–a long stretch at night along with a shorter respite during the day.

A nice, restful nap sounds awesome. And as Tim Ferriss' "The 4-Hour Body" claims: "[r]emarkably, adding just one [20-minute] nap during the day shaves an hour and 40 minutes off your total sleep requirement."

This might be just the ticket for those days when I wake up before dawn to go brutalize energize myself at CrossFit. I gotta pull me a George Costanza and start napping under my office desk.



I don't have the time or inclination, however, to experiment with a full-on Uberman polyphasic sleep protocol like some people -- including Cosmo Kramer.

All this talk of sleep is making me sleepy. 'Night.

No Kettlebell?

No problem. Make yourself a T-handle. Also known as a “Hungarian Core Blaster,” this piece of equipment will set you back just a few bucks and a trip to Home Depot. Just add weight plates and you have yourself a DIY kettlebell.

Tim Ferriss had this to say about T-handles in “The 4-Hour Body”:

I have 20 kettlebells of various sizes but still prize my T-handle, as it can be disassembled for travel and packed flat at a weight of less than five pounds. In addition to swings, it can be used for deadlifts, two-arm bent rows, curls, reverse curls, and more. For $10, five minutes of shopping, and less than five minutes of assembly, you have an entire gym.

Dave Draper.com has the full assembly instructions, but here’s the quick-and-dirty:

Go to a hardware store and pick up the following:

• One 3/4" diameter pipe “T” fitting
• One 3/4"diameter X 12” long pipe nipple (a pipe threaded at both ends) for the vertical shaft (Note: if you’re short, get a shorter pipe)
• Two 3/4" X 4” pipe nipples for the handles (Ferriss recommends using electrical or duct tape to cover the outside threads)
• One 3/4"floor flange
• Optional: A spring clamp to keep plates from shifting up / dropping down during swings.

Screw the pieces together as shown below.

And don’t be a dummy: Use a pipe wrench and some thread locker to be safe, and don't swing above chest-height. (If you really want to do overhead swings, it's best to get yourself an actual kettlebell, you cheap bastard.)

Also, replace your T-handle every few months. It'll cost you less than a cheap pizza.

(Bonus: You can also put together a D-handle for one-handed swings.)

DEXA Body Fat Scan

We all know that BMI (Body Mass Index) is altogether unreliable as an indicator of health. It's junk science, and it doesn't tell us anything about body composition. There are plenty of better ways to measure body composition, and in Tim Ferriss' "The 4-Hour Body," he discusses a bunch of 'em -- some of which are much less accurate than others. Calipers and measuring tape only get you so far. And do you accept as gospel truth what the bio-electrical impedance bodyfat scale in your bathroom tells you? 'Cause you shouldn't.

Ferriss examined nine different methods of body composition testing, and "[a]fter dozens of trials with multiple subjects, and taking into account both constancy and convenience (including cost), there were three clear winners." The first of the three: DEXA (dual energy X-ray absorptiometry) -- the "gold standard" of body composition testing. DEXA is a full-body scan typically used to measure bone density, but it's also capable of pinpointing body fat percentage and location. In a nutshell, you plop down on a table, fully-clothed, and a movable electronic scanner X-rays your body from head to toe. It takes less than ten minutes, and you get a keepsake photo of your lumpy silhouette (think airport security pornoscan shots) showing all the fleshy parts you'd prefer to conceal with Spanx and oversized football jerseys. Fun!

Bonus: The unassuming little medical office where Ferriss gets his DEXA scans is just a few freeway exits from my home.

So for kicks, both M and I decided to give this DEXA thing a shot. This afternoon, after shelling out $65 and filling out some simple paperwork, I found myself lying on some crinkly paper, staring at the ceiling while a softly-whirring mechanical arm performed low-dose X-ray scans of my body. It took no time at all. Before I left, the friendly technician spent a few minutes going over my DEXA measurements with me.

Check me out. (Nice lungs, right?)

I'd gained about ten pounds over the past six months, so I figured my body fat percentage had gone up, too. But I'm happy (and more than a little shocked) that my low body fat level puts me in the 1st percentile for my age, meaning I'm leaner than 99 percent of other men in their mid-thirties.

Despite switching to a Paleo diet and adopting a 3-days-a-week CrossFit schedule (i.e., eating loads of saturated fat and exercising less frequently), I've maintained a sub-10 percent body fat percentage. The weight gain, it seems, is largely muscle.

I don't know if it's due to eating Paleo, lifting heavy stuff and doing short metcons a few times a week, intermittent fasting, or a combination of the above, but something seems to be working.

Wired Interviews Tim Ferriss

Ferriss apparently did some pretty hardcore self-experimentation.

Wired: What do you think is the most dangerous experiment that you tried for The 4-Hour Body?

Ferriss: I had a chemical cocktail injected to reverse injuries. It included BMP, bone morphogenetic protein, and there’s a risk of it fusing your vertebrae. In retrospect, I probably wouldn’t have included that.

Wired also summarized a bunch of Ferriss' conclusions in the form of a handy-dandy table (click the image below to embiggen):

More on The 4-Hour Body here.

(Source: Wired)

The 4-Hour Body: Who Cares If It's Overhyped?

Author / record-breaking dancer / yabusame archer / fighter / speaker / relentless, cocky self-promoter Tim Ferriss is one of my heroes. And he's about to release a new book: "The 4-Hour Body."



This is a follow-up to his bestseller -- "The 4-Hour Workweek" -- and Ferriss has been hyping his new tome for months now. While the pitch comes across as a little (okay, a lot) over-the-top, I couldn't resist buying it. I pre-ordered a copy (along with Gary Taubes' upcoming book) a while back, and can't wait for it to show up on my doorstep.

Why? Because if even a fraction of what Ferriss is advertising is possible, this will be all sorts of awesome. Here's a description Ferriss posted on his blog:

YOU WILL LEARN (in less than 30 minutes each):

• How to lose those last 5-10 pounds (or 100+ pounds) with odd combinations of food and safe chemical cocktails.
• How to prevent fat gain while bingeing (X-mas, holidays, weekends)
• How to increase fat-loss 300% using temperature manipulation
• How Tim gained 34 pounds of muscle in 28 days, without steroids, and in four hours of total gym time
• How to sleep 2 hours per day and feel fully rested
• How to produce 15-minute female orgasms
• How to triple testosterone and double sperm count
• How to go from running 5 kilometers to 50 kilometers in 12 weeks
• How to reverse permanent injuries
• How to add 150+ pounds to your lifts in 6 months
• How to pay for a beach vacation with one hospital visit

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are more than 50 topics covered, all with real-world experiments, many including more than 200 test subjects. You don’t need better genetics or more discipline. You need immediate results that compel you to continue. That’s exactly what The 4-Hour Body delivers.

Granted, I have serious doubts about the whole "sleep 2 hours and feel fully rested" thing. I am not about to ditch my Paleo approach in favor of "odd combinations" of "chemical cocktails." And I'm really uninterested in tripling my testosterone or doubling my sperm count, as (1) I am already super-manly (obviously), and (2) we're done pumping out kids. (We refuse to be outnumbered by our children.)

But increasing the weight on my lifts? Boosting my endurance? Reversing injuries? Sign me up.

(By the way, I asked M: "what do you think he means when he says we can learn 'how to produce 15-minute female orgasms'?" Her response: "That's why YOU need to read the book.")

Check It Out: Tim Ferriss

Tim Ferriss, author of the bestselling self-help book, The 4-Hour Workweek, is full of himself -- a trait I don't appreciate in most people (besides myself), but for some reason, it totally works for Ferriss. Yes, he brags a lot (check out his book for self-glorifying anecdotes about his phenomenal successes in business, martial arts, ballroom dancing, learning Japanese, etc.), but unlike some people, he's not all talk -- he's the real deal. Here are some snippets from his Wikipedia entry:

Ferriss founded BrainQUICKEN, a San Jose-based online company that sells sports nutrition supplements. He sold the company in January 2009 to an unnamed private equity firm. He is now a full-time angel investor and has invested in the following companies: Twitter, Posterous, DailyBurn (formerly Gyminee), Reputation Defender, Foodzie, Badongo, Rescue Time, and SimpleGeo. He also acts as an advisor to StumbleUpon and Shopify, which he has alluded to in interviews with Kevin Rose are in exchange for equity.

He holds the Guinness Book of World Records' record for the most consecutive tango-spins in one minute. Ferriss and his dance partner Alicia Monti set the record live on the show Live with Regis and Kelly. Prior to his writing career, Ferriss served as an advisor to professional athletes and Olympians and was a National Chinese Kickboxing Champion, a title he won through a process of shoving opponents out of the ring for which he was nicknamed "sumo." In 2008, he won Wired Magazine's "Greatest Self-Promoter of All Time" prize and was named one of Fast Company's "Most Innovative Business People of 2007." Ferriss has also spoken at the EG Conference.

His show "Trial By Fire" aired on the History Channel in December 2008. In the show, Ferriss had one week to attempt to learn a skill normally learned over the course of many years and in the pilot episode he practiced the Japanese art of horseback archery, Yabusame. 

And the guy's only 33. God, I'm a slacker.

I picked up Ferriss' book some time ago and have been slowly adopting some of his productivity tips (using Evernote to organize my cluttered life, for example). But I only recently started checking out his blog, which contains some useful information about personal fitness and nutrition. For example:

• Preeminent kettlement guru Pavel Tsatsouline posted a guest article on Ferriss' blog about maximizing gains and efficiency in powerlifting:

• Ferriss has also invited Dr. Michael Eades to discuss why calorie-counting is a pseudo-science, and how counting carbs is the key. (One of the reasons I'm a fan of Ferriss is that he's solidly in the Gary Taubes low-carb camp.)

• I'm a terrible swimmer, so it was eye-opening to read about how Ferriss quickly (in ten days!) became a strong swimmer after a lifetime of being afraid of the water.

• Ferriss shares how he gained 34 pounds of muscle in 4 weeks using something he calls "Four-Hour Fitness."

• He writes about how to figure out what the labeling on meat products really mean.

• Ferriss is into Vibram FiveFingers.

• And most importantly, he describes how to properly "peel" a hard-boiled egg: