The 4-Hour Body: The Revolutionary Guide to Weight Loss from the Bestselling Author

If you want a book that will change your body and keep it changed this is the book. This isn't some crash diet that you will do for a fortnight and forget about its life changing. The principle of the book can be summed up with this idea of minimum effective dose: if you are clever you will get great results in minimal amount of time by doing only the required amount. Tim calls it hacking your body. The book has sections on weightloss, muscle gain, great sex, and even how to be able to run a marathon without ever running more than 10k a week. Each section starts with an entertaining story about Tims amazing life to wet your appetite. The content that follows will be concise enough for you to follow and with enough information to use the techniques and get noticeable results. If you are interested he has the science bits highlighted which you can gloss over and it won't make much difference to the result. The most interesting section to me was the weight-loss section where Tim proposes his slow-carb diet. The beauty of this diet and why it works when so many others don't is its simplicity and how easy it is to integrate into your life. I've been doing it now for 2 and a half months and my body fat percentage has dropped from 17 to 10%. I like to think of it as a combination of the atkins diet, the low GI diet, low inflamatory diet and with a few other foods taken out because of there effects on the hormone levels in your body etc. Now that doesn't leave you with many foods which makes it very simple to follow. Since we live in a world where everyone is trying to scam you and, just like other books, this promises life changing results with minimal effort, its understandable that people would be skeptical about buying this book. This book however lives up to its hype. Well done Tim Ferris

This book changed the way I think about fitness. I bought it from America the day it came out so I'd have it for Christmas last year and I'm glad I bought it. It didn't disappoint. Its got chapters on how to do everything from rapid fat loss (that I did and know worked on me personaly losing nearly two stone in two months, exercising like one or twice that whole time) increasing strength, testosterone, gaining mass, improving sex, increasing endurance whatever you need this book has it. Each chapter is worth the price of the book if you're looking to improve on that area. The great part of the book is well is when he talks about using psychology to train habits into yourself and up to date psychology on how thats done. Nothing about will power just systems and tracking what you do is very effective. If its photo food journals, waist, strength training etc tracking these things will make the habit of training and eating well stick. He even has a guy who used tracking to lose about 20/30 pounds in 8 months I think it was to lose weight despite still eating unhealthy foods and not exercising that much just to show how tracking is important. Tim Ferriss encourages you to become a self tracker and do your own research to and not to just trust him and that was important to because it made me do my own reading on fitness and inform myself more than I had in the past. So thats a great thing. I personally read the book all at once which the author doesn't recommended he says just pick your chapter after reading the introduction. But when re reading I pick my chapters. If your going to do any of the programmes in the book I'd recommend re reading the chapters cause you can miss one or two things because its so information dense. But overall if you're looking to improve you body you cant go wrong with this book. I'd buy it P.S. I've bought about 7/8 copies myself for people and a few others have bought them themselves thats how good it is. I've never done that with another book before so please do yourself a favour and buy this book

Tim Ferris' website proudly proclaims that he was awarded the title "self promoter of the year" (I forget which year) by Wired magazine - I'm not sure they meant it as something he should be proud of. He is internet famous, has a lot of followers and many haters - but he knows, and has interviewed a number of serious people (his podcast is pretty good). My opinion of the efficacy of his work is that he is a non-scientist researching and self experimenting, to find subjects to talk and write about on his blog and podcasts (and some TV). Some of the science is dubious/controversial. Some of the self-experimentaion is extreme if not dangerous. His real skills are self promotion and selling through his internet business, not scientific method. As such, I take him and his work with a pince of salt, but that is not to say that he is making it all up - just hyping it up. Anyway, the book is OK - you will find some useful ideas, though some more critical-thinking oriented reviewers clearly hate it. It's divided up into chapters on different subjects that are intended to be read individually, though some refer to each other. The writing style is chatty but formulaic. Many of his claims are inflated, but not without a grain of truth. There are chapters on weightloss - via the "slow carb diet" - I didn't lose anywhere near what Ferris suggested I would, but 18lbs in six weeks isn't bad, following the suggested diet fairly closely. 2 months after stopping, I haven't gained any weight, but I cycle and weight train a few times a week which probably helps. The Geek to Freak chapter, describes what is otherwise known as high intensity training (Google Mike Mentzer, HIT). There is no way you can gain good quantities of lean muscle in 30 days following this method - according every expert opinion I have heard (mostly body builder types). But that ignoring the hype, it turned out to be a time efficient routine for gaining strength over a period of months (perhaps a little size). I do a lot of mountain biking and I got very strong at hillclimbing, which I would attribute to performing this programme once or twice a week, for 3 months over the winter. Based on experience I do not believe that the information in the Occam's protocol chapter can gain a satisfactory amount of muscle. Maintainance maybe, when you're short of time for some reason. I do a 5x5 barbell routine, which after a research, testing, and adjustments, is working for me. Six minute abs - more hype. A six pack is more about low body fat percentage than exercise. But strong abs are a good thing for other reasons. The "myotactic crynch" as described here is good - 3 sets of 12 is very painful, and thas is now my abs exercise of choice. There are also a few other abs exercises listed that are far better than situps or crunches e.g. bicycle crunch and captains chair. The sleep chapter is useful. There seems to be a lot of product placement in this chapter, but ignoring that, cold baths (brutal at first, but you get use to it) and flaxseed oil before bed (along with reading fiction and avoiding the telly/Ipad) make me sleep like a log. This process does more for my mood and productivity than anything else the next day. There are a couple of chapters on sex, and the techniques do work. I've read similar ideas elsewhere, and, well give it go on a willing subject and see for yourself. There is no such thing as the 15 minute orgasm that the book claims - 30 seconds max, followed by a few minutes of heightened sensitivity. She will, however, be very happy. I haven't tried everything in the book, but I will be trying out the ideas in the chapters on running and swimming at some stage. The Effortless Superhuman chapter may yeild some benefit as well. Recieved wisdom isn't always correct - but equally the basics sometimes do work better than anything else, I find. Many ideas here are worth testing for yourself, and I've found myself dipping in to this book repeatedly over the last three years. Take the inflated figures and claims with a pinch of salt and do your own research along side this book. Test the ideas and refine processes for yourself and see what happens - I got some reasonable results. To be fair Ferris does say "do your own research" repeatedly.

I love Tim Ferriss's work. I have all 3 of his books that I use daily. So what is it that I like so much? His humour, his uncomplicated way of writing, the empathy and sense of childlike curiosity and adventure that seaps from every page. Does his stuff work? In my experience, yes! I do not get all the science, and to be honest I don't care - this guy slaughters holy cows all over the place and opens up enough pandoras boxes to give the most respectable scientists grey hairs and ulcers, so if the science is askew it still makes one ask questions. We believe a, yet b is happening. We believe that we have to starve ourselves, exercise like the crazied and work like durges to get anywhere close to a reality that we percieve that we want, yet this guy, and those he has talked talk to, have found something totally different. Maybe it's the case of we are resetting and recreating our reality. Maybe, gasp shock horror, the most esteemed priesthood of science hasn't got the full picture and are making 'laws' and school taught hypothesisms based in half facts? Do I care, not really. It works. Period. We may not get the same results - I only lost 5 lbs in my 2 week, but I have been fighting for over 2 years to lose a couple of stone so this is a massive result for me - and we may have to think a little for ourselves, but the basis works. And strangely what he says is echoed in all the old knowledge, in all the fringe belief systems and in all the 'free' societies - we don't have to be slaves to anything if we don't want to be. Not to our diet, not to our exercise regime, not ( 4 hww) to our work, not even to our sleep patterns! So, if you are ready to step out of the box, see the world from a different angle and reclaim some of that childlike adventure and curiosity that adult life tends to squeeze out, buy this book. You may just find it food for thought, or it may rekindle and restart your life like it has for me. P.S Thanks Tim for the rabbit!

I bought this book about two years ago, and have come back to it again and again. I do believe it contains the very best up to date information on what diet and exercise regime to follow to lose weight and gain muscle (and it overlaps heavily with the 'paleolithic' approach to eating and living which I also believe are our best ways of living). The serious problem with this book is that it should have been seriously better edited. The author describes it as a 'buffet', in that he recommends not reading it in a linear fashion but jump in and devour the bits you find most interested. This is fair enough but even within the chapters that I find most interesting Ferriss floats away on flight of fancy after flight fancy, anecdote after anecdote, name dropping all the way.... and I find it deeply frustrating. I just WANT THE INFORMATION. And every time I do dip into this buffet I have to skim past Ferriss's long anecdotes or personal musings. I sit here, now trying to devise a simple weight lifting regime to get myself started with, and there are no less than four chapters, with different regimes mentioned that I trawl through, filtering out the bloat as I do, to get the real info. This book is a serious tome, very very thick, and I think it could have been about half as thick if it wasn't for all that self-indulgent meandering. I like Ferriss. His adventurous spirit is incredible but he seriously needs the restraint of a good editor. This book feels like it's been written by someone with attention deficit, though with some writing talent, and a TON of research and experience at hand. His four hour brand (which I do love anyway, despite these misgivings) is getting a touch ironic when each book gets thicker and thicker and more bloated (the four hour chef looks like a real War & Peace too - in colour). Anyway, it's a great book in the sense it does contains information that works. You just have to do some work yourself (esp. if you're starting out like me) to boil that down to a simple recipe. Even though there are chapters with simple recipes - like "Occam's Protocol" - I still feel I don't come away with a simple prescription.

Tim Ferris is so entertaining and left-field that this book is worth reading even if you have no intention of using it. Oh, and if you do use the techniques that he promotes then they are unbelievably effective. I have lost 10 lbs of fat in 8 weeks and don't ever feel hungry! How do I know its fat? Because I measured areas of the body, waist, hips arm, thigh, calf and also used calipers. Tim is a measurement freak and its easy to get into. Really worth measuring early on as the scales tell one story whereas the measurements can give much more encouraging info when you understand whats going on with your body. Easy to stick to because he encourages eating the same meals over and over again (sounds dull but its ok if you like the meals!) As you are pretty much only eating beans in all their glorious forms for carbs, wind may be an issue for those in the early days of the diet but your digestive system seems to adapt and it doesn't persist! The audiobook is unabridged and an easy way to get into the book, would also recommend the books that have been written by others to nail down actual recipes because when you read the book you may get to a point where you just want a meal plan and to get on with it! There is a cheat day once a week which is to stop your body going into starvation mode when you can eat any foods you might have fancied during the week, for me that would be dark chocolate. However, I've found that I don't really crave much junky food at all so the caloric intake on that day is pretty low but psychologically its a good release. Interestingly, main reason diet fails is not eating enough protein in each meal and not drinking enough water. Only 10lbs to go ,target 12 stone 10!

I followed a large part of this diet solidly for 2 months. The sections I followed were: the diet, the kettlebell and Bosu exercises, the cold showers/ice packs, the supplements and the weight/fat measuring. In these 2 months I noticed rapid fat and weight loss, I was visibly becoming leaner, there was noticeable improvement to my muscle definition and fat loss. I was also able to consistently cut almost 2 minutes off my personal 5km best prior to the 4-Hour-Body. I felt more energetic and lighter. The downsides of this plan are: 1. The cost. The food is fairly expensive. Buying a fat monitor was expensive. Suppliements - expensive! Bosu balls and kettlebells - expensive! 2. The maintainability. After 2 months I just wanted to chill out a little for Christmas. I'm not sure I'd be able to continue to follow this 100% for much longer than a few months. I am currently adapting it to suit what makes me happy. 3. I didn't enjoy cheat days. I would feel so sick on these days and barely be able to finish any of my meals. It was a little disappointing to feel like I wasn't really getting my treat. 4. Finding the right foods and supplements can be difficult. I live in London so I'd imagine it would be more difficult for those living in smaller cities and towns. Overall though I completely rate this book for achieving effective results. If you really can stick to such a strict diet, this would be great for you! If you're willing to completely commit to something for a few months, it would also be useful (albeit costly). However if you're not willing to put 100% in to trying, I'd probably not go for this plan.

I searched out this book after hearing it being mentioned by a character in a US Sitcom. I'm a nerd like that. I had never heard of Tim Ferriss or the Four Hour Work Week so was unsure as to what to expect. Firstly, the author makes it very clear that you should dip in and dip out of the book as required. This is sound advice as the book will not be relevant to all people. There are chapters on weight loss and chapters on weight gain. Chapters on female orgasms for those who have never had one (and for those who have never given one!). Much of the book however deals with Tim's experiments with his own body which border on narcism. On reading the book it's clear that Tim is already a wealthy and successful author who has time on his hands. This is where the relevance of the book to the ordinary reader starts to fade. For example: How do you know if you're losing body fat? Simple, you spend your days having numerous X-rays, Ultrasounds and other scans to prove it - you might also want to chat to an inventor friend of yours and have a glucose monitor transplanted under your skin. Do you want a 'free' holiday? Easy, have all your scans in Nicaragua and when you subtract the cost from what you would have paid in the US you're quids (dollars) in! Want better sleep? This can be achieved by not working and taking several 20 minute naps a day at fixed intervals. You could also try to stay awake for a week just for the hell of it. That said, most of the PR surrounding the book relates to the Slow-Carb diet plan. Paradoxically, the diet takes up only about a quarter of the book - the rest being Tim's search to find out just how awesome, muscular, fit, injury free, sexual and clever Tim is. It is the diet that will be of most relevance to the average person who has no aspirations to be a bodybuilder or is happy with their current orgasm schedule. The diet section gives some sound advice and appears just as well researched as the other areas of the book - but with added relevance! I would however caution any reader against following Tim's experimentation with various stimulants and supplements to achieve his ideal body weight.

Loved loved loved this book!! Extremely interesting and full of helpful references. Added bonus, I lost weight too.

I have received this large book only recently and have not gone through it fully. Most of what it says agrees with my opinion formed after about fifty years of regular and daily physical exercise. Mr. Tim Ferris has done a great job of debunking many of the present day ideas about fitness and diet. I have been practicing his prescription about sleep for several years now. A twenty minute after-lunch nap suffices for me to sleep about four and a half to five hours at night. I have added the balancing exercises to my routine. I have reduced the grains and cereals in my diet and added legumes, beans and green vegetables to it. I am feeling the difference, but yet to see it. It is great book, yet I have not formed the final opinion.

Awesome book! Rich in practical details. I read 1 chapter gave an overlook to every chapter and again Tim did a wonderful job Thank you for sharing your researches 🙏🏻

WEIGHT LOSS SECTION Last summer I lost 18 pounds, getting down to 6% body fat. This enabled me to finish 29th in the Pikes Peak Ascent, which climbs nearly 8000 feet in 13.5 miles and was the 7th Annual World Mountain Running Association (WMRA) Long Distance Challenge. I received the award for 1st place in the 45-49 age group. Ferriss advocates keeping your blood sugar even, i.e., avoiding spikes and drops by eating low on the glycemic index. I've done this for nearly 25 years and I believe it's the most important dietary advice. Ferriss should have mentioned that Barry Sears' Zone Diet books go into more detail on low-glycemic eating; there are more health benefits besides losing weight. Sears' website also sells products that help with this diet, e.g., high-protein, low-glycemic index pasta. Ferriss recommends lemon juice or cinnamon to lower the glycemic index of foods, something I'd never heard of. He could have mentioned that Celestial Seasonings makes a cinnamon tea, called GingerBread Spice, that you can drink with a meal instead of putting cinnamon in foods. Even though I've eaten low-glycemic foods for nearly 25 years my weight had crept up a little each year. Last summer I tightened up my diet but lost only 3 pounds in 7 weeks. I then discovered a technique that Ferriss doesn't mention: "Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a queen, and supper like a pauper." A thin French friend told me this is how Europeans stay thin. I ate big breakfasts with protein (fish, lean meat, eggs, etc.), protein shakes with spirulina around noon, big lunches around 3pm, and then just a green salad or fruit salad in the evening, enough to not go to bed hungry. I then lost 15 pounds in 12 weeks. Ferriss has good advice for eating low on the glycemic index: not eating white sugar, white flour, and other refined carbohydrates; and not drinking calories, e.g., fruit juice packs a lot of sugar. He also says to eat the same few meals over and over. This makes staying on your diet easy. Ferriss recommends not eating fruit, because fructose converts to glycerol phosphate that facilitates fat storage. I'm skeptical of this, because fruits are more than just fructose, e.g., they have fiber. Just because a reaction occurs in vitro (in a test tube) doesn't mean the same thing will happen in vivo (in a living person). Given his huge fan base maybe he could ask a few hundred of his blog readers to divide into two groups, one of which eats fruit and the other doesn't, and see who loses more weight. I'll bet the non-fruit eaters will substitute another sweet that is more fattening and lose less weight. Ferriss recommends taking one day off a week from your diet and eating anything (and everything) you want. He says that this "binge" day will support weight loss by keeping your metabolism high. Again, I'm skeptical and I'd like to see a clinical trial. However, last summer I did a "binge day" every week without realizing it. I had a race every week and after each race ate whatever I wanted the rest of the day. Ferriss recommends not eating dairy, as it has a high insulinemic response despite its low glycemic index. When Ferriss advocated a high-protein diet, recommending that I eat almost 200 grams of protein per day, my first reaction was "What about the China Study?" This book, by Colin and Thomas Campbell, correlated animal-based diets with cancer, and recommended eating a plant-based (vegan) diet. Ferriss's website has a link to Christopher Masterjohn's critique of "The China Study." Colin Campbell's study with rats fed aflatoxin (one of the most potent carcinogens) found that a diet with 20% casein (one of the proteins in milk) led to every rat developing cancer, when none of the rats whose diet was 5% casein developed cancer. Apparently casein signals your cells to grow, which is good if you're a baby but not good if you have cancer. Masterjohn then shows how the Campbells extrapolated this one study to say that all milk proteins facilitate cancer growth, when whey (another milk protein) doesn't facilitate cancer growth, and to say that all animal protein facilitates cancer growth (also not true). Ferris says that canned and frozen foods are just as good as fresh. I agree with him regarding canned beans, but I believe that fresh fruits and vegetables are necessary for my health. Ferriss correctly points out that my grandmother, born in Poland in 1904, ate one orange each year, on Christmas. But my grandmother was tiny compared my cousins and myself. One of the clerks at the natural foods supermarket near my house is 25 and was diagnosed with cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. He switched to a raw foods diet and all of his health problems disappeared. He told me that previously he ate a "standard American diet," i.e., packaged processed foods. I've always eaten big salads, both green salads and fruit salads. If I don't eat raw foods, e.g., when traveling, after a couple days I crave raw foods. I don't know whether raw foods diets work due to something in raw foods, e.g., enzymes that are destroyed by heat, or if these diets work because of what's not in them, e.g., packaged processed foods. Ferriss recommends eating slowly, and raw foods take time to eat. When I make a big salad for breakfast with greens, beans, and smoked salmon it takes me all morning to finish it. Ferriss doesn't mention spirulina. I put two tablespoons in my mid-day protein shake. Spirulina is arguably the perfect food, if you can handle the swamp taste. It's high in protein, with balanced amino acids; includes essential fatty acids; vitamins, especially the B vitamins lacking in vegetarian diets; minerals; and photosynthetic pigments, i.e., it's really green. Ferriss suggests cold exposure (cold showers or ice baths) to lose weight, gain muscle, treat insomnia, boost immunity, treat depression, and increase testosterone and sperm count. Dathan Ritzenhein used a cryosuana, exposed to -275 degree nitrogen vapors for 2.5 minutes, the day before the New York Marathon, where he finished 8th in 2:12. At first I was skeptical of Ferris's claim that cold exposure aids weight loss because I keep the house cold all winter and exercise outside 2+ hours a day, often in sub-zero temperatures, and I gain weight every winter. Then I realized that Ferriss is right. Cold exposure makes me crave peanut butter sandwiches and other high fat, calorie-dense foods. In the summer I resist cravings relatively easily but in the winter the cravings are more powerful. I'm sure that if I resisted cravings brought on by cold exposure I'd lose weight fast. I like this book because it's a collection of new ideas that Ferriss personally tried. 25 years ago I felt like Diogenes with his lamp, except instead of looking for an honest man I was looking for new ideas. In the 1980s new ideas were few and far between. Now with the Internet I feel blessed to live in an age in which new ideas circulate rapidly. Typically each new idea has a single advocate so it's hard to compare whether this idea is better than that idea, unless you take the time (and expense) to try several ideas. Ferriss did just that and is reporting his experiences. In contrast, Andrew Weil writes about the same materials but with an affect of authority, as he's a doctor and reads scientific studies. Ferriss's affect is "I'm a regular guy just like you, I'm not an expert, but I'm intelligent and I can read scientific studies too, and here's what happened when I tried this..." Another reviewer said that Ferriss's book is his new "bible." I don't agree with that. If you want a "bible," read Andrew Weil. If you want interesting ideas and personal experiences, read Ferriss. ADDING MUSCLE SECTION I'm not interested in body building so I skimmed this section. However, this section made me realize how different bodybuilders are from outdoor athletes. Or at least how different Ferriss and I are. Later he talks about learning to run and to swim, i.e., these are new skills for him. He doesn't mention cycling or playing team sports. Before reading this section I hadn't realized how many drugs bodybuilders take! (Ferriss suggests googling "Andreas Munzer autopsy".) Ferriss doesn't include a chapter about integrating exercise into your daily life. E.g., riding a bike to work instead of driving, or joining a mixed-gender softball team to meet singles. I don't like going to gyms, I only exercise when it's fun or there's a purpose. IMPROVING SEX SECTION This section starts with how non-orgasmic women can learn to masturbate, e.g., by reading Betty Dodson's book. I watched Dodson's video about ten years ago and one item remains with me clearly: Dodson tells women to schedule three to four hours when they want to masturbate! Ferriss shows some improved positions for couples. My wife and I tried these and she was unimpressed (but then she's never had problems with orgasms). The next chapter explains how Ferriss increased his testosterone 2.5 times: vitamins, ice baths, and cholesterol (egg yolks and steaks). I nearly tripled my testosterone (from barely over 300 to just under 900) by taking a contact improv dance class. Three times a week a dozen sweaty young women and I rolled our bodies over and under each other. (Contact improv is like gymnastics except you use your partner instead of vaults and balance beams.) The pheromones in young women's sweat increases men's testosterone. Someday someone will make a fortune collecting young women's sweat and selling it to middle-aged men. There were also young men in the class, whose sweat literally made me weak and nauseous until I showered. Ferriss doesn't say that lifting weights in gyms surrounded by sweaty young men might lower your testosterone. Ferriss doesn't discuss why you might not want to increase your testosterone. Testosterone causes baldness, and your hair doesn't grow back if you later lower your testosterone. Testosterone doesn't make you faster: gelding race horses are just as fast as stallions. Ferriss says that when his testosterone was high he literally turned women's heads in restaurants. My experience in the dance class was that the young women literally jumped in the laps of the gay men at the start of class. If they couldn't partner with a gay man then they partnered with women. Every class I'd look around when the instructor said to find a partner, and the only available partners were the other two straight men. We'd do the first exercise together half-heartedly and then ask women to partner with us. Testosterone may have made the women avoid us. Ferriss doesn't mention that women might want to increase their testosterone. I've read that testosterone is the most effective anti-depressant for women. It also increases their libido. Listen to This American Life's podcast #220: a transgender female-to-male talks about what it was like to receive testosterone injections; and a man who had a medical condition that eliminated testosterone in his body, with the result that he achieved a Buddha-like state of desiring nothing. I performed these two characters in a play, my favorite line was from the transgender man: "Testosterone makes life challenging, but it makes you love the challenges." The next chapter is about declining sperm count. Ferriss suggests getting your sperm frozen before you're 35, which I did. His other advice is to not carry your cellphone in your pocket (I don't). He barely mentions other ideas such as not drinking out of plastic bottles, avoiding soy foods, and wearing loose boxer shorts instead of tighty whities. OTHER SECTIONS The next section is about insomnia. He suggests all sorts of gadgets, cold baths, foods, etc. but doesn't suggest cutting out caffeine. Getting back to cold exposure, I support Ferriss's claim that cold exposure aids sleep. In the upper Midwest people say "good sleeping weather" to describe cold nights. I sleep well when I let the house drop below 50 degrees and pile blankets on my bed. Next is a section on reversing "permanent" injuries. My massage therapist (whose wife is a physical therapist) was impressed with this section, esp. the Egoscue recommendation. Next is a section on medical tourism (saving money by going to foreign countries for medical treatment). Next, Ferriss recommends preventing injuries by getting a Functional Movement Screen (FMS) test. FMS measures left-right differences in strength and balance. I'm putting this on my to-do list. RUNNING SECTION I'm 48 and this year ran a 5:08 mile, an 18:09 5K, and a 37:48 10K. I qualified for All-American in a 3000-meter race and I win an age group award in most races. I only run about 3 hours a week: two 45-minute track workouts plus a 1.5-hour club run. An exercise physiologist was amazed that I have a VO2-max of 59 and run this fast on 3 hours a week. Then I said that I walk my dog 2 hours a day, plus we hike twice a week, mixing speedwalking, easy jogging, and stopping to pee every 30 feet. The exercise physiologist said that I have the perfect training plan: a base of daily easy exercise with a few short but intense workouts. Ferriss recommends running with the Pose technique. I've done this for five years and this has been the best thing I've ever done to improve my running, both for increasing speed and minimizing injuries. Ferriss doesn't mention that the same technique has other names, including Chi Running and Evolution Running. Ferriss' description of the Pose technique is excellent but he only has photos of himself (before and after). His "before" photos are clearly wrong but his "after" photos aren't much better, likely because he just doesn't run fast. (His 24-minute 5K is what we politely call "mid-pack".) He should have included photos of faster runners who do the Pose Technique better. Ferriss' 12-week workout schedule is good. The main workout is 800-meter repeats, beginning with two the first week and moving up to six in later weeks. Ferriss doesn't explain why this workout is so important. Running workouts (to oversimplify) either train leg speed or cardiovascular (heart and lungs). 800 meters is three minutes for Ferriss. If you run intervals longer than 3 minutes you don't maximize leg speed. If you run less than 3 minutes you don't maximize heart rate. 3-minute repeats are two workouts in one, training both leg speed and cardiovascular. Ferriss should have explained that you run three minutes, not 800 meters, i.e., a slower runner could run 600 meters, when I run 900 meters and a pro might knock off 1200's. Do two of these the first week and gradually build up to five, or six if you're an animal like Ferriss. All should be equal distance, which means that your first interval feels easy and the last interval is maximum effort. Ferriss' schedule also includes 100-meter and 200-meter leg speed workouts. This is excellent advice for slow runners trying to get faster. Too many joggers run for miles at a slow pace and never get faster. He also did longer 5K and 10K runs to build endurance, and did some hill repeats to build the strength necessary for trail running. He doesn't mention that the 100-meter repeats should be barefoot on grass, to teach you good form. Ferriss recommends Inov-8 running shoes. I use Nike Frees. He rightly denigrates Newtons and warns against running barefoot (e.g., Vibram Five Fingers), except for strides on grass. Fueling during long races is an important subject that Ferriss doesn't adequately cover. But I'll give you a tip that'll make your next race faster. Clear your gastrointestinal tract by not eating solid food for at least 12 hours before the race (i.e., drink only juice and energy drinks). Digestion demands up to 40% of your blood so not having anything in your gut at the start line will provide more blood to your muscles. GETTING STRONGER Here's where Ferriss presents weightlifting for runners, based on Barry Ross (coach of Olympic gold medalist Allyson Felix). I don't do weightlifting so these ideas were all new to me. Ferriss gives two reasons why runners should do strength training (weightlifting). First, distance runners have weak sodium-potassium pumps. The sodium-potassium pump is what enables muscles to return to relaxation after contracting. The discoverer of the sodium-potassium pump won the Nobel Prize. Strength training improves the sodium-potassium pump. Second, greater ground force support (applying force to the ground at landing) is more important than moving your legs faster. The recommended strength training is in three stages. First, speedwalking 15 minutes three times a week. I do speedwalking because it gives me leg speed without wearing me out. Ferriss says to start with four weeks of speedwalking. The second stage is weightlifting. Three times per week you do dynamic stretching, then bench presses or push-ups, then deadlifting, in which you lift the weights only to your knees. Ross's athletes deadlift three times their bodyweight! Finish with an exercise called the Torture Twist to strengthen your core muscles. The third stage is speedwork on the track. The distances are short. Ross's sprinters, who don't compete in distances longer then 400 meters, don't run more than 70 meters in training. No advice is given for distance runners, but Ferriss's other coach telling him to run 800-meter repeats to train for a 50-kilometer race sounds similar to Ross's short interval speedwork. Ferriss doesn't mention the one type of weightlifting I do, which is essential for avoiding calf injuries when running with the Pose Technique. Some people call these "toe lifts," I call them "heel lifts." Stand barefoot on a stair on your toes. Lower your heels below your toes. Then raise yourself as high as you can. This strengthens your calf muscles. Start with both feet, then go to one foot as you get stronger. SWIMMING SECTION Ferriss recommends Total Immersion Swimming. I did Total Immersion Swimming about five years ago and agree with Ferriss. Before, I panicked and tried to swim fast to avoid drowning. I could swim only two lengths of the pool before reaching anaerobic fatigue. Total Immersion Swimming first taught me to float in the water without panicking. Then you learn to paddle around slowly. Then you improve your form step by step to become more efficient (hydrodynamic), so effortless paddling actually moves you through the water easily. Eventually you're swimming back and forth across the pool completely relaxed. Another chapter teaches you to hit baseballs harder. Another chapter explains how to hold your breath for three minutes. LIFE EXTENSION SECTION First, Ferriss rejects calorie restriction as it's a miserable life. He similarly rejects restricting ejaculations (i.e., Dr. Strangelove). He rejects resveratrol because it interferes with estrogen. I stopped taking resveratrol because it interferes with thyroid function (I'm hypothyroid). He rejects some other life extension drugs. He recommends creatine monohydrate for preventing Alzheimers, Parkinson's, and Huntington's if your family has a history of these diseases. He also recommends intermittent fasting or just not eating protein for a day. He also recommends that men donate blood to reduce iron. Ferriss doesn't talk about DHEA, the anti-aging hormone I take. DHEA is the most abundant hormone in the body. It's related to testosterone and estrogen but men and women have it equally. It peaks at 25 then gradually declines. Low DHEA is associated with many diseases of old age, and many studies have found DHEA supplements reverse these diseases in older people. Ferriss recommends having SpectraCell Laboratories test you for nutritional deficiencies. He doesn't mention that they also have a telomere test. This tests your body's biological age, in terms of cell reproduction (i.e., how close your cells are to being unable to reproduce and your body wearing out). Lifestyle, e.g., diet and exercise, affect this. I'm going to get both of these tests done. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS This book isn't perfect or complete. But I'm giving it five stars because it gave me new ideas. I'm sure that an expert could pick apart any chapter and find mistakes or missing info. But that's OK. This book isn't the Bible; Ferriss doesn't want you to blindly repeat what he did. He investigated interesting ideas and saw what worked or didn't work for him. That's how you should use this book. P.S. Several commentators have suggested that I write a book. I've written three books. Two are about stuttering therapy. My third book is "Hearts and Minds: How Our Bodies Are Hardwired for Relationships." It's written somewhat like "The 4-Hour Body" in that I present scientific research about relationships and then describe my experiences applying these ideas to dating and in relationships. Amazon sells all my books.

Tim Ferriss prévient le lecteur dans la préface : ce livre doit être utilisé comme un buffet ; les quelques premiers chapitres sont incontournables et les autres sont à lire (ou non) en fonction des envies. Et pourtant, j'ai lu ce livre comme un roman, chapitre après chapitre ! Bien sur, tous les chapitres ne me concernent / ne m'intéressent pas mais la curiosité et le dynamisme avec lequel l'auteur aborde ses sujets donnent envie de tout lire. J'ai trouvé dans ce livres des explications et des conseils qu'on peut facilement appliquer. J'ai notamment adapté mon alimentation (plus de proteines) et commencé l'exposition au froid (douches froides) et je ressens un regain d'énergie. Il convient évidemment de prendre ce livre pour ce qu'il est : le compte rendu d'auto-expériences personnelles (et non un traité scientifique). C'est dans cette perspective que le livre peut être vu comme un buffet ; on retient de la lecture de ces 600+ pages des préceptes que l'on peut expérimenter sur soi, souvent avec succès. Quelques soient vos objectifs, Tim Ferris à des propositions fascinantes à vous faire.