Four Hour Body: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

I mentioned Tim Ferriss not too long ago, and brought up the fact that he was a best selling author, a lecturer, a pretty successful business man, masterful marketer and apparently a giant scam artist!

Well, some people really believe that he is a scam artist,  what he suggests could never be followed through with, he is all sizzle and no steak (I read at least three or four pages that used that exact phrase, figured I’d keep it going) and so on and so forth.

Now there are also others that say he has changed their lives, set them free, and opened a whole new world to them.

In short, its hard to know what to make of him or his new book the Four Hour Body.

As someone who has worked in the fitness profession for quite a while and been a huge fan of it for even longer I have grown to be a natural skeptic when there are fantastic claims being made about results.  Well Tim makes the word “fantastic” seem like a gross understatement with what he claims his book can do.  Of course its all marketing fluff, but when you claim to make people superhuman its bound to catch attention (his desired result, did you see where I mentioned masterful marketer up above).

So 600 pages later … let’s get down to what this book can or can’t give you

Tim basically goes through a series of self experiments to see what are the most efficient means to achieve certain goals.  He works to increase his strength, increase his endurance, melt away his body fat, hold his breath longer, swing a baseball bat better, swim like an olympian and a myriad of other goals.

The advice in this book can definitely help you reach such goals, but its important to realize that

• It can be dangerous to do so, moderation isn’t his strong suit
• You will likely not get nearly the same results, his “experiments” were set up to give the biggest results possible (such as his muscle gain experiment when he RE-gained muscle after an extreme diet)
• You will not have the same resources available that he does.  He has quite a bit of money, time and social connections to get to the best professionals in each field. You don’t.

Now all of that said, this book isn’t useless and unlike some of the people giving it bad reviews on Amazon for contradictory advice you must realize that each chapter and goal is a complete stand alone piece of information.  For instance in the fat loss chapter he mentions to not have any dairy (with the exception of cottage cheese as a last resort), but in the muscle gain chapter he talks about that GOMAD diet … Gallon of Milk A Day.  Just realize that lots of what you read here is old wisdom that he has passed along in his entertaining writing style.  This book is NOT a complete health and fitness solution with a unified message.

I read 600 pages so you don’t have to…

Here are the most important take home points

Muscle Building

• He refers to the Casey Viator example quite a bit and mimics the experiment as best he can.
• This means High Intensity Training.  A program consisting of doing exercises for two sets to absolute, puke your guts out, failure.  Then rest a long time and eat a ton before doing it again.
• Did I mention eat a ton?  He does. A lot. It works.

34lbs in 28 days ... it can be done!

Strength Gaining

• He talks about training for performance, not fatigue
• Use multiple sets of low reps
• Rep counts as low as 10 per exercise (ie. 5 sets of 2 repetitions, 3 sets of 3 repetitions)
• Long enough rest between sets

Fat Loss

• Eat 30g of protein within 30 minutes of waking to boost resting metabolic rate
• Eat a “slow carb” diet consisting of lean protein, green veggies, beans (pretty much a Paleo Diet)
• NO: dairy, fruit, starch based carbs
• Have a cheat day once a week
• Do a lot of kettlebell swings

Endurance Training

• Probably the coolest chapter in the book, some new methods I didn’t know much about… (endurance is definitely NOT my thing)
• Focus on increasing aerobic threshold with lots of sprints and short rests
• Crossfit styled HIIT workouts for same reason
• Limited road work to keep body from getting banged up

There are other chapters that cover more obscure topics like holding your breath for a long time, but they aren’t really relevant for most people or worth summarizing.

So there wasn’t much new information reported, just a rehashing of what most people who keep up to date with the health and fitness industry already know.  All that said, I think its a very entertaining read and I’m glad I went through it.  I might even toy with some of the endurance stuff and see if I can’t whip up a road race sometime this year

Overall 6/10 – Entertaining read.  Informative for newbies, but doesn’t give comprehensive plans to follow, just short term solutions.

Tagged as: Book Review, Endurance Training, fat loss, four hour body, Gain Muscle, Strength Training, tim ferriss