Tools of Titans

by Timothy Ferriss

  BASE: Meet flyer’s shoulders with arms straight and fingers pointing up, and lift flyer into the air. (fig. B)

  “Keep your legs wide and your feet heavy. Toes to the ground.” FLYER: Keep a strong bend at your hips. Most flyers lift their legs, losing the “shelf,” which can lead to a fall. Another cue: “Keep your feet as close to the floor as possible.”

  “Let your upper body be heavy and legs be super heavy.”

  “Now, reach behind your back and grab your own elbows, if you can. Grabbing forearms or wrists is also fine.”

  “Bring the soles of your feet together to butterfly stretch. (fig. C) Now, bring your toes down enough that you can see them.” This ensures the proper “shelf.”

  BASE: Arms and legs should be straight. “Deep inhale, and exhale.” BASE: On the exhale, slowly bend one leg to twist the flyer at the waist. Return to all straight. Repeat the breath and twist to the other side. Repeat 4 to 6 reps total.

  Folded Leaf and Leaf Hugger

  * * *

  Repeat steps 1 to 7 of Hippie Twist.

  8. BASE: Tell flyer, “Now, relax your arms completely and put the tops your hands on the floor. I’ll help.” Lightly grab flyer’s wrists and place their hands well behind their hips. (fig. D) Flyer should not be supporting any weight. Flyer’s legs should be wide and heavy, as close to the floor as possible without straining. This is Folded Leaf position.

  9. BASE: Reach your hands under the flyer’s armpits and underhook, landing your hands on the upper back. (see inset)

  10. BASE: Bend your legs to lightly rest the flyer’s ribcage on your shins. (fig. E) This creates a safer angle for the flyer’s shoulders.

  11. BASE and FLYER: Inhale together. BASE: Extend the flyer back with your bent legs as your arms traction the flyer’s upper body back in opposition. This is Leaf Hugger.

  12. BASE: Return to legs straight, releasing traction on the flyer’s back, then repeat for 2 to 4 reps.

  Leg Love—“Gravity Boots”

  * * *

  At the end of an AcroYoga session, the base’s legs are typically fried. This is when “Leg Love” comes in—the flyer helping to decompress and restore the base’s legs and hips. There are dozens upon dozens of techniques (e.g., “Bus Driver”), but this one gives a fantastic bang for the buck. Since I’ve never heard a name for it, I’ll call it “Gravity Boots,” as the effect is similar.

  Even used independent of AcroYoga, this exercise has therapeutic value.

  BASE: Lie on your back, legs straight and spread a few feet.

  FLYER: Stand between base’s legs and pick up their feet, holding onto the lower Achilles and top of the heel. Base should completely relax and not help.

  FLYER: Stagger your stance, turn the base’s feet inward—like a pigeon-toe stance—behind your hips (see inset), and then lean back for 2 to 5 seconds. (fig. A) This will decompress the base’s hips and legs. Repeat for 3 to 5 reps.

  Deconstructing Sports and Skills with Questions

  As Tony Robbins would say, “The quality of your questions determines the quality of your life.”

  When I was interviewing athletes and coaches from 2008 to 2010, digging up non-obvious tactics for The 4-Hour Body, I sent different combinations of the following questions to dozens of experts. These can be modified for any skill or topic, not just sports. Just replace [SPORT] with what you want to learn, and track down your mentors. You can often find past gold and silver medalists willing to answer these via Skype for $50 to $100 per hour, which is an incredible steal and could save you years of wasted effort.

  Who is good at [SPORT] despite being poorly built for it? Who’s good at this who shouldn’t be?

  Who are the most controversial or unorthodox athletes or trainers in [SPORT]? Why? What do you think of them?

  Who are the most impressive lesser-known teachers?

  What makes you different? Who trained you or influenced you?

  Have you trained others to do this? Have they replicated your results?

  What are the biggest mistakes and myths you see in [SPORT] training? What are the biggest wastes of time?

  What are your favorite instructional books or resources on the subject? If people had to teach themselves, what would you suggest they use?

  If you were to train me for 12 weeks for a [FILL IN THE BLANK] competition and had a million dollars on the line, what would the training look like? What if I trained for 8 weeks?

  In the case of basketball, I added four more to the above. The following questions were emailed to Rick Torbett, the founder of Better Basketball:

  What are the biggest mistakes novices make when shooting or practicing shooting? What are the biggest misuses of time?

  What mistakes are most common, even at the pro level?

  What are your key principles for better, more consistent shooting? What are they for foul shots (free throws) vs. 3-pointers?

  What does the progression of exercises look like?

  I received his email responses and, 2 days later, hit 9 out of 10 free throws for the first time in my life. Then, on Christmas Eve, I went bowling and realized that many of the basketball principles (e.g., determining eye dominance to move your vertical “center line”) applied to the lane, too. I scored 124, my first time over 100 and an Everest above my usual 50 to 70. Upon returning home, I immediately went outside and sank the first two 3-pointers of my life. That’s a hell of a lot of fun. It all starts with good questions.

  * * *

  Peter Attia

  Peter Attia, MD (TW: @peterattiamd, eatingacademy.com) is a former ultra-endurance athlete (e.g., swimming races of 25 miles), compulsive self-experimenter, and one of the most fascinating human beings I know. He is one of my go-to doctors for anything performance- or longevity-related. Peter earned his MD from Stanford University and holds a BSc in mechanical engineering and applied mathematics from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He did his residency in general surgery at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, and conducted research at the National Cancer Institute under Dr. Steven Rosenberg, where Peter focused on the role of regulatory T cells in cancer regression and other immune-based therapies for cancer.

  Peter’s Breakfast

  “It usually starts with nothing, and then I usually do a second course—because I’m a little hungry—and I’ll have a little bit more nothing. I usually top it off with a bit of nothing.”

  Peter rarely eats breakfast and has experimented with many forms of intermittent fasting, ranging from one meal a day (i.e., 23 hours of fasting per day) to more typical 16/8 and 18/6 patterns of eating (i.e., 16 or 18 hours of fasting and only eating in an 8- or 6-hour window). Going 16 hours without eating generally provides the right balance of autophagy (look it up) and anabolism (muscle building).

  Random Bits

  Peter spent 3 straight years in nutritional ketosis, and maintained a high level of performance not only in ultra–long distance cycling and swimming, but also in strength (e.g., flipping a 450-pound tire 6 times in 16 seconds). He still enters ketosis at least once per week as a result of fasting (one primary meal per day at ~6 to 8 p.m.), and he feels he is at his best on a ketogenic diet. His main reason for moving away from it was a craving for more fruits and vegetables.

  Peter is obsessed with many things, including watches (like the Omega Speedmaster Professional, Caliber 321, which has been around since the 1950s) and professional-grade car racing simulators. The simulator Peter owns uses iRacing software, but the hardware (seated cockpit, steering wheel, hydraulics, etc.) is all custom-built, so it doesn’t have a name. His favorite car to drive is the Formula Renault 2000.

  Why Peter and I Get Along

  Peter explains the joy of drinking his first experimental batch of synthetic (exogenous) ketones:

  “The first one I tried was the beta-hydroxybutyrate ester, whi
ch a very good friend of mine sent me [Dominic D’Agostino, page 21], and I had been told these things taste horrible. I had talked to two people who had consumed them before, and these are stoic, military dudes. These weren’t 6-year-old kids. They said, ‘Oh, man, that’s the worst-tasting stuff on earth.’ So I knew that, but I think that piece of information was fleeting in the excitement when the box came. I tore open the box, and there was also a note in there that explained a somewhat palatable cocktail that you could mix—how you could mix this with ten other things. I just disregarded that and took out the 50-ml flask.

  “I chugged it, and I remember it was like 6:00 in the morning, because my wife was still sleeping. First of all, you drink it, and it tasted like how I imagine jet fuel or diesel would taste. If you’ve ever smelled distillate, it’s this horrible odor, and you can sort of imagine what it would taste like. This is what it tasted like, and so my first thought was, ‘Goddamn, what if I go blind? What if there’s methanol in here? What did I just do?’ And then my next thought was just, ‘Oh my god, you’re gagging. I mean, you’re really gagging. If you puke this stuff up, you’re gonna have to lick up your puke. It’s just gonna be a disaster.’ And so I’m retching and gagging and trying not to wake up the family and trying not to spew my ketone esters all over the kitchen. It took around 20 minutes for me to get out and do my bike ride, which was the whole purpose of that experiment.”

  Tools of the Trade

  Peter wears a Dexcom G5 continuous glucose monitor to track his glucose levels 24/7, which are displayed on his iPhone. His real goal, if he could wave a magic wand, is to keep his average glucose and glucose variability low. Outside of a lab, this approximates minimizing your insulin “area under the curve” (AUC). To accomplish this, Peter aims to keep his average glucose (per 24-hour period) at 84 to 88 mg/dl and his standard deviation below 15. The Dexcom displays all of this. Peter calibrates the Dexcom 2 to 3 times per day with a OneTouch Ultra 2 glucometer, which requires less blood and appears more accurate than the Precision Xtra that I use for ketone measurement.

  Glute Medius Workout

  “Modern man is weakest and most unstable in the lateral plane. Having a very strong gluteus medius, tensor fasciae latae, and vastus medialis is essential for complete knee-hip alignment and longevity of performance.”

  Peter once visited me in San Francisco and we went to the gym together. In between sets of deadlifts and various chalk-laden macho moves, I glanced over and saw Peter in a centerfold pose doing what looked like a Jane Fonda workout. Once I finished laughing, he explained that he avoided knee surgery thanks to this exercise set, taught to him by speed guru Ryan Flaherty and kinesiologist Brian Dorfman (Brian also helped him avoid shoulder surgery after a torn labrum).

  I tried his “reverse thighmaster” series and was dumbstruck by how weak my glute medius was. It was excruciating, and I felt and looked like an idiot. (See Coach Sommer’s quote, “If you want to be a stud . . .” on page 10.) For each of the following 7 moves, start with 10 to 15 reps each. Once you can do 20 reps for all 7 consecutively, consider adding weight to your ankles.

  You’ll likely feel quite smug and self-satisfied for the first few, but remember: No rest until all 7 are done and no rest in between exercises.

  For all of these—keep your big toe below your heel (think pigeon-toed) to ensure you’re targeting the right muscles, and perform this series 2 times per week.

  #1—Up/Down

  Lie down on your side and use your arm to support your head. Keeping your legs straight, lift your top leg and lower it, keeping your foot internally rotated as described above. Don’t lift the foot very high. The max angle at your crotch should not exceed 30 degrees. Higher reduces the tension and defeats the purpose.

  For exercises #2–4, maintain a roughly 12-inch distance between your ankles at the bottom. Maximize tension on the glute medius and only move your leg in a horizontal plane. Ensure the ankle doesn’t dip when kicking behind you, for instance. In the first 1 or 2 workouts, aim to find the leg height that is *hardest* for you. It’s usually 12 to 18 inches from the lower ankle. Remember to keep toe below heel.

  #2—Front Kick/Swing

  Kick your top leg out to 45 degrees at the hip (as shown below). Think “cabaret.”

  #3—Back Swing

  Swing your leg back as far as possible without arching your back.

  #4—Full Front and Back Swing

  Swing your leg forward and then back (the previous two combined), with no pause at the midline.

  #5—Clockwise Circles

  Paint an 18-inch-diameter circle with your heel. Remember, at the bottom of the circle, your ankles should be roughly 12 inches apart. If you let the ankles get within inches of each other, you’re cheating.

  #6—Counterclockwise Circles

  Repeat in the other direction.

  #7—Bicycle Motion

  Pedal as if you were using a bicycle.

  Easy peasy, Japanesey? Switch sides and repeat.

  Plank Circles on Swiss Ball

  The goal of this separate exercise is to create scapular (shoulder blade) movement and rotation. Scapular mobility is one of the keys to upper-body function and longevity. The target muscles are the teres minor, infraspinatus, supraspinatus, subscapularis, and rhomboid.

  The setup is simple: Get into a plank position with your elbows propped on a Swiss ball, forearms pointing straight ahead. Don’t sag between the shoulder blades or at the lower back (keep the “hollow” and “protracted” positions described on page 19). Start with the legs wide for stability, and you can narrow the feet as you get stronger. Keeping your body in this position, use your forearms to move the ball as described below. One set consists of 10 to 15 reps of each of the following with no rest in between:

  Clockwise circles

  Counter-clockwise circles

  Forward and backward (i.e., sliding the elbows forward 6 to 12 inches and then back to your ribs)

  When you’re doing this correctly, you should feel your entire shoulder blades (scapulae) moving.

  Peter will do 3 total sets per workout, 2 times per week. He will superset these with “Wolverines” (Google it) on a cable machine. If done correctly, Wolverines target the rhomboids more than the deltoids.

  5 Blood Tests Peter GENERALLY Recommends

  “Of course, the answers depend on the individual and the risks each person faces (cardiovascular disease, cancer, etc.) based on family history and genetics, but—broadly speaking—looking through the lens of preventing death, these five tests are very important.”

  APOE Genotype: “This informs my thinking on a person’s risk for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The gene is far from causal, meaning, having it does not cause AD, but it increases risk anywhere from a bit to a lot, depending on which variant you have and how many copies you have. For what it’s worth, the apoE phenotype (i.e., the actual amount of the lipoprotein in circulation in your body) is more predictive of AD than the gene and is obviously a better marker to track, however [a test is] not yet commercially available. Stand by, though. I’m working on it.”

  LDL Particle Number via NMR (technology that can count the number of lipoproteins in the blood): “This counts all of the LDL particles, which are the dominant particles that traffic cholesterol in the body, both to and from the heart and to and from the liver. We know [that] the higher the number of these particles, the greater your risk of cardiovascular disease.”

  Lp(a) (“L-P-little-A”) via NMR: “The Lp(a) particle is perhaps the most atherogenic particle in the body, and while it’s included in the total of LDL particle numbers, I want to know if somebody has an elevated Lp(a) particle number, because that, in and of itself, independent of the total LDL particle number, is an enormous predictor of risk. It’s something we have to act on, but we do so indirectly. In other words, diet and drugs don’t seem to have any effect on that number, so we pull the lev
er harder on other things. Nearly 10% of people have inherited an elevated level of Lp(a), and it is hands down the most common risk for hereditary atherosclerosis. The bad news is that most doctors don’t screen for it; the good news is that knowing you have it can save your life, and a drug (in a class called “apo(a) antisense” drugs) to treat it directly will be around in approximately 3 or 4 years.”

  OGTT (Oral Glucose Tolerance Test): “In this test, you drink a glucose concoction and then look at insulin and glucose response at 60 minutes and 120 minutes. The 1-hour mark is where you may see the early warning signs with elevated glucose levels (or anything over 40 to 50 on insulin), which can represent hyperinsulinemia, a harbinger of metabolic problems. In fact, the 1-hour insulin response may be the most important metabolic indicator of your propensity to hyperinsulinemia and insulin resistance, even in the presence of normal ‘traditional’ markers such as HbA1C.”

  IGF-1 (Insulin-like Growth Factor-1): “This is a pretty strong driver of cancer. Diet choices (e.g., ketogenic diet, caloric restriction, intermittent fasting) can help keep IGF-1 levels low, if such a strategy is warranted.”

  Ketosis Warning Signs

  “Keto works well for many people, but it’s not ideal for all. It’s also not clear why some people do well for long periods of time, while others seem to derive max benefit from cycling. If certain markers get elevated (e.g., C-reactive protein, uric acid, homocysteine, and LDL particle numbers), it’s likely that the diet is not working properly for that person and requires tweaking or removal. Some patients who suffer from significant LDL particle number increases on keto can reverse the trend by limiting saturated fat to fewer than 25 g and replacing the required fat calories with monounsaturated fats (e.g., macadamia nut oil, olive oil, limited avocado oil).”