💪 Books & Biceps - Issue 198

Your 5-Minute Brain and Body Flex

Books & Biceps is the only weekly e-mail that combines reading recommendations, bestselling author interviews, legit workouts and more.

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WRITING

The Tycoons book that I recommended last week is awesome but it’s a beast and taking a while to get through. When I’m in the thick of a “big” book I like to break it up by reading some long form features and articles… I read a bunch this week, but two stood out that I had to recommend:

LL Cool J — Radio: A 35th Anniversary Retrospective by Dart Adams

I was seven years old when LL Cool J’s debut album came out so I won’t pretend to remember it… But I do remember that once I hit middle school songs like “I Need a Beat” and for me, in particular, “Rock the Bells” were already on every mix tape me and my friends made. Rock the Bells was tough and cool and hard, but also clever and funny at times. It was the perfect rap to get into rap for a twelve year old with a little lawn mowing money cruising through Tower Records… I’ve been an LL fan ever since and I admit I knew very little about how he broke through at only sixteen years old. I didn’t know how he hunted down labels to send his mix tapes to… I didn’t know how he met Rick Rubin through Ad Rock of the Beastie Boys…and there are about 50 other things I didn’t know in this article. Dart’s piece is a must-read for LL fans.

Bo Jackson Makes Video Game History Again with his First Madden Cover by Aaron Dodson

I’ll read just about anything on Bo Jackson; and that goes double for anything about Jackson’s dominance in Tecmo Bowl. Now you add in Aaron Dodson interviewing Bo about Tecmo Bowl and his legendary place in gaming and sports and…well…I’m IN.

Dodson does a great job and asks all of the questions you’d like to ask, which gives us all the answers you’d like to get, like this one from Bo:

“It really makes me feel good that I have grown men in their 40s saying, ‘Hey, my cousin and I got into the biggest fight of our lives because we both wanted to be you in Tecmo Bowl when we were young. So our parents took the game and my dad locked it up in his tool cabinet. We couldn’t play with it for a month because the fight was so intense.’ I hear that a lot.”

I feel like I don’t really need to tell you much more. You either grew up with the legend of Bo or not. Either way, read it.

BICEPS

A few weeks ago I wrote about adding ‘21s’ to my workout and as usual, someone wrote in a suggestion for a different version of this arm workout staple to try. I tried it. I liked it. The workout is called 10s.

All you do is take the 45 pound bar and do one long pyramid set with only 5 seconds rest between reps: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

It starts off super easy… but finishes pretty hard. I put 5s on each end of the bar to make it 55 lbs, but you can do what you want. Only takes maybe 5 minutes but it’s a good finisher.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Dreams don’t have deadlines.” - LL Cool J

QUICK FLEXES

• Took this candid shot of what I look like every day at my second office, AKA, my daughter’s swim practice, as I try to find the one not-broken lounge chair to work on.

• I shared this awesome shot I found in my research for my new Dominique Wilkins project. It’s a super young Magic Johnson, ‘Nique and Isiah Thomas hanging out at a playground or something. Lot of people liked it. Super old school NBA.

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