The 4-Hour Body: Eating the Elephant and Learning to Swim in 10 Days
“Just remember: somewhere in China, a little girl is warming up with your max.” That’s what Olympic weightlifting coach Jim Conroy tells his athletes. Welcome to chapters 33 and 34. One is about adding 100 pounds to your bench press. The other is about a guy who was scared of water learning to swim a mile in the ocean. Both come down to the same idea: eat the elephant one bite at a time.
The Elephant: Adding 100 Pounds to Your Bench Press
Tim’s bench press was his weakest lift. Wrestling, his main sport, basically ignored chest muscles. So he called Marty Gallagher, a man who coached legends. Ed Coan - 70+ world records. Kirk Karwoski - a squat world record of 1,003 pounds that still stood 16 years later. Marty himself was a three-time master powerlifting world champion.
The question was simple: can a regular guy go from a 200-pound bench to 300 in six months?
Marty’s answer: improbable, but not impossible. You just need three things.
The Three Requirements
1. A periodized plan. Periodization is a fancy word for planning your weights in advance, week by week. Kirk Karwoski would sit down with a pencil 12 weeks before a world championship. He’d write out every weight, every rep, every set for three months. Then he’d hit every single one. Not a single missed rep across an entire cycle.
That’s the level of precision we’re talking about.
2. No missed workouts. Zero. Not one.
3. You must gain muscle. This is the part nobody wants to hear. Any fitness “expert” who claims you can add 50% to your bench without gaining weight is either delusional or trying to sell you something. It takes roughly a 10% increase in lean muscle mass to get a 50% increase in strength. Period.
The Three Phases
Marty’s program runs 26 weeks total.
Phase I (12 weeks): Bench press once a week using three grips. Competitive grip for max power. Wide grip for starting power. Narrow grip for finishing power. Each week, the weights go up according to a precise schedule. By the end, you’ve added about 30% to your bench and 11% to your lean mass.
Phase II (6 weeks): This is the part that goes against human instinct. You stop barbell benching entirely. Switch to heavy dumbbells instead. Flat and incline, paused at the chest, once a week. Your body “forgets” the barbell movements. Your hypothalamus recalibrates. You feel like you’re losing ground, but you’re actually setting up the next jump.
Phase III (8 weeks): You bring the barbell back. Three grips again, but now your body reacts to them like they’re brand new. The training effect hits hard. Chest, arms, and shoulders get shocked into growth again.
That’s how you eat an elephant. One phase, one week, one rep at a time.
Oh, and about those bench press numbers for context. Joe Ceklovsky has bench-pressed 600 pounds at 148 pounds bodyweight. Scot Mendelson pressed 1,031 pounds at 275. To visualize that: load a standard Olympic bar with 45-pound plates until no more can fit. That’s only 885 pounds. Scot uses 100-pound plates. The steel bar literally bends around his hands. He wears a mouth guard so he doesn’t shatter his teeth from jaw tension.
These are unusual people. But you can learn a lot from the extremes.
Learning to Swim in 10 Days
Now here’s a story I find more relatable than bench pressing a small car.
Tim Ferriss had national titles in other sports. But he could barely stay afloat for 30 seconds. Swimming terrified him. Every time he tried to learn - and he tried almost a dozen times - his heart rate shot to 180+ after one or two pool lengths. It was exhausting and miserable.
Then a friend made him a bet. The friend would quit coffee for all of 2008 if Tim could train for and finish a one-kilometer open-water race that year. The friend was a former competitive swimmer. He argued that swimming was a fundamental life skill, something Tim would need to teach his future kids.
Tim agreed. Then he tried everything. Kick boards - barely moved, felt humiliated. Hand paddles - nearly destroyed his shoulders. He read the “best” books. All failures.
The Turning Point
Months later, at a barbecue, Tim met Chris Sacca (former Google, now investor and triathlete). Before Tim could even finish describing his problem, Chris cut him off: “I have the answer to your prayers.”
Chris pointed him to Total Immersion (TI), a swimming method developed by coach Terry Laughlin.
Tim ordered the book and the freestyle DVD. In his first workout, without any coaching, he cut his water resistance by about 50%. By the fourth workout, he’d gone from 25+ strokes per 20-yard length to an average of 11 strokes. That’s more than twice the distance with the same effort. No panic. No stress. He actually felt better leaving the pool than when he got in.
The Eight Tips That Changed Everything
Here’s what made the biggest difference.
1. Stop kicking harder. Everyone tells struggling swimmers to kick more. Wrong approach. Focus on shoulder roll and keeping your body horizontal. Less drag beats more force every time.
2. Look straight down. Keep your head in line with your spine, like when you’re walking. Most beginners lift their heads. That pushes your legs down. Your legs down means more drag. More drag means more effort for less distance.
3. Swim on your sides, not your stomach. Think of freestyle as alternating between “streamlined right side” and “streamlined left side.” Here’s a quick test: stand facing a wall and reach up with your right arm. Now turn your right hip to the wall and reach again. You’ll gain 3-6 inches. That extra length adds up fast over hundreds of strokes.
4. Angle your arm down into the water. Push your hand and arm below your head as you enter. This downward pressure brings your legs up. It feels like swimming downhill.
5. Fewer strokes, not faster strokes. Focus on gliding farther on each stroke. Count your strokes per lap and try to bring the number down.
6. Turn your whole body to breathe, not just your head. Stretch your extended underwater arm and rotate. You should feel a stretch in your back, like reaching for something on a high shelf. Exhale slowly underwater. If you wait to exhale until your face is out, you’ll have to both exhale and inhale in one gasp. That’s how you swallow water and burn out.
7. Practice hand swapping. Keep your lead arm fully extended until the other hand comes over and enters the water near the extended arm’s forearm. This one drill alone cut 3-4 strokes per lap.
8. Call it “practice,” not “workout.” You’re training your nervous system, not your cardio. If it feels like a struggle, your technique is off. Stop and fix it rather than pushing through and building bad habits.
The Mile in the Ocean
Four months before his deadline, Tim went home to Long Island for his birthday. He woke up early, walked to the beach, and asked the lifeguard how far away a red-roofed house was. “Almost exactly a mile.”
He walked to the house. Put on his goggles. Said “Fuck it” out loud. Yelled. Got in the water.
He swam a mile in the ocean. Alone. About 100 feet offshore, breathing every third stroke, alternating sides. When he reached the lifeguard stand, he kept going another 200 yards just because he could. There was no fatigue.
Walking up the sand, he’d never been prouder. One of his deepest lifelong insecurities was gone. And it would never come back.
The Common Thread
Both chapters teach the same lesson. The bench press chapter is about eating an elephant - breaking a huge goal into precise, planned phases. The swimming chapter is about finding the right method and focusing on technique instead of effort.
Most people fail at physical skills because they try harder instead of trying smarter. They kick more, they push more, they grind more. But the answer is usually the opposite. Plan better. Move less but move right. Let the system do the work.
Whether it’s 100 pounds on your bench or a mile in the ocean, the elephant gets eaten one bite at a time.
Previous: Becoming an Effortless Superhuman
Next: Hitting Like Babe Ruth and Holding Your Breath
This is part of my 4-Hour Body retelling series. New posts every Saturday.