The 4-Hour Body: Building the Perfect Posterior and Six-Minute Abs

Two chapters this week. One about your butt. One about your abs. Both are short because the actual work is embarrassingly simple.

Chapter 14: Building the Perfect Posterior

Your posterior chain - everything from the base of your skull to your Achilles tendons - is where the real power lives. But the star of this chapter is not Tim. It is Tracy Reifkind.

Tracy’s Story

Tracy was 245 pounds at age 41. She had been a chubby kid back when that was rare. She kept gaining throughout her life and had basically accepted it. No tank tops. No travel to Italy (her dream trip). Her weight was causing gastrointestinal problems so bad she couldn’t go far from home.

Then her coworkers started a betting pool. Six women, $100 each, whoever loses the highest percentage of body fat in 12 weeks wins the pot. Tracy made it seven. The pot went to $700.

Her husband, Mark Reifkind, was a former national team coach in powerlifting who also competed in Olympic gymnastics. He introduced her to kettlebells.

Tracy lost 45 pounds of fat in the first 12 weeks and won her bet. She kept going and eventually lost over 100 pounds total. At 129.6 pounds she looked 10 years younger.

The secret? The Russian kettlebell swing, done twice a week, 15-20 minutes per session. Her longest session ever was 35 minutes. That was the peak, not the average.

No marathon cardio. No extreme dieting.

One Move is All You Need

Tim tried complex kettlebell movements back in 1999 and quit after two sessions because of shoulder problems. Six years later he realized the mistake. He was overcomplicating it. One move: the two-hand swing.

He also met “The Kiwi” in Buenos Aires - a guy with a degree in exercise physiology whose obsession with perfecting the female posterior started when he saw a samba dancer in Brazil balance tequila shots on top of each butt cheek. By 2000, he had refined his method to four weeks of swings and took his girlfriend from a surfboard profile to being voted one of the top 10 sexiest out of 39,000 university students.

Tim tested a minimal version himself. One set of 75 swings with a 53-pound kettlebell, twice a week. Total weekly time: 10-20 minutes. In six weeks he hit his lowest body fat since 1999.

The Technique

• Feet wider than shoulder width, toes pointed out about 30 degrees
• Shoulders pulled back and down, don’t round your back
• The downswing is sitting-back-on-a-chair, not squatting-down
• At the top, squeeze your glutes as hard as humanly possible. Tim says if your dog’s head gets in the way, it should be lights out for Fido

Learn it with Zar Horton’s method: start with touch-and-go deadlifts between your feet. Move the kettlebell behind your heels so the deadlift naturally becomes a pendulum. Let that pendulum grow into a full swing. Done.

Fleur’s Minimal Version

Fleur B. didn’t have 100 pounds to lose. She had the opposite problem - the last few stubborn pounds that running three times a week couldn’t touch.

Her program, three times a week, before breakfast:

1. One set of 20 glute activation raises
2. One set of 15 flying dogs (each side)
3. One set of 50 kettlebell swings

Five minutes per session. One hour per month total.

In five weeks: body fat dropped from 21.1% to 18%. Waist fat thickness went from 7.0 mm to 4.1 mm. Almost a pound of fat lost per week. As a bonus, the swings fixed her desk-work slouch. Better posture made her look like she had a smaller rib cage and larger chest. Good posture is free cosmetic surgery.

Chapter 15: Six-Minute Abs

Tim opens with the famous scene from There’s Something About Mary - the hitchhiker with a business plan for “7-Minute Abs” who panics at the idea of 6-Minute Abs. “It’s like you’re dreaming about Gorgonzola cheese when it’s clearly Brie time, baby.”

Tim’s own scene is funnier. His girlfriend walks out of the shower in a Napa hotel room to find him on all fours on the bed, stomach heaving. “You look like a cat about to vomit.” He grins. “Thirty more seconds.”

For the first time in his life he had a visible six-pack. Cat vomiting worked.

Why Most Ab Exercises Fail

Tim spent over a decade doing conventional ab exercises with no visible results. Even when his body fat was low enough to show veins everywhere, his six-pack was a no-show.

The problem: every standard exercise only uses half the range of motion. Crunches, sit-ups, roman chair - they all work the “curling forward” direction. Nobody was training the stretched position.

Important note: low body fat is necessary but not sufficient. You need both diet (12% or less for men) AND the right exercises.

Exercise 1: The Myotatic Crunch

Uses a BOSU ball or small Swiss ball. Butt close to the floor, no more than six inches up.

1. Arms stretched overhead, hands overlapping like a diving position. Keep arms behind or next to ears the whole time.
2. Lower for 4 seconds until fingers touch the floor. Keep reaching further away from the ball.
3. Pause at the bottom for 2 seconds at maximum stretch.
4. Rise under control. Pause at top for 2 seconds. Arms should NOT pass vertical.
5. Do 10 reps. When that gets easy, hold a book for extra weight.

The name comes from the myotatic reflex - the stretch reflex. By going into full back extension (the part every other exercise skips), you trigger a stronger contraction. Tim saw results in three weeks.

Exercise 2: The Cat Vomit Exercise

This targets the transverse abdominis (TVA) - the deepest ab muscle that runs horizontally like a belt. Tim calls it the “corset muscle.” Regular crunches hit the vertical fibers. They will never pull your belly in. The TVA is what creates that flat, tight look.

1. Get on all fours. Look at the floor under your head.
2. Forcefully exhale ALL air from your mouth. Your abs should contract just from this.
3. Hold your breath. Pull your belly button toward your spine as hard as you can. Hold for 8-12 seconds.
4. Inhale fully through the nose.
5. One rest breath, then repeat. Do 10 total.

That is the entire ab program. Two exercises, twice a week, after kettlebell swings. Under six minutes.

A Note for Women

Tim warns against heavy resistance on obliques - square obliques destroy the hourglass shape. The myotatic crunch and cat vomit are safe. For extra core work, stick with timed planks: 30 seconds front, 30 seconds each side, up to 90 seconds max.

Also: fix your pelvic tilt with hip flexor stretches, 30 seconds per side, once a day. That small potbelly look common even on fit women is often just anterior pelvic tilt, not fat.

My Take

Two chapters, two simple protocols. Kettlebell swings 2-3 times a week for your posterior chain. Myotatic crunch plus cat vomit twice a week for abs. Total weekly time commitment: maybe 30 minutes.

Tracy Reifkind’s story is the standout. A 41-year-old woman who lost over 100 pounds with a cannonball on a handle and 20 minutes twice a week. No gym membership, no complicated routine.

The cat vomit exercise sounds ridiculous and looks worse. But if your abs still poke out at low body fat, you are probably ignoring the TVA. Tim includes an EMG chart showing the traditional crunch is basically the worst ab exercise you can do. Even a bicycle crunch is 2.5 times more effective. But neither hits the TVA.

These chapters are not long. The exercises are not complicated. That is the point.

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Next: From Geek to Freak - Gaining 34 Pounds in 28 Days

This is part of my 4-Hour Body retelling series. New posts every Saturday.