Men_s Fitness USA - June 2016

The New All-Natural Sports Nutrition Line

THE PROS’

BODY BLUEPRINT > Pack on Muscle > Get Shredded > Play Forever > Look Like THIS

BETTER

SEX TONIGHT (TRY THE NEW SOFA POSITION!)

THE FOOLPROOF LOSE-YOUR-GUT WORKOUT

*

ROCK YOUR SUMMER

HUNDREDS OF GEAR, TECH, AND TRAVELTIPS

TM

Zac

EFRON HIS BAYWATCH

PLAN TO GET AS JACKED AS THE ROCK!

SALADS & SANDWICHES THAT BUILD MUSCLE 7 SECRETS OF LIFELONG ATHLETES GUY’S GUIDE TO BEST-EVER

BBQ

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LISTERINE USERS ARE 3.26X MORE LIKELY TO SPIN A BASKETBALL ON ONE FINGER LISTERINE USERS ARE MORE LIKELY TO MOVE THEIR PECTORAL MUSCLES HOW ABOUT YOU?

LISTERINE USERS ARE MORE LIKELY TO SKYDIVE

June Breakthroughs 66

84

Top News Is sushi the secret to healthy living?

Fitness Box your way to a smaller waist; and the new (nervous-making) science on HIIT.

Health

93 72

Another excuse to have sex: It helps your prostate. Thanks, prostate!

Nutrition Create a filling, bodybuilding “bowl meal,” the best breakfast for weight loss, and a new way to feel the “pulse.”

Success

78

Will love put you in the poorhouse?

HOW EXTWILIGHT STAR ASHLEY GREENE LEFT HER COMFORT ZONE.

To m S c h i r m a c h e r /A u g u s t

GO HIGHER Promaster Navihawk GPS

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A watch that receives a satellite signal in as quick as 3 seconds for precise timekeeping anywhere in the world.

Citizen Boutique Times Square KAY JEWELERS kay.com/citizen

June

Columns 46

48

50

46

Chop shop: revvedup salads for real men.

Game Changers

Look Great

The Body Book

23 Healthy Grilling

55 Win with Flying Colors

102 Build the Best Body on the Beach

How to pull off bright colors? Dress them down with denim.

Zac Efron’s very own Baywatch -priming workouts.

58 Face Time

108 Mighty Great Sandwiches

Every meal can sizzle with these lean recipes and tips.

26 Training The 122 guide to building muscle.

The sleekest watches for any occasion (even joining the Swiss Army).

30 Hot Seat On-screen vampire Ashley Greene now goes Rogue on TV.

62 Cologne

32 Wisdom Matt Bomer on football and fatherhood.

ON THE COVER

64 Style Guy Actor and World of Warcraft fiend Rob Kazinsky wears the best hoodie ever.

33 Drive Meet the M2 Coupé.

34 Experience Rock-climb your way back to World War I.

Regulars

38 Gear Car camping? Going backcountry? Here’s what you need.

42 Tech Wearables for the next-level athlete.

44 Drinks A cocktail with a helluva kick.

6 Fitness on the Go ZAC EFRON

8 View from the Top

PHOTOGRAPH:

JEFF LIPSKY GROOMING:

Sabrina Bedrani/The Wall Group using Dior T-SHIRT A N D WAT C H :

Tommy Hilfiger J E A N S : Baldwin

55 Lose your fear of blazing brights.

9 Adventure Calendar 128 #Fitwit Wimbledon rocks our lawn, and Adriana Lima rules our dreams—all in 140 characters or less.

114 Your New Colossal Chest The simplest way to build the upper body of your dreams.

118 Lose lbs Today with…Water? Drink (water) and eat (butter) your way to a trimmer body.

120 Lose the Shoes, Raise the Dead Build a stronger deadlift and bigger back by working out with your shoes off.

122 A New Hope Mark Wahlberg wants to help you in your supplement search.

C l o c k w i s e f r o m t o p l e f t : J a r r e n V i n k ; C h r i s t o p h e r Te s t a n i ; A n d y R y a n

Hit “refresh” with summer’s coolest new scents.

Protein-packed combos you can eat anywhere, anytime.

R E I M A G I N E

This month on

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Foods of Summer

Check out our exclusive racing preview with him online, then read our follow-up print interview in next month’s issue. mensfitness.com/earnhardt

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JACKED LIKE ZAC Q Find out how Zac Efron transformed his body.

GET WITH THE PROGRAM

The 15 things that could be doing it—and how to change them. mensfitness.com/badsex

Q Mine through our massive video library to find your next body-reconstructing workout.

Don’t wash your hair every day— plus more rules for looking good. mensfitness.com/cleancut

Jay Gagen RPM Associates, 248-690-7013

Download it for free on your Apple or Android mobile device to unlock offers and exclusive videos.

What’s Killing Your Sex Life?

10 Grooming Commandments

SENIOR DESIGNER Joe Summa

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Built for the Beach

Dale Earnhardt Jr.

DETROIT SALES REPRESENTATIVE

Victor Kim

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The freshest in-season produce to help you trim down.

Look better than ever in just swim trunks with this five-day program. mensfitness.com/beachbody

EDITORIAL PRODUCTION COORDINATOR

BACK TO BASICS Q Are you getting the most out of these 20 moves? Check out the video demos.

I N T E R N AT I O N A L

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21-DAY SHRED UPGRADE

Q Your favorite rapid-fat-loss plan, now with more workouts and better user experience. mensfitness.com/21dayshred

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HEADING OFF ON A BIG TRIP?

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Race car driver. Animal whisperer. Nationwide® pet insurance member.

®

3 90% back on vet bills* 3 Use any vet, anywhere Get a quote today. petinsurance.com 855.630.7063 *With the Whole Pet with Wellness plan. Items such as grooming, tax, waste disposal, boarding, or pre-existing conditions are not eligible for coverage. See policy documents for a complete list of exclusions. Underwritten by Veterinary Pet Insurance Company (CA), Brea, CA, an A.M. Best A rated company (2013); National Casualty Company (all other states), Madison, WI, an A.M. Best A+ rated company (2014). Nationwide, the Nationwide N and Eagle, and Nationwide Is On Your Side are service marks of Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company. ©2016 Nationwide. ©2016 Hendrick Motorsports, LLC. 16ADV3826

View from the top

Transform yourself

Take a master class from fitness buff, father, and humanitarian Matt Bomer.

Watch out. Grab the smartest and handsomest new piece of wristwear for any occasion.

F r o m t o p : D o u g I n g l i s h ; A n d y R y a n ; C h r i s t o p h e r Te s t a n i ; J e f f L i p s k y

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H AT I L O V E M O S T A B O U T W O R K I N G

out isn’t seeing abs in the mirror, or the positive attention both women and men give a guy who’s got a good body. And it certainly isn’t the pile of smelly gym clothes that accumulates in the hamper. What I love is the fact that staying fit—perhaps more than any other habit or endeavor—makes you believe you can completely transform yourself. For the better, and forever. Whether you’re eating healthy to lose that extra 10 pounds you’ve been carrying around or powering your way through your first pushup, you can make yourself better by taking decisive action that transforms your body—and, eventually, your whole life. This issue is all about transformation. Start on page 66 with Zac Efron, and follow his journey from skinny star of teen hits like High School Musical to ripped leading man in next summer’s sureto-be blockbuster Baywatch. For that role, Efron whipped himself into absolutely perfect shape, reducing his body fat to a mere 5%. By remaking his body, Efron has relaunched his career, turning himself into a natural choice for the kind of superhero and action roles that create stars. Want to give his exact workout and diet plan a try? It’s on page 102.

Get wise.

Shred it. Eat like a man with the tastiest, meatiest, and heartiest new salads.

David J. Pecker Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of American Media, Inc.

Get jacked. Take a page from Zac Efron’s own weight-room and nutrition manual.

Fitness on the go

Adventure calendar A L L T H E T H I N G S T O D O T H I S M O N T H I N T H E G R E AT O U T D O O R S

JUNE 5

JUNE 5, 13, 19, OR 27

JUNE 9–12

JUNE 17–19

The Jungle Ultra

Learn to Climb Big Peaks

GoPro Mountain Games

Walk on the Wildflower Side

BELLINGHAM, WA

VA I L , C O

Q Technical rock, snowfields, ice—these are the harsh Alpine elements that defend big-mountain summits and separate mere hikers from grizzled mountaineers. This month, master them among the glaciated stratovolcanoes of the Cascade Range. The American Alpine Institute’s six-day primer sets you up with the skills—rock/ice climbing, crevasse rescue, fixed line travel, belaying—which you’ll use to scale Mt. Baker’s 10,778-foot summit.

Q This broad-ranging four-day fest is the Colorado mountain community’s celebration of all things outdoors, and includes wild, take-allcomers pro-am contests in bouldering, mountain biking, climbing, rafting, trail running, and whitewater kayaking. Here you’ll compete against dirtbags and elite athletes alike, taking time between events to enjoy music concerts and witness the oddball carnage of full-contact kayaking, dubbed the NASCAR of the sport.

G R E AT S M O K Y M O U N TA I N S N AT I O N A L PARK , TN

From top: Ewan Burns; Cour tesy of GoPro Mountain Games

CUSCO, PERU

Q Test yourself on this 142-mile stage race through Peru’s spectacular Manú National Park, one of the planet’s most biodiverse places. Starting high in the Andes cloud forest, you’ll descend 10,500 feet into the depths of the Amazon rain forest, where you’ll battle stifling heat, ford rivers, navigate mud-slicked trails, encounter local tribes, and, if you’re lucky, steer clear of jaguars, black caiman gators, and—less lethal but more demoralizing—biting ants. beyondtheultimate .co.uk

alpineinstitute.com

Brace yourself! This isn’t full-contact kayaking—but if you want it, the GoPro Mountain Games have it.

mountaingames.com

Q Even our mostvisited national park has its wild corners— you just have to know where to find them. Hit the Great Smoky Mountain trails on a guided three-day backcountry trip to explore lush old-growth forests, drink from pristine streams, and ogle the Technicolor rainbow created by the park’s 1,500-plus flowering plants, which erupt from deep forest floors to high, airy balds this time of year. awalkinthewoods.com

MEN’S FITNESS

9

Hard-hitting news from the cutting edge of modern research

Edited by Nina Combs

There’s something fishy going on in Japan—and it’s keeping people alive.

Jonathan Kambouris/ Gallery Stock

The sushi secret Japanese people are some of the healthiest on the planet. They have the highest life expectancy for men (76) and women (86), and, at 3%, the lowest obesity rate. (The U.S. sits at a flabby 32%.) They also have the lowest risk of death from all causes, along with reduced odds of dying from cardiovascular disease and stroke. So what the hell are they doing so right? Eating sushi. Or, to be more specific, eating salmon, tuna, cod, mackerel, octopus, eel, a little beef, some chicken, and a whole lot of rice, buckwheat noodles, carrots, cucumbers, mushrooms, pickles—well, basically what you’d see on the menu at your local sushi spot. Yes, according to a new study published in the journal BMJ, it’s the typical Japanese diet— defined by the country’s dietary guidelines as five to seven daily servings

of grains, five to six servings of vegetables, three to five servings of fish and meat, and two servings of dairy and fruits—that’s keeping this country’s citizens so extraordinarily healthy, In addition to eating mostly energy-dense, whole foods in the right proportions, the Japanese also serve smaller portions, so their daily calorie intake is about 25% less than that of Americans—a boon in itself, as studies have shown that even just an 8% reduction in calories could lead to longer life. To implement these guidelines in your own life, up your intake of fish, veggies, and grains; and the next time you hit a sushi joint, skip the overstuffed Americanized rolls and stick to more traditional Japanese fare by choosing sashimi (strips of raw fish), nigiri (raw fish on top of a bit of rice), and temaki (the coneshaped, seaweedwrapped rolls). Kanpai! — A D A M B I B L E MEN’S FITNESS

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Fitness

Breakthroughs

Knock out belly fat! Put your beer gut down for the count by finding your inner Ali. ¶ That’s the word from Down Under, where for 16 weeks researchers at the U. of Western Sydney put 12 overweight but fairly healthy people into two test groups: one that walked briskly four times a week for 50 minutes per session, and one that hit a heavy bag for the same amount of time, and did five boxingrelated interval exercises—heavy bag, focus mitts, circular body bag, footwork drills, and skipping—in three-minute intervals (2 minutes on, 1 minute rest). ¶ Four months later, the boxers had clearly won the bout: Their waist size was down 2.6 inches, they’d dropped an average of 11 pounds, and their body fat was 13% lower; even their heart rate and blood pressure were vastly improved. And the walkers? They’d lost just a quarter inch from their waists, barely a half pound overall, and only 5% of their body fat. And though their heart rate was a bit better, their BP was inexplicably worse. ¶ Despite the study’s small size, it’s obvious that, for getting lean, sleek, and shredded, putting on some gloves and whacking a heavy bag beats the shit out of taking a brisk walk.

P

Is High-Intensity Interval Training HIIT-ing the wall? Q To the consternation of HIIT junkies everywhere, new research has dumped a bucket of cold sweat on this red-hot craze. In a U. of British Columbia study, 12 untrained or

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MEN’S FITNESS

JUNE 2016

your muscle to defend against free radicals,” says the study’s Robert Boushel, Ph.D. “Still, even the welltrained shouldn’t do HIIT more than a few times a week.” And newbies? “Start slow and gradually increase the intensity over several weeks.”

Creatine maxes strength

QHard-training guys can benefit from adding proven supplements like fish oil, whey protein, and extra amino acids to their diets. Creatine is another safe, effective supp with a whole weight room’s worth of studies behind it showing it can get you to the next level in lean-muscle gains, aid recovery,

and boost your muscle strength. Well, add another study to the pile: As the journal Nutrients reports, research by scientists in Taiwan found that giving athletes 5g of creatine four times a day for six days produced significant strength gains compared with a placebo group. The creatine

group’s one-rep max on back squats jumped 14 pounds, while the noncreatine group had no significant gain. The study also tested explosive performance—movements that would come into play during soccer or baseball games—but found the supp gave the athletes no gains in performance.

F r o m t o p : B e n Wa t t s / Tr u n k A r c h i v e ; J o r g B a d u r a

That’s intense: HIIT stresses muscles for

moderately active, healthy men in their 20s did HIIT arm/ leg exercises (30 sec. intense work, 4 min. rest, 4–6 sets) on 7 out of 15 days. Afterward, muscle tissue showed that oxidative stress caused by HIIT weakened the mitochondria that power our cells by up to 45% posttraining—and that, researchers say, could invite disease caused by free radicals, like cancer or accelerated aging. But all’s not lost, HIIT fans: “If you have a solid fitness foundation, you have more enzymes in

‡

Health

Breakthroughs

Q Though men are more likely to go to a male doctor than a female, they’re less likely to be honest with him about symptoms— especially if they feel the need to be a tough guy (read: not show weakness to another man), two new Rutgers U. studies have discovered. But with a female doc, they’re more open. (Hey, they’re just chicks—no loss of mojo there, right?) If you hold back with Dr. Dude, switch to a female doc. You’ll be more comfortable dropping trou—and defenses.

EJACULATING AT LEAST 13 TIMES A MONTH LOWERS YOUR CANCER RISK. READY, SET…GO!

Butt out—fast!

Q Getting and stay-

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Ashes to ashes… Quitting smoking in one fell swoop is more successful than trying to do it gradually.

The more often you ejaculate, the lower your risk of prostate cancer will be, Harvard is reporting— and it doesn’t matter if you’re making sweet love to your honey bunch, banging a bridesmaid in a taxi cab, or choking the chicken in your mom’s powder room. ¶ The recent 10-year follow-up to a 2004 study confirmed that men who ejaculated more than 21 times a month had a 20% lower risk of prostate cancer than those who got off only four to seven times a month. “Even 13 or more ejaculations per month led to significant reductions in prostate cancer risk,” says study head Jennifer Rider, Ph.D. ¶ She and her colleagues speculate that getting rid of all of that baby batter releases a citrate that nourishes sperm and keeps nearby cells healthy, or that regularly flushing out all that moldy old baby batter purges potentially cancerous cells. ¶ And, in related dick news: Two to three cups of coffee (85–170mg caffeine) a day can make you 42% less likely to suffer from erectile dysfunction, according to a U. of Texas study. Docs think the caffeine relaxes the arteries and muscles that lead to the penis, allowing for more, and better, chubbies.

T

F r o m t o p : A r t h u r B e l e b e a u / Tr u n k A r c h i v e ; J o n a t h a n K a n t o r / G e t t y

ing trim could be as easy as making your job commute a little more active. Adults who bicycle to work weigh about 11 pounds less than those who drive cars, and have less (heartdamaging) body fat, according to U.K. researchers who analyzed data from a huge observational study of subjects aged 40–69, The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology reports. Even if cycling to work isn’t practical for you, keep this principle in mind: Every single thing you can do to get your butt out of the car is a step toward staying slimmer and healthier.

QDon’t try to stop smoking by tapering off—just pick a date and quit cold turkey. Oxford U. researchers split almost 700 subjects into two groups: one who would try to kick the habit gradually, and one who quit all in one shot. Both groups had access to tobacco-cessation programs, including advice, support, and

free replacementtherapy like patches and nicotine gum. At the end of six months, 22% of the cold turkeys were still ciggie-free, compared with 15.5% of the gradual quitters. Why? Struggling to cut down gave the gradual group an extra thing to do, which may have put them off quitting altogether, Oxford’s Nicola Lindson-Hawley, Ph.D., speculates. So, go ahead, just rip off the Band-Aid— you’ll have clean lungs and something to brag about with all those stillpuffing wimps.

Your prostate wants you to have more sex

Bowled over

IF YOU WANT MORE IN YOUR MEALS, START BOWLING.

Your memory is sweet on maple syrup QMaple syrup—the

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MEN’S FITNESS

QHey, it’s not the ’90s anymore, so ditch the plain old green tea and switch to matcha, a green tea that’s packed with loads more phytonutrients and even comes with its own traditional Zen Buddhist brewing ceremony (participation optional). Unlike regular green tea, matcha is produced by taking the—well, let’s just say that, between the tea bush and your kitchen, there’s some very picky leafpicking, air-drying, and stem-plucking, which creates a high-quality tea JUNE 2016

powder that can lower your risk of heart disease and even cancer. To brew matcha, try this quick-anddirty formula: Sift 2 tsp matcha into a bowl. Set a pot of water to boil, but remove it just before it does. Pour 2 oz of hot water in the bowl, and whisk till frothy. As for the ages-old preparation ritual, it involves kimonos, bells, barefoot bowing, and, at one point, sayeth Wikipedia, a nakadachi, a break so the host can “sweep the tea room, take down the scroll, and replace it with a flower arrangement.” Or, yeah, you could just pick up a cup at Starbucks.

Great bowl combos to whip (or order) up: Green with envy. Matcha tea has a lot more cardio-boosting antioxidants than regular green tea.

Pictured: Steak (protein; energy-boosting iron), quinoa, black beans (extra protein; fiber), corn, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, jalapeños (metabolism-boosting capsaicin), plantains, coconut-tomato sauce. Lamb (protein), whole-grain couscous (slow-burning carbs), grape tomatoes, romaine, banana peppers, yogurtbased tzatziki (more protein/probiotics), sriracha.

Salmon (heart-healthy omega-3 fats), brown rice, sweet potatoes (energizing grain-free carbs), cucumbers, avocados, soy-wasabi vinaigrette. Chicken (clean, lean protein), lentils (filling fiber), kale, spinach (vitamin K), feta cheese (bone-strengthening calcium), olives, green beans, sliced almonds (cholesterol-fighting monounsaturated fats), honey-tahini vinaigrette.

F r o m t o p : H a l f B a k e d H a r v e s t ; K h a n h Tr a n g / i S t o c k

real stuff, not the high-fructose synthetic slop— may play a big part in preventing brain diseases like Alzheimer’s and other dementias, a new U. of Toronto study shows. Compounds in the syrup can prevent proteins in our neurons from clumping to form dangerous plaque linked to brain disorders, researchers say. The data echo other recent findings on the subject.

Matcha Beats Green Tea to a Pulp

Instead of eating off a plate (how common!), the hot new I restaurant trend is plopping everything into—wait for it—a bowl. ¶ What, not revolutionary enough for you? Well, it’s actually a pretty mind-blowing, fit-body-building idea. No longer are you forced to limit yourself to just an entrée and two sides stuck on a dreary plate, looking like they’re doing time on the same cell block. Now you can pile on just about anything your heart desires—proteins, whole grains, vegetables, sauces—to make up an exciting, balanced meal with layers of complementary tastes. ¶ Bowl meals are especially popular at healthy fast-food joints like Sweetfin Poké, Sweetgreen, and Chopt, which are spreading across the country. (For other hearty meals they’ve inspired, see “Dude, Where’s My Salad?” on page 72). They let customers choose from the entire menu to fill their bowl— to boost flimsy greens with hunks of lean steak and plantains, for example, or turn a boring “one fish, one veg, one potato” plate into a gratifying hodgepodge of salmon, sweet potatoes, rice, cukes, avocado, and a splash of vinaigrette. ¶ To make your own bowl, says Rocket Fuel author Matt Kadey, R.D., “start with grains or a roasted sweet potato, add slightly smaller amounts of protein and vegetables, and end with some sort of spicy sauce—that’s the key to better-tasting bowl food.”

Nutrition The best whey to lose weight A new study from Israel’s Tel Aviv U. has discovered A that adding whey protein to a sensible breakfast can help you lose serious pounds. ¶ Researchers gave one group of subjects a breakfast of toast, light cream cheese, milk, a granola bar, an apple, and a whey-protein shake; another group got a similar breakfast, with eggs, soy, or tuna standing in for the protein powder; a third group got a low-protein, high-carb/starch meal. ¶ After 12 weeks, the whey-protein group had lost almost 17 pounds; the eggs/soy/tuna protein group was down more than 13 pounds; but the carb/starch group had dropped just 6.8 pounds. ¶ The study authors also report that the whey-protein group felt fuller throughout the day, which made overeating less common. And their bodies showed significant suppression of ghrelin, also known as the hunger hormone that controls appetite and energy. ¶ To pump up the whey in your breakfast, simply make a whey-protein shake with milk or add whole-food sources like ricotta (it has the highest whey content of any food), other soft cheeses such as Neufchâtel, or Greek yogurt.

ADD A WHEY PROTEIN SHAKE TO BREAKFAST AND WATCH THE FAT DISAPPEAR.

Drop pounds by eating “pulses”

QSimply cutting

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JUNE 2016

Processed foods: They’re taking over!

Check your pulse. Beans and other pulses can halt cravings.

QA poll on what more than 9,000 Americans ate in a 24-hour period showed—astonishingly—that ultraprocessed items like cereal, instant soup, soft drinks, and frozen dinners make up more than 50% of the U.S. diet. Processed fare, laden with artificial colorings, flavorings,

and other additives, also accounts for almost 90% of all the added sugar in our diets. With 35% of American adults obese and 68% overweight or obese (as the nonprofit State of Obesity project estimates), aren’t you glad you’re eating healthy, not turning into one of those guys who sweats gravy when he tries to get off the couch?

From top: Lucas Zarebinski; Rob Lawson/ Get t y

sugary drinks from your daily diet could keep deadly visceral fat from putting a stranglehold on your internal organs, says a new study in the journal Circulation. Too much visceral fat, the deep fat that wraps around vital organs like your heart, liver, and kidneys, can lead to metabolic syndrome, whose symptoms can include high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and raised insulin levels.

QAt first we thought the U.N. had gone a little buggy naming 2016 “The Year of the Pulse”—like, in which year would you not want to have a pulse? Then we realized: Oh, not that kind of pulse. These pulses are foods that keep cravings at bay and can even help you whittle your waist— so, yeah, definitely worth checking out. Previously known by their maiden names—kidney bean, navy bean, pinto bean, garbanzo bean, dried French green bean (flageolets), black-eyed and split pea, lentil,

and peanut—pulses are legumes harvested only for the dry seed, unlike green peas or soybeans, which are vegetable crops. And apparently they can help you lose weight: According to an analysis of 21 clinical trials, 940 subjects ate just a ¾-cup serving of pulses daily—but didn’t change anything else diet- or activitywise—yet in six weeks, they still lost about threefourths of a pound, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reports. Bonus: Pulses also help you feel fuller; supply fiber and nonanimal protein; and even cut cholesterol.

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Success Breakthroughs

The wrong (and right) places to open up. Manspreading: Good in a dating selfie, bad on an NYC subway.

Women like it when you go wide Q Manspreading your fellow train passengers out of their seats is downright rude. But manspreading in your Tinder pic? Downright smart. As it turns out, “expansive” postures (legs spread, arms open) are more attractive to the opposite sex— especially women— than “contractive” poses (legs crossed, arms folded) and get more interest

on dating sites, two UC Berkeley experiments have shown. In one, speed daters watched videos of potential matches in various postures and voted yes or no to a meeting. In the other, online daters each posted two profiles, one with a pic of closed posture and one an open pose. In all cases, the open posture won— possibly because it signals openness and dominance, says study co-author Tanya Vacharkulksemsuk.

Wha?! Pot worse than booze? No way. Q I dunno, man. I just

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—J A M E S R O S E N T H A L

JUNE 2016

You may think you’re frugal, but chances are that frugality goes right out the window when you shop for someone you love. ¶ In a study in Judgment and Decision Making, subjects shopped for one of three items: a wedding ring, a storage container for either a grandfather clock or a cremated grandfather (ha!), or birthday cupcakes for a loved one. ¶ Results: When buying for someone they loved, most subjects felt it was inappropriate to question a price, look for a cheaper option, or haggle—even when prices were negotiable. For example, 91% of wedding-ring shoppers chose highpriced rings that weren’t necessarily high quality, and most buyers of crematory containers and b’day sweets said OK to any price quoted. But buyers of the “clock box,” a much less personal item, did look for ways to save money. ¶ The study authors call these “sacred” vs. “secular” purchases, meaning: No one wants to look like a cheapskate in the eyes of a loved one—or society. ¶ But words to the wise: Be discriminating about how many people merit big cash outlays—life’s long; you’ll want to make it to the end with a few bucks still in your pocket. And the highest price isn’t always the best value, so refusing to shop around isn’t respectful, it’s stupid—even Grandpa understood that.

Y

FOR MORE LIFE-HACKING SUCCESS TIPS, GO TO MENSFITNESS .COM.

F r o m l e f t : C o u r t e s y o f M TA ; F e l i c i t y I n g r a m / t h e l i c e n s i n g p r o j e c t . c o m

read on the Internet that weed poses a greater risk to midlife success than alcohol. These scientists, they followed 947 New Zealanders from when they were 0 in 1972–73 till they were 38 and kept track of how much weed they smoked, how much booze they drank, and how fucked up their lives were compared with their folks at 38. They found out that pot and booze both cause downward mobility, antisocial behavior, and relationship agita. Word.

But they also say that “regular” weed smokers, the ones who light up four– plus times a week (I’d think more like fourplus times a day, but hey, I’m no scientist. At least, I don’t think I am…), had even worse cash problems and job prospects than alkies. Well, I think it’s all bullshit, man. Because I’ve been sitting here in my underwear in front of my computer all day and all night for 15 years now, stoned to the bejesus, and I swear, it has not affected me at all.

Can love put you in the poorhouse?

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EAT THIS NOT THAT

The healthy grillmeister Take a break from burgers and BBQ long enough to master leaner meat and veggies and you’ll discover that every day can be grill day By Shawn Donnelly Photographs by Christopher Testani

Tricks of the trade. Things like cedar planks and skewers take the guesswork out of grilling fish and asparagus.

Grill fests usually involve seeking out G the fattiest, most celebratory cuts of meat we can find, then lathering on sugar-packed sauces and going for broke. But barbecue days don’t have to be cheat days. “Grilling is actually inherently healthy because you’re taking away the fat and adding flavor with an open flame,” says Project Smoke author Steven Raichlen. We asked Raichlen and Jamie Purviance, author of Weber’s New American Barbecue, to show us the easiest ways to grill what’s good for us.

Game Changers

A juicier chicken breast Q “A chicken breast is so lean it dries out quickly,” explains Jamie Purviance. “And its uneven thickness makes it even harder to cook.” But when done right, it’s far tastier than when baked. His chicken-grilling tips: Buy quality boneless, skinless breasts that come from an organic, free-range chicken. “It makes a huge difference.”

Use medium heat. “Guys often blast chicken with too much heat—this dries the outside and leaves the inside uncooked.” Leave the grill lid down so the heat bounces off the lid and back onto the meat. “It speeds up the overall cooking, which helps maintain moisture and captures the smokiness. Also, the grate will be hotter—that will create more caramelization, which will add to the taste.” Only turn the chicken breasts once. “A lot of guys tend to 24

MEN’S FITNESS

Don’t guestimate when it’s done—use a meat thermometer, which should read 165°F. “Cutting into it to check is total amateur hour.” Also: “Make sure it’s opaque in the center, not pink or fleshy.” And don’t let your mind wander: “There’s a short window of time to take it off.” Always let chicken rest for a few minutes after you take it off the grill. This will relax the meat and make it juicier.

No more dry fillets. Grilling traps moisture and adds smoky flavor.

Lemon Chicken Marinade

Expert’s guide to grill heat

2

tsp finely grated lemon zest ¼ cup fresh lemon juice 1 tbsp Dijon mustard ½ tsp dried oregano 2 garlic cloves, minced 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil 1½ tsp freshly ground black pepper 1 tsp kosher salt

Whisk together all ingredients. Place chicken breasts in a large, resealable plastic bag with marinade. Press the air out and seal tightly. Place in a bowl and refrigerate for 1 to 4 hours, turning the bag occasionally.

JUNE 2016

WHEN DONE RIGHT, GRILLED CHICKEN BREASTS TASTE FAR BETTER THAN BAKED.

Q A simple Miss issippi count is the best way to determine the temperature of your fire, says Raichlen. Hold your hand, palm-side down, four inches above the grill grate. If you can only hold your hand there for two to three Mississippis before you have to move it away, you’ve reached “high heat” (roughly 500°F). A medium-high fire is four to five Mississippis, and medium heat is six to eight.

Do the hand test to gauge grill temps like the experts.

F o o d s t y l i n g b y S u z a n n e L e n z e r ; P r o p s t y l i n g b y K a i t l y n D u R o s s Wa l k e r / H o n e y A r t i s t s

Add moisture before grilling with a marinade. (See recipe below.) “You solve the dryness problem by starting the process with a bit of extra moisture.” The key to freestyling your own marinade? Mixing a little acid (e.g., lemon juice), oil, and your favorite seasonings.

fiddle with grill meat constantly. That prevents good caramelization.” Instead, leave it on the grill for about four minutes before flipping it, then grill for an additional four minutes on the other side.

Game Changers

Grilled Corn Corn is low-maintenance, filling but not fattening, and goes with just about any meat you throw on the grill INGREDIENTS

4 6 2

Foolproof fish

1

Q Fish can be intimidating to master on the grill—its delicacy and tendency to stick to the grate mean a lot can go wrong. But not if you do it cedar-plank style— you never have to turn the fish over, and it gets infused with a nice smoky flavor. Salmon is a good fish to start with to get the hang of it.

DIRECTIONS

1)

3) Place butter, parsley, and garlic in a mixing bowl and whisk until smooth. Lightly brush on each ear. (Use only salt and pepper for a lighter option.) 4) Position corn on the grill so the husks are away from the fire. Grill until kernels are browned all over, 8—12 minutes. “The grill heat caramelizes the natural plant sugars,” notes Raichlen. “So you’ll notice a smoky sweetness. It’s a good, natural, healthy flavor.”

Use an untreated, cooking-specific cedar plank about 12 by 6 inches, and soak it in water for an hour before you start grilling.

Brush the salmon with extra-virgin olive oil, and season with salt and black pepper.

Buy fresh corn in the husk (in the store, strip back a portion of the husk and look for ears with plump, juicy, fully formed kernels).

2) Preheat the grill to high. Fold husks back, but leave attached at the stem, and tie string around them to form a handle.

Cook only the freshest fish—and with salmon, make sure it’s wild, not farm-raised. “It tastes better, the texture is better, and it’s much healthier,” says Purviance. Leave skin on to retain moisture.

Cook over direct medium heat. “Most people think you should use less heat with fish because it’s delicate,” says Purviance. He suggests medium heat with a plank; high heat without.

ears sweet corn in their husks tbsp (¾ stick) butter, room temp tbsp minced fresh flat-leaf parsley glove garlic, minced Coarse salt and black pepper

Superfood side dish. Swap chips and salsa for nutrient-packed veggies.

Greens for the grill Q Surprise people by throwing a little color onto the grill and infusing hearty vegetables with the flavor of fire Sesame-Grilled Asparagus Rafts

Place the wet plank over the fire and close the lid. When it begins to smoke, turn it over. Place salmon, skinside down, on the plank, close lid, and leave for 10 to 12 minutes.

Few vegetables taste as good grilled as fresh asparagus. But how do you prevent the thin stalks from falling through the grate? Raichlen suggests this trick picked up from Japanese chefs.

Once the fillet’s cooked, carefully slide a metal spatula between the skin and flesh. Lift fillet away to plate. “The smoke adds great flavor, so you never really need a rich sauce,” says Purviance.

1

pound asparagus

2

tbsp Asian (dark) sesame oil

1

tbsp soy sauce

1

clove garlic, minced

INGREDIENTS

Coarse kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper 2

tbsp sesame seeds

DIRECTIONS

1)

Fill ’em up. Corn is a filling alternative to mayo’d up potato salad.

Preheat grill to high heat. Take several stalks of asparagus, break off the woody part at the base, and discard. Place stalks next to one another, leaving a tiny bit of space between them. (This will allow asparagus to cook on all sides.) Skewer them crosswise at the top and bottom with toothpicks or slender bamboo sticks.

2) For the marinade, combine sesame oil, soy sauce, and garlic and mix. Brush on both sides of the “raft.” Season with a little salt and lots of pepper. 3) Place rafts on the hot grate and grill until nicely browned, 2–4 minutes per side. Sprinkle with sesame seeds as they cook. “It’s a great, healthy side dish,” says Raichlen.

FOR MORE HEALTHY GRILLING TIPS, GO TO MENSFITNESS .COM.

JUNE 2016

MEN’S FITNESS

25

Game Changers

The Hardgainer’s Guide to Muscle Q

¶

¶

¶

Freedom of the press. Benching through a full range of motion may not be appropriate for a scrawny guy.

St yling by Christina Simonet ti and Angel Macias; Grooming b y M a t t h e w Tu o z z o l i /A t e l i e r M a n a g e m e n t u s i n g D i o r H o m m e

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Game Changers

RULE NO. 1

Don’t Think “More Is Better” Q If hardgainers, or anyone urgently seeking muscle gains, make one mistake, it’s thinking more is always better. In 2011, the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that subjects who trained the whole body each session thrice weekly got the same results as those who did an upper-lower split over four training days, with both groups completing the same total sets. So as long as you do the work, it would seem it doesn’t matter how often you go to the gym to do it. Still, Staley recommends sticking with the three-day, fullbody model, which forces you to limit the work you do for each muscle group in a single session. This prevents overzealous trainees (including hardgainers) from doing more work than they can handle. Every workout should begin with

HARD FACTS

OUR TRAINING DIRECTOR, SEAN HYSON, SOLVES YOUR WORKOUT CONUNDRUMS

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MEN’S FITNESS

a variation of the squat, bench press, or deadlift, then follow with dumbbell and machine exercises. For instance, you could start with squats, then hit a dumbbell bench press and cable row. RULE NO. 2

Alternate High and Low Reps Q Hardgainers believe that conventional training doesn’t work for them, so they love to experiment with advanced methods, like dropsets and forced reps. “I don’t like bringing in the heavy artillery until you’ve already made some good gains,” says Staley. “But novelty alone is a big stimulus for muscle growth.” You can change up your workouts and shock your muscles more simply and safely by switching back and forth between periods of higher-rep training and heavy lifting. “For three to six weeks, train with reps in the six to 12 range,” says

SAM D., WYCKOFF, NJ

Q Despite decades of rumors that an allplant diet will shrivel up your muscles and turn you into a sissy, all those who go vegan and lift weights prove otherwise. You can get complete, musclebuilding protein from combinations of foods and seeds like quinoa and hemp. Soy protein, the most popular vegan muscle supplement, has been shown to offer benefits on par with whey, and so has pea protein. In 2015, the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition found that

JUNE 2016

Staley—that targets pure muscle growth best. Then spend the same amount of time doing sets of three to five reps, which builds strength more optimally. Repeating

young lifters drinking pea shakes made the same gains in biceps thickness and strength as their whey-drinking counterparts. One caveat though: I was vegan for two years, and while I actually got my absolute biggest with that approach (250 pounds), I also put on a lot of fat. Eating vegan means eating lots of carbs and fats by default, so you may experience unwanted weight gain if you don’t watch your calories. That’s why I stopped.

Squatter’s rights. Classic barbell lifts like the squat should always kick off your workouts and be followed with dumbbell, machine , and body-weight training for balanced gains.

this contrast provides big gains over time. “Try to increase the weight and sets each workout,” Staley says. So you might start with two sets per lift and increase it to five sets over four weeks. “Pile up the sets until you don’t get sore anymore, then start a new phase with new exercises.” Soreness isn’t the best indicator of progress, but if you’re never sore from a lift, it probably means that your body has gotten too efficient at performing it to spur new growth. RULE NO. 3

Choose the Best Lifts for You

HEAVY AND LIGHT LIFTING DONE IN SEPARATE PHASES KEEP THE MUSCLES GROWING LONG-TERM.

Q “If you can’t grow quads because you have long femurs,” says Staley, “maybe back squats aren’t the best thing for you.” Long-legged lifters often find they have to bend their torsos forward more to

complete the lift, and that can risk injury to the lower back as well as shortchange the quads of stimulus. In this case, Staley recommends including more leg presses and hack squats in your program to target the thighs more directly. By the same token, if you have long arms, touching the bar to your chest on a bench press isn’t necessary. Instead, says Staley, “do floor presses so the range of motion isn’t so big,” which allows you to use heavier weights more safely. A 2012 study found that lifters who used a partial range gained the same biceps thickness as those who used a full range. Dumbbell and machine pressing, which you can do with a full range, are good options as well to keep your strength balanced.

Game Changers

Dark star

“THE THINGS I HAD TO DO IN THE AUDITION WERE DEFINITELY OUT OF MY COMFORT ZONE.”

To m S c h i r m a c h e r /A U G U S T

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JUNE 2016

Game Changers

“I GOT TO FIRE A SUBMACHINE GUN, AN AK-47, A 9MM, AND A .22…IT WAS A FUN DAY AT THE OFFICE.”

Magic Matt With his singular talent and range—to say nothing of his near-heroic refusal to be typecast—Matt Bomer is, at long last, ensconced on Hollywood’s A-list By Mark Clayton Photograph by Doug Inglish

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JUNE 2016

Long before he broke hearts as a lovably devilish ladies’ man on USA’s White Collar or shed 40 pounds for a Golden Globe–winning role as an AIDS victim in HBO’s The Normal Heart—and certainly before he gyrated alongside Channing Tatum in the Magic Mike films or played a vampire on FX’s American Horror Story: Hotel— Matt Bomer was a Texas high schooler

L

valiantly defying any and all stereotypes of what it meant to be a man. Was he a handsome jock or a shapeshifting thespian? A gun-toting good ol’ boy who’d been hunting since he was 8 or a gay man coming of age in one of America’s reddest states? Well, turns out he was all of them—at least, as long as his schedule allowed it. “Unfortunately, my senior year I left the football team because

I got a play at the Alley Theater in Houston,” says the 38-year-old Bomer, who still looks back fondly on his days as a wide receiver and defensive back. “I was crazy fast,” he says. “I ran good routes, and I had good hands. I didn’t drop passes!” These days Hollywood is his turf, and he’s more than holding his own with the biggest names in town. Last month, he took on one of his edgiest parts yet, that of an assassin hunting down a

private investigator and a hired enforcer— played by Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe—in Shane Black’s TheNice Guys. “Watching Ryan and Russell work was an incredible education,” says Bomer. “The comedic chemistry between them is extraordinary.” But not even that was the highlight for this former Texan. What was? The firepower. “It’s an added bonus that I play the angel of death,” he says. “I got to fire a Sterling submachine gun, an AK-47, a 9mm, and a .22, all in the same take. It was a fun day at the office.” In real life, it’s fatherhood that truly thrills him. “So many of the adages are true,” says Bomer, now a dad of three (with his husband, publicist Simon Halls). “It changes all your priorities—at the end of the day, family comes first.” High on his list as well: his work in the fight against AIDS, which won him the 2012 Steve Chase Humanitarian Award. He’s also a big supporter of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, which works to eliminate bullying in schools, and the L.A.based Art of Elysium, which connects ill kids with artists and celebrities. “That’s actually the first charity I volunteered with here in L.A,” he says.”It’s one of my favorites because they offer welcome breaks to children with serious medical conditions.” Clearly, Bomer believes magic can happen—and not just in the movies.

Game Changers

Drop the hammer With its new M2 Coupé, BMW has created a true rarity: a muscular, beautiful sports car designed for pure performance By Nicolas Stecher

As cars continue to roll out of the factory in bigger, heavier sizes, offering buyers even more in the way of technology, comfort, and safety suites, auto enthusiasts should be forgiven for wondering if all the pedal-to-themetal fun of driving has disappeared forever (at least in cars non-hedge funders can afford). And the answer is: Not as long as this baby is around. BMW’s new M2 Coupé goes for just over $50,000, but it’s absolutely as gutsy as any high-end sports car out there. Just how muscular

Cour tesy of BMW

A

ROCKET LAUNCH: THE M2 COUPÉ GOES FROM 0 TO 60 IN 4.1 SECONDS.

is this beast? The M2 engine is a modified version of the 3.0-liter TwinPower Turbo inline-six found in the M235i. Engineers gave it a slight retune, and shoehorned that bad boy under the bulging hood of a smaller twodoor body. That means you’ll have 365 horses snorting angrily from the quad tailpipes of a car that’s lighter than most of the others in the M class. And thanks to 343 lb-ft of torque, it has enough bottom-end punch to launch from a standstill to 60 mph in just 4.1 seconds. Other cars with that sort of oomph: The Porsche 911 Carrera and the Aston Martin

DBS—which both cost about twice as much as the M2. But a true performance car isn’t just a straight-line drag racer, and the M2 coupé is no exception, handling so well that it conquered Germany’s spaghetti-like Nürburgring racetrack in less than eight minutes. (No other car in its segment comes even close.) If you spot one on the road but it’s whizzing by too fast to see closely, know that BMW’s Bavarian car-body designers have also done their part, and the result is something that looks much more villain than superhero:

Fenders flare from the rear axles to fit 19-inch aluminum alloy wheels wrapped in wide Michelin rubber; doors scallop in, like a tux stretching to accommodate the

swollen delts of John Cena; enlarged intakes swallow air in thirsty gulps to cool the hot-running power plant; and twin circular headlamps glare angrily from BMW’s square-jawed profile. Inside the cockpit everything is executed with superb materials and a Germanic attention to details. The rich black Dakota leather seats are buttery soft, contrast stitched in electric blue for pop. These azure hits are echoed throughout the cabin, as are M-spec badges on the steering wheel, headrests, gear shifter, and doorsills. While the seven-speed dualclutch automatic delivers lightningquick shifts via steering-wheel-mounted paddles, you’re better off opting for the six-speed stick. Manual cars are becoming more and more rare, but the shortthrow stick shift properly fills out the M2’s throwback vibe. Because, as car lovers know, every now and then a man’s gotta open up the throttle and go screeching into the sunset.

The bulging Bavarian. BMW has wrapped a massive engine and a fighter-pilot cockpit in a tight package.

JUNE 2016

MEN’S FITNESS

33

Game Changers Adventure

Calling all rock jocks “Via ferrata” climbing is the perfect mix of scary and safe. Do something bold (and smart) this summer and book a trip to the vertical world. BY BLANE BACHELOR

Rocky Mountain high

Q Thanks to the late Chuck Kroger, an iconic Telluride climber and ironworker, the thrilling open-air traverse along the southwest face of 12,785-foot Ajax Peak is accessible to anyone who can handle heights. The out-and-back adventure starts out on a challenging hiking path (be on the lookout for the plaque honoring Kroger), which quickly turns into a narrow ledge before vanishing completely. The toughest stretch, known as the Main Event, is a 300-foot horizontal expanse over some 200 feet of open air.

C o u r t e s y o f Te l l u r i d e / R y a n B o n n e a u

During World War I, Italian soldiers created a vast network of cables and ladders, called a via ferrata (also known as “iron path”) high in the Dolomites as a way to outmaneuver Austrian troops. ¶ Now similar systems of handrails and rungs are being built around the world to create an exciting new way to explore mountain peaks—one that requires no complicated knot-tying or advanced rockclimbing knowhow. (Most routes can be done in sneakers and require minimal equipment.) ¶ Here, the most breathtaking vie ferrate in the U.S. and beyond, where even novices can discover the thrill of the climb.

Game Changers Adventure

Hardcore hangout. B.C.’s Kicking Horse via ferrata is North America’s most challenging.

Easy rider

Canadian cliffhanger

The original iron way

WAT E R FA L L C A N YO N ; OGDEN, UT

KICKING HORSE MOUNTA I N R E S O R T; B . C .

Q Legendary Alpinist

Q With arm-pumping

V I A F E R R ATA FA U S T O S U S AT T I ; L A K E G A R D A , I T A LY

Jeff Lowe designed these three killer routes on a 1,484-acre private ranch not far from Salt Lake City. The experience begins with some time on a 30-foot training wall, familiarizing yourself with the special via ferrata safety setup (helmet, harness, locking carabiners, and shockabsorbing tethers, in case of a slip). Then, a guide matches you with the appropriate route to match your comfort and skill levels. The most basic option still offers quite an adrenaline rush, with plenty of exposure and several spots that require stringing together multiple climbing moves. No matter which route you end up on, expect epic views of a 350-foot waterfall and the Great Salt Lake.

Q Dozens of original via

utahadventurecenter .com/viaferratainfo.html

overhangs and a 300-foot-high suspension bridge, this may be the toughest via ferrata in North America. After a gondola delivers you to the start, there’s a vertical of more than 1,000 feet to overcome. First, you ease in with a narrow rock edge, which gives way to that wobbly, 295-foot-long, aptly named “Guts Bridge.” If that scares you, you should probably turn around. After Guts Bridge, it’s up the ascension, which involves a 1,525-foot vertical grind, with frightening exposure as you teeter along a narrow cable above 900 feet of open air. Once you top out, toast your accomplishment with a frosty Kokanee Lager at the Eagle’s Eye Restaurant, Canada’s highest at 7,700 feet. kickinghorseresort.com

friendsofarco.it

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JUNE 2016

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ferrata routes remain throughout the Dolomite mountain range in the Lake Garda region of northern Italy, most dotted with war-era bunkers, tunnels, and the original iron cables and anchors. One classic choice is the Fausto Susatti route, also known as Cima Capi for the peak it tops out on. It’s an all-day adventure and a fun mixture of via ferrata climbing and steep hiking. The VF climbing isn’t especially technical, but the entire outing is a big physical challenge that includes a 3,000-foot summit you can brag about later over pizza and cold Moretti. You’ll get views clear across the surrounding Dolomites and aquamarine lake, but it’s the history that leaves a real impression.

High, but not so dry. Utah’s purpose-built Waterfall Canyon via ferrata offers a unique view of the cascading 350-foot falls at the heart of the private ranch.

Clock wise from top lef t: Cour tesy of Kicking Horse Mountain Resor t; image Broker Alamy; Cour tesy of Utah Adventure Center

History in the high country. Italy’s Lake Garda region is home to hundreds of World War I–era via ferrata routes.

F I L M - C O AT E D D I S S O LV E S FA S T, W O R K S FA S T. LOOK FOR IT IN THE WHITE BOX.

Use as directed.

© P⇒zer 2016

Game Changers

WITH MESH THAT EXPOSES THE SKY, THE NIGHTWATCH TENT LETS YOU SLEEP UNDER THE STARS.

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Osprey Atmos AG 50 Backpack

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5

BEST TENT

Sierra Designs Nightwatch 2FL Tent

Q With its main body of no-see-um mesh and an easily retractable rain fly, the Nightwatch mimics sleeping under the stars. If the sky opens, it takes only a second (and two clips) to batten down the hatches.

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Camelbak All Clear Bottle

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Forays into the backcountry call for a kit that’s light and fast, whereas car camping is more about fun than function. Whichever you prefer, the gear you bring makes or breaks it. By Peter Koch Photographs by Jonathon Kambouris

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JUNE 2016

Backcountry essentials

$99, camelbak.com

1

2

3

7

Black Diamond Spot Headlamp

Kammok Thylacine Sleeping Bag

MSR WindBurner Stove System, 1.8L

Q The Spot is one of the best all-around headlamps we’ve ever used. Compact and powerful, it somehow crams 200 lumens, four lighting modes, a dimming feature, and travel-friendly battery lockout into a lightweight, fully waterproof package.

Q Most companies want to sell you different bags for different seasons. Kammok’s 3-in-1 system is a down-filled bag rated to 30° with an optional zip-in liner that keeps you warm down to 15° and another insert that clips in when the mercury bottoms out.

Nemo Tensor Insulated Sleeping Pad 20R between you and the ground, the more comfortably you’ll sleep. The 3-inch-thick Nemo cushion is plush yet packs down to the size of a tallboy. Plus, internal trusses maintain structure and eliminate air mattress wobble.

Q MSR is the industry standard when it comes to backcountry cooking. The compact, all-in-one WindBurner system—insulated pot, bowl, lid, burner, stand, and fuel canister (not included)—lights reliably, nests together, and boils water fast even in a stout wind.

$40, blackdiamond equipment.com

$329 for base bag, kammok.com

$150, nemoequipment.com

$150, cascadedesigns.com

BEST HEADLAMP

BEST SLEEPING BAG

BEST CUSHION

Q The more space

BEST GRILL

Prop st yling by Sarah Guido/Halley Resources

Home is where you pitch it

Q As refreshing as that crystal- clear backcountry stream looks, it could be teeming with bacteria or stomachchurning protozoa. This 25 oz bottle zaps all the nasties with UV light, making even the most questionable water sources potable in just 60 seconds.

Great coverage, by land or sea. At GEICO, great rates and outstanding coverage doesn’t stop with your car. Whether you drive a motorcycle, boat or RV, GEICO could help you save money on more than just car insurance.

Contact us for a free quote and see just how much you could save.

JHLFRFRP_$872_/RFDO2IĆFH

Some discounts, coverages, payment plans and features are not available in all states or all GEICO companies. Motorcycle and ATV coverages are underwritten by GEICO Indemnity Company. Boat and PWC coverages are underwritten by GEICO Marine Insurance Company. GEICO Auto policyholders could be eligible for a discount on their GEICO Marine Insurance policy. GEICO is a registered service mark of Government Employees Insurance Company, Washington, D.C. 20076; a Berkshire Hathaway Inc. subsidiary. © 2016 GEICO

Game Changers

SETTING UP A TENT DOESN’T HAVE TO FEEL LIKE TRYING TO PASS A SOBRIETY TEST.

1

2

6

5

4

3

Car camping essentials

1

2

3

4

5

6

Alite Designs Sierra Shack

Kelty Tru.Comfort 20 Sleeping Bag

Coleman Fyrecadet Stove

Brunton Lightwave AMP Lantern

Yeti Hopper 40 Cooler

Q Setting up a tent doesn’t have to feel like some frustrating sobriety test. This after-party–friendly two-person shelter pops up in seconds and packs away just as easily. And because car camping is more fun with friends, Alite made this tent modular, so multiple Shacks can be zipped together.

Q For campers who’d rather count z’s than ounces, this 20° sleeping bag has a roomier profile that will make side sleepers rejoice. The real clinchers, though, are the unique two-layer blanket system for regulating temperature and a two-way zipper that allows you to stick your feet out of the bag.

Q It may look retro, but the Fyrecadet camp stove boils water twice as fast as your dad’s old-school Coleman. An interchangeable grill-griddle cooktop expands your culinary options, covering you from bacon and pancakes in the morning straight on through to a BBQ dinner. It stows like a briefcase.

Q How do you make a simple lantern more useful? You don’t— you make it more fun. Besides the Lightwave’s impressive 700 lumens and phonecharging capabilities, it also has integrated Technicolor lights that flash to the beat of your favorite tunes and a robust onboard Bluetooth speaker.

Q When lugging an unwieldy hard-sided cooler is too cumbersome, the soft-buttough, arctic-cold Hopper is your go-to portable fridge. It holds 36 cans of beer with ice—enough to last you and your friends an entire afternoon at the main stage. Once empty, it can double as a shoulder tote.

Helinox Chair One and Table One Hard Top

$120, alitedesigns.com

$119, kelty.com

$140, coleman.com

$200, brunton.com

$400, yeticoolers.com

BEST TENT

BEST SLEEPING BAG

BEST GRILL

BEST TORCH

BEST COOLER

B E S T D I N I N G TA B L E

Q It’s hard to find a chair with the weightto-comfort ratio of the less-than-two-pound Helinox One. It keeps you cool with breathable mesh backing and, when paired with the ultrastable Table One, makes a great place to mix up some strong sundowners. Chair, from $100, table, from $130, bigagnes.com

© 2016 Brooks Sports, Inc.

Brooks DNA cushioning dynamically reacts to your specific weight, pace, gait and running surface to give you a customized ride and super-soft landing. So put your feet into the Glycerin 14 and get some serious cushiness.

While sometimes all you need is a heart-rate monitor or a step counter, next-level fitness and performance call for something a little more high-tech. These cutting-edge next-to-skin gadgets will make you a better athlete. By Michael Frank Photographs by Jarren Vink

Among the newest entry-level wearables, we’re now seeing a generation of hardware that uses complex algorithms to capture such nuanced data that the analysis rivals that of a personal coach. These breakthrough trackers can analyze form, give midworkout feedback, and even read personal biometrics in a way that makes it impossible to fake it.

1 THE RUNNER’S COACH

Sensoria Fitness Smart Socks Q While plenty of foot pods measure running “smoothness,” the Sensoria socks’ sensors (two sets at the forefoot, one at the rear) and ankle bracelet track cadence, groundcontact time, and heel versus forefoot strike. The info is then relayed to an app, which highlights the imbalances. A metronome function mimics a coach, feeding an audible stride rhythm to your headphones and letting you rewire your footfalls to a more efficient pace. The anklet is a little cumbersome—but indispensable during key training periods. $199, sensoria fitness.com

The smart way to hit your stride. Three sensors in the Sensoria Fitness Smart Socks evaluate your running form and efficiency.

42

Game Changers

2 A SUPERIOR STRAP

Form flawed? Now you can fix it. The Wahoo Tickr X doesn’t just measure your heart rate; it also analyzes your technique in real time .

3 FITBIT FOR LIFTERS

P r o p s t y l i n g b y M e g u m i E m o t o /A n d e r s o n H o p k i n s

Atlas Wearables Wristband Q Sometimes you just want to get in a zone and work out. Atlas counts reps and queues next exercises, showing correct form using detailed animation right on the face. A buzz tells you when to start and end each set. The Atlas won’t let you slack, either; the built-in heartrate reader measures beats per minute against your cardio target. The threeaxis accelerometer detects up to 69 different exercises— everything from kettlebell swings to burpees—which means you don’t need to preprogram it. It can even learn new moves, using crowdsourcing to add to its ever-expanding library of exercises and workouts. $199, atlas wearables.com

Wahoo Tickr X Q Conventional heart-rate chest straps monitor, well, your heart rate. The Tickr X calculates the timing of your intervals and rest periods and guides you through your workout on your smartphone. Wahoo’s RunFit and 7 Minutes Workout apps are like tiny trainers that track reps and upcoming exercise and even feed real-time analytics on whether you’re doing an exercise correctly. The straps’ sensors can tell, for instance, when you’re not holding still during a plank or not exploding through your hips during squats. And by measuring the quality of your motion and rep count against your heart rate, it can give each set a score. $100, wahoofitness.com

Athos Shorts (above). Athos’ removable sensors send immediate feedback to an app so you can check—in real time—which muscles are working correctly, then quickly adjust your effort. Atlas Wearables Wristband (left) . This wrist tracker recognizes what exercise you’re doing and can even show you how to correct your form.

THE ATLAS CAN DETECT UP TO 69 DIFFERENT EXERCISES, SO THERE’S NO NEED TO PREPROGRAM.

4 PRO-LEVEL SELF-COACHING

Athos Shorts Q Sure, pro champions like the Golden State Warriors use Athos’ high-tech selfcoaching shorts, but anyone who does big, technique-dependent moves like squats can benefit from them, too. Powered by a palm-size rechargeable “core” that also snaps into other Athos pieces, the 12 sensors sewn into the shorts send muscle-output info to an app that displays real-time imagery via a “heat map,” showing you, for example, if your quads are firing when they should. The app also “animates” each set, so you can instantly spot weaknesses, prompting you to slow down and really recruit all your muscles for a sustained contraction. Shorts and core, $348; liveathos.com

Game Changers

A Moscow ’tail So, a vodka salesman, a ginger-beer seller, and a copper peddler walk into a bar… And decades later, the Moscow Mule is the hottest drink of summer ’16. BY BRIAN GOOD

Make Some Bucks Q “Any spirit mixed with ginger beer is traditionally known as a buck,” says Robyn Gray. For example: 1) Swap the vodka in your Mule for gin and you’ve got a Gin-Gin Mule. 2) Switch over to rum and it’s now a Dark and Stormy. 3) Add tequila and a dash of crème de cassis (made from black currants and famed for its deep red color) and you’re drinking El Diablo. “All the variations are good,” says Gray. “Whatever you choose usually just depends on your mood, or what’s left in the liquor cabinet.”

44

ME

I

It may seem like

become one of the tastiest, most vital

The Prohibition Moscow Mule

Q “The original recipe calls for 1½ oz vodka, 3 oz ginger beer (like one from Grace Island Sodas), and a squeeze of lime,” says Gray. “Then, to give it our signature taste, we add ½ oz lime juice.” To amp up the Caribbean feel, add a splash of simple syrup, a dash of bitters, and a sprig of mint; serve over crushed ice in a copper cup.

there’s no denying the deliciousness of a

Despite its name, ginger beer is non-alcoholic, like root beer.

READY WHEN YOU ARE

POLAR A360 FITNESS TRACKER W I T H W R I S T - B A S E D H E A R T R AT E This waterproof fitness tracker comes with wrist-based heart rate monitoring, individual guidance and 24/7 activity tracking.

SMART N O T I F I C AT I O N S

SLEEP

FLOW APP & WEB SERVICE

TOUCH SCREEN

Available at:

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Learn It!

Killer intelligence

46

MEN’S FITNESS

JUNE 2016

JARREN VINK

P r o p s t y l i n g b y M e g u m i E m o t o /A n d e r s o n H o p k i n s

Keeping up with current events doesn’t just make you an ace citizen—it can also help your career, boost your love life, and make you a popular dinner-party companion. Here, four smart, easy ways to stay in the know.

lift hard, eat healthy, and generally lead a well-rounded lifestyle. Good for you. ¶ But, if pressed, could you articulate your opinion on the privacy war between Apple and the FBI? What was your reaction to the Panama Papers? Do you think the Pacific Northwest needs a better earthquake-detection system? ¶ If these current-event questions didn’t stump you, I’ve got some great news: Aside from helping you responsibly fulfill your most basic civic duties (how can you vote wisely if you’re not up on the issues?), knowing what’s going on in the world can also enrich your life in other crucial ways. ¶ Like: helping you on the job. “Guys who excel at work generally have an excellent grasp of current events,” says executive coach Bruce Tulgan, of RainmakerThinking—i.e., a smart company will promote an informed, intellectually curious employee over a clueless dullard any day. The principle applies with the ladies, too. “If a dude doesn’t know what’s happening in the world, he probably doesn’t have opinions—and not caring is not sexy,” says Kate, 26, who works in TV. Even a guy’s social life gets a bump if he stays au courant—after all, what dinner party doesn’t put a premium on sparkling conversation? ¶ So for the best, most efficient ways to gather—and retain—the info you need to keep you in the loop, try these four expert tricks. We guarantee, you’ll never get caught with your news briefs down again.

Y

By Jeff Wilser

LESSON 1

Set a news browser as your home page

This is a simple trick with a powerful upside: When, for instance, Google News is your home page, it forces you to notice the news every time you fire up your browser. Simply scanning the headlines for just a second will leave an impression. “The big thing I find is that it’s so much easier to stay fairly informed if you’re at least minimally informed on a regular basis,” says Samantha Rollins, news editor at The Week. “This gives you a pretty good baseline, and from that you can dive deeper on the things that interest you.” Then, of course, if something really catches your attention and prompts you to want a deeper understanding, you can head off for a longer read via an app like Pocket or Instapaper, from which you can save longer articles for later.

professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Virginia. “The extra audio cues—the prosody—can help your brain.” In other words, listening is a tremendous force for retaining information, which is good news in 2016, when podcasts are all the rage. But it gets even better: If you listen to a story on a subject, then also read about it, that audio/visual combo—called “dual-coding”—attacks the brain with a one-two punch that can practically turn you into a tenured professor on a subject. “Studies show that the combination of hear plus see is the best way to learn,” says Rodero. Her advice: Scan a story on Reddit, for example, then listen to a radio presentation—like a podcast of NPR’s All Things Considered—on the same subject, and you’ll learn more quickly and in a more consolidated way. LESSON 4

Make the most of Twitter “lists” LESSON 2

Have “get-informed” time every day (no multitasking!)

Many of us are guilty of trying to do too much at one time. This is particularly true in the mornings, when we’re fresh, caffeinated, upbeat, and hopeful, so we put all that good energy into trying to multitask—and accomplish very little. Because, as it turns out, our brains aren’t wired to manage workflow while paying bills and scrolling Twitter. In fact, multitasking is incredibly inefficient. When you inundate your brain with too much information, it doesn’t know what’s important enough to remember. The same goes for absorbing current events. “We think we can read the news while we’re doing other things, and of course we can—but we won’t be able to retain the information,” says Emma Rodero, Ph.D., a cognitive psychologist who specializes in media. Instead, dedicate a block of time— even if it’s just five minutes—to reading only the news. LESSON 3

Both read and listen to a story to become an instant expert

“Prosody” is defined as the melody of speech. “If I write, ‘Oh, what a great party,’ but you don’t actually hear me say it, you have no way of knowing if I’m being sarcastic,” says Daniel Willingham, Ph.D., a

For everyone I interviewed for this article, Twitter is the backbone of the process flow for consuming news. And taking full advantage of the “list” functions are crucial. “I rely heavily on lists,” says Daniel Victor, a writer and editor at The New York Times. “I have a second monitor dedicated mostly to six columns of TweetDeck. I have a list of just news sources, one of journalists, one of presidential candidates, etc.” Why bother with this? If you’re on Twitter and follow more than, say, 10 people, you quickly find that it’s like trying to drink news from the fire hose. Scanning your entire feed, you will either A) waste time that could be used more productively; or B) miss real, actual news, which is buried in the weeds. So here’s your plan of attack: In one list, put no more than three to five of your most trusted news sources. That will be the feed you can scan in quick, 30-second gulps. Bookmark the list. Check it every day. Then make other lists for your IRL friends, the sports teams you follow, and your less important indulgences, such as The Onion. Bookmark each of these. Install either Tweetdeck or Tweetbot on your phone and on your laptop. Q Jeff Wilser is the author of The Good News About What’s Bad for You…and the Bad News About What’s Good for You.

Earn It!

by Jack Otter

WHAT TO DO ABOUT A

BAD BOSS

You’re working for the bastard child of Idi Amin and Anna Wintour, with a little Michael Scott DNA thrown in. Here’s how to succeed anyway.

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MEN’S FITNESS

JUNE 2016

detailed some stomach-turning findings: That employee engagement in corporate America is horrible and job satisfaction is in the tank and businesses are suffering as a result. U.S. companies are loaded with loathsome Lumberghs whose inertia, fear, and refusal to share power are sucking the life out of their workers. ¶ It got me thinking: If your company is run by an incompetent corporate cabal, does that mean you have to pay the price? Hardly. So I took Pfeffer’s best management practices and flipped them to write the “best employee commandments.” Use them and you can bypass an awful boss and excel even in a workplace designed to quash success.

N B C /A l a m y

I attended a business conference in Scottsdale, AZ—the type of corporate gathering any road warrior knows will invariably end with a motivational speech culminating in some over-the-top, lifechanging conclusion: “Everything you’ve been told is wrong!” “Diet and exercise don’t work!” “Micromanaging is good!” ¶ This time, however, the keynote speaker, a deeply respected professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business named Jeffrey Pfeffer, shocked 800 of the nation’s top financial pros with some news that was as revolutionary as it was (refreshingly) boring: that decades of real-world research had proven that everything they knew about good management practices—that, to get the best out of employees, you need to promote from within, invest in training, reward good performance with bonus pay, and decentralize decision-making—was basically correct. Happy employees, he went on, make for kick-ass companies, which is what bosses everywhere have been told...well, forever. ¶ So how come your boss overlooks you for promotions, keeps you toiling in the dark, and reneges on every yearly bonus? ¶ The problem, Pfeffer said, is that few managers actually follow these wisdoms, as conventional as they are. He then NOT LONG AGO

Earn It! (IGNORED) MANAGEMENT RULE NO. 1

Wouldn’t that be cool? In fact, if we land it for anything, no matter how small, drinks are on me.” Notice what happened there. You just became the leader. Congrats.

“Don’t select new employees on the basis of skills that can be learned relatively quickly; use qualities that are important and more permanent in your hiring decisions.” B E S T E M P LOY E E TA C T I C

Always Look at the Bigger Picture

The last person I hired was without question the least-qualified of all the applicants I interviewed. On paper. But what really makes a great employee isn’t the ability to handle the day-to-day rote. I needed someone who could get his head around exactly how we’re different, who could understand the bigger goal, then learn what was necessary to nail it. And guess what? He nails it. Routinely. Yes, you need to complete all the tasks your job requires. But that’s just the beginning. Every day, think about the bigger problems facing your unit, your boss, your company, your industry. Come up with ways to solve those problems. I’m not suggesting you pepper your boss’s boss with ideas for changing procedures. No one likes that guy. Instead, when roadblocks get in the way of business, come up with a solution before your boss even knows there’s an issue, and give him that solution when you alert him to the problem.

Lumbergh nation. Research has shown that corporate America has a serious bad-manager problem.

you do and describe each win for your boss in your next review. When you do get charge of the team, what if it turns out to be not much of a “team” at all? According to my favorite management guru, Tribal Leadership author David Logan, groups are often made up of well-educated, competitive alpha males. Here’s his simple approach for turning these “me first” types into team players. “First, be curious about people’s motivations—ask lots of questions, and really listen,” he says. Once you find shared motivations, let the other team members know what you have in common and use the word we. To close the deal, wait for a day when there’s some cheer in the air and call a few members of your team into a conference room. Logan writes the script for you: “If we actually stopped competing with one another and started working together, we could land [this goal] in five minutes.

(IGNORED) MANAGEMENT RULE NO. 3

“Share information: Engage in open-book management, because employees need data to make decisions.” B E S T E M P LOY E E TA C T I C

Take Advantage of Areas Where You’re Smarter Than Your Boss

If you’re 30 or under, you’re basically a digital native. There’s a good chance you speak Internet better than the graybeards running your company. So even if you hit a dead end trying to get your managers to share information, you have access to data your boss’s boss probably doesn’t even know is out there. Learn how to use that data to make decisions. It’ll make your boss look smart when he includes your spreadsheet in his next PowerPoint deck and give him a feeling of safety when he executes ideas based on that data. It’ll also shield you if you’re wrong— you’re better off showing that a failure was based on good data than admitting you pulled an idea out of your ass. (IGNORED) MANAGEMENT

(IGNORED) MANAGEMENT RULE NO. 2

RULE NO. 4

“Decentralize decision-making and assign it to self-managing teams.”

Be the smartest (money) guy in the room

B E S T E M P LOY E E TA C T I C

20 th C entur y Fox

Make Every Decision You Can Yourself

This is the classic business practice that everyone with an MBA knows and no one ever follows. The logic is obvious: Small, nimble teams understand their niches better than far-removed managers and can react more quickly to a changing marketplace. Companies often even invest in training programs to equip the teams to make such calls. But the guys at the top of the corporate pecking order didn’t get there by letting other people make decisions, and they’re sure as hell not going to let go now. So what can you do about it? First, you have to become the guy who manages that team. Don’t have seniority? Fine, just choose one small project and offer to take it off the bigger dog’s plate. Be aware that when you ace it, he’ll probably take credit. But look on the bright side: By making him look good, you just became a valuable ally. Keep it up and eventually you’ll get the credit you deserve. Meanwhile, keep track of exactly what

Q As soon as your cell phone contract is up, prepare to pay less. With pricing turmoil and lots of upstarts in the industry, consider Virgin Mobile or Republic Wireless. T-Mobile even offers a $50 plan with unlimited talk. You may not get great service everywhere, but you’ll save lots of cash.

Q Be careful on Twitter. Creditrating agencies, which determine whether you’ll get a loan and how much interest you’ll pay, are experimenting with social media to evaluate your financial reliability. It could hurt you if too many of your friends are deadbeats, or even if words like wasted appear in your posts too many times. QIf you’re thinking of popping the question, it’s worth knowing that diamond prices are falling hard. De Beers lowered prices on diamonds 15% last year, and the numbers are falling this year, too. And good luck!

“Don’t answer ‘Why?’ with: ‘Because that’s the way it’s always been done.’” B E S T E M P LOY E E TA C T I C

Always Be Ready to Do Things Differently

If you remember only one thing from this article, let it be this: Never, ever, explain anything by saying, “That’s the way we’ve always done it.” On the contrary, be vigilant for stale practices and never pass up the chance to change them. You’ll be amazed at how many colleagues will say they hated the old way but never got around to changing it. Prove that millennials can improve things rather than just drive their older peers crazy, and the promotions will start flowing. Q Jack Otter is the author of Worth It…Not Worth It? Simple & Profitable Answers to Life’s Tough Financial Questions. JUNE 2016

MEN’S FITNESS

49

Burn It!

by Mark Ellwood

Killer duds, the latest supplements, a month’s worth of steaks—these days there’s nothing that can’t be delivered to your door in a box. But which subscription services are actually worth using? Check these out.

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MEN’S FITNESS

JUNE 2016

“Socks-and-ties” club Most of Sprezza’s boxes are a great value—in a store, each item would be roughly the same price as the whole subscription box you’re sent each month.

JARREN VINK

P r o p s t y l i n g b y M e g u m i E m o t o /A n d e r s o n H o p k i n s

grooming services. You signed up with Harry’s or the Dollar Shave Club, and every month a cardboard box filled with razors and other shaving materials landed on your doorstep, for a dirt-cheap price. In hindsight, it was a total no-brainer: You saved bundles of money on a daily ritual— shaving—and managed to erase those annoying trips to the drugstore from your life once and for all. ¶ Now, though, box-subscription services are multiplying faster than cokedup rabbits on a Viagra binge: Monthly boxes of everything from vinyl records (vynl.org) to crates of caffeinated products (energysupplyco.com) to bizarre collections of random trinkets targeted at mad, kitten-loving women (catladybox.com) are available for sign-up. No doubt we reached peak box-subscription absurdity when a startup called Washboard offered to send subscribers 20 bucks’ worth of quarters—for laundry, presumably—for the bargain price of $27. (Thankfully, it only lasted a week.) ¶ Nevertheless, there are a lot of winning services out there—if you’re a smart shopper. So I went ahead and did the groundwork and found you the best options in three dude-friendly categories. IT ALL BEGAN WITH

Charisse Nader Team Nutrishop Athlete

CREATE YOUR DREAMJOB. According to a Harris Interactive survey, 55% of working adults are in search of a new profession. So why not turn your passion for fitness and nutrition into your own business? We carry the top brands and the latest nutritional supplements with guaranteed low prices. The right concept, the right opportunity, the right time. Open a Nutrishop today!

www.NutrishopUSA.com | NutrishopUSA

Burn It!

FROM OUR FIELDS TO YOUR GLASS.

FOR

The clothes shopper WINNER:

SprezzaBox

$25–$28/month, depending on subscription length; sprezzabox.com

GLUTEN FREE.

The best-known style category is what I call “sock-tie-plus” boxes. Each offers a pair of socks and a tie plus various accessories for around $30/month. If you’re a suit-wearing nine-to-fiver, they’re a great value: Each box costs pretty much the same as the tie if you’d bought it in a store. For me, the standout in this crowded field is two-year-old Sprezza, started by reformed hedge funder Philip Sblendorio. It trounces rivals for two simple reasons. First, the value: For $28 per month, boxes have a guaranteed value of $100. Second, it’s aptly named (and no, I didn’t know sprezza was the Italian word for “effortlessly stylish,” either). The monthly deliveries are NYCthemed, like the recent travel-inspired Kennedy (as in airport) box, which included a Dopp kit, earbuds, and grooming products along with the standard socks and tie. THE RUNNER-UP:

Bespoke Post

$45 per month; bespokepost.com

For control freaks like me, Bespoke Post is terrific. Unlike a lot of the services in this category, it unveils the contents of its monthly so-called “Box of Awesome” before shipping, so you can opt out of anything that doesn’t interest you. (Smell you later, Himalayan salt block.)The downside: the massive cost, which makes it one of the priciest services. FOR

The guy who lives at the gym WINNER:

Carnivore Club

$50–$55, depending on subscription length; carnivoreclub.co

SAVOR STOLI® RESPONSIBLY. Stolichnaya® Gluten Free Premium Vodka. 40% Alc/Vol. (80 proof). Distilled from Corn and Buckwheat. Stoli Group USA, LLC, New York, NY. ©2016. All rights reserved. ® - Registered trademarks of ZHS IP Americas Sàrl or Spirits International B.V.

If you’re tired of endless trips to the butcher for more protein, why not opt for a couple pounds of high-class meats routinely delivered fresh to your door? And we’re not talking freeze-dried jerky here, fellas. Carnivore Club taps a

different artisan butcher to fill the box each time; one recent purveyor of mine was N’duja Artisans, which produces insanely delicious Italian sausages as well as exotic cuts like Wagyu beef salami. You could also find yourself with a box of delicious Jamón Ibérico from Spain, or low-fat, high-protein treats like buffalo jerky. Sure, at $50/month, it’s pricey, but let’s face it: Like razors, good, muscle-building protein always needs replenishing in any dude’s apartment— so why not opt for the best? THE RUNNER-UP:

JackedPack

$11.25–$15/month; jackedpack.com

I’m definitely a fan of this service, which sends you a fistful of monthly supplement samples, like an assortment of workout boosters ranging from ProMax bars to the always hugely important whey protein (all, thankfully, from reputable supplement companies like Cellucor). It’s a great way to try out new stuff you wouldn’t otherwise; and once you’ve checked a few boxes to show your preferences—whether your goal is building muscle or losing fat, what your favorite flavors are—these guys will start sending you full bottles. FOR

The guy who’s seen every single movie on Netflix WINNER:

Bookspan

$11.99-$16.99, depending on subscription length; bookspan.com

This is the True OG of subscription boxes: a 90-year-old Book of the Month-type club that’s been updated for the Internet era. Each month, a panel of five judges personally picks one book; the lineup’s an assortment of bookish experts such as New York Times alum Bill Goldstein, and celebrities like Craig Ferguson. Once you see that month’s assortment, you can select which of the five you’d like to receive or skip that month if none appeal. I like the eclectic assortment of reads that the approach ensures, from Sarah Vowell’s humorous essays to a CIA vet’s memoirs.

NEW 100% GLUTEN FREE. 100% THE VODKA.

A steady diet of meat and movies. Boxes from the Carnivore Club (above) and Boxwalla (left).

And a couple of extra tips we found in the box… Be your own private eye: The best way to check out a subscription service on your own, to be sure it’s legit? Stalk the company’s social media, checking for high numbers of followers and positive mentions, says Liz Cadman of mysub scriptionaddiction.com. Also, any reputable firm will post recent boxes online; eyeball a few to see if the goodies appeal. Make sure you’re getting enough value:

THE RUNNER-UP:

Boxwalla

From top: Cour tesy of Carnivore Club; Cour tesy of Bookspan

$49.95 every 2 months; the boxwalla.com

Boxwalla offers two distinctive entertainment options: one focusing on highbrow books, the other containing two DVDs from the tony Criterion Collection. It’s a shamelessly retro approach— who buys DVDs in an era of Netflix?— but that’s exactly the point. And the service is all the better for it: Criterion’s mission is to preserve and restore obscure movies by introducing you to films you’ve never heard of, let alone seen. Think of them as a high-protein diet for your brain. And a side bonus: The shipping boxes are made of cotton scraps instead of timber—definitely worth keeping for storage.

This differs across sectors, says hello subscription.com box reviewer Brandy O’Grady. “For an artisan food box, be happy if the products’ value equals that of the box; but for fashion or grooming, expect two to three times the actual cost of the box.” Usually, the bigger the firm, the better the deal, since larger companies can buy in bulk. Also, a year commitment is often cheaper overall than a monthly one—and you can usually cancel without penalty. On that note… Cancel your cancellation worries: “It can be a hassle to cancel some boxes—for example, they might make you call them to do it,” Cadman says. “So always set up payments through PayPal, which lets you disable ongoing debits with no pesky phone calls or fear of blowback. Q

Mark Ellwood is the author of Bargain Fever: How to Shop in a Discounted World.

+

TRENDS

+

+

LOOK GRE AT

watches

O There’s only one blue-dialed diving watch that isn’t just intelligent, but also elegant: the Seiko Prospex PADI. A throwback to a popular 1970s diving watch, it has a wide, masculine case and bears the official logo and colors of the Professional Association of Diving Instructors. And because it’s powered by Seiko’s “Kinetic caliber” technology, it charges while you wear it.

+ Diver’s watch: SEIKO, $525, Macy’s in August 2016, macys.com; Jacket: CHAPS, $60; Jean jacket: 7 FOR ALL MANKIND, $278; Headphones: URBANEARS, $120

O Meet the horological embodiment of ’60s corporate cool —but with a seriously cutting-edge twist. The clean-cut Citizen Eco-Drive isn’t just a beautiful , classy, retro-style watch that begs to be worn with any look (let’s be clear: it is), it’s also entirely powered by light, so you’ll never need to charge it or change its battery. Ever.

+ Watch: CITIZEN

G r o o m i n g b y M a t t h e w Tu o z z o l i /A t e l i e r M a n a g e m e n t u s i n g D i o r H o m m e

ECO-DRIVE, $235, citizenwatch.com ; Jacket: DOCKERS, $350; Shirt: ELEVENTY, $195; Tie: THE TIE BAR, $19

FOR

The Style Guy O You’ve wished for

a watch so comfortable you can forget you’re wearing it—well, it was just a matter of time. Every element of the Bulova Curv— the case, the dial, even the hands—is slim and ergonomically curved, making it soothingly snug and easy to wear. Add a handsome dark face and a sleek stainless-steel case, and you’ve got one seriously cool (and original) piece of wristwear.

+

Watch: BULOVA CURV CHRONOGRAPH, $799, Macy’s in September, macys.com ; Jean jacket: LEVI’S, $89.50; Cardigan: EXPRESS, $79.90; T-shirt: JOCKEY (three- pack), $29.50

O Amid legions of multicolor timepieces, one stands eye- catchingly apart: the I.N.O.X. Paracord from Victorinox Swiss Army. Its face and unique, adventurethemed band touting the same bold shade of red as the world’s most famous pocketknife, the Paracord also confirms its pedigree with a water- and scratchresistant stainless-steel case that makes it ready for any challenge.

+

Watch: VICTORINOX SWISS ARMY I.N.O.X. PARACORD, $625; swissarmy.com ; Jacket: DIESEL, $998; Pants: J BRAND, $198; Sneakers: MARK NASON LOS ANGELES, $79

LOOK GRE AT GROOMING

Hit “Refresh”

I S S E Y M I YA K E

C A LV I N K L E I N

N O T E S : Grapefruit, sage, white patchouli

NOTES:

PERS O N A L I T Y:

Contemporary At a gallery opening

W E A R I T:

Cilantro, sea salt, cedar P E R S O N A L I T Y : Sexy W E A R I T : On an island escape

RALPH LAUREN POLO GIVENCHY

Lemon, mint, sage P E R S O N A L I T Y : Elegant W E A R I T : To an outdoor wedding NOTES:

N O T E S : Marine, basil verbena, vetiver P E R S O N A L I T Y : Suave W E A R I T : At the yacht club

AZZARO

N O T E S : Citrus, nutmeg, cedar P E R S O N A L I T Y : Energetic W E A R I T : On a spontaneous getaway

MICHAEL KORS

N O T E S : Bergamot, cardamom, sesame P E R S O N A L I T Y : Confident W E A R I T : Partying at your summer house

LOOK GRE AT GROOMING

KENNETH COLE

PRADA

DIOR

BURBERRY

N O T E S : Coriander, vanilla, musk P E R S O N A L I T Y : Refined W E A R I T : For drinks with Dad

N O T E S : Ginger, cedrat, gray amber

NOTES:

Electrifying W E A R I T : Sailing the Mediterranean

N O T E S : Bergamot, Ambroxan, Sichuan pepper P E R S O N A L I T Y : Rugged W E A R I T : On your desert vision quest

PAC O R A BA NNE

GIORGIO ARMANI

VINCE CAMUTO

N O T E S : Yuzu, pink pepper, grapefruit P E R S O N A L I T Y : Lively W E A R I T : When all bets are off

N O T E S : Neroli, green tangerine, Moroccan cedar P E R S O N A L I T Y : Crisp W E A R I T : On a weekend adventure

N O T E S : Citrus, saffron, bourbon P E R S O N A L I T Y : Cool W E A R I T : Relaxing by the pool

PERS O N A L I T Y:

Grapefruit, vetiver, guaiac wood

PERS O N A L I T Y:

Sophisticated When London calls

W E A R I T:

Crisp and bright to start, these fragrances dry down to a cool, masculine base.

LOOK GRE AT PERSONA L ST Y LE

“ IT WAS ONE OF THE HAPPIEST TIMES OF MY LIFE—ROLL OUT OF BED, RAID A LITTLE, SWITCH REALMS, RAID SOME MORE…”

All-out War!

Art imitates life as World of Warcraft fiend Rob Kazinsky stars in a new film based on the video game By Martin Mulkeen Photograph by Jeff Lipsky

THE GUY

THE CLOTHES

> Kenneth Cole’s luxe take on the hoodie blends the slim tailoring of a sport coat with performanceouterwear features like nylon sleeves and knit cuffs. The result is a casual classic that dresses up. “It allows for ultimate wardrobe flexibility,” says Cole. “You can go straight from the plane to a business meeting or a dinner.”

Jacket: KENNETH C O L E , $24 9

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JUNE 2016

G r o o m i n g b y M a r i s s a M a c h a d o /A r t D e p a r t m e n t u s i n g K e v i n M u r p h y

> Most actors who land iconic roles in the fantasy genre end up cramming source material and praying they don’t alienate the Comic-Con crowd. Rob Kazinsky doesn’t have that worry. This summer, the 32-year-old former British soap star appears as Orc war chief Orgrim Doomhammer in Warcraft, the film version of the massively popular multiplayer video game—something Kazinsky, it turns out, has been obsessed with for more than a decade. In fact, he used to play 18 hours a day: “It was one of the happiest times of my life,” he says. “Roll out of bed, raid a little, swap over to another realm. Raid again. Then do it all over again until 4 a.m.”

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Zac Efron has never been more ready for the zombie apocalypse, he says. And considering the phenomenal shape the star of the upcoming Bay watch movie has gotten in thanks to an outrageous new diet and fitness routine , he’s clearly prepared —should any undead cross his path—to tear them limb from limb.

How Zac BY JOSH DEAN PHOTOGRAPHS BY JEFF LIPSKY

If you want to see Zac Efron with his shirt off, you needn’t look further than his slate of recent and upcoming films: Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, out last month, in which he’s often shirtless; Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, slated for August, which has him basically shirtless on the movie poster; and next year’s big-screen adaptation of ’90s TV series Baywatch, in which he’s routinely running on the beach—no surprise here—shirtless. A Google Images search for Efron yields hundreds of photographs that will make you feel terrible about your own fitness, as will looking him up on Instagram, where he’s lately contributed plenty of beefcake photos from the Baywatch set, where he and co-star Dwayne Johnson spend their off-hours engaged in bare-chested truck-tire-flipping contests. Though Efron, now 28, worked very hard to achieve his physique (the same shirtless torso that, in 2014’s Neighbors, caused Seth Rogen’s character to say, “He looks like something a gay guy designed in a laboratory”) and works even harder to maintain it (more on that later), he’s also aware the subject has begun to spin out of control. The furious online coverage of his pecs, lats, and delts expands daily, ranging from fawning and breathless (“This Woman Spraying Zac Efron’s Body Has Your Dream Job!”) to downright weird (“Are buff male stars like Zac Efron driving young men to drugs and eating disorders?”). And certainly Efron appreciates the love; but as a guy who spent years running away from the first, extremely popular, version of himself—Zac Efron, Pretty Boy Teen Idol—he admits he’s now wary of being typecast all over again, this time as Zac Efron, Shredded Human Ken Doll. But let’s be clear: That doesn’t mean Efron has any intention of letting himself go—as easy as that would be, given his ridiculous schedule. It’s a Sunday in L.A., and we’re sitting at a table in the garden room of the trendy Soho House. He flew in early yesterday from the set of Baywatch, in Savannah, GA; so far he’s seen his girlfriend, slept a little, and filmed an entire day of reshoots on Neighbors 2, in which he reprises his role as Teddy. That shoot ran until 5 a.m., after which Efron spent some more time with his girlfriend, then caught a few hours of sleep before dragging himself out of bed to drive over to West Hollywood to talk about himself over brunch. As soon as we of that into the bottle, too. So yeah: Zac Efron is so committed to finish, he’ll go straight to the airport and fly back to Savannah, his body that he’s BYO-health-drink at a place that offers at least landing around 1 a.m., and by 7 tomorrow morning, he’ll be on set five proprietary juice concoctions incorporating every conceivable again, alongside the Rock, rescuing people pretending to drown. type of vegetable as well as uniquely L.A.-ish ingredients like alka“It’s been a pretty gnarly schedule,” he says. It’s obvious he’s tired, line water, montmorillonite clay, and activated charcoal. and I half expect him to order a cheeseburger and a beer and prop In person, Efron is taller than I’d imagined—5'9"—and far up his feet. Instead, he digs into a small backpack and pulls out a less bulky. It’s not until he pushes his sleeve up to scratch at the plastic bottle, shakes it up, and sets it on the table. remnants of a fake fraternity tattoo from the previous day’s shoot Inside is a yellow-brown liquid with a foamy head, comprising that I glimpse a sign of it: a giant biceps, ridged with veins. ingredients typed onto a label by his on-set nutritionist: mango, “I guess I forgot to scrub there,” he says. coconut, and lemongrass with coconut water, virgin coconut oil, Efron sips his drink and grimaces a little. This is something Epic protein, and almond milk. He drinks a little, then adds water to tolerate, not enjoy. And the payoff is a body that, he says, feels to dilute what’s left. When our iced coffees arrive, he pours a little as good as it ever has. “Right now I’m probably the physically 68

MEN’S FITNESS

JUNE 2016

Grooming by Sabrina Bedrani/ T h e Wa l l G r o u p u s i n g D i o r

“I assumed I wouldn’t like him very much,” says Efron’s Neighbors co-star Seth Rogen. “But he was very self-effacing... he won me over.”

strongest I’ve ever felt,” he says. “Not in terms of bench press or how much I can squat, but in how quickly I could get out of this room and destroy everything in my path.” He looks around the room—at the parents with kids, the willowy young women and men eating in sunglasses to disguise their hangovers—and laughs. Maybe this isn’t the boldest pronouncement he’s ever made. “If the zombie apocalypse happened right now,” he says, “I’d definitely be able to defend myself.” Zac Efron Knows You Think He’s a Jackass

Of course, Efron wasn’t always recognized for being an obscenely fit man. Or, for that matter, for being a man at all. At the

height of his early fame, circa 2007, Zac Efron was the extremely handsome teen star of Disney’s smash-hit High School Musical franchise who, according to a popularly cited but impossible-toprove metric, was plastered on a third of all American teenage girls’ bedroom walls. Efron probably could have made a bazillion more High School Musical sequels, albums, and mall appearances, then retired into a life of wealthy obscurity. But he had other things in mind. “The second we finished the first one,” he says, he began to tell people this wasn’t the life he had in mind. “I was, like, 17. And I said, ‘Guys, you know this is not at all what I want to do?’ And they were like, ‘Really?’ ” After appearing in the 2007 musical Hairspray, Efron went on JUNE 2016

MEN’S FITNESS

69

jumped out, the chute opened, and he landed. to his next post-HSM projects, the teen-girl-friendly films 17 Again and Charlie St. In reality, he says, what happened was “one of Cloud; but he quickly bailed on the Footloose remake and began to do, well, anything the worst things possible.” that wouldn’t typecast him. There were dramas (Parkland), thrillers (The Paperboy), To be more specific, he almost died when indies (We Are Your Friends), grown-up romances (The Lucky One and That Awkward the lead chute’s cord tangled around his ankle Moment, the latter a bro-fest co-starring Michael B. Jordan and Miles Teller). He even and wouldn’t deploy. “As I was going headvoiced a starring role in Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax, and poked fun at himself in several first toward the ground, I thought to myself, Funny Or Die sketches. ‘Something’s wrong here,’ ” Efron recalls. Off-set Efron was experimenting, too. He became a recurring character in the He could feel the tension of the chute’s cord tabloids for a series of social shenanigans that culminated in early 2014, when he got tightening around his leg, “and everything into a fight with a homeless man under a downtown L.A. overpass. He went to rehab, went kind of white and I started to say, ‘Don’t emerged sober, and immediately owned up to his problems, telling The Hollywood panic, don’t panic, reach for your reserve!’ ” Reporter that it was all part of being young, single, and successful in the industry. “I’m Jumping from only 5,000 feet doesn’t give a human,” he said. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes. person much time to react, but he did everyThen in May 2014, Neighbors came out, and the “Efronaissance” began: The former thing he could to free his leg. “I just started teen idol surprised nearly everyone in Hollywood by playing a lovably arrogant prick kicking wildly,” he says. “Then all of a sudden, and showing formidable comedic chops. The shoomp!, the parachute came out. And I R-rated comedy earned more than $260 million went, ‘Oh my God, that was close.’ ” and became the highest-grossing live-action Perhaps most surprisingly, he then just film of co-star Seth Rogen’s career; but the brushed it off. “I haven’t really told anybody biggest surprise was probably that Efron stole “Right now I’m the strongest I’ve ever felt... this since then,” he says. He adored Grylls, and the movie. Like Justin Timberlake before him, If the zombie apocalypse the two wandered around the woods for two he seemed to successfully shed any former teendays, snacking on worms, rappelling down idol lameness and managed to come out the happened right now, cliffs, and camping out in a cave, where they other side not only respectable and unscathed I’d definitely be able to joked and told stories. “This is a guy who’s not but also cool. defend myself.” in the entertainment industry,” Efron says. “I And yet, Efron is nowhere near ready to don’t know what he knew of my work or if he’d seen any of it, but declare this transformation complete. “I step back and look at I was so grateful he was interested in who I was. I felt like I was myself and I still want to kick that guy’s ass sometimes,” Efron says talking to just a guy, a dude, with no judgments. He came in with of his former self. “Like, fuck that guy. He’s done some kind of cool no preconceived notions, and we talked about awesome stuff.” things with some cool people—he did that one thing [Neighbors] that was funny—but, I mean, he’s still just that fucking kid from From the Court to the Stage [High School Musical].” That’s how Rogen felt, too, when he ran into Efron at a party a few years back. “For sure, I assumed he’d be a guy I wouldn’t like very much,” Rogen told me. “But he was very self-effacing and selfdeprecating, and I remember really liking him. He won me over.” Efron says Rogen “was and is my hero” and confesses he never considered working with him “within the realm of possibility.” In their initial meeting about Neighbors, Efron recalls speaking first. “I said, ‘I know what you think of me. I know because I don’t like me, so I can’t imagine what you think.’ ” According to Rogen, it’s this self-awareness that makes Efron so endearing—it provides a level of psychological complexity that gives his characters a depth they might not otherwise have. “What’s surprising about him is how sympathetic and vulnerable he seems,” Rogen says, “probably because people view him a certain way and he’s been shit on. He’s someone you sympathize with, and that’s really hard to do when you look the way he does.” “I know that’s how people think, and it’s in the back of my mind all the time,” Efron says. “I ultimately want that person to want to see me in another interesting role. And that can only come with time, respect, and making decisions that are hard.” If you look closely enough, there are plenty of signs of this process at work, often in unlikely places. The previous night, I’d stumbled on something online I hadn’t seen before: Efron was the first-ever celebrity guest on Running Wild with Bear Grylls, the survival spin-off in which Grylls takes celebrities—most recently President Obama—into the wild and teaches (or tries to teach) them to fend for themselves. The episode opens with Efron and Grylls skydiving from a heli“I was, like, 13, 14, and thrust into this world where my parents copter to begin their quest. Efron had jumped a grand total of once weren’t allowed, with college girls and dudes who loved to share in preparation, and that was with an instructor at a much higher knowledge, and it opened up a whole new world for me.” altitude. But then the show called for him to make a 5,000-foot For all our talk about getting away from the past, it’s obvious solo jump with a self-deploying chute. To viewers at home, Efron Efron still cares deeply about musical theater. “I’d love to find a 70

MEN’S FITNESS

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Continued on page 126

Well-shredded. If getting lean is your goal, one of the simplest and most effective diet hacks you can do is to sub out your regular dinner for a salad. Good news, though: They can actually be tasty!

DUDE, WHERE’S MY

salad?

The Feel-Better Steakhouse Salad The best cut of meat, an d best cuts of greens, adapted from Adam Cole, chef at Maple Block Meat Company, based in Culver City, CA

SERVES 2

2

cups arugula, roughly torn

Cue the Coulotte

2

cups rainbow chard, thinly sliced

The secret to perfecting this manly dish is to complement the juicy steak with a crunchy component—here in the form of pepitas, otherwise known as pumpkin seeds—and something tart, chiefly pomegranate. Of course, you also need the right cut of meat. “Coulotte is a great cut for grilling and for salads; it’s popular in Argentina, where it’s called picanha,” says Cole. “Because it’s part of the sirloin and next to a lot of working muscles, it’s especially flavorful, it goes great with arugula, and it isn’t too expensive.”

¼ cup toasted pumpkin seeds (pepitas)

What’s Superhealthy About It

Iron and zinc deficiencies have been linked to depression—good thing this salad’s beef and pumpkin seeds pack in both nutrients, as well as tryptophan, which boosts serotonin levels (and, consequently, mood). Pomegranate seeds also contain powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory qualities. 74

MEN’S FITNESS

INGREDIENTS

1

8 oz coulotte steak (sirloin cap) Salt and pepper

¼ cup pomegranate seeds DRESSING

1

tbsp honey

1½ tbsp fresh-squeezed lemon juice ¼ cup olive oil Whisk ingredients together until emulsified. INSTRUCTIONS

Season steak liberally with salt and pepper. On a medium-hot grill (or a grill pan over medium heat), grill steak, fat side down, about 8 minutes or until rare. Flip steak and cook another few minutes, until medium-rare. Let rest 10-15 minutes before slicing. Meanwhile, toss greens with dressing and add salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle pepitas and pomegranate seeds over greens, then slice steak and arrange over the top.

JUNE 2016

The Zesty, Crunchy Quinoa Bowl Call it what you want— “quinoa bowl,” “grain bowl,” “salad that looks disturbingly like a bowl of cereal.” But it’s powerfully healthy—and, when done right, absolutely delicious.

SERVES 2

Fluffy Goodness

¼ cup chopped walnuts

Q The new “grain bowls” are a welcome entry into the salad pantheon: filling, nutritious, versatile, and easy to jazz up with your protein of choice. Quinoa, one of the few grains that’s a complete protein (meaning it contains all nine essential amino acids), has a light, fluffy texture that won’t weigh you down.

INGREDIENTS

½ tsp salt 1

cup quinoa

Who said salads are dishes best served cold? The new hot-tops feature pipinghot meat laid over tasty, cool greens.

1½ tsp turmeric 1

tbsp fresh-squeezed lemon juice

½ cup diced celery ¼ cup ricotta (preferably fresh) INSTRUCTIONS

Bring 1½ cups water and ½ teaspoon salt to a boil in a medium saucepan over high heat. Stir in quinoa and turmeric, return to a boil, then reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer 20 minutes. Fluff quinoa with a fork and turn onto a platter to cool. Mix in lemon juice, then celery and walnuts; adjust salt. Top with dollops of ricotta before serving.

What’s Superhealthy About It

Q Turmeric is high in curcumin, shown in studies to help alleviate joint pain. The exercise-induced inflammation that results when you train hard can make your joints feel old and creaky, but adding more curcumin to your diet may help banish the aches and increase mobility.

The Hearty Salmon Hot-Top Mastering the newest salad innovation means layering steaming-hot meat over citrusy greens.

F o o d s t y l i n g b y S u z a n n e L e n z e r ; P r o p s t y l i n g b y K a i t l y n D u R o s s Wa l k e r / H o n e y A r t i s t s

The salad that eats like a sandwich

Q The health food chain Chopt Salad recently introduced the hot-top to the world, which is a hearty combination of braised meat and grains ladled steaming hot over greens for a filling meal. In our simple but richly flavored version, the chipotle-orange sauce acts as a warm dressing to gently wilt the spinach, and we subbed out the chicken for just-ashearty lean salmon. What’s Superhealthy About It

Q Salmon’s omega3s help your heart function at top levels. Studies show

that omega-3s can lower risk of abnormal heartbeats, drop triglyceride levels, retard the growth of plaque on your arteries, and lower blood pressure. The American Heart Association recommends eating fatty fish like salmon and sardines at least twice a week; you can also supplement with about 1,000g of high-quality fish oil every day to make up the slack.

SERVES 2

INGREDIENTS

2

tbsp adobo sauce (from canned chipotle chiles)

½ cup orange juice (preferably fresh squeezed) 1

large boneless salmon fillet (about 8 oz, preferably Alaskan wild), cut in half

4

cups spinach, washed, dried, and roughly torn

INSTRUCTIONS

In a sauté pan with a lid, bring adobo and orange juice to a boil over high heat. Add salmon, reduce heat to low, and cover pan. Cook until salmon is opaque throughout and flakes easily with a fork, about 10 minutes. Divide spinach among plates and top each with a salmon fillet. If sauce is thin, bring to a boil and reduce until it reaches the consistency of ranch dressing. Drizzle sauce over salmon and greens and serve hot.

Pork need not apply Collard greens, the comfort food staple, are one of the most overlooked vegetables, says chef Wolfgang Puck. You can almost invariably sub them in for kale in any recipe.

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JUNE 2016

The Fantastically Filling Blueberry-Grape Salad The World-Best Nutty, Luscious Collard Green Salad The ultimate trendy, terrific salad, adapted from world-famous celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck. Behold the “new kale”!

Q Yes, collards are delicious when cooked Southernstyle with salty pork, but they’re also great when eaten raw; Puck says you can elevate any traditional kale salad by subbing in collard greens. (In fact, both are from the same species, Brassica oleracea). What’s Superhealthy About It

Q Collards are among the greens highest in vitamin K, crucial for strengthening your bones. Strong evidence from multiple studies shows that getting adequate vitamin K prevents fractures and bone loss. SERVES 2

INGREDIENTS

½ bunch of raw collard greens (about 4 oz) Salt 3

tbsp golden raisins

3

tbsp toasted pine nuts

½ avocado, peeled and diced Shaved Parmesan, for garnish (optional) DRESSING

Zest and juice from half a lemon 1

tsp Dijon mustard

½ tsp sugar 2

tbsp olive oil

Whisk lemon, mustard, and sugar till sugar is dissolved. Slowly drizzle olive oil while whisking to emulsify. INSTRUCTIONS

Roll collard greens lengthwise and cut into strips. In a large bowl, combine greens with a sprinkle of salt and “massage” the leaves with your hands for 60 seconds to tenderize. Add the raisins, pine nuts, and avocado, and toss lightly with dressing. Garnish with Parmesan.

Meet the only superhealthy meal that can also pass for dessert.

SERVES 2

1

cup blueberries

Fruit Power

1

cup red grapes, halved

Q It’s a simple fruit salad with a big secret weapon: matcha (green tea powder; see “Health Tip,” below), which adds a flavorful complexity and a big shot of nutrition.

½ cup Greek yogurt

What’s Superhealthy About It

Q In addition to being crazy high in antioxidants, the blueberry’s prowess in combating brain aging has led researchers to call it the “brainberry.” One Tufts study showed that the equivalent of a half cup a day dramatically improved neuromotor skills. And the anti-inflammatory properties of both blueberries and red grapes (which have the polyphenol reservatrol, the reason docs often recommend a daily glass of red wine) can protect against seizures.

INGREDIENTS

1

tsp matcha (green tea powder) Honey, maple syrup, or powdered sugar to taste

INSTRUCTIONS

Combine blueberries and grapes in a large bowl. In another bowl, mix yogurt, matcha, and sweetener until smooth and of uniform color. Add matcha cream to fruit, mix gently, and serve.

The Muscle-Building Roasted Beet Salad A delicious twist on today’s fine-dining staple, adapted from chef John Fraser, of New York’s NIX

SERVES 2

INGREDIENTS

1

Extra-virgin olive oil

The right way to go red

Q This easy salad includes all the flavors that beets go best with: toasted nuts, creamy dairy, and tender greens. What’s Superhealthy About It

Q Beets’ nitrates may help shuttle more oxygenated blood to the muscles and heart; a 2015 study found that drinking beet juice upped muscle power about 13% .

lb beets, scrubbed clean Salt

6

tbsp roasted, shelled pistachios, roughly chopped

1

tbsp za’atar, or toasted sesame seeds

½ cup plain yogurt, whisked with a pinch of salt 1

cup mâche greens, for plating

DRESSING

2

tbsp sherry vinegar

1

tsp Dijon mustard

1

tsp honey

¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil Whisk vinegar, mustard, and honey in a bowl. Slowly drizzle oil while whisking to emulsify, then salt to taste. INSTRUCTIONS

Preheat oven to 350°. Toss beets with a little olive oil and salt, and place in a baking pan. Cover with foil and bake about 90 minutes. Rub off skin with a kitchen towel while still warm. Cut larger beets into halves or quarters, toss with dressing, and divide between plates. Combine pistachios and za’atar over beets. Spoon yogurt around the beets. Top with mâche.

Why do I sometimes

feel I’m about

to absolutely f*%&ing

snap?

A Allow me to confess something horrible. On somewhat regular occasions—way more often than I’d like to admit—I feel the sudden and overwhelming urge to pummel complete strangers. Just a few weeks back, I was waiting in line to board a plane when a guy in a suit—it’s always some entitled prick in a suit—nudged past, certain that because he’s an Important Businessman it must be rightfully his turn to board. His blithe disregard for my rightfully earned place in line, or anyone else’s, had me debating internally whether I should stick a foot out and trip him there, in full view of everyone, or wait and push him out of the baggage door on the Jetway. Then there was the Audi SUV driver who appeared in my rearview mirror on the highway, pulled to within inches of my bumper, and flashed his lights like an ambulance. Forget the fact that we were both already doing 80 mph and I had two kids in the back—hey, Jason Statham here had places to go! For a split second I actually fantasized about running him off the road. Then there’s Time Warner Cable customer service— well, let’s just stop there for now. But here’s the thing: I’m not an especially angry person. I’ve never actually pummeled a complete stranger—or anyone else, for that matter. I hate fighting and avoid conflict whenever possible. Had I played football, I probably would’ve been a punter. Yet even I can’t help it when certain objectively trivial events cause my senses to heighten, my muscles to tense, my vision to tunnel, and my sweat glands to churn, and before I know what’s happening I’ve gone from mild-mannered father to white-hot rage monster. And if you believe the media, I’m hardly alone. In 2016 everyone seems overworked, overstressed, and overcharged by an onslaught of bad news that runs the gamut from terrorism to droughts to racial violence to constant angry rhetoric from politicians who can’t stop yelling. Anger in America is so pervasive that when NBC conducted a national poll on the matter in November, nearly half of all U.S. adults surveyed described themselves as angrier than they were a year ago. And all this rage isn’t harmless. A recent study by the U. of Sydney found that, for as long as two hours after an episode of uncontrolled anger, your risk of a heart attack is nine times higher. So when I heard talk of a supposed “rage specialist” named Mitch Abrams, Psy.D., I had to give him a call. Abrams, a 43-year-old psychologist, has made treating anger his life’s work. His primary job is running the psychology program in five 80

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New Jersey prisons, but he’s even better known in psych circles as the guy who teaches elite athletes—both professionals and amateurs— how to harness their most primal feelings. These are men and women (but mostly men) who thrive in a realm where aggression is encouraged. And if this guy can talk to NFL defensive backs (or, God forbid, serial killers) about harnessing their rage, surely he can handle a father of two from Brooklyn who gets riled up in airports. “Mitch really stands out as the person in our field who can talk about anger,” says Alison Rhodius, Ph.D., chair of the sport psychology program at John F. Kennedy University in San Francisco. “He’s the one person who’s taken this issue and just run with it.” Abrams begins our first conversation by assuring me that anger is normal. It’s a core human emotion and one of the body’s natural physiological responses to danger. Dealing with anger is, simply put, a choice. It’s how you choose to respond to anger—how you hone your ability to recognize and deal with the impulses—that ultimately determines whether you’re a healthy and happy human being. “Think about it this way,” Abrams says, settling into one of his favorite analogies. “You can’t make a good steak without fire, right? If you can control the flame, you can make wonderful things happen. But if you can’t, you’re going to burn up the steak. Anger is like that fire. If you learn how to harness it, there are all kinds of things you can do. If you can’t control it, you’re going to burn yourself up.”

To Banish Anger, Should You Imagine a Warm Beach or Hammer a Heavy Bag? Whether he’s talking to a regular guy like me or an NBA power forward, Abrams’ first lesson is this: You can’t control anything until you acknowledge that there’s a problem in the first place. To illustrate, he brings up football. “Did you watch the SteelersBengals game?” Abrams asks one afternoon, taking off his gray pinstripe suit jacket and pulling a rolling chair out from behind his desk at the main branch of his private practice in New Jersey. Abrams is a large man—6', 240, he says—and he sits in his chair in an athletic posture, his legs spread and his feet firmly planted, as if he’s preparing for the snap. “That fourth quarter was the validation of my entire career. For the Bengals, when you live by the sword, you die by the sword.”

W

Know Your Boiling Point > The key to controlling your anger and preventing destructive behavior—even violence—is recognizing that you’re becoming progressively more agitated until you reach what anger-management guru Mitch Abrams, Psy.D., calls the “explosion threshold.” And believe it or not, it’s rarely a “sudden” occurrence. Below, Abrams, who works with both pro athletes and death row inmates, walks us through a hypothetical escalation. At each point, he recommends visualization exercises to bring you back down to your “baseline”—the resting emotional state when you’re calm, content, and happy.

BOILING POINT

6 A.M.

7 A.M.

8 A.M.

Illustrations by Oliver Munday

1) You’re unaware you’re irritated

“You wake up with a headache and some flu symptoms,” Abrams says. “You’re in a negative mindset but don’t even notice it.”

9 A.M.

10 A.M.

11 A.M.

1 2 P. M .

1 P. M .

2 P. M .

3 P. M .

2) You’re clearly annoyed

3) You’re pretty damn steamed

4) You’re seriously angry

“At breakfast, your wife nags you about a bill you forgot to pay, and you argue, which raises your overall irritation. Now you’re definitely annoyed.”

“As you leave, you spill coffee on your shirt. It’s a small annoyance, but all of a sudden it seems huge. You feel your muscles tighten. Now you’re definitely on edge.”

“Driving to work, a person cuts you off in traffic. Now you’re mad. You scream and swear and consider chasing him. You feel hot, and your heart is racing.”

4 P. M .

5 P. M .

5) You completely lose your s#*t

“At the afternoon meeting, your boss criticizes a job you did, and instead of apologizing or letting it go, you argue. You yell. Now you’ve crossed the line and hurt yourself.”

6 P. M .

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them,” he says. “But our body keeps a tally of them even when our conscious mind doesn’t.” There are other factors that can also send you spiraling toward the explosion threshold before you know it—“things that have even bigger meaning and might result in a more hysterical response,” Abrams explains. Maybe you’ve experienced a recent personal tragedy or are very sensitive about a political issue. Drugs and alcohol qualify, too. “They numb the parts of the brain that might notice warning signs and say, ‘Hey, maybe it’s a bad idea to call that police officer a fucking prick,’ ” Abrams says. “Alcohol doesn’t make you an asshole—alcohol makes it impossible to hide the fact that you’re an asshole.” Recognizing anger cues is harder for athletes because they’re already in a heightened state of arousal and may not notice the subtler cues, so Abrams teaches them to look for other warning signs. “What I’ll often tell athletes, especially football players, is to pay attention to when their mindset is shifting—when it’s moving from executing the call to executing someone,” Abrams says. “That’s when anger’s taking over. And when anger takes over, it interferes with performance.” In short, the key to control is awareness: Once you identify the changes in your body, you’re in a position to calm yourself. And the most common and effective approach to doing that? Visualization, says Abrams. He tells patients to get comfortable and conjure an image that makes them feel relaxed. The go-to image is a therapy-world cliché: a quiet beach, where waves roll in, one after another. “Whatever problems you have, when you exhale, exhale those problems into the ocean,” he says, choosing nature as the context because whatever tiny thing has set you off is easily put in its place by the enormity of the natural world. “Recognize that, in the grand scheme of things, your problems are small.” There are other ways to reel yourself in, including muscle relaxation techniques, in which you tense and release certain muscle groups, meditation, and music. “Music can be very powerful to amp you up or calm you down,” Abrams says. One thing he discourages at all costs: yelling. “I hear people say, ‘If you’re angry, yell into a pillow.’ No—then you’re reinforcing yelling. And in an argument, once you start yelling, people stop listening.” Exercise is another very effective way to burn up your anger, but the type matters. A particularly bad outlet: Punching a bag to “work it out.” In fact, Abrams actively discourages patients from using “striking exercises” to fight rage. “Let’s say that whenever I’m angry, I go hit the heavy bag,” he says. “I’m going to feel better, sure. But if that’s the go-to when I’m angry, what’s happens the next time, when I have not my punching bag but my wife in front of me? Bam!”

Prop st yling by Megumi Emoto/ Anderson Hopkins

He’s referring to last season’s AFC Wild Card game, when the Steelers edged the Bengals in one of the ugliest and most violent football games in recent memory. By the second half, the game had completely devolved into a battle of dirty plays and cheap shots—the NFL later handed out nearly $140,000 in fines to seven players— and no single player bore more responsibility for the mayhem than the Bengals’ volatile linebacker Vontaze Burfict. The 25-year-old committed three nasty personal fouls, the final of which knocked Steelers All-Pro receiver Antonio Brown out of the playoffs with a head shot in overtime. Burfict personally rang up about $70,000 in fines and a suspension for the first three games of the 2016 season. “I have no doubt in my mind I could help that guy,” says Abrams. The main problem with Burfict, he says, isn’t that he was born angry or is constitutionally angrier than any of the rest of us, but that his environment has nurtured his rage rather than forced him to manage it. In fact, the linebacker has been known for his notorious temper since he was in college, at Arizona State. Treating hotheaded athletes is challenging at first, Abrams says, because they’re often forced into therapy against their will when they do something wrong, like hurting someone, so they’re resistant to change. Abrams’ first order of business, then, is to show the player why he wants to be there. He’ll ask, “Do you want to lose your job, your wife, your life? OK, then— you want to be here.” “I seduce the humanness out of them,” he explains, which is easier if the patient’s a parent. “That’s an in: Is this what you want your daughter to know you’re about?” That’s when Abrams gets to lesson No. 1: When we snap, it’s almost never random and sudden. Reaching that point is a process of escalation in which the body’s mental and physical processes slowly ramp up until we reach what Abrams calls the “explosion threshold”—the point at which our anger boils over and we lose control. Abrams opens a book and shows me a graph illustrating the process. (See “Know Your Boiling Point,” page 81.) As we become agitated, we experience a series of subtle physiological changes from what Abrams calls the “baseline”—our calm and contented state. Breathing and pulse increase. The hair on our arms stands up. We start to feel physically hot. We begin to think angry thoughts. The more stress we’re under, the further up that line we go, usually without even realizing it. “We experience a lot of stressors subliminally,” Abrams says. A stubbed toe in the morning may set in motion a particularly angry day, exacerbated by a crowded security checkpoint at the airport, then compounded even further by a testy e-mail from your boss. “There are many things that annoy us, but we don’t consciously process

Even Nuns Lose It at

DMV

they lose their focus.” Guys like Burfict, he says—or even ex-Ravens running back Ray Rice and former Cowboy Greg Hardy, who both Abrams grew up in Brooklyn, in Starrett City, a abused their significant others in fits of rage—are the exception, not small, working-class neighborhood in the borough’s the rule, because they haven’t learned to harness their anger. southeast corner. He claims his life’s calling was The more I talked to Abrams, the more I realized that most of revealed to him at 15 during a frightening tantrum us—the raging masses—are looking at anger in a fundamentally in his bedroom. There was music blaring—“because wrong way. As Pixar’s Inside Out made adorably clear to families last no good temper tantrum exists without background summer, anger isn’t a condition but a natural emotion universally music”—and in the midst of his outburst he took his rage out on a shared, no different from sadness or joy. Abrams once used the word folding metal chair. “I ripped it in half like it was paper,” he recalls. “fix” to describe the process of treatment, but that’s not really what He was so amped that he hadn’t noticed his mom was in the room. he’s doing; the truth is, a man’s anger will never go away. “It was the first and only time I ever saw her afraid,” he says. “She When I tell Abrams about my own irrational episodes, he assures looked at me and said very me that it’s all perfectly normal. clearly, ‘You need to get ahold “It may seem unimportant of that because if you don’t, being cut off in line, but it’s an you’re going to ruin your life ego and a pride thing. That’s and you’re never going to get to rooted in insecurity.” Most where you could go.’ That was angry feelings, he says, can be the first time I became cognitraced back to feelings of insezant of anger as a real emotion curity—physical, financial, or in real time that, if it was left otherwise. For this reason, olduntethered, could take me to fashioned psychotherapy is, all kinds of bad places. That’s without a doubt, your best tool when it all started for me.” for defeating them. Abrams’ first job in the field Abrams himself gets pissed was as the senior psychologist at when someone cuts him off in Coney Island Hospital; he also traffic—he’s just trained himself began doing sports consulting to deal with it: “I may mutter on the side. It was just after he’d ‘asshole,’ but I also think, ‘Yep, finished a talk on the subject you’re gonna die—probably of athletes and anger—based soon. You can beat me there.’ It’s on his Ph.D. dissertation—at just better to let most things go.” a psychological conference in Most people who know 2000 that a man approached how to deal with anger have and asked him if he’d consider found the right amount of heat bringing his work to a New without burning the steak. Jersey prison. He said yes. They employ what’s techniToday Abrams oversees the cally called “instrumental psychology program in five aggression”—using their angry prisons in the state, with 100 thoughts to accomplish an people reporting to him. And actual goal. This comes across Dial M for murder: Mitch Abrams, despite the fact that his private as tenacity, as passion, as spirit, Psy.D.,helps convicts at New Jersey’s practice is booming—it’s now a whereas “reactive aggression”— Northern State Prison deal with the anger that probably landed them there. second full-time job—he’s still a baseball player breaking a bat staring down murderers. over his knee after a strikeout, And for the record: Criminals me throwing a guy out of a really aren’t angrier than the Jetway—manifests as a loss of rest of us, Abrams says. As with out-of-control football players, their control. Michael Jordan used “instrumental aggression” every game. behavior is rooted in their environments and other psychological Learning the skills needed to master anger, such as better underconditions for which anger is merely a symptom. standing your body’s signals, isn’t easy, Abrams says; but truly motiIt’s not just athletes and cons who rely on Abrams for help. In recent vated patients can do it in roughly eight to 12 therapy sessions. The years, he’s become popular with yet another group—one that often process can take much longer if you’re resistant. “Getting to the struggles not to cross the line between having just enough anger underlying triggers takes time,” he says. “I find that men are especially and having too much: corporate executives. “The truth is, you can’t hesitant to look at themselves, but once they start, it pays off.” be successful in life by being passive,” Abrams says. Though there’s Toward the end of our last conversation, I ask if anyone has truly always risk of “spillage”—crossing the explosion threshold—the right mastered anger. A Buddhist monk, perhaps? amount of anger can make you stronger. “I think there are some people who are physiologically much less It’s the same in football, he says. When you consider what they’re reactive to anger,” Abrams says. “They still get angry, but not as often asked to do on the field, “football players on the whole have really and not as intensely. I think there are also people who are accepting good anger-management skills.” In fact, players often worry that and patient, so they get pissed off by fewer things. But I don’t think seeing Abrams is going to make them “too soft.” Not a chance, he there’s anybody who doesn’t get angry. You send Mother Theresa to says. “I want them to be tenacious, hungry, focused. I want them to be the DMV, I’m sure she would get pissed.” aggressive. But I don’t want them to be so consumed by emotion that And that makes me very happy. Q

A

ANDREW CUTRARO

never get old

Today’s top pro athletes are extending their careers longer than ever before, inching their way toward athletic immortality. How are they doing it— Training? Diet? Fitness technology? We launched an investigation to learn their highest-level secrets so you, too, can play forever. BY ERIC BENSON

The fitness world has come a long way “My back problems cost me at least three or four years [of my career],” Bird told reporters in 2012. “After I hurt it, I always played with spasms. I kept playing because I always wanted to play for one more championship. That was just me.” To be sure, Bird wasn’t an outlier in his era. Michael Jordan retired—for the second (though not final) time—at age 35. Troy Aikman left the NFL at 34. Baseball star Don Mattingly bowed out at that age, too. The reality is that their retirements didn’t seem unusual—they were “old.” Yet if those guys were playing today, the timing of their exits would no doubt feel premature. So what, specifically, has changed? Any dedicated Men’s Fitness reader can give at least a partial answer: Today’s athletes are eating better, resting better, and training smarter than ever before. But that hardly explains why Vince Carter, just shy of 40, can dunk over guys 20 years younger than he is, or how Jagr keeps the team’s strength and conditioning coach at the gym past midnight. So what are the specific training techniques that athletes have adopted that have prolonged so many careers? With that question and more in mind, we launched a formal investigation into longevity training, reaching out to team doctors and sports scientists, academic physiologists and elite strength coaches—and, of course, the age-defying athletes themselves. Some of theses experts, like Marcus Elliott, M.D., director of the “applied sports science” firm Peak Performance Project, are at the bleedingedge of forward-looking fitness technology. Others, like legendary NFL strength coach Johnny Parker—who, in the ’80s, tracked down Soviet coaches so he could pick their brains about plyometrics and periodization—are decidedly more old-school, but no less inquisitive. New-school, old-school—they still agreed on the fundamentals. So we compiled their wisdom into six lessons, crucial techniques, and habits that have helped prolong the careers of aging stars. Best of all, the lessons apply to you, too. Whether you’re a lifter, a runner, or an all-around sports nut, you’ll find something here to keep you performing at the very highest level. Because age, science and real-world results are now telling us, is just another number.

since the late 1980s, when Jane Fonda and Richard Simmons dominated the popular home-video market and StairMasters and Nautilus machines were newfangled attractions in burgeoning gym chains. Fat was irredeemably evil, the surgeon general had only recently issued a report on the dangers of secondhand smoke, and a certain guy named Tabata was still a decade away from inventing HIIT. In 1988, personal training was such a wildly new concept that The New York Times actually launched an investigation into the curious rise of “highly disciplined, one-on-one workouts, not just for professional athletes and celebrities but for ordinary people who can afford them.” Meanwhile, the undisputed king of professional sports was Larry Bird, a pasty basketball player from Indiana who had a blond mullet, chewed tobacco, crushed cans of Bud—and, by 1986, had never seriously lifted a free weight in his life. At the time it didn’t matter. He not only guided his Boston Celtics to the NBA championship that June but also capped the season by winning his third consecutive MVP award. Then, the last month of ’86, something ominous occurred that affected his life and his career: He turned 30. It’s an age that feels so inconsequential today. LeBron James is over 30. So are soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo and NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Remember when the New England Patriots’ 38-year-old quarterback Tom Brady turned 30? Neither does he. Since then he’s won two league MVP awards and a Super Bowl and thrown 281 touchdown passes, which is more than Hall of Famer Joe Montana threw in his entire career. Forty-year-old San Antonio Spurs big man Tim Duncan turned 30 seven All-Star Game appearances and two NBA championships ago. And since the season after Florida Panthers 44-year-old (not a typo) winger Jaromir Jagr celebrated his 30th birthday, he’s played for seven NHL teams, scored 279 goals, and logged 14,774 minutes of ice time. (And that doesn’t even include the 4∏ seasons he spent playing in Russia and the Czech Republic.) But not long after Bird turned 30, he started missing games. His Achilles tendons became painfully tender. His back acted up. His body began to fall apart in front of sports fans’ eyes. On the court he grimaced with every twist and twinge; on the sideline he lay on his stomach to relieve the pain. In the locker room, he crammed his torso into a quarter-inch-thick fiberglass body brace. He tried to fight back from his injuries with immobilization and bed rest. (Both bad ideas, as we now know.) Before Bird’s final season, surgeons extracted a disk from his spinal column to relieve the pain but the operation didn’t help much. In 1992, at the age of 35, he announced his retirement at the Boston Garden. 86

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“JAGR’S INTO THE SPIRITUAL ASPECTS OF TRAINING, LIKE ACTIVATING CHAKRAS,” SAYS TRAINER TOMMY POWERS.

The fighter. Forty-four-year-old Florida Panther Jaromir Jagr swears by speed and resistance work—and doesn’t engage in big lifts.

44, and he’s probably never really trained that way in his career. I’m not going to come in and say, “Hey, you should be doing this,” and totally change up his routine.

O p e n e r i m a g e : S t e v e M i t c h e l l / U S A To d a y S p o r t s : T h i s p a g e f r o m l e f t : Chris Crisman; Cour tesy of Reebok

Training a “Freight Train” Florida Panthers strength coachTommy Powers talks about working with the NHL’s ageless wonder, Jaromir Jagr

So Jagr is getting pretty famous for his unorthodox drills… T O M M Y P O W E R S : A lot of the stuff we do is definitely a little out there. He shoots a sixpound med ball against a wall. He wears a 45-pound vest and ankle weights, and he’ll just wear them all day until he gets on the ice. Then sometimes when he’s on the ice he’ll skate with the weights on. There was one practice where one of our star defensemen lifted up Jagr’s stick and took his puck away, and after that Jagr came in and said, “I’ll never get a puck taken away from me again!” We also found a way to strap a stick

to a cable on a Keiser Functional Trainer, and he applies pressure downward on the stick to activate his core.

And any traditional weight training? Not really. He’ll do some dumbbell shoulder raises, but he’s not doing bench presses or hang cleans or power cleans or deadlifts or any of that stuff. When he sees other players doing those, he’ll be like, “You shouldn’t be doing that, you should be doing this!” It’s pretty funny to see. Some guys will start going over to the stuff that he’s doing. I do think something like hang cleans could benefit Jagr with the power aspect, but he’s

What did you expect training him would be like? When Jagr got traded to us he was 43, and everybody told me he was the kind of guy who has his own key to the rink, who wants to skate at late hours—all these nightmare stories for a strength and conditioning coach. But it really wasn’t that bad. He’ll call me up and we’ll skate at 10:30 at night, and then we’ll work out in the gym until 12, 12:30 doing sprints and pushes and all that stuff. He just wants to train when his body feels ready, not be told when to do it. What does he focus on in his training? Right now it’s being strong and stable and able to protect the puck. He’s evolved into a guy who’s going to create pressure in the offensive zone and use his body and have short bursts of speed. Sprints are his go-to. I’ll resist him with a rope, and he’ll go 10, 15, maybe 20

meters max. That gets his legs going and gets his glutes firing. He’ll do those for 10 minutes after every game, and he’ll grab me on the road and we’ll do it in the hallways of the hotel. We try to maintain as much of that lowerbody power and speed as we can that way.

Can other athletes learn from him? I think anybody can learn from him. He doesn’t like taking any days off. If he takes a day off, he feels terrible. And he finds ways to make himself stronger with his mindset and his mental preparation, too. He’s also very into the spiritual aspect of things. He’s really into activating chakras and all that stuff. Activating chakras? Yeah, he’s been doing it for years. There are seven chakras; he’s able to open them up to help him feel strong and create energy through his body. Before games, he listens to chakra opening music on YouTube, and he kind of meditates. Then he’ll say to me, “How are my chakras?” I’ll push him and he won’t budge at all, and I’ll say, “Yeah, they’re really good. They’re open.”

1

T HE WA R AG A INS T RE T IREMEN T

IN THE WEIGHT ROOM, FOCUS ON BAR SPEED—NOT WEIGHT

VS.

The retirement age in spor ts just keeps rising

THEN

NOW

BJORN BORG

ROGER FEDERER

The head-banded one called it quits in 1983 at the ripe old age of 26, announcing that tennis was no longer “fun.”

“Ageless Roger Federer [34] is in peak form, looks primed for a sixth U.S. Open title,” Sports Illustrated said in 2015.

THEN

NOW

LARRY BIRD

VINCE CARTER

His bad back did what his competitors couldn’t: sideline him for good in 1992 at age 35.

As of press time, the 39-year-old was averaging nearly 7 points per game off the bench for the Memphis Grizzlies.

NOW

TOM BRADY

The three-time Super Bowl winner credits his bad back for an untimely exit in 2001 at the age of 34.

He’s 38, and at the rate he’s going, still ringing up 4,000-yard seasons, Gronk may retire before he does.

88

THEN

NOW

BOBBY ORR

JAROMIR JAGR

One of the greatest of all time was forced to hang up his skates at 30 due to too much knee pain.

See “Training a ‘Freight Train,’” page 87, and read how his chakras are still very much open.

MEN’S FITNESS

JUNE 2016

C l o c k w i s e f r o m t o p l e f t : Wa l t e r I o o s s J r. / G e t t y ; J a y n e K u m i n - O n c e a / U S A To d a y S p o r t s ; D a n H a m i l t o n / U S A To d a y S p o r t s ; S t e w M i n e / U S A To d a y S p o r t s : M a n n y R u b i o / U S A To d a y S p o r t s : U S A To d a y S p o r t s

THEN

TROY AIKMAN

The sobering truth of aging: No matter who you are, it slows you down. (Even Usain Bolt’s fastest times are all from his early and mid20s). And if you play a sport that demands speed and explosiveness, you’re not going to have a job for very long if you’re slow. That’s why, as athletes get older, strength coaches have the same mantra: Forget maxing out in the weight room and focus on “the rate of force development.” In other words: bar speed. “When I’d see a guy squatting incredible weight, I’d tell him, ‘Lighten up and move the bar faster,’ ” says Johnny Parker, a courtly Mississippian who was an NFL strength and conditioning coach from 1984 to 2007 and won Super Bowls with both Bill Parcells’ New York Giants and Jon Gruden’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers. “I’d stop a player at or before he was squatting double body weight. You don’t need to squat any more. And if you train ballistically—which is going down under control and then up as quickly as possible, really rattling the plates—you’ll maximize the rate of force produced. That’s the best way to preserve your speed.” The problem with explosive movements— whether it’s ballistic lifting or, especially, plyometric exercises—is that they can strain your joints, particularly if you’re an older athlete with mobility issues. As Jeremy Holsopple, athletic performance director for the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, says, “It’s hard to do explosive things on an ankle that has zero degrees of dorsal flexion…or a knee or hip that has some arthritic changes.” Holsopple was hired by Mavericks owner Mark Cuban specifically for his sportsscience expertise, and when he works with his team’s aging star, 37-year-old Dirk Nowitzki, he puts his knowledge into practice. “We do high-force outputs with Dirk, but we keep fast-twitch muscles firing in a way that’s not breaking down the joints,” he tells me. Nowitzki and Holsopple still do plyometric drills, but they lessen the load with a new high-speed isokinetic squat machine, a specialized piece of equipment that maintains a consistent resistance throughout the concentric (raising) phase of the lift and applies virtually no resistance during the eccentric (lowering) phase. This means that on an isokinetic machine, Nowitzki has to push just as hard at the top of his lift as he does at the bottom (a normal squat gets easier as you get more leverage on the bar), and once he starts moving downward he has to deal with only his own body weight. “The whole movement’s very aggressive,

but it doesn’t feel that way on his ankles, knees, or lower back,” Holsopple says. “It lets us do something that’s high force without the wear and tear.”

2

MAXIMIZE YOUR USE OF FREE WEIGHTS

Isokinetic squat machines can be great for targeted explosive exercises, but when it comes to building up the entire body, exercise science still has no replacement for traditional free weights. “I’ll tell you one thing that’s definitely helped players,” Parker tells me. “The age of the fitness machine is fading into history.” That’s because machines target only limited groups of large muscles, whereas Olympic-style lifts train the body’s kinetic chains, which include the easily ignored but crucial muscles that stabilize and assist.

“The reason traditional methods like free weights are tried and true is they prepare those support structures,” says L.A. Lakers strength coach Tim DiFrancesco. “There’s nothing you can substitute for that.” A lot of athletes have been told incorrectly to avoid beneficial exercises like the deadlift, and there’s a reason for that: Deadlifting with bad form is a tried-and-true way to eviscerate your lower back. (There are different types of deadlifts. If you’re struggling with the classic deadlift, try an option like the hex-bar. See “The Flaherty Formula” in our May issue for the definitive hex-bar primer.) But lifting weights with good form incorporates critical support muscles like the erector spine, rotator cuff, and smaller hip muscles, which sitting isolating on a machine won’t always do as effectively. Strengthening these muscles can mean fewer lowerback, shoulder, and knee injuries, and a career with fewer of those injuries almost

always means a longer career. To ensure you’re giving your body a solidly built base, DiFrancesco recommends sticking to the basics: squat, deadlift; lunges for the lower body; and bench presses, pushups, rows, and pullup variations for the upper body.

3 HIT YOUR HIPS HORIZONTALLY Of course, when it comes to bulletproofing the body’s support structures over time, Olympic lifts aren’t the whole story. Bill Foran, the Miami Heat’s strength coach since 1988—the franchise’s debut season— has seen a major evolution in approaches to training the core and hips in the decades since he came on board. “Back in the day, if you squatted deep and you did lunges deep, you were doing enough hip work,” Foran remembers. “But that’s

Eat to Play Forever! Hint: Get More Vitamin C And fats like pasture-raised bacon. But, if you’re Tom Brady, that means no more tomatoes or mushrooms. “Everybody has always looked at food as fuel,” says Tim DiFrancesco, the L.A. Lakers’ strength and conditioning coach. “But now we’re realizing that food is also potentially medicine— or the opposite.” DiFrancesco, widely known as “Grass-fed Tim” (a moniker bestowed on him by 36-year-old Metta World Peace), is evangelical about the benefits of certain foods not only for overall health but also for the recovery process of aging athletes. One of his biggest battles is against inflammation. But he doesn’t fight it with heaps of anti-inflammatory pills—he fights it with diet. For example: sugars and hydrogenated oils are very much out— “They can not only create inflammation, they can also make your

E

DIRK NOWITZKI PROTECTS HIS JOINTS WITH 1G OF VITAMIN C MIXED WITH 5G GELATIN.

supporting structures more fragile and brittle on a cellular level,” he says—and healthy fats, particularly avocado and coconut oil, are in. “They’re not going to add to inflammation, and they’re going to give you a lot of good energy.” And for a fullout assault on inflammation, DiFrancesco has his players scarf up the leafy greens of their choice. This whole-foods approach (which, for the Lakers, is actually catered by Whole Foods) will sound familiar to anyone who’s heard of Paleo; but the best aging pro athletes take it to another level. Patriots quarterback Tom Brady reportedly eats a diet carefully calibrated to be 80% alkaline and 20% acidic; he also steers clear of nightshades—tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, eggplants—because they don’t have

anti-inflammatory properties. In Dallas, Dirk Nowitzki bulletproofs his joints with a different approach: 1g of vitamin C mixed with 5g gelatin per day. (Studies have shown that high- dosing vitamin C can reduce the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines.) And in L.A., the recently retired Kobe Bryant, 37, has become a devotee of bone broth soup. “When Kobe had the Achilles tear [in 2013], he said, ‘I’m not going to hang it up,’ so we needed to do everything we could to get him back,” DiFrancesco says. “There’s evidence that a cup of bone broth contains basically the building blocks of the body’s support structures. Did it alone help him get back? Probably not. But I’d say it could very well have been part of the overall map to recovery.”

vertical hip work. We’re finding athletes need to do horizontal hip work as well.” Foran has his Heat players perform bridges, lateral shuffles with resistance bands, and hip raises with a sandbag or a barbell placed across the waist for resistance. “When you develop the hips, they correct above and below,” he explains. “When you have strong, mobile hips, you have stable knees and a stable back. When your hips are weak and stiff, your back and knees become mobile, and that’s when injuries happen.”

BUST YOUR ASS—BUT ALSO KNOW YOUR MAX HEART RATE, AND DON’T EXCEED IT FOR TOO LONG.

4 TRAIN YOUR TENDON FIBERS AS HARD AS POSSIBLE

5 CONSIDER YOUR LEGS WAY MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOUR ARMS Here’s what happens when you age: Your tendons and ligaments get creakier. Your muscles become less supple. Your testosterone levels drop. Your maximum heart rate and oxygen consumption drop. You become slower, less explosive, and have less endurance. And while you can’t change these biological 90

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Show some heart. You might not have access to pro-level trackers, gyroscopes, and accelerometers, but a simple heart-rate monitor can help keep you from overtraining.

facts, you can delay and soften their harmful effects by not easing up on your training. For years, aging athletes did less work— particularly less power work—than their younger counterparts. Instead of explosive movements, they focused on static stretching. After all, why would older athletes risk injuries by going all out? Wouldn’t it make sense to slowly drift from the squat rack to the elliptical machine? Short answer: Hell no. Talk to age-defying pro athletes today, and they all praise high-intensity workouts, putting a massive emphasis on maintaining the power in their legs. Hockey legend Jaromir Jagr is famous for his lung- and leg-busting fitness routine. He sprint-skates wearing a 45-pound weight vest, with light weights taped to his ankles. On the road, he runs resistance sprints in hotel hallways, dragging the team’s strength coach, Tommy Powers (for more on him, read “Training a ‘Freight Train,’ ” page 87), behind him for short, 10- to 20-meter bursts. He also utilizes a medicine ball to work on his core and resistance cables to build and maintain upper-body strength. And if he stopped the rigorous training? He’d pay the consequences, he says. “It’s like a truck, a heavy truck,” Jagr told The Wall Street Journal. “When you’re going, you kind of go—and fast. But once you stop, it’s tough to start again.” And take 39-year-old Memphis Grizzlies forward Vince Carter. He’s not the kind of athlete you’d predict would have an extralong career. When he first entered the league in 1998, he was more show pony than workhorse, becoming known more for his abovethe-rim, acrobatic exploits than his hustle or determination. He was “Vinsanity”! Slamdunk champ! A pure athletic talent! But as he’s gotten older, he tells me, he’s

increased his output in the weight room, particularly with his lower-body routine. “I’m not as fast today, I don’t jump as high, but I just do more work now,” he says. “I lift more, I lift heavier. I was never a big squatter, but now I’m doing box squats, lunges, leg presses. You’re going to lose your lower body first. Everything I do is to make sure my lower body can sustain the season. I didn’t have to do that before.” Bottom line: If you’re not 22 years old any more, get used to squats, lunges, thrusters, and sprints.

6 DON’T BELIEVE THE NAYSAYERS: GET YOURSELF A TRACKER Now for the tricky part. To stay at the top of their games, aging athletes need to “train hard and train often,” as Hirofumi Tanaka, associate professor, Department of Kinesiology and Health Education at the University of Texas, says. But they also need to be very careful about overtraining. For every player who lazed his way out of pro sports by taking it too easy as an older athlete, there’s another who was such a beast in training that one day his aging body yelled, “Basta!” Ever wonder what caused Tiger Woods’ catastrophic downfall? His former swing coach has speculated that it was the golfer’s love of powerlifting and urban warfare–inspired training methods that led to his cascading series of injuries. As longtime Denver Nuggets strength and conditioning coach Steve Hess puts it: “It’s a lot harder to come back from overtraining than it is to get back into shape from undertraining.” But how can you tell what’s training hard and what’s training too hard? Increasingly, data-tracking wearables are

This page: Cour tesy of Fitbit. Opposite page: James Michelfelder

Not too long ago, the conventional wisdom was that tendons couldn’t be trained. They were considered “hypovascular,” meaning they didn’t have sufficient blood flow to recover from microtears like muscles. Now we know better. Recent studies have consistently found that tendons can, in fact, be trained, and that—with the right training interventions—they can increase in rigidity and explosive potential. “It’s been a big paradigm shift,” says the Mavericks’ Holsopple. Holsopple has his players train their tendons with highload isometrics, holding positions while supporting 1.5 to 2 times their body weight. This approach not only strengthens the tendon, researchers believe, but also actually reconstitutes the material of the tendon. Holsopple’s ultrasound scans of his players’ tendons have revealed the same thing. “It will actually change the fiber combination we see,” he says. “It’s been tremendously helpful. It helps us with both strength and durability.” For the oft-injured Achilles tendon, Holsopple puts his players on a leg-press machine and has them hold a single-leg calf extension at the midway point (neither flatfooted nor fully contracted) for five seconds. It’s a simple high-load isometric exercise that when repeated pays real dividends. “Everyone should do it,” he says. “When it’s possible to load the tendon structures three times a week, that’s an ideal scenario.”

coming to the rescue. NBA, NHL, and pro soccer teams, in particular, have a fetish for them, hooking players up to GPS trackers, accelerometers, and gyroscopes, many from the Australian company Catapult Sports. “You get to see metabolic output, exertion, oxygen consumption, miles run, peak heart rate,” says Riley Williams, M.D., a sports medicine surgeon at Hospital for Special Surgery and the medical director and head time physician for the Brooklyn Nets and New York Red Bulls. “It helps you assess their real exertion. Instead of just the old ‘No pain, no gain,’ we have normative data that tells us, say, when a 30-year-old midfielder might get a hamstring strain, or a [35-year-old] player will reach his fatigue limit, so we know we have to rest him.” However, if you’re an amateur athlete with no medical or training staff at your beck and call to interpret the reams of complicated data a tracker collects, you may decide not to use one at all, but that would be a mistake. Sure, counting how many steps you take in a day isn’t an extremely useful athletic-performance booster, but staying at your maximum aerobic capacity is—and that’s something pro teams use heart-rate trackers to measure. Just remember: The rule of thumb is that your maximum heart rate is 220 minus your age, and your maximum aerobic threshold is that number multiplied by .85, or 85% of your max heart rate. In other words, if you’re an average 35-year-old with a max heart rate of 185 (220 - 35 = 185) beats per minute, and you want to bust your ass to improve while staying healthy and safe, make sure you don’t get too far above your max aerobic threshold of 157 (185 x .85 = 157) bpm for very long. “In general,” says renowned pro cycling instructor Neal Henderson, “80% of your training should be relatively easy to moderate, and only 20% should be intense.” Mavericks strength and conditioning coach Holsopple conditions his athletes with long-striding, court-length runs that emphasize explosiveness but never push beyond the aerobic threshold. That’s a low-impact, cardio-building approach you can mimic with just a little data input. Once you know your limits—and you’ve got strong hips, tendons, and legs—it’s finally time to actually have some fun. “Some guys stop because they don’t want to play any more,” says Carter. “When I first started we didn’t have all the things you do now, but we did have cold tubs and weights and a lot of the same preparation, and some guys chose not to put in the work, and others were willing to do it because they enjoyed it. “You know, every year I think, I could sit back and rest and enjoy the summer. But I know that if I did, I probably wouldn’t have a job when I came back.” Q

Kettlebell Swing Keep your back flat and bend your hips back; bend knees as necessary.

The Longevity Workout Stay healthy and strong for the long haul with this sample routine B Y S E AN H YS O N, C . S .C . S.

M A I N TA I N I N G ST RE N GT H A N D AT H L E T I C I S M into your 30s, 40s, and beyond means doing all you can to prevent injury—and that means checking your ego at the gym door. Loading up a bar as heavy as you can and going for broke on each set is no longer an option; working muscles you’ve long neglected is your new priority. This routine is perfect to build your future training on, as it covers all the bases for keeping you healthy and athletic. In particular, it focuses on boosting explosive strength, improving conditioning, and fortifying the stabilizer muscles in your core and hips that protect your back and knees.

1)

Perform the workout once per week. Exercises marked “A,” “B,” and “C” are done in sequence, so you’ll do one set of A, rest, then B, rest, and then C. Repeat until all sets are completed.

2)

3A) 3B) 4) 5A)

FOR VIDEO DEMONSTRATION, GO TO MENSFITNESS .COM/LONGEVITY WORKOUT.

5B) 5C)

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Wise up

Ask Men’s Fitness “Some buddies and I are going on a canoeing trip in the Adirondacks, on a river they say has some pretty cool rapids. But another pal of ours called canoeing “wimpy” because “you just sit all day and only use your arms.” Is that true, or is it really a good workout?” A L J . , L I M A , O H

It’s definitely not wimpy: “On full-paddle days, you could burn 4,000–6,000 calories a day!” says Courtenay Schurman, C.S.C.S., co-author of The Outdoor Athlete . For comparison, Schurman says, if you’re a 175-pound guy and you jog 6 mph for an hour, you’ll burn roughly 612 calories; but if you canoe 4 mph for an hour, you’ll burn 728 calories—even more if there’s a headwind, “Canoeing taxes the body like interval training,” Schurman says. And that’s not counting the time you’ll spend humping a 17-foot canoe and all your gear over land (aka “portaging”). To make sure you’re physically in shape for several days of paddling, Schurman advises working on 1) upper-body strength (shoulders, lats, arms, and forearms); 2) a strong core (abs, obliques, and lower back); and 3) leg endurance (calves, quads, hamstrings, and hips), for portaging. Finally, if the river has rapids, be sure you’re a strong swimmer, Schurman says, and that someone with you is a skilled boat handler. But all in all, it’s an experience you won’t forget. “The adrenaline rush of going through rough water is a thrill in itself.”

R i c h a r d P h i b b s / Tr u n k A r c h i v e

I

NO WORKOUT FOR WIMPS, CANOEING CAN BURN UP TO 6,000 CALORIES A DAY.

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Ask Men’s Fitness

TO GRAB A HOMER, WEAR A GLOVE (AND DON’T SIT BEHIND GOLIATH).

What’s the best way to catch a baseball at a game? L A N C E P. , TA C O M A , W A

G

SHORTY THE BARBER

ENLIGHTENED ADVICE FROM GROOMING EXPERT SHORTY MANIACE

MEN’S FITNESS

RANDY S., NOME, AK

Q Straight razors are great. The shave’s not necessarily closer, but it’s smoother and lasts longer. Don’t do it more than every two days, though, and never in a rush. You want to take some time—pour yourself a whiskey, put on some cool jazz, and pamper yourself. Get a good razor— anything less than $100, you may as well scrub your face off with Brillo. Shave at the sink, not in the shower, and keep a hot towel ready. Start with a preshave oil or cream, and apply it with a badger hair brush to JUNE

2016

pull the hair away from the face. Next, brush on the shaving cream—I like the tube kind— and start on the cheeks, going with the grain. If your skin’s tough, make a second pass with or against the grain; I go against, but see what works for you. When that’s done, put the piping-hot towel on your face, splash on aftershave, then spin the towel to get it cold and slap it on your face. Apply moisturizer afterward. And don’t be a scaredy-cat, have fun with it. You may cut yourself up a bit, but you won’t kill yourself—well, unless you’re an asshole, get drunk on the whiskey, and fillet your neck.

Keep a straight face. Shaving with a straight razor won’t kill you (but the Jack Daniels might).

I spent 10 years as a lifeguard, and it really weathered my skin, so now I have frown lines like an old man. What can I do? MACK R., BOISE, ID

FOR MORE ON ANTI-WRINKLE SKINCARE PRODUCTS, GO TO MENSFITNESS .COM/FACETIME.

Q“Chronic exposure to the sun’s UV rays takes a toll on the skin,” thinning it faster by robbing it of elasticity and collagen, says Karen H. Kim, M.D., of SkinCare Physicians in Chestnut Hill, MA. And that causes— you guessed it— wrinkles like those between the eyes, called frown lines. There are several non-medical ways to minimize wrinkles,

Kim says, like using skin creams containing retinol, which stimulates collagen and exfoliates skin; scrubbing with cleansing grains to spur skin regeneration; and using home peels (just don’t combine them with retinol). But if you need the big guns, the best way to soften frown lines is with injections of a botulinum toxin like Xeomin, which immobilizes muscles for up to several months, relaxing the lines so they’re not as visible. Now, stay the hell out of the sun!

F r o m t o p : P r e s t o n M a c k / G e t t y ; j v p h o t o /A l a m y

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The straight razor’s becoming trendy— does it give a better shave? And will I kill myself using it?

Ask Men’s Fitness

Is it really that big a deal to send a thankyou note after a job interview? And can I e-mail it, or do I really have to handwrite the damn thing? LORNE M., JORDAN, MT

QWant the job? Then yes, yes—and yes. “What you do after the interview is as important as what you do before it,” says Manners That Sell author Lydia Ramsey, so send an e-mail thank-you immediately, then a handwritten one the same day. “A handwritten note makes the best impression,” says Ramsey. “Few people send one, so you’ll stand out.” Adds etiquette expert Diane Gottsman: “A handwritten note conveys a sin-

cerity e-mail can’t.” (One MF editor even messengers a handwritten note the same day. And, well, we hired him, didn’t we?) Some expert tips: Before the interview, buy some quality, neutral-hued note cards and a book of always-valid Forever stamps. (We’d pick a flag or fern design over psychedelic Hendrix or Charlie Brown—but, hey, it’s your future.) You can also invest in a pricey pen, though we’d get an erasable Pilot FriXion Clicker gel pen, our new obsession: It’s permanent but erases cleanly if you botch the job. Before the big day, stamp and address

I let some veggies rot in my refrigerator, and now there’s a really foul smell. How do I get rid of it? MIKE S., TULSA, OK

Write your own ticket. Sending a handwritten note after an interview will really set you apart from the crowd.

the envelope. “That way, when it’s over you can send it right away,” says Ramsey. For the note: “It doesn’t matter if you print or use cursive,” says Gottsman, “so do what’s most legible.” Be brief—five

CHALKING YOUR HANDS LETS YOU FEEL THE WEIGHTS BETTER (AND LOOKS BADASS, TOO).

or six lines—and include your excitement about the job and why you’d be great at it. Also, try to mention something you learned that day or look forward to doing if you’re hired. Finally, proofread the shit out of that muther. The last thing you want is a would-be boss’s final memory of you to be: “Thank you again for meating with me today…”

FOR FIVE WAYS TO GET A GREAT JOB, GO TO MENSFITNESS .COM/JOB.

Which is better—wearing lifting gloves or chalking your hands?

RAD D., DEL AWARE, OH

Just add lemon . Wiping a refrigerator down with lemon kills bad odors.

C l o c k w i s e f r o m t o p : J a r r e n V i n k ; P r o p s t y l i n g b y M e g u m i E m o t o /A n d e r s o n Hopkins; Creative Crop/Get t y Images; Andrew Cutraro

The main reason to chalk your hands or wear gloves is to prevent sweat from screwing up your grip, so chalk and gloves both work—but chalk is tough to top, says Nick Tumminello, owner of Fort Lauderdale’s Performance University. ¶ Chalk helps absorb sweat and lessens the chances you’ll get blisters, he explains. “Gloves are less messy, but they don’t stop sweat from getting on your fingers,” which could make you lose your grip. Also, not having direct contact with the bar may give you less sensory awareness of what you’re doing. In other words, “It’s just not the same feeling.” Not to mention chalk looks badass, which can earn you your man-card in the eyes of some lifters. ¶ So it’s up to you as to what’s most important, he says. “But lifting hard and heavy is lifting hard and heavy, regardless of what you do with your hands.”

T

QFunny you should ask: A neighbor once gave us a fridge she’d left unplugged with rotting meat inside—so we know whereof we speak. First: You’ve tossed the veg cadavers and used a spray cleaner, right? If not, for God’s sake, man, go do it now. If the stench stays, “use a baking soda/water paste to scrub the plastic parts,” says cleanmyspace.com’s Melissa Maker. Still no good? Wipe shelves with lemon juice, Mayer says, then put a bowl of one of these odorkillers (listed weakest to strongest) on a shelf: vanilla extract; white vinegar; coffee grounds (what flight attendants use to destink vomit); baking soda; or activated charcoal from a pet store or aquarium. If all else fails, you could fill the whole thing with balledup newspapers, but really, it’d be easier to just buy a whole new fridge. (Trust us on this one.) Then get a BerryBreeze (berrybreeze .com), an ionic air filter that eats fridge odors and keeps produce fresh for weeks—a boon for both nose and wallet.

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Ask Men’s Fitness

Y

What better time to try new things than while you “Netflix and chill”? Breaking away from traditional missionary not only keeps things hot, it shows her you’ve got some creativity—every girl loves an ingenious, confident guy. ¶ I’d recommend the Couch Surfer, a rear-entry position with you standing facing the end (arm) of the couch and her in front of you, also facing the couch, bending over

the arm. This gives you lots of control, not to mention a great view of both her backside and your penis going in and out, which is super empowering. All in all, a hot position for both of you! (This position can get a little uncomfortable for her neck, so be sure to check in with her.) ¶ For other creative positions, like the Frisk and the Flying Circus, pick up my new book, Classic Sex Positions Reinvented, on amazon.com.

But if you don’t tell her and you don’t get caught, experience tells me you’re much more likely to do it again. I’d say, have this difficult conversation with her.

sexually transmitted)—from the stripper, who ends up having a Zika baby that she leaves with you to raise, which is even harder now that President Cruz has destroyed all our social safety nets. Then one day you call your ex and say you want only her, and she calls you “sweet” (meaning she doesn’t even care enough about you to be bitter) and says she’s moved on. You’re crushed, till you look down and see Iggy (I named him Iggy, I hope that’s OK) smiling up at you with his tiny little head, and realize he’s made your life whole in a way no one ever could, and everything happens for a reason. Now is that so bad?

W

THE SEX FILES

What’s an actual, credible amount of time to have sex before I come? And how can I tell if she’s ready for me to stop? JOE R., SAN FRANCISCO, CA

Depending on the study, the average length of actual intercourse is just 4–5 minutes. That said, I think guys put too much pressure on themselves about how long they last in the sack, particularly with so many ways to please a partner besides intercourse. Just enjoy what you’re doing and you’ll have a much better experience— and so will she. DR. AARON:

OUR EXPERTS ANSWER YOUR MOST INTIMATE QUESTIONS— NO HOLDS BARRED T H I S M O N T H ’ S PA N E L:

WRITER/STAND-UP COMIC JENA FRIEDMAN PSYCHOTHERAPIST/ SEX COUNSELOR MICHAEL AARON, PH.D. PSYCHOTHERAPIST/ SEX THERAPIST MOUSHUMI GHOSE, PH.D.

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I just had sex with the stripper at a bachelor party. Not so bad, right? Thing is, it was my bachelor party. I feel awful about it and I’ll never do it again (I was superdrunk). But the wedding’s soon— what should I do? PA U L F. , M I A M I , F L

D R . A A R O N : Sure, people lose their judgment when they get drunk, and no doubt the stripper added temptation. But, come on—if you’re really honest, you wanted to have sex with another

party.

woman, right? You probably still do. So if your fiancée’s expecting you to be faithful, you don’t need me to tell you you messed up. But you do need to decide: If she wants more in terms of fidelity, can you give that to her? M O U S H U M I : People who get shit-faced usually know on some level they won’t be able to make sound decisions. But alcohol doesn’t make an act less harmful—it just lets you feel less accountable. If you said you’d be monogamous, you’ve broken a serious promise. If you don’t tell her and you get caught, it could really damage the relationship.

Oh, geez. Did you at least wear a condom? You know, it doesn’t matter, the scenario sucks. Then again, maybe your banging a hooker right before the wedding is your fiancée’s secret fetish? You should find out. If you think she’ll be pissed, though, ask yourself: Do you want a fun wedding? If so, shut the fuck up, be the best groom you can, and never do anything like this again. But if you want to build a strong, honest marriage, come clean. Worst-case scenario, she calls things off, you get herpes—or worse, Zika (also, weirdly,

JENA:

MOUSHUMI GHOSE

GOT A SEX QUESTION? E-MAIL US AT ASK@MENS FITNESS.COM.

C a r l o s N u n e z / P i c d e s k ; j e n n i f e r L i v i n g s t o n / Tr u n k A r c h i v e

J E N A : Any time I’ve had great sex, I’ve never been cognizant of how long it’s lasted. There are obvious parameters, like don’t splooge right away (the fivesecond rule isn’t just for food), but rather than fixate on time, focus on who you’re with. Sometimes really quick sex is great, especially if you’ve gotten her off during foreplay. As for signs she’s ready for you to be done, listen for things like “No, stop,”

“Go ahead, come,” or “I’m ready for you to be done”—a lot of us are pretty direct when we want sex to be over. If she’s not, watch for nonverbal cues, like yawning. Now go get her (consensually), Tiger!

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Your better-body blueprint

Build a body Use the workout that got Zac Efron pumped for

By Sean Hyson, C.S.C.S.

Q 

It’s a pretty safe bet that Baywatch will be next summer’s movie blockbuster. But what isn’t so clear is who the audience will be ogling most—the buxom, bikini-clad beach bunnies or the pumpedup, hard-bodied musclemen in the cast. Dwayne Johnson’s “Rock” physique already has legions of fans, but the transformation of co-star Zac Efron (who shot to fame in the teen-film hit High School Musical) has shocked the world. According to Efron’s trainer, Patrick Murphy, the actor reached 5% body fat after just 12 weeks of training. How’d you like to do something similar? Turn the page and you can.

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JEFF LIPSKY

Ed i t e d by S e a n H ys o n , C . S .C . S .

O Body Book

Celebrity workout

How It Works Q Efron’s training was constantly evolving, but for us, Murphy condensed the best of it into a three-day split, working back and biceps one day, legs another, and shoulders, chest, and arms the third day (abs are in there, too, a little bit every day). The main feature of the workouts is supersetting—doing two exercises back-to-back with no rest in between. Not only does this approach save time, it also doubles as cardio, burning more calories and enhancing the “pump” that drives more nutrition-filled blood into the muscles for fast growth. Since it was important that Efron not just look like a lifeguard but be able to perform like one too, some exercises are explosive to build speed and agility along with muscle mass. See you on the beach.

D AY I : BACK & BICEPS

1A STRAIGHT-ARM PULLDOWN Sets: 3 Reps: 8–12 Rest: 0 sec.

Attach a straight bar to the top pulley of a cable station and grasp it with hands shoulder-width apart. Bend at the hips a bit to feel a stretch on your lats, then pull the bar to your hips with your arms straight.

Perform each workout (Day I, II, and III) once Directions per week, resting a day between each session. The exercises are paired (marked A and B) and done as supersets— complete one set of A and then B before resting 60 seconds. Repeat for all the prescribed sets before moving on to the next pair.

1B AB WHEEL ROLLOUT Sets: 3 Reps: 8–12 Rest: 60 sec.

Kneel on the floor holding an ab wheel under your shoulders. Brace your abs and roll forward until you feel your lower back is about to collapse. Roll yourself back up.

2A SEATED CABLE ROW Sets: 3 Reps: 8–12 Rest: 0 sec.

Attach a straight bar to the low pulley of a cable station and sit on a bench or the floor. Row the cable to your sternum, squeezing your shoulder blades together in the finished position.

3A NEUTRALGRIP PULLUP

Attach a suspension trainer to a sturdy overhead object and extend the handles so that when you suspend your body from them, you’ll be at an angle to the floor that allows you to complete 8–12 reps. Hang from the handles with abs braced and your body in a straight line. Pull yourself to the handles, retracting your shoulder blades as you come up.

Hang from a pullup bar that offers handles so your palms can face each other. Pull your body up until your chin is over the bar.

Sets: 3 Reps: 8–12 Rest: 60 sec.

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MEN’S FITNESS

Sets: 3 Reps: 8–12 Rest: 0 sec.

3B LAT PULLDOWN FROM KNEES Sets: 3 Reps: 8–12 Rest: 60 sec.

Set up at a lat-pulldown station, but kneel on the floor and allow the bar to stretch your lats. Pull the bar to your collarbone.

JUNE 2016

4A CHINUP

Sets: 3 Reps: 8–12 Rest: 0 sec.

Hang from a bar with hands at shoulder width and palms facing you. Pull your body up until your chin is over the bar.

4B DUMBBELL BICEPS CURL Sets: 3 Reps: 8–12 Rest: 60 sec.

Hold a dumbbell in each hand with arms at your sides and palms facing forward. Without moving your upper arms, curl the weights up.

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Celebrity workout

D AY I I : L E G S

1A LEG PRESS Sets: 3 Reps: 8–12 Rest: 0 sec.

Set up in a leg-press machine with your feet shoulder-width apart and toes pointed out 45 degrees. Lower the platform toward your chest until your knees are bent 90 degrees, and then press the platform up.

1B SUSPENSION SQUAT JUMP Sets: 3 Reps: 20 Rest: 60 sec.

Grasp the handles of a suspension trainer at chest level and stand with feet shoulderwidth apart. Squat down halfway, jump as high as you can, then land softly. Repeat.

2A SWISS BALL HIP EXTENSION Sets: 3 Reps: 8–12 Rest: 0 sec.

Lie on your back on the floor and rest your heels on a Swiss ball. Brace your abs and drive your heels into the ball to raise your hips into the air.

2B SWISS BALL LEG CURL Sets: 3 Reps: 20 Rest: 60 sec.

From the top position of the Swiss-ball hip extension, bend your knees and curl your heels toward your butt, rolling the ball back toward you.

3A REVERSE WALKING LUNGE

Sets: 3 Reps: 8–12 (each side) Rest: 0 sec.

With a dumbbell in each hand, step back. Lower your body till your rear knee nearly touches the floor and your front thigh is parallel to it. Repeat for each rep.

SUPERSETTING AND FOLLOWING AN ORGANIC DIET GOT ZAC EFRON DOWN TO 5% BODY FAT.

3B MOUNTAIN CLIMBER ON SLIDERS Sets: 3 Reps: 20 Rest: 60 sec.

Place furniture sliders on the floor (or paper plates if you have a waxed floor) and set your feet on them. Get into a pushup position and draw one knee up to your chest. Slide that leg back while you draw the other one up to your chest. That’s one rep. Continue alternating legs at a brisk pace.

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MEN’S FITNESS

JUNE 2016

JAMES MICHELFELDER

THINK “PORN-STAR BUTT” AS YOU BEGIN THIS DEADLIFT, AND PUSH YOUR BUTT BACK AS FAR AS YOU CAN.

4A DUMBBELL ROMANIAN DEADLIFT

4B KICK BUTTS

Hold dumbbells in front of your thighs. Keeping your lower back in its natural arch, push your hips back and lower your torso until you feel a stretch in your hamstrings. Allow your knees to bend as needed. Extend your hips to return to the starting position.

From a standing position, jump and quickly kick your butt with both heels. Land softly.

Sets: 3 Reps: 8–12 Rest: 0 sec.

5A UNSTABLE SINGLE-LEG CALF RAISE

Sets: 3 Reps: 8–12 (each side) Rest: 0 sec.

Stand on a foam or air-filled pad on one leg. Hold a weight in the hand on the same side. Place the other hand on a wall or grasp a sturdy upright object to steady yourself. Lower your heel toward the floor until you feel a stretch in your calf. Then drive the ball of your foot into the pad to raise your heel up. Complete all your reps on one side and then repeat on the opposite side.

Sets: 3 Reps: 20 Rest: 60 sec.

5B SUSPENSION TRAINER SINGLE-LEG SQUAT HOP Sets: 3 Reps: 20 (each side) Rest: 60 sec.

Hold the handles of a suspension trainer as you did for the suspension trainer jump squat, but stand on one leg. Squat down halfway on one leg and then jump as high as you can. Land softly and repeat immediately. Complete all your reps on one side and then repeat on the opposite side.

Celebrity workout

O Body Book

D AY I I I : SHOULDERS, CHEST & ARMS

1A DUMBBELL FRONT RAISE

1B CROSSBODY CABLE RAISE

Hold a dumbbell in each hand in front of your thighs. Brace your core and, keeping your arms straight, raise the weights up to shoulder level.

Attach a handle to the bottoms of two facing cable stations. Cross your arms in front of your chest and grasp the opposite side’s handle in each hand. Raise them to 90 degrees.

Sets: 3 Reps: 8–12 Rest: 0 sec.

Sets: 3 Reps: 8–12 Rest: 60 sec.

THE FLOOR PRESS STRENGTHENS A COMMON WEAK POINT IN THE BENCH PRESS.

2A DUMBBELL FLOOR PRESS Sets: 3 Reps: 8–12 Rest: 0 sec.

Lie on the floor with a dumbbell in each hand and hold the weights over your chest. Press them over your chest and then lower your arms until your triceps touch the floor (not your elbows). Continue pressing from this shortened range of motion.

2B PUSHUP

Sets: 3 Reps: 8–12 Rest: 60 sec.

Place your hands on the floor at shoulder width and lower your body until your chest is an inch above the floor.

3A INCLINE DUMBBELL PRESS Sets: 3 Reps: 8–12 Rest: 0 sec.

Set a bench to a 30-degree angle and lie back against it with a dumbbell in each hand. Press the weights over your chest.

3B DUMBBELL OVERHEAD PRESS Sets: 3 Reps: 8–12 Rest: 60 sec.

Stand with feet shoulder-width apart and hold a dumbbell in each hand at shoulder level. Press the weights straight overhead.

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JUNE 2016

MES MICHELFELDER

Eat Like Efron Zac Efron dieted for his Baywatch role with pizza and cheeseburgers…just kidding. (You wish!) In reality, he ate ultrahealthy for a transformation that took only 12 weeks. “I implemented an allorganic whole-food diet,” says his trainer, Patrick Murphy. Below are all the food categories Efron was permitted to choose from to put together his meals:

Z

• Chicken breast • Turkey breast • Pork loin • Egg whites • Fish • Steak (lean cuts like sirloin)

• Quinoa • Brown rice • Oats

• Apples • Pears • All kinds of berries

• Seeds • Nuts • Avocados

• All kinds

Efron also supplemented with whey protein—“unflavored,” adds Murphy, who also stipulated it could contain no other ingredients (NOW Whey Protein Isolate is a good example). “He also hit a minimum of 100 ounces of water daily.” Murphy won’t disclose specifics but says he had Efron change his caloric intake about every two weeks, along with his breakdown of protein, carbs, and fat. “My tweaks worked like a charm,” he says. No kidding.

4A CABLE CHEST PRESS

5A SINGLE-ARM PUSHDOWN

Sets: 3 Reps: 8–12 (each side) Rest: 0 sec.

Sets: 3 Reps: 8–12 Rest: 0 sec.

Attach a rope handle to a cable station and hold an end in one hand. Pull the rope through the handle so that its full length hangs from the attachment. (Or grab both strands as shown here.) Extend your elbow, pushing the handle down and away from your body. Complete all your reps on one side and then repeat on the opposite side.

Attach single-grip handles to the top pulleys of two facing cable stations. Stagger your feet for balance and press the handles from shoulder level.

4B BOSU PLYO PUSHUP Sets: 3 Reps: 8–12 Rest: 60 sec.

S a l a d : R a d i u s I m a g e s /A l a m y

Place a Bosu ball on the floor, dome-side down, and grasp each side of it. Get into a pushup position and stabilize yourself. Lower your body until your chest nearly touches the back of the Bosu and then explosively press your body up so that the Bosu leaves the floor with you. Land softly.

5B SINGLE-ARM CURL

Sets: 3 Reps: 8–12 (each side) Rest: 60 sec.

TRICEPS PUSHDOWNS ARE EASY ON THE ELBOWS AND TARGET THE OUTER HEAD OF THE MUSCLE.

Hold a dumbbell in one hand and stand on that same side’s leg. Keeping your upper arm stationary, curl the dumbbell. Complete all your reps on one side and then switch arms and legs.

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No marshmallow fluff with the crusts cut off or American cheese on Wonder Bread is going to get you strong or keep you lean. So it’s time to leave all those childhood slabs of processed crap back where they belong—at the bottom of your sixth-grade locker. In their

N

Pig out on protein: Bacon meets rotisserie chicken, yogurt, tomato, and onion in this powerhouse pita (next page).

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O Body Book

Eat lean Green beef. Make sure you buy steak that’s grass-fed, not “grass-finished,” which means the cattle ate grass only part of the time.

A meal within a meal. Asparagus contains prebiotics, which act as food for the healthy bacteria in your gut.

Loaded Steak Sandwich MAKES: 1 SERVING

INGREDIENTS

1

tbsp olive oil

1

tbsp grass-fed butter

4

oz grass-fed lean steak Salt to taste Black pepper to taste

4

spears of asparagus

2

tbsp goat cheese

3

tbsp Greek yogurt

½ tsp dried rosemary ½ tsp dried thyme 2

slices sprouted grain bread

DIRECTIONS

Not ba-a-a-d. Goat cheese is lower in calories and fat than cheese from cows.

1) Place a medium saucepan on mediumhigh heat and add the olive oil and butter. Season the steak with salt and pepper, then add to the pan. Sear on each side and cook until desired doneness. Transfer from pan to a plate and let cool for 10 to 15 minutes before slicing diagonally against the grain. 2) While the steak cooks, boil a small pot of water. Add the asparagus and blanch for 3 to 4 minutes.

Pinch of salt

Honey-Mustard BLT ( P A G E 1 0 8 )

Pinch of black pepper 1

MAKES: 1 SERVING

INGREDIENTS

2

slices smoked bacon

4

oz rotisserie chicken breast, shredded

1

tbsp nonfat Greek yogurt

2

tbsp Dijon mustard

2

tsp honey

¼ cup diced red onion ½ tsp garlic powder

110

MEN’S FITNESS

large whole wheat pita

½ cup mixed baby greens ½ tomato, sliced DIRECTIONS

1) Preheat the oven to 400°. Line a sheet pan with the bacon and bake 15 to 20 minutes until crispy. (If you’re too impatient to wait for the bacon to bake, cook it in the JUNE 2016

microwave by placing on a paper-towellined plate, then topping with another paper towel; cook for 6 to 8 minutes.) 2) Meanwhile, in a medium mixing bowl, add the shredded rotisserie chicken, yogurt, mustard, honey, red onion, and seasonings. Toss until well combined. 3) Lightly heat the pita in the microwave to soften. Cut it in half and stuff with the

honey-mustard chicken, baby greens, and tomato slices, and add one bacon strip to each half. N U T R I T I O N (PER SERVING)

615 calories, 46g protein, 56g carbs,23g fat

THE “SANDWICH” WAS SUPPOSEDLY INVENTED BY THE EARL OF SANDWICH, AFTER HE REFUSED TO LEAVE A GAMING TABLE FOR A MEAL.

4) Add the steak slices on one half of bread, then top with the blanched asparagus and combine the halves to form a sandwich. Lightly drizzle olive oil on the outside of each piece of bread. Press in a panini maker, or toast in a cast-iron skillet and apply pressure with a spatula to make it panini-like. N U T R I T I O N (PER SERVING)

512 calories, 41g protein, 40g carbs, 21g fat

F o o d s t y l i n g b y C y d M c D o w e l l ; P r o p s t y l i n g b y E m i l y R i c k a r d / Tr i c i a J o y c e

3) In a small mixing bowl, add the goat cheese, yogurt, rosemary, and thyme. Mix until a smooth paste forms. Smear the herbed goat cheese mixture liberally on each piece of bread.

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O Body Book

Eat lean

Double duty. Avocados are a major source of healthy fat and fiber.

Pimp juice. Squeezing lemon on avocado keeps it fresh and green.

Smoked Salmon, Avocado, and Egg Stack MAKES: 1 SERVING

INGREDIENTS

2

tsp white vinegar

1

tsp salt

2

large eggs

1

whole-grain English muffin Ripe avocado

½ lemon 3

oz smoked salmon Pinch of black pepper Diced scallions, for garnish

DIRECTIONS

1) Fill a large saute pan with two inches of water, the vinegar, and salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce to medium-low heat. Crack each egg into its own small bowl and then slowly tip one egg at a time into the simmering water. Cook until the whites are firm and the yolk is soft but runny, about 3 to 4 minutes. Remove each egg with a slotted spoon and rest on a plate. 2) While the eggs cook, halve and toast the muffin. Spread the avocado on each toasted half—it should be ripe enough to spread easily. Squeeze fresh lemon juice on top. 3) Add two slices of smoked salmon to each muffin half. Top with a poached egg on each. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and garnish with diced scallions if desired.

Crack down. Adding vinegar to the water keeps boiling eggs from falling apart in the pot.

Tuna-Avocado Un-wich

2

tbsp unsweetened dried cranberries

2

tbsp toasted almond slivers

4

Bibb lettuce leaves

MAKES: 1 SERVING

INGREDIENTS

4

oz can albacore tuna, packed in olive oil

½ avocado Juice from ½ lemon Garlic powder to taste Salt (Himalayan if possible) to taste White pepper to taste 112

MEN’S FITNESS

DIRECTIONS

1) Rinse the tuna thoroughly. In a medium mixing bowl, add the tuna, avocado, lemon, and seasonings. Mix and mash with a fork. 2) Add the dried cranberries and toasted JUNE 2016

almonds to the bowl and gently fold in. 3) Divide a scoop of tuna mixture into each Bibb leaf, roll it up, and add a small toothpick to hold in place for easier serving.

TUNA PACKED IN OIL IS MUCH MOISTER AND TASTIER THAN TUNA PACKED IN WATER, FOR NOT THAT MANY MORE CALORIES.

N U T R I T I O N (PER SERVING)

583 calories, 45g protein, 38g carbs, 28g fat

PB&J Smoothie

1

scoop protein powder (preferably vanilla or berry flavored)

6

ice cubes

MAKES: 1 SERVING

INGREDIENTS

1

cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk

1

tbsp peanut butter

N U T R I T I O N (PER SERVING)

2

367 calories, 37g protein, 13g carbs, 19g fat

tbsp peanut butter powder

1

tbsp chia seed

1

tbsp flaxseed or meal

¾ cup frozen strawberries

DIRECTIONS

Add all ingredients to a high-powered blender. Pulse until thick and creamy. N U T R I T I O N (PER SERVING)

518 calories, 42g protein, 38g carbs, 22g fat

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Muscle up

Q

We love the barbell bench press as much as you do, but just because you’ve been doing it every Monday night since high school doesn’t mean you can’t change it up every once in a while. Pressing with dumbbells is safer for your shoulders and activates more pectoral muscle, which means more focused training directly on your chest. Plus, at times when a home or hotel gym is all you have access to, dumbbells are the best weapon you’ve got. Follow this routine for four weeks, and we bet you’ll add as much as another quarter inch to your chest.

How It Works Q Dumbbells don’t let you go as heavy as barbells, so don’t fight it—instead, follow this workout, which focuses on higher reps and keeping the muscles under constant tension so they work to exhaustion. Dumbbells also let you train your muscles through a larger range of motion—pressing with a barbell cuts you off a few inches short—and they correct strength imbalances between sides. If you find yourself in a gym so bare bones that the dumbbells you have still aren’t heavy enough to provide enough challenge, simply perform your reps more slowly. In your race for bigger gains, slow and steady sometimes is the fastest path.

1 INCLINE DUMBBELL PRESS

Directions Perform the workout once per week, resting at least a day before and after any shoulder training. Exercises marked “A,” “B,”and “C” are done in sequence, so you’ll perform one set of each without rest in between.

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Set an adjustable bench to a 30-degree angle and lie back against it with a dumbbell in each hand at shoulder level. Press the weights over your chest.

2 SQUEEZE PRESS

Sets: 3 Reps: 8–10 Rest: 90 sec.

Lie back on a bench with a dumbbell in each hand. Press the dumbbells into each other as hard as you can, as if you were crushing something in between them. Keep the tension as you lift the weights over your chest.

3 DUMBBELL FLYE Lie back on a flat bench holding a dumbbell in each hand over your chest. Spread your arms apart and lower the dumbbells out to your sides until you feel a stretch in your pecs. Squeeze your pecs as you bring the weights together again.

4A DECLINE PUSHUP

Sets: 1 Reps: As many as possible Rest: 0 sec.

Get into pushup position with your hands just outside shoulder width and place your feet on a box or bench so your body angles toward the floor. Lower your body until your chest is about an inch above the floor and then press up. Stop a rep or two shy of your max.

AFTER DUMBBELL PRESSING, PUSHUP VARIATIONS ARE THE BEST CHEST BUILDERS.

4B PUSHUP

4C INCLINE PUSHUP

Immediately move your feet to the floor after your last rep of decline pushups and perform pushups normally. Stop a rep or two shy of your max.

Turn around and place your hands on the box or bench and get into pushup position so your body is inclined. Perform pushups at that angle to failure.

Sets: 1 Reps: As many as possible Rest: 0 sec.

p

O Body Book

Weight loss

Drink down. A glass of H2O before meals can cut fat.

P H I L T. , A U S T I N , T X

Q

From a numbers standpoint, butter (1 tbsp: 100 cal/11g) looks like the worst diet option, but it’s actually the handsdown winner, says Matt Kadey, R.D., the author of Rocket Fuel ( rocketfuelfoods.net ). “You have to think beyond just calories,” Kadey says. More fat means more calories but also more fullness after meals, which can keep you from overeating later in the day. Plus, a new study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that subjects who ate the most high-fat dairy products lowered their risk of being overweight or 118

MEN'S FITNESS

obese by 8% compared with low-fat eaters. Also, if the butter is from grass-fed cows, like Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter (1 tbsp: 100 cal/11g fat), says Kadey, it has more vital nutrients, like omega-3 fats and vitamin E, than regular butter; it’s also healthier than a nondairy spread, like I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, which has refined fats that can increase inflammation. Still, if you want to keep calories low, here are a few notunhealthy options—and one superhealthy one!— to try (serving size: 1 tbsp):

“Eyeball” your plate to estimate portions accurately.

The eyes have it PORTION CONTROL

Kerrygold Reduced Fat Irish Butter

Never overeat again

8 0 C A L / 8 G FAT

Laughing Cow Swiss Light 3 5 C A L / 1.5 G FAT

Philadelphia Light Cream Cheese 3 0 C A L / 2 .3 G FAT

And the indisputably best, healthiest option: Fresh avocado 2 2 C A L / 2 G FAT

JUNE 2016

Still a phat choice. Eating high-fat foods (like butter) can cause more weight loss, not less.

Q How do you know how much of each food to eat in a meal? Ask yourself, “When it was alive, did it have eyes?” Foods that contain protein typically come from animals—beef, fish, and fowl—which all have eyes (OK, there are a few exceptions, like beans and tofu). Carb-y fruits, tubers, grains, and vegetables, on the other hand, are always eyeless. If you tend to feel hungry all the time, make every meal one-half “eye” foods, one-third carbs (the eyeless), and one-fifth high-fat foods (avocados, nuts), says Paul Chek, the author of How to Eat, Move, and Be Healthy! On a dinner plate you could put steak on one side and veggies and/or rice on the other, carving out a little corner at the top for avocado.

F r o m t o p : A n t o n i o s M i t s o p o u l o s / G e t t y I m a g e s ; J a r r e n V i n k ; P r o p s t y l i n g b y M e g u m i E m o t o /A n d e r s o n H o p k i n s ; but ter by Claire Benoist /thelicensingproject.com

I like having a piece of buttered toast with breakfast. Should I use old-fashioned butter or one of those other “spreads” if I’m trying to lose weight?

The simplest solution to a problem is often the best. That applies even when the problem is losT ing weight—because how many times in your life have you heard of a simpler solution than “just drink a glass of water”? ¶ A study in the journal Obesity divided clinically obese subjects into two groups: one that drank 16 ounces of water 30 minutes before meals and one that only visualized a full stomach before eating. After 12 weeks, the water-drinking subjects had lost almost three pounds more than the control group. The exact reason why isn’t clear, but it’s believed that water helps you feel fuller, leading you to eat less. ¶ If the taste of plain water doesn’t interest you, feel free to use a non-nutritive sweetener like SweetLeaf drops (sweetleaf.com), which are fruitflavored and sweetened with stevia. Or toss in some frozen berries—they’ll jazz up water with almost no calories.

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O Body Book

Strength strategies H O L LY W O O D M U S C L E

Forearms Like Rambo When deadlifting, focus on a spot on the floor a few feet

Use Sly Stallone’s workout to load your guns Q There’s only one set of muscles that is on display year-round and can create the impression you have an action-hero physique overall (even if you don’t): your forearms. Adam Ernster, a Hollywood trainer who helped Sylvester Stallone peak for 2008’s Rambo , can show you how Sly got his so you can build a pair of your own. Use the following routine frequently—as often as every other day.

Rambo Forearm Workout A REVERSE WRIST CURL Sets: 2 Reps: 15–20 Rest: 0 sec. B WRIST CURL Sets: 2 Reps: 15–20 Rest: 0 sec. C HAMMER CURL Sets: 2 Reps: 10–15 Rest: 0 sec. D BAR HANG Sets: 2 Reps: Hang 30–60 sec. Rest: 90 sec. For exercise descriptions, go to mensfitness.com/slyforearms.

LIES WE LIVE BY

Build a stronger deadlift and bigger back by working out with your shoes off By Sean Hyson, C.S.C.S.

120

The strongest thing coming from your feet shouldn’t be the odor. It should be the power you need to do better lifts. And by putting your bare feet on the floor, you can increase your strength on one of the all-time best muscle-building exercises: the deadlift. ¶ Going shoeless decreases the distance you have to lift the bar. A few millimeters might not seem like much, but it will give you a significant mechanical advantage— especially if you’re used to lifting in a shoe with a squishy sole, which reduces your stability—and, therefore, your strength. ¶ If your gym won’t let you lift in socks—a stupid rule that doesn’t improve safety (as if shoes would protect your toes if you dropped a plate on them), use the most minimalist footwear you can, like a Sockwa G4, Vibram FiveFingers, or even some Converse Chuck Taylors. Your old high school wrestling shoes will work, too.

T

saps your strength.

JAMES MICHELFELDER

S t y l i n g b y A n g e l M a c i a s ; G r o o m i n g b y M a t t h e w Tu o z z o l i /A t e l i e r M a n a g e m e n t u s i n g D i o r H o m m e ; F r o m To p : A F A r c h i v e / A l a m y ; M a t t H a w t h o r n e

Lose the shoes, raise the dead

Q Clothes that don’t allow much ventilation make you sweat more; so when you step on the scale after a run, you may find your weight is down—but the loss is water weight, not fat. Any wrestler who’s ever had to make a weigh-in before a match can tell you that. Even more important, aiming to sweat excessively during training actually hurts your ability to lose fat, because it dehydrates you, so you can’t go as hard. A recent study review in the Journal of Sport and Health Science concluded that dehydration negatively impacted performance in activities that lasted more than 30 seconds. Interestingly, there was no significant negative effect on activities lasting less than 15 seconds— which may mean you can lift heavy without adequate hydration. But we recommend always drinking enough to keep your urine clear (the best indicator of good Running on emp Training in heavy hydration).

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Z A C E F R O N (continued from page 71)

way to reinvent a musical,” he says when I ask if he’d do it again. But for now, Efron’s reading scripts and taking meetings—but, he says, every audition is still a fight. “The only way people really get me is if they meet me,” he says. “Until that happens, I don’t think they have their heart set on me for any role. Afterward, maybe they take me more seriously.” Zac Efron Earned His Baywatch Body

Efron’s fitness goal, especially for Baywatch, is to be “fast and light.” His physical archetype is Bruce Lee. “I want to be lean,” he says. “When I put on a T-shirt, I don’t want people to go, ‘Oh, that guy’s a bodybuilder.’ ” To consume enough calories to carry out Baywatch’s many physically difficult scenes yet keep his body fat minimal, Efron eats a diet designed by his nutritionist, trainer Patrick Murphy: Every element—carbohydrates, fat, salt, vitamins—is broken out for every meal, so both he and the nutritionist can see exactly what he’s putting into his body. The diet is extremely low-carb, with an emphasis on fully organic whole foods. “After a while your body stops craving junk food and you look forward to these meals,” he says. When I express my skepticism, he explains further. “There’s this trigger that happens after two or three weeks of dieting and eating healthy food, where your body switches its primary energy source from burning mainly carbohydrates to burning fat,” he explains. “And when it switches over, all your cravings change. You go, ‘Holy cow, I want kale and vinaigrette shredded with beets and a little bit of sweet potato!’ ” I wait for him to laugh. He doesn’t. Efron was no less serious about the fitness regimen created for him by Murphy, who spent 10 weeks helping him “drop the last bit of body fat” and “get into

the best shape of his life.” (For Efron’s fullbody routine, go to page 101.) It wasn’t a superfluous task: “Many actors train hard for a specific scene,” Murphy says—but Efron was prepping to shoot an entire film wearing, for the most part, nothing but swim trunks and a whistle. Murphy trained him five or six days a week, often twice a day, mixing balance and agility, strength, and endurance training, plus swimming and sprinting/hiking to create what he calls “the most dynamic program I’ve ever put together for a client.” A few weeks after our chat in L.A., Efron has a rare day off in Savannah, and I manage to get him on the phone. One thing I’d wanted to ask him about in L.A., before we ran out of time, was his sobriety. Efron battled some very public drug and alcohol issues, and he’s been forthright about those episodes ever since. He says he’d even discussed those days with Grylls on the show. “I was caring less about the work and more about the weekend,” he told Grylls as the two prepared to eat an omelet made of wild bird eggs and earthworms. “I don’t want to have to take anything from the outside to feel good on the inside.” And when I bring it up, Efron doesn’t flinch. Working out has definitely helped, he says. “When I’m very careful about my fitness and have a goal in mind, it keeps me motivated and balanced. I wake up earlier. I don’t feel the need to be out—that kills your day, your hobbies, and your motivation.” Fitness, he says, is now a key part of a formula that seems to be working: “Balancing sobriety and work and finding that comfortable place where you feel like a good person.” Being exiled to Savannah to work for weeks alongside the Rock isn’t likely to lead to a relapse, either. Johnson, Efron

says, is exactly what any of us imagine him to be: a superhero in corporeal form, “like the genes just clicked and made this dude.” Efron wakes up at 5 a.m. to train—but the Rock rises by 4. “He’s getting less sleep than I am and he already did a post on Instagram at 5:30, doing the most ridiculous leg day you’ve ever seen,” Efron says. “He’s reached nirvana—muscle nirvana.” The admiration, it turns out, is mutual. “Athletes know how hard it is to prep, train, and diet for a competition,” Johnson says. “It’s months of focused sacrifice all leading up to one particular event that takes place in one night. In the case of Baywatch, Zac’s had to apply the diet and training strategy of an elite athlete, but he’s also had the ‘added bonus’ of needing to maintain that look for months while we’re shooting. Zac committed to be the best version of himself possible and did it. He came in looking like a fucking animal.” The two have been gleefully bro-ing out ever since. Early on set one day, as the cameras were preparing to roll, Johnson noticed Efron working with some elastic bands— “to, as Arnold says, ‘get the pump on,’ ” he explains. Johnson asked Efron to toss one his way, and the two commenced prepping their movie-star muscles for the first scenes. The surreality of the moment poured over Efron like a bucket of nacho cheese. “Here we are lifting weights on the beach, surrounded by a bunch of people watching. It was one of the most ridiculously narcissistic moments of my life.” And with that, Efron has to go. He’s late to be fitted for a new carbon-fiber road bike his manager bought him so he can take up endurance cycling. “Hopefully, I’ll be able to tell you about my first triathlon sometime,” he says. The way he’s going, it’ll probably be the Ironman. Q

Men’s Fitness (ISSN 0893-4460) Volume 32, No. 5), is published 10 times a year, Jan/Feb., Mar., Apr., May, Jun, Jul/ Aug., Sept., Oct., Nov and Dec., by Weider Publications LLC., a division of American Media Inc. 4 New York Plaza, 4th Fl, New York, NY 10004. Periodical Rates Postage Paid at the New York, NY Post Office and at additional Mailing offices. Copyright © Weider Publications, LLC 2016. All rights reserved. Canada Post International Publications Mail Sale Agreement No. 40028566. Canadian B.N. 88746 5102 RT0001. All materials submitted become the sole property of Weider Publications, LLC. and shall constitute a grant to Weider Publications, LLC., to use name, likeness, story, and all other information submitted of the person submitting the same for any and all purposes and cannot be used without permission in writing from Weider Publications, LLC. Men’s Fitness is not responsible for returning unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, letters or other materials. Weider Publications, LLC and American Media publisher of Men’s Fitness, does not promote or endorse any of the products or services advertised by third-party advertisers in this publication. Nor does Weider Publications, LLC or American Media Inc, verify the accuracy of any claims made in conjunction with such advertisements. Copyrighted under the Universal Copyright Convention and International Copyright Convention. Copyright reserved under the Pan-American Copyright Convention. Todos derechos reservados segúin la convención Pan Americana de Propriedad Literaria Artística. Title trademark registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Subscription rate is $24.00 for (1yr) 10 issues in U.S.A. In Canada (1yr) 10 issues $ 36.97. Outside of U.S.A. and Canada (1yr) $40.97 U.S. Orders outside of U.S.A. must be prepaid in U.S. funds. For Customer Service and Back issues call toll-free (800) 340-8958 or write to: Men’s Fitness, P.O. Box 37207, Boone, IA, 50037-0207. SUBSCRIBERS: If the postal service alerts us that your magazine is undeliverable, we have no further obligation unless we receive a corrected address within one year. U.S. POSTMASTER: Send all UAA to CFS (See DMM 707.4.12.5); NON-POSTAL and MILITARY FACILITIES send U.S. Address changes to: Men’s Fitness Magazine, P.O. Box 37207, Boone, IA 50037-0207. CANADA POSTMASTER: Send address changes to American Media Inc, PO Box 907 STN Main, Markham, ON L3P 0A7, Canada. From time to time we make our subscriber list available to companies who sell goods and services by mail that we believe would interest our readers. If you would rather not receive such mailings, please send your current mailing label to: Men’s Fitness, P.O. Box 37207, Boone, IA, 50037. Manuscripts, art or other submissions must be accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Printed in the U.S.A.

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Hot & Heady! Kate and Adri rule our dreams, Wimbledon rocks our lawn, and bikinis reach our peek, all in 140 characters or less

Halfway through the year— still plenty of time to restart your resolution to restart your resolutions. June 30 / 12:42 p.m. @MikeTyson turns 50. Ranked #1 on espn.com ’s list of Hardest Hitters in Heavyweight History. Also #BestHangoverActorEver (sorry, @kenjeong). June 30 / 11:13 a.m. Power Rankings, Beach Games: 5) Frisbee 4) Bocce 3) Paddleball 2) Cornhole 1) “Nap” with Sunglasses On, Watch Girls Walk By June 29 / 9:05 a.m. Post-workout wakeup: At end of hot shower, cycle it down to warm for 15 secs, then ice cold. Hold 30 secs. June 28 / 4:12 p.m. Wimbledon opens. In honor, ping the neighbor kid with tennis balls while he mows your lawn. June 27 / 7:02 p.m. Read “A Marine’s Convictions” from @washington post. Riveting, troubling. June 27 / 11:01 a.m.

#MakeYourOwn sweet coffee: Splash of coconut milk + drop of chocolate milk. June 22 / 1:11 a.m. #MakeYourOwn damn bed. June 22 / 1:11 a.m. All I want for Father’s Day: Someone to organize my garage/closet/photos/attic. And a pair of Nike Flyknits. June 19 / 10:10 a.m. Don’t start something you June 18 / 10:55 p.m. 24 Hours of Le Mans starts. In honor, stay up all night, then race to IHOP for French toast. June 18 / 3:00 p.m. Finna Google to figure out what finna means. June 16 / 4:02 p.m.

Most overused phrase in work emails: “I want.” June 15 / 2:19 p.m. Most ill-advised phrase in work emails: “Suck it.” June 15 / 2:19 p.m. HBD, @Adriana Lima! May all my dreams come true. June 12 / 10:25 p.m. The Sixers should totally try to get @JManziel2. June 12 / 9:03 p.m. HBD, @KateUpton! (jk about Adriana; it’s always been you, only you). June 10 / 11:40 p.m. #LockerRoomLaw: With 100 empty lockers, the only 2 being used will be mine and the one next to it. June 8 / 6:16 p.m. #LockerRoomLaw: My gym membership doesn’t include your singing. June 8 / 6:16 p.m. #LockerRoomLaw: The older the man, the smaller the towel. June 8 / 6:16 p.m. Dave Matthews lyric or CrossFit mantra? “However small, the first step is hardest of all.” June 7 / 8:42 p.m. Dave Matthews lyric or CrossFit mantra? “If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.” June 7 / 8:04 p.m. Dave Matthews lyric or CrossFit mantra? “The future is no place to place your dreams.” June 7 / 7:39 p.m. Nat’l Yo-Yo Day! Psst, how’s the diet going? June 6 / 12 noon Master the art of the sincere compliment. You’re smart, you’re talented, you can do it! June 1 / 9:03 a.m.

SEAN McCABE

F r o m t o p : T h e R i n g M a g a z i n e / G e t t y ; C h r i s J a c k s o n / G e t t y ; S h a u n B o t t e r i l l / G e t t y ; J u l i a n F i n n e y/ G e t t y

#MakeYourOwn prowler: Truck tire on old skis, add sandbags/kids for weight. June 22 / 1:11 a.m.

Most underused phrase in work emails: “I understand.” June 15 / 2:19 p.m.

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