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SHRED YOUR CORE THE BEST MOVE YOUâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;RE NOT DOING

SUMMER MUSCLE: MADE IN WINTER

Dacre Montgomery On Turning His Fitness Upside Down

AUGUST 2019 $9.50 NZ $9.99 INC GST

HACK YOUR BODY+MIND

TIPS TO CHILL THE F#*K OUT EVERY QUESTION YOU EVER HAD ABOUT

EATING WELL

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AUSTRALIAN

THE FIRST WATCH WORN ON THE MOON On the 50th anniversary of the first lunar landing, OMEGA is reflecting on the golden moments that defined that iconic day. While our own Speedmaster was strapped to the wrists of the astronauts, George Clooney was looking up towards the moon where his heroes were making history.

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CONTENTS

0 8 .19

COVER GUY: DACRE MONTGOMERY PHOTOGRAPHED BY: CHRIS MOHEN

PHOTOGRAPHY: DANIEL LINNET

The inimitable BodyHack presenter Todd Sampson simply wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t back off, engaging in ever more daring physical challenges in pursuit of total control of his mind.

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INSIDE THIS ISSUE

MIND

p76 23 Serotonin Boosters Triggering a surge in your happy neurochemical just got simple.

p86 Visions Of Perfection What if dabbling in psychodelics could unlock your brain’s potential?

FITNESS

p30 The Viper Press Shake up your lunch gym sessions – and shred your core – with this move.

p115 Never Settle CrossFit’s James Newbury has turned recovery into a science project.

TACTICS

p36 Get Out Of Town! This guy swapped the rat race for the simple life. Could you follow suit?

p92 Man On Fire Here’s how to douse your volcanic rage and learn to go with the flow.

NUTRITION

p28 You Cane Do It!

Steph Claire Smith The kick-arse businesswoman reveals the qualities she most values in a man.

Attack The Flank Team a fibre-rich side with a hunk of protein for a feed that delivers.

How clued up are you on sugar’s health-wrecking ways.

p80 Eating Well, Made Easy Confused about how the heck to feed yourself optimally? Look no further than this no-BS report.

MUSCLE

p120 Your Lifelong Power Plan Hit pause on ageing with these muscle-building, life-extending workouts.

p126 The World’s Fittest MC Find out how superstar emcee Nick Cannon used cinder blocks to get jacked.

119

Turn Your Training Upside-Down MH’s fitness director has a radical plan to grow your delts: the handstand push-up.

An Exhaustive Guide To Cardio Know this: you have a high-performance engine inside you. It’s time to turn the key. August 2019

E D I T O R’S L E T T E R

Men's Health Australia

@MensHealthAU

menshealth.com.au

WALK THE WALK Somehow, just like that, we find ourselves more than halfway through the year. And while that’s a scary thought, what might be scarier still is looking back on the goals you set yourself back on January 1. Have you achieved what you set out to do? Or have you written those goals off – primed, perhaps, for a fresh crack in the new decade? The good news is that when it comes to your health, you don’t need a new year, a new month or even a Monday to make a change. You can choose to improve your health at any second. And as the grip of winter tightens and your best intentions take a backseat to days on the couch and comfort food, picking up this issue of Men’s Health is a great place to start on your quest for self-improvement. When it comes to staying motivated through winter, first things first: conquer your mind. Kick the winter blues to the curb with a serotonin boost (p.76) and get a handle on your rage (p.92). Once you’ve silenced the negativity in your head, you’re ready to unleash on your physical goals – because it’s not too late to turn those resolutions into reality. My goals and sources of inspiration change weekly, even daily, often depending on the stories we’re sharing and the people I’m fortunate to meet. Being surrounded by health professionals and hearing, day in and day out, incredible tales about the search for better living, I can’t help but be influenced by those guys our team talks to. Society lauded its poets and later its rock stars. Now we have “influencers”. At Men’s Health, we choose ours carefully so you have a clear path to a better life. The truth is, everyone has a sphere of influence. Our words and actions affect those in our immediate reach. For me, the best influencers are those who walk the walk, who remain true to their values and seek to influence not to enrich themselves but to help others improve their lot. Choose your influencers wisely and feel pushed to be a better man every day. Just this month, spurred on by recent MH cover guys and features, the entire MH team has committed to tackle the Blackmores Running Festival in Sydney. It’s a huge leap out of the winter-induced comfort zone for many of the team. But as with those we look up to, it’s important for us to walk the walk . . . or shuffle the shuffle as the case may be.

SCOTT HENDERSON Editor BEN JHOTY Deputy Editor DANIEL WILLIAMS Associate Editor DAVID ASHFORD Creative Director JASON LEE Deputy Art Director KATE FRASER Head Of Pictures – Fashion and Health LAUREN WILLIAMSON Digital Content Manager – Health ALEX PIEROTTI Digital Content Editor HARRIET SIM Editorial Coordinator TODD LIUBINSKAS Fitness Director JEFF LACK Style Editor ERIN DOCHERTY Grooming Writer

CLARISSA WILSON

KATHY GLAVAS

JESSICA LAY

COURTENAY McDERMOTT

Brand Solutions Director

Head of Health

Brand Solutions Manager

Senior Marketing Manager – Health

CALVIN SIMPSON

Marketing & Events Executive

ANDREW CAMERON

Production Manager

ALEX DALRYMPLE

Advertising Operations Manager

Brand Solutions Coordinator

ELLIE FLETCHER PAUL KING

Executive Creative Director

ALLAN WEBSTER

Multimedia Content Producer

GEREURD ROBERTS Chief Executive Officer, Pacific Magazines GUY TORRE Chief Financial Officer LOUISA HATFIELD Group Content and Brand Director

NICOLE BENCE Commercial Director MARK BOORMAN Group Production Manager

RICHARD DORMENT

Editor in Chief, Men’s Health US

Scott Henderson menshealth@pacificmags.com.au

SIMON HORNE

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KIM ST. CLAIR BODDEN

SVP/Editorial & Brand Director CHLOE O’BRIEN

SVP/Managing Director Asia Pacific & Russia

Deputy Brands Director

RICHARD BEAN

Executive Director, Content Services

Director of International Licensing and Business Development

Henderson, setting an example for Team MH, is training for a half marathon.

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ASK MH

PARENTAL PLAYBOOK

My teenager is a total slob. How do I get him to clean his room? You don’t . . . necessarily. Understand that a child’s teenage years are his transition years, when he begins to build and create his own world. “You can think of his room as archaeological layers,” says organisation and productivity consultant Julie Morgenstern, author of Time to Parent. “He’s got leftover things from childhood and new objects emerging from adolescence.” A messy room doesn’t always indicate a dysfunctional room. If he has a messy room but can find everything he needs and is comfortable in that space, then just close the door and walk away. If he is not functioning – losing his homework, always late for school, never able to find his favourite shirt and going to school stressed or less confident because of it – that’s when you intervene, advises Morgenstern. And when you do intervene, don’t think of the experience as a battleground. Organising a kid’s room with them is one of the greatest ways to get to know your child. “You get to see how they think, what they value and how their interests are changing,” says Morgenstern. “It should be a peaceful and fun process, not – Pick up all this crap!”

A MESSY ROOM MIGHTN’T INDICATE CHAOS. EXCEPT WHEN IT DOES.

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–AK

ANCIENT SOLUTION TO A MODERN PROBLEM Q I worry about getting an incurable disease and dying a slow, painful death. DE

A “We are more often frightened than hurt, and we suffer more in imagination than in reality.”

Seneca, Roman Stoic, b. 4BC

TEXT A PT Hey. The mirror’s telling me that my weight training is delivering! Except my shoulders still look puny. Congrats on the gains you’ve made elsewhere. You just need to treat your delts as a lagging body part.

THE BIG QUESTION

How hard should I go foamrolling? It should hurt, right? First off, it’s not compulsory to use a foam roller. It is a choice. “For some, it may help with mobility or temporary pain relief, as the pressure enacts changes within tissue and the nervous system,” says trainer Bill Hartman, who specialises in recovery and bouncing back from injury. But you should never use a foam roller for a bone issue, Hartman warns. “Pain here could just mean pain, or you could be irritating a fracture or

–SC

causing more problems.” When foam rollers are used correctly, though, you will experience minor discomfort. Still, there should be no ongoing pain or discolouration of the skin after rolling. Self-applied pain is a personal choice, but more is not necessarily better. “Some people tend to overdo or overvalue the ability to tolerate discomfort,” says Hartman. “But with rolling, too much pain can actually prevent gain.” SOLVE THE PRICKLY ISSUE OF FOAMROLLING BY GAUGING PAIN.

What does that mean, in practical terms? It means implementing the principles of Priority Training – an old bodybuilding concept made famous by Joe Weider and Arnie himself. It’s pretty simple. Your training’s focus becomes bringing your shoulders up to speed with the rest of you.

Training them more often, you mean? Yes. If you’re hitting them twice a week, up that to three. And/or increase sets. Also, move delt work to the start of your sessions when you’re freshest. And if you’re not feeling broad, don’t neglect the width-building medial head, best targeted via lateral raises. Ben Williams PT, pymble@northshoregym.com.au

August 2019

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FEEL THE (FAT) BURN

GET TO GRIPS WITH CHILLI TO FIRE UP YOUR TRAINING.

WORDS: LOUEE DESSENT-JACKSON; PHOTOGRAPHY: ROWAN FEE

Hot-wire your progress with the only food that’ll make you sweat as much as CrossFit IF YOU’RE THE TYPE of man who disregards the consequences of ordering his madras with added chillies, or douses his Nando’s with extra hot sauce, we applaud you. No matter how unflattering the immediate aftermath, your bravery is laudable and, according to new science, you will be rewarded. According to researchers at the Tianjin Medical University, a compound found in chillies can fire up your muscles at the cellular level. In a study, men who ate chilli peppers several times a week performed better in strength tests than those who opted for a lemon and herb dressing, an advantage that could translate to extra pull-ups or a double-your-bodyweight deadlift. The more chillies they ate, the more force they were able to demonstrate. Be warned, however, that mild capsicums won’t cut it, because they contain far less of the active ingredient capsaicin. This compound is what sets your tongue on fire when you overdo the Tabasco and reduces YouTubers who chomp down on a Carolina reaper into blubbering wrecks. The Chinese scientists believe that capsaicin supports strength training partly by boosting the production of mitochondria in cells. That allows your muscles to convert more nutrients into energy, so you can squeeze off a few more reps before burning out.

PLAY WITH FIRE How much heat can you take? Consult the Scoville chilli scale

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August 2019

RHYTHM AND SNOOZE Use our timeline to get your circadian clock in order and sleep like an infant

07.00

Rise’n’grind. Train early to fall asleep fast at night. Or stick to weights in the pm*.

BUILD STAYING POWER IN BED

13.00

Melatonin’s effects on deep sleep are well known. But this hormone can also supercharge your muscles overnight

WORK AND WORKOUTS too often conspire to sabotage your sleep. We’ve all been there: putting in a late shift to hit a deadline, then racking up some reps before bedtime. But rather than knocking you out, this overexertion can leave you buzzing, which plays havoc with your health and progress. Not only is missing out on Zs linked to heart trouble, but deep sleep is also when your body floods your system with the restorative hormones HGH and testosterone.

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Thankfully, there’s a pill for that, and it actually works. Scientists at Manouba University have found that melatonin will put sleep trouble to bed and make you a fitter man come morning. Athletes who popped 10mg of melatonin after an intensive 8pm training session slept 25 minutes longer on average than a placebo group. But the Tunisian researchers found that the benefits went well beyond a better rest. When members of the study group were subjected to a

Yo-Yo intermittent recovery test (similar to a bleep test) after waking, the supplement helped them to outperform their own scores from the previous night by 82m. Melatonin is not a lolly, and we suggest consulting your doctor before use and sourcing it only for the nights you really need it. For everyday benefits, a pre-bed snack of pineapple and banana naturally boosts melatonin by 300 per cent. That’s a rock-solid go-to before upping the ante.

Light-ﬁlled office? You’ll sleep 46 minutes longer than cave-dwellers**.

17.00

Office feuds wreck sleep. Clock off early to link with friends for a tipple.

20.00

After dinner, have some kiwi and yoghurt for dessert: the combo will help you drift off†.

WORDS: LOUEE DESSENT-JACKSON; PHOTOGRAPHY: JOBE LAWRENSON; *APPALACHIAN STATE UNIVERSITY | **AMERICAN ACADEMY OF SLEEP MEDICINE | †TAIPEI MEDICAL UNIVERSITY

WAKE UP FITTER WITH A PILL TO LAY DOMS TO REST.

RAISE A GLASS TO ENHANCED FERTILITY Post-work beers could give you a better shot at expanding your fit fam in 2019. Cheers to that

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DR’S ORDERS You don’t have to ditch booze to drop kilos. Choose your tipple wisely, and you can have your metaphorical cake and . . . er, drink it

VODKA AND SODA

A shot of vodka contains little more than 210kJs and soda water adds nothing. But on its own, this can be as bland as tap water – so add some lime for ﬂavour and vitamin C.

GIN AND DIET TONIC THE MOST SOCIABLE WAY TO BOOST YOUR ODDS OF CONCEPTION.

With its fresh taste and just 420kJs, this is a tried-andtested tonic for joint pain. Meanwhile, the juniper berries in the gin contain ﬂavonoids that may help to lower your risk of heart disease.

WHISKY ON THE ROCKS

The lack of sugary mixer makes this another light option: a generous shot contains minimal carbs and a reasonable 500kJs. Its ellagic acid also helps to kill pre-cancerous cells.

WORDS: HARRY BULLMORE; PHOTOGRAPHY: COLIN BEAGLEY

BETWEEN 1995 AND 2014, births in Australia regularly peaked in September. As the mathematicians among you will have worked out, that means festive joy is no myth. Despite this, male fertility is in a state of crisis: according to scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, sperm counts in the western world have more than halved in the past 40 years and are falling at an annual rate of 1.4 per cent. While the precise cause for the decline has yet to be determined, a new paper published in the Andrology Journal suggests a timely solution. In a study of 323 men, Italian researchers found that a few beers each week can boost your fertility. Of these subjects, those who drank between four and seven units of alcohol per week (one bottle of beer contains roughly 1.7 units) had a higher median semen volume and greater sperm concentration than teetotallers. Cheering news, especially when your abstemious peers are trying to pressure you into various joyless months of abstinence. But before you prop up the bar, be warned that the relationship between alcohol and fertility is U-shaped. After eight or more units per week, the positive effects level out; after serious overindulgence, your sperm count declines. As with most things in life, moderation is key. If your priority is your body goals, cut back on booze, by all means – but if your aspiration for 2019 is to bulk up your family, say yes to a guilt-free fireside drink with friends. The first round’s on you.

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YOU CAN POP A CAP IN FAT MASS

ADD A SPRINKLE OF MAGIC TO YOUR FAT-LOSS PLAN.

Should you deviate from your best-laid meal plans, science has found a tasty antidote. Make some shroom for a little indulgence

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MUSH ADO ABOUT EVERYTHING Match the mushroom to your health and ﬁtness goal, then hit add to basket

CREMINI

This humble ingredient will help you to combat one of man’s biggest killers: heart disease. Filled with the antioxidant ergothioneine, a serving will help to protect your body from harmful oxidative stress.

OYSTER

A mild-tasting option that contains more iron than most other varieties, improving blood supply to your muscles to boost gym performance. This pairs especially well with crisp white wine, too.

MAITAKE

Save this for the morning after. Fry it up and serve with a slice of buttery toast and its naturally higher levels of the antioxidant glutathione will soothe and help to detoxify your liver.

WORDS: LOUEE DESSENT-JACKSON; PHOTOGRAPHY: ROWAN FEE

NUTRITIONAL SLIP-UPS are a fact of life: your post-work drinks that ended at a train station kiosk, say, or downing a nut-butter-laden shake, despite having phoned in a gym class. But your error needn’t be remedied with ascetic abstinence. Helpfully, the Journal of Obesity has offered up an insurance policy for your dietary wobbles. Australian researchers found that shiitake mushrooms, a common east-Asian variety you can pick up at the supermarket, trigger a kind of backstop in your fat cells, which means the extra kilojoules you haven’t burned won’t necessarily be turned into fat. The scientists used doses of shiitake powder equivalent to 340g of fresh mushrooms, so you’d need to buy in bulk. Yet the effects were significant. The more shiitake given to lab rats over the six-week trial, the lower the rodents’ fat mass at the end, despite being consistently in a kilojoule surplus. Scientists speculate that the mushrooms’ beta-glucans – a soluble dietary fibre – could be preventing fat absorption, or that bioactive substances in the fungi can ramp up your metabolism. Whatever the precise mechanism, we suggest you make shiitake a new shopping-list staple, so the next time you’re faced with a choice between indulgence and monkish abstinence, your weight-loss goals needn’t fall between two toadstools.

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STRONGER THINGS

Dacre Montgomery, the breakout star of hit show Stranger Things, has the world at his feet. Find out how he turned his life ‘upside down’ to get there

BY BEN JHOTY PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRIS MOHEN STYLING BY JEFF LACK

DACRE MONTGOMERY is skylarking about on the top-floor balcony of his new apartment in Sydney’s inner-city suburb of Erskineville. Barefoot, in a grey suit with a white flat cap and gold tinted glasses, he moves easily for the camera, performing a highwire act on the balcony ledge that’s causing his publicist considerable alarm. “Please be careful, Dacre,” he repeats a couple of times. Montgomery, who’s absorbed in a variety of freeform poses, seems oblivious to the 30m drop on the other side of his balcony’s narrow herb garden. He looks every inch a movie star, his blue-eyed, sharp-jawed intensity recalling Hollywood heartthrobs of yesteryear, not least original bad boy James Dean.

Emporio Armani double-breasted jacket with peak lapels and patch pockets in silk cotton $1600 Pleated trouser in silk cotton $950 Cotton poly mode shirt $670 Dacre’s own rings on left hand, necklace, glasses and cap

August 2019

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“I’VE NEVER GIVEN UP ON MYSELF AND PEOPLE HAVEN’T GIVEN UP ON ME” 20

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Indeed, Montgomery looks as at ease with his burgeoning success as he does in any of the outfits he’s wearing today for MH’s shoot. His scene-stealing turn as beefcake villain Billy Hargrove in Netflix’s megahit Stranger Things (season 3 out July 4) has made him one of Hollywood’s hottest properties at just 24. Watching him tap-dance so assuredly against the rooftop skyline, you can’t help feeling his seemingly meteoric rise has an air of inevitability about it. Appearances, of course, can be deceiving, as Montgomery knows better than most. Just seven years ago he was a bullied, overweight teen from Perth with nothing more than passion and a pipedream. His ascent to the precipice of superstardom was as unlikely as it is for any of the millions of wannabe actors out there. His current self-possession, it turns out, is a product of his lifelong self-belief. “I have always wanted it really, really, really badly and I’ve never given up on myself and I’m lucky that I’ve been surrounded by people that haven’t given up on me,” he says of becoming an actor, as we chat on the floor of his Bali beach-house inspired bedroom. Vaulting from obscurity to reach the heights Montgomery now finds himself involved starting at the bottom or, in the vernacular of Stranger Things, emerging from ‘the upside down’. Because sometimes, to make your name, you’ve got to flip the script.

ROLE REVERSAL Montgomery’s opening scene as Billy Hargrove in season 2 of Stranger Things ranks among the more memorable smallscreen debuts. Sporting an 80s mullet that straddles the slim line between iconic and ironic and an over-the-top snarl, he emerges from a muscle car, clad head-to-foot in denim, cigarette dangling from his mouth, as heavy metal blares in the background. The archetypal bully, Hargrove is initially cartoonish in his malevolence, giving the show’s geeky gang of kids a flesh-andblood foil almost as menacing, at least in a high school context, as the hollow-faced Demogorgon they’ve been pitted against thus far. In the upcoming season 3, Billy breaks badder still, going from flirty, cougarcourting lifeguard in the opening episode, to fully-fledged force of evil. Montgomery landed the role after submitting a now-legendary audition tape in which a shirtless, unhinged Billy burns up the screen as he dances to 80s classics by Duran Duran and Dexys Midnight Runners. That Montgomery is convincing in the role is perhaps not surprising – it was both informed and inverted from his own experiences and encounters as a teenager. “I had a really tough time in high school and

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August 2019

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I feel like there’s a lot of people in my life that have possessed those types of qualities that I represent in the show,” he says. “You know, any bully or person that you’ve had in your life that has been antagonistic towards you. It was about finding those qualities and representing them.” While it’s tempting to picture Montgomery as the theatre nerd bullied by the jocks, it wasn’t as simple as that. The drama school community wasn’t any more welcoming to him than the footy team, he says. “I was kind of ostracised from that community as well,” he says. “I don’t think I was ‘theatre’ enough for those kids and I wasn’t good-looking enough for the other kids. I didn’t play sport, so it had me in this really unique place. High school was really tough.” Painful as it was and as successfully as Montgomery has drawn on those experiences to play Billy, the role could easily have been a caricature but for the nuance and complexity he brings to the character. “Everyone has a story behind that antagonism,” Montgomery says. He points to a scene from season two between Billy and his abusive father. “That scene with my dad humanises the villain.” It also wrongfoots the audience and subverts expectations. Which is handy, for chances are if you can do that just enough, you’ve got a shot at a long career.

BODY SLAM Bullying wasn’t the only thing Montgomery battled in high school. In year 12 he weighed 90kg. “I was a really big kid,” he says. Montgomery discovered exercise after taking a gap year after school, during which time he lost 25kg. “That was purely just going to the gym and getting on the treadmill and running,” he says. From there, he tried to stick some muscle on his frame, lifting “really heavy” before suffering injuries that put him off shifting large loads of iron for good. He subsequently dabbled with yoga and stretching and took up surfing this year after being introduced to it by his girlfriend, model Liv Pollock. But Montgomery found his true exercise calling while preparing for his first major role in 2017’s Power Rangers. “I started doing night-time boxing classes at the gym and that gets you really cut,” he says. “I loved that.” For Stranger Things he needed to muscle up again. This time, instead of weights he used resistance bands, doing a mix of light weight, high reps and static holds. “I think the best type of muscle for me is creating, not big muscle but dense muscle,” he says. “I wanted to do this meatier, chunkier jock thing so I still worked out a ton, but I also did a lot of boxing and ate a heap. My carb intake was higher, my meat

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“THE BEST TYPE OF MUSCLE FOR ME IS DENSE MUSCLE”

August 2019

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SUPPLIED BY NETFLIX

HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW: MONTGOMERY DREW ON PAINFUL MEMORIES TO PLAY BAD BOY BILLY.

“A FILM SET IS LIKE WALL ST IN TERMS OF THE ANXIETY AND THE PASSION” 24

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intake was higher and I just built this chunkier, more muscly version of myself.” Along with getting him in shape, exercise has also helped Montgomery manage anxiety and fill the downtime that plagues many actors between roles. The best piece of advice he ever got, he says, was from a screenwriter on Power Rangers. “He said, ‘You need to know how to kill Wednesday’,” he says. “To kill time. It’s a huge part of being, not just an actor, but any freelancer, so that you don’t go crazy and worry too much about what the future is going to hold. I’ve become very proficient at killing Wednesday.” That’s perhaps understating the manner in which he destroys downtime. He dabbles in interior design and lately has been working on an intriguing podcast series that drops this month, in which his beat poetry is set to improvised scores from artists like Angus and Julia Stone. If that weren’t original enough, Montgomery then plans to turn each podcast into a cologne – a thoroughly holistic approach to an area he’s keen to explore in the future: the intersection of art and commerce. “Hopefully the audience fall in love with the sound they hear and everything that encompasses and then we can build a scent around that,” he says. So, yes, laying waste to Wednesday isn’t a problem in itself. What he really finds hard, he says, is the initial decompression period after a shoot wraps and he returns to daily life. It’s a discombobulating experience he compares to FIFO miners. “The comedown after you work 80 hours a week, every week for months on end and then you come home and it’s this quiet, dead place,” he says. “It’s really hard. You get really anxious.” Montgomery’s lucky, he says, that his girlfriend travels with him and mates come and visit. “It keeps me grounded because you get so consumed when you’re in it,” he says of filming. “Your mates are always there to tell you, you know, you’re being a dickhead or to be as blunt as they can be.” It also helps, he says, that his mates are just as driven as he is. “Surrounding yourself with people with similar ideas or goals is so important because they keep reinforcing where you want to be.” The more you talk to Montgomery the more inexorable his ascent looks. He grew up on sets – both his parents worked behind the camera. That gave him, he says, a granular appreciation of the filmmaking process. “A film set is like nothing else,” he says breathlessly. “It’s like Wall Street in terms of the adrenaline and the anxiety and the passion around it and I love it. I feel like I have a duty to my parents to understand everything that goes into filmmaking.” Montgomery’s success may not have been inevitable. No one’s is. But the passion and dedication he possesses, those things can create momentum that’s hard to stop.

RAPID FIRE Favourite exercise Skipping. It’s like tunnel vision. You just get lost watching the rope come over and over Least favourite? Chin-ups – my lats are really weak Cheat meal? My whole diet right now Book you’d recommend? Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari – it’s dense but I loved it Karaoke song? I’m not a singer Last time you cried? Watching that Netflix show, When They See Us. I was weeping Hero? Mum – she’s just supported me all the way through Motto? If you have the fire and the passion in your belly, keep stoking it until you make it

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August 2019

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Invest In Generation Gains, Now

Aspiring fathers are told to avoid alcohol, but Italian researchers found that a few beers each week can actually boost fertility (see p14). Andrology

Ashwagandha is not just hipster Instagram fodder. An Indian study found that 5g per day raised sperm count and motility. King George’s Medical University

INSTA RESULTS

DRINK UP

COUNT YOUR CHICKENS Your Tupperware chicken does more than feed your biceps. Poultry eaters have a 13 per cent higher fertilisation rate than vegetarians. Harvard Chan Public Health School

Bring fertility rates out of recession with the science that’ll leave your family-man dreams in credit

GO NUTS Snacking on foods rich in antioxidants (such as almonds, hazelnuts and walnuts) can boost the number and quality of your sperm, so grab some between meals. Universitat Rovira

C THE DIFFERENCE

HOLD

Make vitamin C your go-to supp. Scientists found that taking it twice a day for two months increased sperm count by more than 100 per cent. Dubai Specialized Medical Center

SNOOZE YOU WIN As with all aspects of health, it pays to prioritise sleep. Men who get seven to eight hours each night are more fertile than those who get less than six. So, sleep on it. Fertility & Sterility

HOLD

MAKE HEADSPACE

KEEP IT REAL Choose steak over sausage. Too much processed meat in your shopping basket can damage the potency of your sperm in the long term. Harvard Chan Public Health School

RISERS AND FALLERS DOWN

DOWN

BALLS DEEP A hot bath after training raises the temperature of your testes, killing sperm. An ice bath, though, will soothe your muscles with no impact on your fertility. University of California

DOWN

NO JOY WITH SOY Researchers found men who ate the most soy had 41 million fewer sperm per ml. Harvard School of Public Health

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TOXIC WAIST Overweight men tend to have a lower sperm count and motility, so break up your day at the desk with a lunchtime workout. First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University

DOWN

BITTER PILL Studies have linked chronic ibuprofen use to male infertility. So, the next time you have muscle aches (or a hangover), simply adopt a stiff upper lip. University of Copenhagen

DOWN

AGILE WORKING Spending hours with your laptop on your lap will demote your fertility: a rise in temperature of 1°C can harm your testicles’ sperm production. State University of New York

UP Buy nappies

HOLD Still trying

DOWN False alarm

WORDS: BEN WELCH; ILLUSTRATION: INFOMEN

Spend 10 minutes with a mindfulness app in the evening to lock work out of the bedroom. Office stress has a negative impact on both sperm motility and quality.

A+ NUTRITION

YOU CANE DO IT!

Take this quiz and see how much you know about the effects of sugar on your health. *The Men’s Health staffer who wrote this corny headline has been told to lay off the Skittles Let’s get the most important sugar delivery out of the way. Chocolate: good or bad?

A Bad B Bad(ish) C Good(ish)!

Depends. If you choose highly processed and sugary milk chocolates, you’re missing out on flavonols, beneficial plant compounds found in higher levels in dark chocolate. These may help enhance the function of blood vessels, decrease blood pressure and improve cholesterol levels. Unless you eat too much, and then there’s the bad-for-your-heart obesity thing. Answer: C

Kill a sugar craving by pl playing:

Khalid

Volleyball

Video games

Stay in your seat: a University of Plymouth study found that three minutes of Tetris can weaken cravings for food. Answer: C

You’re most likely to want sweets when:

A Tired B Angry C Tangry!

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Answer: A

A SOFT-DRINK HABIT IS CAUSING YOU A MOUNTAIN OF POTENTIAL TROUBLE .

Anger makes you do lots of things you regret, but inhaling sweets isn’t usually one of them. Late nights give sugar cravings the upper hand: sleep loss blunts activity in brain regions needed for decision-making, according to UC Berkeley research. Fatigue also amplifies activity in parts of the brain that control desire, making it hard to keep “gotta-have-it” urges in check.

Research shows that sugary drinks speed up cell aging by how many years?

TO ENJOY CHOCOLATE WITHOUT RISKING YOUR HEALTH, SWITCH TO THE DARK SIDE.

1.5

4.6 4

7.3 7

A mere 1.5 years is wishful thinking. People who drink 590ml of soft drink per day have DNA changes typical of cells a little bit older. Answer: B

The best way to get some energy before training is to reach for:

A A sports drink

Adding sugar to your coffee can f___ your memory.

A Makes it swim faster

A -ocus

B Tanks its quality

B -orestall

Answer: B

hit the 3pm slump. 5 You’ve Instead of a Snickers from the vending machine, go for:

C -uck with

A UK review found that combining your daily caffeine fix with sugar helps with cognitive performance. But over time, a sugary diet disrupts brain-cell communication and can hinder learning and memory, UCLA researchers say. Answer: A and C

If you won’t cut back on soft drink for yourself, do it for your grandchildren. High intake of sugar-sweetened beverages is linked to poor sperm motility.

C A look at Instagram

Research from Germany suggests that all that #foodporn on Instagram may actually induce spikes of ghrelin, a hormone responsible for stimulating appetite. A brisk 15-minute walk, on the other hand, can chase away sugar cravings, different research found.

you declined earlier in the day

Heavy weights and sugary foods make for bad training partners. A 75-gram hit of added sugar causes a 25 per cent drop in testosterone levels, according to Clinical Endocrinology. Peel a banana instead.

of these can make 10 Which dessert sweeter without extra kilojoules?

Honey is better for you than sugar.

A True

B False

Your silverware

The lighting

Your companion

Molasses, corn syrup, brown sugar, cane sugar, fructose – and honey: they’re all still sugar. Answer: B

B A walk around the building

C That vending-machine Snickers

Oxford researchers found that heavier spoons trick us into finding food sweeter. Company also helps us better enjoy food. Answer: A and C

A A Twix, a Milky Way, M&M’s . . .

B A banana

Answer: B

Sugar does the following to your sperm:

TALLY UP THE ANSWERS YOU GOT RIGHT TO SEE IF YOU’RE . . .

0-4

Sugar Oblivious What you don’t know about sugar could be keeping you in the cycle of reaching for it.

5-7

In the Sweet Spot You know when sugar cravings hit and how to counteract them the right way.

8-10

A Sugar Savant The facts shouldn’t keep you away from all sweet stuff all the time. A little is really okay.

August 2019

Answer: B

A+ MUSCLE

Scale Up Your Lunchtime 1 Gym Sessions

START HERE

COIL UP

TAKE A KNEE

SHRED YOUR CORE, FILL YOUR SLEEVES AND UNCOIL BACK PAIN WITH THE VIPER PRESS – A MOVE THAT HAS IT ALL. BUT BEWARE, IT HAS SOME BITE

WE LIKE TO WALK a fine line at MH, and that line lies between proper functionality and aesthetics. Yes, we want to move well, but we’d be lying if we said we didn’t want to look good, too. And we’re after both from the 45 minutes we have in the gym before lunch. If you feel the same, it’s time to inject some venom into your training with this new movement. “It’s called the ‘viper press’ because you coil up, sitting back, ready to spring forward,” says movement coach and the move’s creator, Richard Tidmarsh. The exercise incorporates the best elements of a crunch and an overhead press, targeting your core, shoulders and arms. The hip extension then encourages mobility in your spine and hips, releasing the joints most susceptible to the pitfalls of sedentary life. “It’s an antidote to sitting, teaching you to use your hips,” says Tidmarsh. “And it’s great for both mirror muscles and functionality.” Try five sets of eight reps at the start of your workout for four weeks, and you can attain both dynamic movement and a shredded core to be proud of.

THE BEST C E EXERCISE ’ YOU’RE NOT DO NG DOING

AND STRIKE

Now, engage your glutes hard to push forward through your hips. This will take you back up into a kneel. As you do so, uncurl your abs until you’re as tall as possible. You’re not done just yet.

WHAT YOU’LL GAIN

+ S H REDD E D SIX-PACK

+ IMPROVED MOBILITY

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Begin in a kneeling position on the floor and set up with two kettlebells held at your collarbone in the front rack position. Keep your elbows high to engage your shoulder muscles from the start.

+ M O N ST E R S H O UL D E R S

POW E R FUL T R I CE PS

THE FINAL PUSH

In a fluid movement, use the upward momentum to push the kettlebells overhead. Slowly lower them to your shoulders and sink into the next rep for a one-stop form and function overhaul.

Slowly sit your glutes onto your heels and lean back. Support the two kettlebells at your chest by contracting your abs. Hold this position for a second to make sure you’re in total control of the rep.

A+ NUTRITION

ATTACK THE FLANK! What’s 30/10? Those are the minimum grams of protein and fibre you need at each meal to help you build muscle and fill up. This month: grilled flank steak

THE PROTEIN Flank comes from the underside of the cow in an area called the drop loin. This unsung cut is a steak lover’s prize: deeply meaty and tender if cooked right. Although the cut does have some fat, it’s relatively lean compared with, say, a rib eye. Flanks take well to marinating and fast cooking, especially on the grill.

Seared Flank Steak with Green Lightning Sauce WORDS: PAUL KITA; PHOTOGRAPHY: MIKE GARTEN

COOK IT

BUY IT Most prepackaged supermarket flank steaks weigh between 680-1130 grams and come trimmed of most of their fat, gristle and silver skin. Look for a cut that’s nicely marbled, with intramuscular streaks of white. That fat will help flavour the meat as it cooks.

You’ll want to grill this cut of beef to rosy, juicy medium-rare. That’s because overcooking flank steak will turn your meal into a jaw-endurance challenge. Flash-sear the flank and then smother thin slices with a simple fresh-from-the-herb-garden sauce. INGREDIENTS: • 900g flank steak • 1 cup fresh parsley, finely chopped • 1 cup coriander, finely chopped • ¼ cup fresh chives, finely chopped • 2 Tbsp fresh oregano, finely chopped • 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped • Juice and zest from 1 lime • Big pinch crushed red-pepper flakes • ¼ cup olive oil, plus more for brushing

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1. Remove the flank steak from the fridge and allow it to come to room temperature as you preheat your grill to high. In a medium bowl, combine the parsley, coriander, chives, oregano, garlic, lime juice and zest, chilli flakes, olive oil. Salt and pepper to taste. 2. Brush the steak with olive oil and season well with salt and pepper on both sides. Transfer the steak to the grill and sear, about 8 minutes per side for medium-rare. Transfer the steak to a cutting board and let it rest at least 5 minutes before slicing against the grain and serving with the sauce. Feeds 6

UPGRADE IT PER SERVING: 1425 kilojoules, 32g protein, 2g carbohydrates (0g fibre), 22g fat

You can make this meal even more delicious with any one of the steps that follow. You can even do all three (show-off).

THE FIBRE

KALE, CH HER RRY RY TOM OMAT ATO AT O, O, AND CHICKP PEA A SAL A AD AD In a large g bowl, combine 1 (400g) can of rinsed and drained chickpeas, 1 medium minced shallot, 1½ cups halved mixed-colour cherry tomatoes, 1½ cups packed baby kale, 1 Tbsp olive oil, 1 Tbsp white-wine vinegar, and salt and pepper to taste. Allow to sit 30 minutes before serving. Makes 4 servings PER SERVING: 1075kJ, 11g protein, 43g carbs (11g fibre), 5g fat

BERRY AN AND ND WHEAT BERR RY SA SAL ALA LAD LAD

IF F Y OU H AV V E . ... Halve Hal Ha ve 1-2 1 le lemon mon ons, s, flilick ckk out an ny seed seed eeds and pop p th them em on you yourr gril gril rilll grat grates es whi while le you yourr ste teak te ak coo ooks. ks Hi ks. High gh hea heatt take take akess the the bitte out out of cit c rus us ye yet pres yet rese erv rve es es its t br br gh brigh ghtt flav fla a our ours. s Squ queez eez e e the t smoky jui sm juice ce ove ov r the sli slice c sstteak ce ced ak. ak

10 MIN N. Before e yo you ssla lap p the the e ste steak ak on o the he cutti cutting ng g b rd, boa rd dr dress ess ss th the e boar oard d itse self lf Ad lf. dd a dash dash a o off ol olive ive oi oill and som om me mor more re re fre esh h her herbs. bs Sc bs. Scatt a e att err som ome e flak flak aky y sea ea salt. sa alt lt. t Th Then en let et th he stea stea teakk rrest est in i th s méla thi méla élange n of goo nge goodne dness. dne ss.

4 HR. HR. Fl Flank ank st steak eakss do well eak wellll wi with th mar arrina inades in des es bu butt don’ don’ on’tt feel feel el lilike ke e you have hav e to go go all all out out.. Some ou Som ome ol o ive e oi o l, sma smash mashed she hed gar garllic clo cloves v an ves and d a fe few w sprigs sprigs spr gss of o fr fresh e herbs esh erbs b arre all all you nee ed. Mar Marina Ma inate in nate in a zipip-top top p ba bag g for att le least ast s 4 hou ourss. Ei Eight ght’ss bet gh better te .

Cook 1 cup p of wheat berries according to package instructions. Drain and allow to cool to room temperature. Transfer to a large bowl and mix with 1 cup raspberries, 1 cup blueberries, ¼ cup mint (finely chopped), 2 Tbsp roasted sunflower kernels, 1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar, 1 Tbsp olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste. Makes 4 servings PER SERVING: 275kJ, 9g protein, 44g carbs (10g fibre), 8g fat

August 2019 33

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Your Reliable Training Partner. The Men’s Health Personal Trainer App. Search for Men’s Health Fitness Trainer in your favourite app store

A+ NUTRITION

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN…

…I Crave Junk Food? Your urge to gorge isn’t a weakness – it’s a desire hard-wired by evolution. Reset your system to resist the Golden Arches

BRAIN FUEL

Early man’s gorging on sugars helped us to evolve large brains and let us outrun the rest of the food chain. This evolutionary impulse to load up on energy-rich foods explains why cravings today have little to do with hunger. Instead, they’re a physiological response: carbs light up your brain more than any other macro, which is why they’re the hardest to cut back on.

HEED THE RED FLAG OF A DIRTY HANKERING.

STAY STRONG

The majority of the research on cravings focuses on how to manage them when they crop up. Resist the biscuit tin for five minutes, or get up and take a walk, and the craving should disappear. Mindfulness is becoming a popular avenue for controlling cravings: spend time clearing a little headspace and you’ll be better able to focus your thoughts away from that lunchtime Snickers.

HAPPY MEMORIES

Your cravings begin in your brain’s reward centres, rather than in your hunger circuitry. The signals are intended to make you feel good when you engage in activities crucial to survival, such as eating and sex. When you devour a Big Mac meal, a “pleasure” neurotransmitter called dopamine is released. Your brain remembers this link between Big Mac sauce and happiness and encourages you to repeat the experience.

TRIGGER WARNING

Breaking habits isn’t easy, especially if you associate your behaviour with a positive feeling. While the food itself may not have addictive properties, the release of dopamine plays a major role in getting you hooked. A study in Nutrition Review found that “environmental cues” and “sensory, metabolic, endocrine and neural pathways” conspire to trigger your cravings. In other words, your brain and surroundings work against you. Which explains the campaigns to stop children being exposed to junk food ads.

WORDS: TOM WARD; ILLUSTRATION: PETER GRUNDY; EXPERT: RACHAEL EDEN, DIETITIAN AT BUPA UK

RECORD RESULTS

Still struggling? Try keeping a food diary, recording not only what you eat and when, but also what you crave and when. Use this to identify patterns. More importantly, keeping a close eye on your eating habits should ensure your blood sugar and energy levels remain steady, putting a lid on hunger. Meanwhile, sharp tastes (such as those of lemon juice and Listerine) curtail cravings. So, if all else fails, wash your mouth out.

August 2019

A+ M2M

Just because your life’s pretty good, is that a reason not to overhaul it? This guy packed up and went searching for something better BY QUENTIN PIEPER

THE PRECURSOR to any lifechanging decision is, I suppose, a feeling of dissatisfaction. I had this gnawing sense that my life wasn’t as good as it might be. I was in my forties at the time. My wife and I had a one-year-old son and we were living in the innerwest of Sydney. We were happy enough and yet a realisation was dawning on me: this wasn’t a great place to raise a kid. In my salad days, inner-city living had suited me. I’d relished the proximity to a pulsating night life. But you get over that, don’t you? A place I’d hitherto seen as loaded with possibility

menshealth.com.au

now seemed noisy and polluted. I wanted something quieter and greener. I’d grown up in the suburbs but had no wish to go back. On the other hand, the idea of going further afield tantalised me. How often do thoughts like this come to nothing? Maybe they blow away on the next breeze or your partner dismisses them out of hand. But in this case my wife was as curious as I was. So one night we sat down and started adding flesh to the bones of a plan. Step one was clarifying the sort of place we wanted to call home. We agreed on a leftleaning enclave with a sense of community – after all, this wasn’t conceived as a retreat into isolationism. We also wanted enough land to grow fruit and vegetables and to maintain our own water supply. We came up with five possibilities: the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney; Bellingen, on the NSW mid north coast; Hobart;

Dangar Island, a speck off Sydney with a population of 300; and Byron Bay. We took our time making our choice, holidaying over the next three years at each location and gradually whittling down the contenders. The Blue Mountains and Hobart are both charming but too icy for my wife. Bellingen wasn’t quite what we expected. Dangar Island was a little too quiet. That left the hipster paradise of Byron Bay, where we stayed for a week on three separate visits in three different areas. Without feeling we’d found the perfect spot, we decided to rent in the area and explore it further as residents. We soon discovered Broken Head, about 10 minutes south of Byron. It’s a beachside hamlet, quiet and leafy, and we ended up buying a house there on 40 hectares of community land. That was four years ago and it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. Here are the questions I get asked all

BY MOVING TO BYRON BAY, THE WRITER SWAPPED PEAK-HOUR TRAFFIC SNARLS FOR SUNSET BEACH WALKS.

buddies a lot. I see them once or twice a year, which isn’t enough but that’s the price you pay for getting everything else right. Do you think this has been good for your son? He’s living the dream. He wakes up in a single-child household that backs onto the bush and is close to the sea, with parents who dote on him and have time to listen to him, play with him, take him to school and to footy training, where his dad’s the coach. Longer term, this perfect upbringing might prove to be a double-edged sword: maybe he’ll run into difficulties when life gets tougher and he needs to show strength and independence. But he gets so much confidence from knowing he’s loved and valued, and from never being told, “Sorry, we don’t have time for that”.

the time by old friends – and what I tell them. What about work? I was a lawyer in my previous life, working at a large bank managing complex litigation. You’re not going to find work like that in the bush, but I negotiated with my boss to work remotely except for twice-weekly commutes – 150km each way – to our Brisbane office. After a while I cut those down to once-a-week before quitting altogether 18 months ago. My wife, who was an IT project manager in Sydney, took charge of the local markets for a while but that was a thankless, highstress role and she quit too. So how do you live? In truth, you can’t do what we’ve done without something behind you. We live modestly from income off several investment properties that my dad pushed me to acquire before I knew my ass from my elbow.

OK, so you don’t have to work, but don’t you miss it? Not at all. I accept that some people, psychologically, need to work. What I’m doing wouldn’t suit everyone. But I was never a person who couldn’t wait to get to work. On the contrary, I was someone who couldn’t wait to get out of there. So what do you do all day? I get this a lot. The answer is, “Whatever I want!” We breakfast as a family before my wife and I drop our son at school and park ourselves in a café to read the paper. After that, I’ll hit either the gym or the beach. In middle age I’ve taken up surfing – I’m hopeless but loving it. After lunch, I’ll tend to our garden and stretch out with a book on the daybed on our back veranda. I’ll pick up the boy from school and take him to footy practice or music lessons. The evenings I devote to him: talking, reading, playing with Lego. For a couple

of years we had no TV but we have one now so we can watch big sporting events together. Uprooting from your old home . . . how hard was that? Not very. I know it’s hard for some people, who accrue a lot of stuff and find it harder to toss crap. I could move tomorrow. I like having a reason to cull possessions down to the minimum. It’s liberating. Don’t you miss your friends? That’s the one downside. Look, you can make new friends in your forties, though it helps to have a kid. You need a shared concern to give you a reason to speak to someone. Through the community school I’ve made friends with a bunch of lovely blokes – really interesting and fun guys. But you need that shared history to feel the connection you have with your oldest mates. Luckily, I don’t get lonely easily. I miss my old

Would you come back to the city to live? If something were to go wrong and we had to return to Sydney and resume working, I think it’s quite possible I’d become depressed. Six weeks after we moved to Byron I had to fly back for a funeral. From the air I saw the harbour and the red roofs, and for a lot of people those familiar sights inspire a sense of belonging. But this time I thought, “I don’t want to be here – this isn’t my home anymore”. It was like meeting up with an old girlfriend at a party and thinking, “Yeah, I used to love you but now you’re just someone from my past”. Could I pull this off? Possibly. But we’ve seen others come here for two years and try their darndest but then head home because they couldn’t make it work. The big thing’s work. That’s make or break. You can’t really get sustainable, satisfying work up here – unless you like the idea of working in a coffee shop. You may need to approach your boss and ask how feasible it would be for you to work remotely. There are people here who do that, and there are others who commute weekly to Sydney or Melbourne. It comes down to this: how badly do you want a quieter, simpler life? And could you handle it?

August 2019

A+ MUSCLE

INFLATE YOUR GYM POTENTIAL At 50, comedy actor Terry Crews has finally balanced physical brawn and mental strength. Get a slice of the action To make your strength funny, you have to be really strong – comically strong. And Terry Crews is. For some, he will forever be the guy singing “A Thousand Miles” in White Chicks. Now, he plays a pecdancing cop in Brooklyn Nine-Nine. But his life hasn’t always been defined by laughs. For Crews, strength used to entail proving it all the time. “My father made sure, every time he came home, that we were uncomfortable. That meant, ‘Now I have respect’,” says Crews. “That’s so many men. That was me.” Playing American football for the LA Rams, San Diego Chargers and Washington Redskins, Crews pushed his body to its limits. This, he believed, was simply what strong people did. Then it all changed. In 2006, Crews narrowly avoided prison. A man had hassled him for an autograph, then became aggressive. Crews and his wife had just learned that she was pregnant. When the man jabbed her, Crews snapped. “I ended up stomping this guy on the pavement,” he says. His wife told him his temperament needed to change. So, when he was sexually assaulted by a Hollywood executive, rather than squash him, Crews left calmly and sued him. He had built a new inner strength to match his external brawn, providing the balance to stay at peak condition and make people laugh in his sixth decade. Every morning, he wakes up before 5am and takes a variety of pills: essential fatty acids, multivitamins, a fat burner and more. He mixes amino acids in water and hits the gym. Then, he eats nothing until 2pm. It’s fasting, together with a strict training plan, that Crews credits for his physique. Despite the 16 hours without food, he couldn’t be further from “hangry”: he is jovial and energetic, entirely at ease with himself. He is in bed by 10pm and rises at dawn to train again. “Because now,” he says, “it’s about Healthy Terry.”

menshealth.com.au

HEIGHT

FITTER PILLS TO SWALLOW

Add some extra bulk to your daily supps stack with Terry’s list

GARLIC EXTRACT This cooking staple is full of allicin, an antibacterial compound that the University of Guadalajara found can charge up your immune system.

GLUTAMINE According to Dalhousie University, this amino acid can reduce muscle soreness and delay fatigue, adding extra kays to your cardio.

BODY FAT

HORNY GOAT WEED This can be used to boost libido (the clue’s in the name), but Shantou University found it also stimulates extra testosterone production.

PHOTOGRAPHY: PETER YANG ; STYLING: TED STAFFORD HAIR: LEANA MCKNIGHT; MAKE-UP: OLIVIA FISCHA FOR CELESTINE AGENCY; SET: FAETHGRUPPE TAILORING: YELENA TRAVKINA; PRODUCTION: ENIKO PERHACS

WEIGHT

PECTORAL REFORM

Use Crews’s four-set, descending ladder structure – lowering your dumbbells very slowly for each rep – to craft dancing pecs at any age

01/ DB CHEST PRESS 4 sets of 10, 8, 6, 4 reps Hold two dumbbells above your chest on a ﬂat bench. Brace your core and lower the weights over four seconds, pause, then push them back up to the starting position.

02/ DB INCLINE PRESS 4 sets of 10, 8, 6, 4 reps Lift the bench to a 45˚ angle and, once again, start each rep with the dumbbells above your chest. Lower the weights over four seconds, pause, then push them up again.

03/ DB CHEST FLY 4 sets of 10, 8, 6, 4 reps Hold some lighter dumbbells together above your chest. With a slight bend at the elbow, lower the weights sideways to chest level over four seconds. Pause and reverse. August 2019 39

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A fragrant fusion of black cherry, violets and toasty oak draw you to an unmistakably elegant wine. Medium bodied with supple tannins, this Shiraz showcases balance and poise through integration of juicy red fruits and spicy oak.

A+ HEALTH

A New Hope for Curing Dementia The latest research suggests that Alzheimer’s may be caused by everyday germs. We put this theory under the microscope FORGETTING WHERE you’ve parked your car in a multi-storey is one of life’s guarantees. For some, it’s nothing more than a slip of the mind; for others, however, short-term memory loss can signal the onset of dementia, a destructive condition that affects around 450,000 people in Australia. To find a cure, many researchers have swapped lofty hypotheses for simple theories. They now believe that Alzheimer’s is caused by germs: not an exotic new pathogen, but the microscopic organisms responsible for gum disease and cold sores. As the blood-brain barrier becomes more porous with age, these germs infiltrate your neural cortex to instigate the onset of Alzheimer’s. The protein fragment betaamyloid is known to form plaques in the brain, which contribute to the development of the disease, and autopsies have detected viral DNA in amyloid plaques. When patients have been prescribed antibiotics or antivirals, they have displayed improvements in symptoms. Scientists have yet to find a cure for dementia, but these findings suggest that a breakthrough may be imminent. Perhaps we’ve had the solution to dementia all along. The race is now on to determine the exact strain of germ we need to target. For the time being, however, prevention trumps cure.

TEND TO BASICS TO PLANT A SEED FOR LIFELONG ACUITY.

FORGET ME NOTS

While researchers focus on bacteria, we rate the everyday preventatives that will help to protect your grey matter until the science catches up

BLUEBERRY VINEGAR The promise: Tests show that it breaks down acetylcholine – a compound that negatively impacts memory – in the brains of animals. Its efficacy in humans is unknown.

Verdict: Hard to find and tastes bad. Don’t ruin your chips.

THE MED DIET

PUB WITH FRIENDS

The promise: Filling your basket with oily fish, nuts and a bottle of red is now linked to slowing the progression of Alzheimer’s. It’s the dependable option for better health.

The promise: Loneliness can trigger anxiety, which is linked to Alzheimer’s. Staying socially active reverses this by releasing endorphins, improving your mood.

Verdict: Solid science and an excuse for a glass of Barolo.

Verdict: Fire-up WhatsApp and we’ll see you at the bar.

EIGHT HOURS’ KIP

HOT CHOCOLATE

The promise: Inadequate shut-eye increases brain beta-amyloid production, which forms plaques and has been linked to the onset of dementia. So, hit the sack.

The promise: Cocoa contains sky-high levels of flavanol antioxidants, which possess strong heart and brainprotecting properties, reports the Neurology journal.

Verdict: The benefits of sleep, it seems, are boundless.

Verdict: Treat this as an indulgence, not a habit.

August 2019

A+ TACTICS

There’s a phase in the middle of every project that threatens to sink it. Ginny Graves helps you find your way through MAYBE IT’S THE GARAGE cleanout. Maybe it’s your side-hustle documentary. Maybe you’re . . . writing a piece for Men’s Health. Regardless of the project, the story arc is usually the same: you embark on the journey feeling exhilarated and capable. Fast-forward a few days, a week, maybe even a month. Now there are half-empty boxes all over the driveway, reference materials burying the dining-room table, tools in the hall. And what are you doing instead of finishing your project? (Is that Fortnite? Are those Doritos?) There’s a reason many of us have something like a half-painted kitchen weighing on our conscience, according to Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter, author of Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End. In between the thrill of starting a project and the joy of completing it lies the interminable middle, where enthusiasm sputters and your effort takes on the grim patina of failure. “The middle is where the project gets hard and you have to face reality,” says Kanter. It’s taking longer, costing more, other people are saying WTF. Getting stuck in the middle is so cartoonishly predictable, Kanter says, that you can plan for it and possibly even prevent it. Your best moves:

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FIRST:

Why? Because when you’re in the throes of your initial enthusiasm, you’re overly optimistic, and as a result, you underestimate how hard the project is going to be. When Canadian researchers asked undergraduate psychology students how long they thought it would take to complete their theses – if “everything went as poorly as it possibly could” – their average answer was 48.6 days.

If things went smoothly, they predicted it would take roughly 27.4 days. Wrong, and superwrong. The average time it took was 55.5 days. You can’t blame youth for the misjudgment. Building the Sydney Opera House took a decade longer and cost 14.5 times as much as the architects initially projected. It’s called the planning fallacy, says Jon Acuff, author of Finish: Give

Yourself the Gift of Done, and failing to account for it is one of the most common reasons people abandon projects midway through. If doubling the time you allot sounds daunting, Acuff suggests downsizing your projects instead. Aim to clean off half your workbench or write three blog posts a week rather than seven. “ ‘Shoot for the moon’ is a recipe for failure,” he says.

THEN:

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU TELL PEOPLE UP FRONT.

Conventional wisdom holds that you should state your intentions openly, the theory being that when other people know what you’re up to, you’ll be forced to finish – or be forced to publicly own up to the fact that you didn’t. But sharing has a serious downside, says Acuff. Say you tell your friends you’re going to landscape the backyard. What do they do? They

slap you on the back and say, “Good for you!” You get the high of finishing before you start, and that can undermine your enthusiasm once you’re immersed in the hard work.

Why eat your vegetables if you’ve already had dessert? If you do tell someone, ask them to be your ally and check in with you once a week and ask you what you’ve accomplished.

BREAK

IT DOWN INTO SERIAL STEPS.

Obvious, right? Well, yes and no. We often get bogged down in the middle because we’re overwhelmed by a project’s scope. So instead of thinking about everything you need to do, define the next small task and focus on

that. Say you want to build a treehouse for your kid. The first step could be as simple as calling a neighbour with a cool treehouse and picking his brain, says Frank Buck, an organisation coach. Buck suggests writing down each step like

this: call Jim Smith xx finish treehouse. “The ‘xx’ serves as a separator between your current action step and the goal line,” he says. “Seeing both together is a reminder that every small task is bringing you closer to your ultimate goal.”

PROP STYLING: MEGUMI EMOTO/ANDERSON HOPKINS

WHY YOU DON’T FINISH THE . . .

ESTIMATE THE AMOUNT OF TIME AND EFFORT IT WILL TAKE - THEN DOUBLE IT.

EVEN THE BEST OF US COULD USE A SYSTEM TO HELP US FINISH WHAT WE START.

FINALLY,

UNDERSTAND THE COSTS OF NOT FINISHING.

“Unfinished projects don’t go away. They become ghosts that haunt you,” warns Acuff. If you repeatedly give up, the person you’re betraying is you. Finishing, on the other hand, shields you from the spectre of projects past, helps you trust yourself – and gets the boxes out of the garage.

AIM TO

FRONT-LOAD MOST OF THE WORK.

MAKE

YOUR OWN RULES.

Acuff once set out to read 100 books in a year – and began posting about it on social media. “People would say, ‘That book doesn’t count because

it’s a graphic novel’. At first it made me question the whole project. Then I thought, ‘Who gets to judge?’ And I realised I do. My project, my rules.”

In 2011, when he was 23, Scott Young, a writer in Vancouver, decided to try to complete an informal version of MIT’s computerscience curriculum in one year – 33 classes, including physics, chemistry and economics. (MIT puts some classes and exams online.) “It wasn’t the exact MIT curriculum, but it was a pretty good approximation,” he says. By then, he knew himself well enough to recognise that he would burn out as time went on. So he structured the MIT Challenge to account for project fatigue. “I finished the first 10 classes in three months, which gave me momentum and made the last half easier than the first.” It worked. He didn’t get credit, but he completed all 33 classes in just under a year.

August 2019 43

A+ MOTORING

SUPRA NATURAL Want a prestige car without the badge tax? Toyota’s latest (and greatest?) offering is a wolf in sheep’s clothing BY ANDREW CHESTERTON

IT’S NOT OFTEN that BMW and Toyota find themselves competing for the same customers. Like someone sweeping through the chinchilla section in Harrods, stuffing furs into their trolley like a Kardashian at Christmas, and then swinging by Aldi to see what bargains have popped up in the ‘special buys’ aisle, the German premium brand and Japan’s icon of mass-market motoring just don’t appear on the same radar. But that will all change this year when the Toyota Supra joins BMW’s new Z4 in Oz, and in the process, finally puts an exact dollar figure on just how much

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more someone will pay to park a premium badge in their driveway. Should the mood take you, you will soon be able to duck down to your local Toyota dealership, step past the rows of Corollas and RAV4s – back slowly away, palms up, from the Camry – and place an order for the new Supra. In its cheapest GT trim, you will find yourself parting with $93,730, with that money buying you a thumping turbocharged straight-six engine pumping out an exciting 250kW and 500N, and feeding that grunt to a pair of hard-working rear tyres via a quick-shifting eight-speed automatic gearbox.

Should you prefer the blueand-white sparkle of the BMW badge, however, then you can head to a BMW dealership and plonk down $124,900 for the Z4 M40i – complete with (though you’ve probably already guessed) a thumping turbocharged straight-six engine pumping out an exciting 250kW and 500Nm, feeding that grunt to a pair of hard-working rear tyres via a quick-shifting eight-speed automatic gearbox. That’s because the Z4 and the Supra are essentially the same car, developed jointly (but there is more BMW than Toyota in both cars’ DNA, including the chassis, engine, gearbox and interior technology) by the two car companies to save on production costs.

TWIN VIRTUES And so just like that, one of motoring’s most enduring questions has finally been answered. What price badge credibility? Exactly $31,170. There is one critical difference between these near-identical twins, though. And it’s one that, in theory, should actually make

the Supra the better performance car. The Japanese version is fantastic – a light-feeling, responsive and always engaging box of fun that shines equally bright whether you’re attacking a public road or a racetrack. Critically, though, the Supra also has an actual metal roof. BMW’s Z4 – exclusively a soft-top convertible proposition – does not. And if you’ve ever seen a house mid-demolition, you’ll know that removing the roof from something never does much for structural integrity. That effect is usually doubleddown in the world of convertibles, where the windscreens and steering wheels are prone to sudden shaking fits, the dynamics turn all weird and wobbly, and the extra weight of the roof mechanicals drains the fun from the drive experience like someone pulling the plug from a bathtub. But BMW’s engineering team has pulled off a kind of minor miracle here. Consider this: the Z4 M40i is actually faster around the infamous Nurburgring than the BMW M2, knocking almost three full seconds off the time

“THIS IS THE KIND OF TOYOTA THAT HASN’T EXISTED FOR DECADES”

managed by the smallest (but still very, very good) full-blown M car. In fact, BMW’s spannerwielders have told us there’s no plan for a proper M version of the Z4, simply because they don’t think they could make it much faster. As is, this M40i will hit 100km/h in just 4.6 seconds, and it will push on to a top speed of 250km/h. Best of all, it will do all that with its fabric roof stored and the sun shining in on the driver. BMW also claims a perfect 50:50 weight distribution, and there’s heaps of clever M kit, including adaptive suspension, bigger brakes and an M Sport differential, all designed to squeeze maximum fun from the drive experience. In the city, the Z4 still somehow manages to trot around in relative comfort, feeling something approaching benign in its most comfortable settings, with the suspension, gearbox and accelerator all appropriately numbed and the fabric roof keeping much of the outside world at bay. But engaging the Sport settings utterly transforms the Z4’s character, the M40i tensing like a sprinter crouched

on a starting block, the steering getting heavier, the accelerator response sharper and the gearbox suddenly willing to kung-fu grip its lower gears as you scream out of corners.

POWER PACT In fact, the change between its two driving modes is so severe that you really can’t leave it in Sport in the city, like you would in some cars. It’s just too hard, too uncomfortable, to be truly liveable. But on the right road, this Hulk-from-Banner transformation is fantastic. And scary. The combination of rear-wheel drive and a short wheelbase can see the Z4’s bottom suddenly overtaking its bonnet when you get too aggressive on the exit of a corner, sparking a moment of pure panic before the traction control intervenes and pulls you back to safety. All of which is very BMW – especially one with an M, even a little one, somewhere in its title – and so not overly surprising. What is more surprising, though, is the smile you’ll find painted on your face when you climb out of the Supra, your

heart thumping and pulse racing in a way that’s totally foreign to the often boring world of modern Toyotas. The Japanese giant is rightly famed as the automotive equivalent of sensible shoes: reliable, comfortable, but as exciting as a tax audit. And yet here we are, fizzing like Mentos in a Coke bottle, and with a Toyota key swinging from our fingers. Like the BMW, this new Supra is rear-wheel drive, and there’s plenty of extra performance trickery working in its favour, like a sports differential and adaptive suspension, as well as perfect 50:50 weight distribution. Happily, the traction control can be set to a half-slip mode, too, meaning it will allow for some tail-sliding – much like the Z4 – but will (hopefully) drag you back into a straight line when things get out of hand. But the real pulsequickening fun of the Supra is how featherlight and fun it feels, with this most un-Toyota of Toyotas quick to respond to steering and throttle inputs, tucking into even the tightest of

corners with a cat-like deftness. But it’s when you blast out the other side of that corner, the rich note of that six-cylinder engine bouncing around the cabin, and with g-forces scrabbling at your face and neck, that you realise that this is truly the kind of Toyota that hasn’t existed in decades. There’s not one part of the Supra that stands above any other. It’s more the overall sense of sharpness, of completeness, that makes it so much fun. It might be a co-built performance car, but it feels like a worthy successor to the famed and Ferrari-bothering twinturbo Supras of the mid-1990s. In fact, it feels a lot like a very good BMW. Only a whole hell of a lot cheaper.

August 2019 45

A+ MH GIRL

STEPH CLAIRE SMITH The Instagram sensation and emerging mover and shaker wants you to be a little kinder to yourself

BY DANIEL WILLIAMS PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEVE BACCON

CAPED CRUSDADER: SMITHâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S FIGHTING TO MAKE THE PURSUIT OF HEALTH AND FITNESS REWARDING FOR ALL.

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As Jerry Seinfeld might say, Steph Claire Smith has all the qualities that would appeal to the superficial man. For her part, however, the Melbourne model and Women’s Health cover girl has been busy shedding a self-image based on her looks. Once upon a time Smith would show up for castings at which success or failure turned on height, hair colour and proportions. “Now they’re booking me for me,” she says. And who is me? A businesswoman, for one. Smith’s Keep It Cleaner empire, which she cofounded with best friend Laura Henshaw and includes a thumpingly successful fitness and lifestyle app (keepitcleaner.com.au), has stamped her as an entrepreneur on the rise. “I’m the most content I’ve ever been,” she tells Men’s Health. “I still have goals and a lot of ambition, but I’m really proud of how far I’ve come.”

THE MAN OF HER DREAMS Sorry to say, it’s not going to be you. This November, Smith is set to marry childhood sweetheart Josh Miller, a cofounder with Smith of sunglasses company Soda Shades. But she’s happy to reveal the three qualities she values most in a partner: trustworthiness, a supportive disposition and a sense of humour – ideally of a goofball, Jim Carreyesque variety. “Even on the worst days,” she says, “Josh can make me laugh.” TRAIN FOR PERFORMANCE Whether lifting heavy weights or doing HIIT, Smith works out, she says, to feel strong and energised. She urges you to follow her lead and not to care so much about the size of your biceps. “I’ve always been competitive,” she says, “not with other people but with myself. I go into every session with a performance goal.” Not chasing aesthetics doesn’t mean going to seed, she clarifies. “I love looking after myself from the inside out. I know physical appearance comes with that, but it’s not at the top of my values anymore.” SUCCESS STORY Smith’s business has reached a

point where she’s started to ponder a question: how much success is enough? She’s not sure. But nor is she backing off just yet. “There’s so much more to go. We just want to keep growing everything.” While keen to remain relatable to her young admirers, Smith holds concurrent thoughts of grand conquests. “But we’re not going to launch into the States or the UK until the program is completely up to scratch for those markets,” she says. FASTER FOOD Your secret to cleaner eating is the same as hers, Smith says: preparation. Getting home from work late feeling wiped and ravenous is a recipe for a blowout. “I try to make the best use of my Sundays, which means shopping for, cooking and freezing meals that are nutritious and ready to go.” That said, the odd takeaway meal needn’t be catastrophic: “You can still make smart choices”. THE MALE PHYSIQUE Smith doesn’t want you seeing a Thor flick and figuring you need to look like Chris Hemsworth by spring. “Some guys can get ripped really quickly, some take years to build muscle and some live a healthy life but will never have abs,” she says. “I can appreciate a guy’s body in any shape or form.”

August 2019

LO·V $GYRFDWH 0HQ·V +HDOWK 'HY Episode 1

Download the Men’s Health Devil’s Advocate podcast on your favourite streaming app or visit menshealth.com.au

A+ MH DAD

Soooooooo . . . Many Kids WHAT’S THE SECRET TO RAISING MORE THAN ONE CHILD?

It is my belief that you don’t get better as a parent the more kids you have. You just get older. And more tired. I have, however, in my older age, developed a few forms of mental jujitsu that make parenting easier on me and, hopefully, on everyone else in my family.

ACCEPT DIMINISHING RETURNS

BY W. KAMAU BELL

I’M PRETTY SURE I just spilled Thai food on my four-monthold daughter’s head. Don’t be alarmed. It’s fried chicken over fried rice and, luckily, because it’s four hours old, it’s cold. I didn’t microwave it to reheat it. I don’t have that kind of time. I agreed to write this when my wife was still pregnant with our third child, Asha. I thought it would be safe to write about being a dad because I could do it from home. But writing anything well – an essay, a to-do list, your name – requires more than four hours’ sleep and fewer than three forms of distraction. It requires wwerdasjuobbbwwwerttytgh. I didn’t just type “wwerdasjuobbbwwwerttytgh”. My four-year-old daughter jumped into my lap and started typing. I could erase it, but I’m being paid by the word, so she

just helped me. I’m counting “wwerdasjuobbbwwwerttytgh” as a word. And thanks to my daughter, I have been able to use “wwerdasjuobbbwwwerttytgh” four times. Okay, I’m back. After I wrote that last part, I drifted away to Twitter. Or was it YouTube? I can’t remember. My brain feels like it has been turned to soup by exhaustion, and I am swimming through that soup looking for the chunky brain parts. I need to find the chunky brain parts so I can think clearly enough to do simple things, like finish this piece and eat lunch at lunchtime and [funny third thing]. The sad thing is that I knew this brain-soup thing was coming. I have experienced this before. Twice. I also have the aforementioned wordsmith, Juno, and my oldest daughter, the seven-year-old Sami.

Being a parent is like being a fire truck. Can a fire truck put out one house fire? Of course. That’s exactly what it was made to do. But can a fire truck put out two house fires at the same time? And what if the burning houses want to watch two different TV shows and there is one TV and the iPad just died? What does the fire truck do then? It puts out the fires it can.

WATCH LOUD MOVIES As hard as it was to stay up with a baby, I remember enjoying all the late-night kung fu movies. This time, there aren’t enough movies that can keep me awake after 2am. They need to be loud and engaging with lots of changes in action. Not plot changes. Action changes. Volume changes help. I don’t care about plot at all. Maybe now is the time to catch up with the Fast and the Furious series.

DON’T NEGLECT YOUR WORK JOB . . . I did a podcast to promote a comedy special, and the host asked me if I’d achieved the perfect work/life balance. I laughed and answered that instead of holding the baby so that my wife could rest her back, I was recording a podcast. I also don’t know how to be the dad who is in my kids’ lives “enough” while being the dad who is out in the world earning “enough” money to feed, house, clothe, educate and entertain them. The sooner you accept the lack of balance, the less unbalanced you’ll feel.

. . . OR YOUR HOME JOB My daughters are three of the coolest people I have ever met. But yes, occasionally I wish I were one of those 1950s-era dads who left the house at 8:30am and returned at 7pm after a stint at the bar. I wish when my wife tried to hand me my daughter at 10pm I could look at her like, “Why are you trying to hand me a baby? I’m a man”. I can’t do it that way. Doing some faux-’50sdad thing and pretending like I don’t want to be around for every minute of it would be harder than what I am going through now. It’s mayhem. But there’s nothing about it I want to miss.

“THE SOONER YOU ACCEPT THE LACK OF BALANCE, THE LESS UNBALANCED YOU’LL FEEL” August 2019 49

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YOUR PASSPORT TO WELLNESS

D E P A R T U R E S 08 19

HIKE USA

Picture Perfect Jaded? Venture into Yosemite National Park and let the power of exquisite natural beauty blow your mind BY SCOTT HENDERSON, MH EDITOR

August 2019

HIKE USA

rom the moment I arrive in Yosemite, I know I’m in trouble. It’s not the prospect of a bear attack or getting lost in the wilderness that has me concerned. No, the biggest challenge facing a journalist visiting this natural playground is finding the words to do it justice. How do you describe the most breathtaking natural beauty you could imagine? Well . . . I guess that’s a decent start. Have you ever questioned the limitations of the human mind? If your answer was a firm “no” accompanied by an eyeroll, then you couldn’t have been to Yosemite. Fair warning: this piece will contain the kind of purple prose usually confined to B-grade fiction. But in this case, I reckon it’s warranted. The walls that form the Yosemite Valley are awe-inspiring. To stand among the sheer granite rock formations is to experience a humility bordering on the indescribable. This is a beauty not replicable in any architecture and beyond capture in the finest photos. To prepare for the sensory onslaught, follow this guide. With the help of trip.com, we’ve done the work for you. All you have to do is conquer your fear of fear itself. GETTING YOUR BEAR-INGS After an overnight flight into San Francisco, the hop across Central California to Yosemite is a tolerable four hours, with the first 52

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FROM LEFT: AN AMPED HENDERSON PARACHUTES INTO PARADISE; THE POSTCARDPERFECTION OF YOSEMITE; TAKING A BREATHER AS HE CHANNELS ALEX HONNOLD.

glimpse of snow-capped peaks eliciting the kind of excitement associated with an imminent foray into the wild. Before the main event of Yosemite National Park, however, I take in the closest town – the charming, Wild West-invoking Mariposa. The wooden facades of its local stores wouldn’t be out of place in a John Wayne movie, and you’ll be fighting the urge to act out a duel on Main St. This is a history-rich township that nowadays plays host to the world’s rock-climbing elite. And right on cue I bump into climbing pioneer Ken Yager. This man is a legend, evidenced by the excited whispering of locals. Later, on the outskirts of the township, with Yager in tow, I hike the flower-lined hills of the Merced River Canyon, where the ruins of mining huts and carts tease the modern explorer. Before I know it, the sun has vanished and it’s time to find rest at the behest of my jetlag. FREE FALLIN’ On my second day, I awake in my own Airstream camper in the

midst of an immense pine forest, although ‘camper’ is misleading given the luxurious interior of the AutoCamp trailer. And the touch of luxury is a welcome start as I prepare for a day of death-defying adventure. My first glimpse of the iconic valley is from the back of a one-seater plane. That’s right: a one-seater. It’s all that’s needed as the plan isn’t to stay aboard for long. There’s just enough room for the pilot, my Skydive Yosemite tandem-skydive instructor and me. While terror inevitably takes hold as we prepare to jump, seeing the distant outlines of famed rock faces El Capitan and Half Dome lowers my heart rate and clears my mind. It’s a view that many guys, including me, might recognise from their screensavers, though the reality elicits a sense of calm never once delivered by a digital facsimile while driving the desk. Plummeting out of the sky, however, brings an entirely different cavalcade of emotions, encompassing fear, awe and humility. If you ever need reminding of the fragility of the

human state, then hurl yourself from a plane towards a mountain range below. Feet back on the ground, heart rate descending from triple digits, I make the quick trip to the wholefood markets for a refuel before hitting the rapids for a raft ride on the notorious Merced River. The rapids flow through the middle of Yosemite Valley and out into Mariposa County, where I’m guided by Maggie of Zephyr Whitewater to take on class 2-4 rapids. I’m told this is quite an extreme rating – and can now attest to that fact. While hardly comparable with falling from the sky for inducing naked terror, the duration of the raft ride still has me contemplating my mortality. Having successfully expanded the vocabulary of the young Irish family in my boat, we scramble ashore dripping wet, and I’m primed for recovery in the confines of the Airstream. FREE SOLO Day 3 brings a much-anticipated entry to the park. And words begin to fail me. Driving along the Yosemite Valley floor your fixed

D E P A R T U R E S 08 19

“Plummeting out of the sky brings an entirely different cavalcade of emotions” notions of nature succumb to new possibilities. The pristine beauty alone is enough to turn any hardened soul into a conservationist. Of course, like every adventure sports fan, I’ve been caught up in the phenomenon of Free Solo, the Oscar-winning doco that follows Alex Honnold as he attempts to, well, free solo (climb without ropes) El Cap, Yosemite’s gnarliest rock face. Always one to jump on a good bandwagon, I decide that climbing is a must on this trip and my activity for the day. But free-soloing El Cap? No, thank you. I opt for a climb with the Yosemite Mountaineering School, which uses a 400m rock wall just to the side of the behemoth of Yosemite. “Are you scared of heights?” I’m asked before beginning the ascent. “I respect them,” I lie. Climbing is a must-do while in Yosemite, which has become the unofficial home of the sport in the US – perhaps the world – with climbers young, old, experienced and green flocking to the granite

FROM LEFT: HENDERSON’S LUXURY SHELTER – THE AIRSTREAM CAMPER; A MOMENT’S CALM ON THE NOTRORIOUS MERCED RIVER.

cliffs of the valley. Truth be told, the climb is hard. Surprise, surprise: it turns out there’s a vast difference between your local climbing gym and the sheer vertical faces found in nature. I place a lot of faith in my climbing partner and find myself testing his attention and willingness to catch the rope should I fall. My reward comes on reaching the top, where the view is something you’d never see from a campervan window. It’s nothing short of breathtaking . . . or perhaps that sensation is a result of the arduous climb. A change of accommodation to the Yosemite Blue Butterfly Inn provides a dose of classic American hospitality, as well as a safe haven to lick my wounds. A home-cooked meal with authentic company makes me feel like I’m staying at the home of a lifelong mate, rather than a B & B in the world’s most famous national park. INTO THE WILD After such an adrenaline-filled fews days, a spell on terra firma is more than welcome. A solo run at sunrise would have, in and of itself, made this trip worthwhile, and on my final day I grab the chance to explore the valley floor on foot. Staying in the park and rising early affords me the rare opportunity to experience the park in peace, free from the campervans and tour buses that haunt it by day. I stop mid-run to take in the

Dawn Wall (yes, the one from Netflix). It’s then I hear scratching behind a fallen tree some 50 metres away. The journalist in me needs to investigate, and I approach less cautiously than I might have given this is bear-infested woodland. Sure enough, Yogi’s head pops up and checks me out. It’s all par for the course in Yosemite, I realise, as another tourist jogs past, notices the bear and continues on his way unruffled. Apparently there’s never been a bear attack in Yosemite’s history. Nonetheless, I keep a respectful distance. The bear encounter kicks off a day of hiking, during which I’m schooled in the history of the valley by Yosemite local and business owner David Gregory of Yosemite Outfitters. If adventure sports aren’t your thing, this is the one experience not to forgo. The natural history, indigenous mythology and pioneer heritage are so rich in these valley walls, and I feel the stories I’ve heard from Gregory merely scratch the surface. Our hike culminates in a cliffside meditation – not normally my thing, but this one allows me to absorb my surrounds and try to come to grips with the past few days. Upon reflection, I realise my visit to Yosemite National Park has ignited a fire within, a burning desire to better myself as a writer, conservationist and athlete. As a result of my immersion into this natural wonder, I want to climb higher, explore further and do more to protect these pockets of perfection that still exist in our world. These ideas dominate my thoughts as the peaks of Yosemite shrink in my rear-view mirror and notifications begin lighting up my phone. As I slip back into the world of 24/7 connectivity, I’m reminded of an anonymous quote: “There’s no Wi-Fi in nature, but you will find a better connection”. I’ve always loved this quote. And now I’m convinced that whoever first spoke these words must have visited Yosemite Valley.

Let Trip.com take care of it all. They have a dedicated Yosemite page for adventurers too busy exploring the real world to surf the net.

FLY

STAY

. $ Yosemite Blue Butterfly Inn

yosemitebluebutterflyinn.com $$ AutoCamp Yosemite autocamp.com $$$ Tenaya Lodge tenayalodge.com Skydive Yosemite skydiveyosemite.com @ skydive_yosemite

Zephyr Whitewater Expeditions zrafting.com/rivers/merced @zephyr_whitewater Yosemite Mountaineering School Travelyosemite.com YOSEMITE OUTFITTERS yosemite-outfitters.com

EAT

EAT $ Food Trucks

Sample international flavours, Cali-style, in Mariposa, next door to the Mariposa Museum & History Center mariposamuseum.com $$ Tenaya Lodge’s Sierra Restaurant Classic American cuisine in the luxury surrounds of Yosemite’s top lodge. The perfect post-massage indulgence. tenayalodge.com $$$ The Mountain Room Dining Cedar Take in Yosemite Falls as you enjoy equally wonderful cuisine. travelyosemite.com/lodging/ dining/yosemite-valley-lodge August 2019

J UST GI V E H IM S O M E S PAC E Omega’s iconic “Moonwatch” turns 50 this year. Here’s why you want one on your wrist BY LUKE BENEDICTUS

“Houston, we’ve had a problem here . . . ” Those were the immortal words of astronaut Jack Swigert after the explosion that crippled Apollo 13. An oxygen tank had blown up, damaging the Service Module and sending the spacecraft spinning off course. If it had re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere at that trajectory it would have bounced into orbit, never to return. The challenge facing Flight Commander James Lovell was grave. He had to manually adjust the course of the craft by using the Earth’s horizon as his sole guide. To pull this off, Mission Control calculated it would take a 14-second burn of rocket fuel. As Command Module pilot, Swigert’s task was to time the manoeuvre with absolute precision. “We used the watch that Jack had on his wrist and I had to control the spacecraft,” Lovell would recall. “Jack timed the burn on the engine to make that correction to get back home safely.” The watch that Jack had on his wrist that fateful day was, of course, an Omega Speedmaster chronograph. Apollo 13’s narrow escape in April 1970 showed that, in space travel, accuracy is a matter of life and death. But the inconvenient truth is that outer space is an unforgiving environment for a timepiece. An astronaut’s watch must, for example, be able to withstand forces topping 7Gs as the rocket blasts out of the atmosphere. On the moon itself, temperatures can vary wildly from -153° to 107°C. Plus there’s the sizable issue of zero-gravity 54

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to contend with. NASA was acutely aware of these demands. That’s why, in the early ’60s, well before the first lunar mission, it bought a range of chronographs from different makers in a bid to find the best watch for their astronauts to wear in space. The watches were subjected to a series of 11 rigorous tests – the most exhaustive examination in the history of horology (see “Not Rocket Science”, left). On March 1, 1965, the test results were in: the Omega Speedmaster was the only watch to pass. But that was just the start of the Speedmaster’s deep-space

induction. NASA wanted to collaborate with Omega to ensure the watch was fit for the task. As James Ragan, the NASA engineer responsible for the qualification tests explained: “The watch was a backup. If the astronauts lost the capability of talking to the ground or the capability of their digital timers on the lunar surface, then the only thing they had to rely on was the Omega watch they had on their wrist. It needed to be there for them if they had a problem.” Ragan worked closely with Omega’s watchmakers. Concerned the chronograph

function buttons on the side might get bashed or bent on intergalactic manouevres, he requested a redesign of the case to include a little recess to protect the buttons. “This configuration became the new version of the chronograph,” he says. Today, the classic Moonwatch retains its distinctive black dial and tachymeter scale with the indexes and hands coated in Super-LumiNova. A hesalite crystal protects the watch face indented with the chronograph sub-dials. Space may be the final frontier, after all, but you still want a handsome watch, too.

WA T C H E S

NOT ROCKET SCIENCE – just a very hard test Famously, only one watch managed to pass all 11 of NASA’s tests (see below). To this day, the Omega Speedmaster Professional remains the only watch certified for extra-vehicular activity in space 1 / HIGH TEMPERATURE: 48 hours at a temperature of 71°C, followed by 30 minutes at 93°C.

constitute failure to pass this test. The ambient temperature shall be maintained at 71°C.

2 / LOW TEMPERATURE: Four hours at a temperature of -18°C.

6 / SHOCK: Six shocks of 40 Gs, each 11 milliseconds in duration, in six different directions.

3 / TEMPERATUREPRESSURE: Chamber pressure maximum of 1.47 x 10-5 psia (10-6 atm) with temperature raised to 71°C. The temperature shall then be lowered to -18°C in 45 minutes and raised again to 71°C in 45 minutes. Fifteen more such cycles shall be completed.

ONE SMALL STEP FOR A MAN WAS ONE GIANT LEAP IN THE HISTORY OF HOROLOGY.

Finally, on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong made his “giant leap for mankind” by stepping onto the lunar surface. But he wasn’t actually wearing his wristwatch. Before his historic moonwalk, the electronic timing system on the Lunar Module went haywire, so Armstrong left his chronograph on board to serve as a backup. Nineteen minutes later he was joined on the moon by Buzz Aldrin, who – thankfully for Omega marketing execs – was wearing his trusty Speedmaster. After years of meticulous development, the Moonwatch had finally landed.

4 / RELATIVE HUMIDITY: A total time of 240 hours at temperatures varying between 20°C and 71°C in a relative humidity of at least 95 per cent. The steam used must have a pH value between 6.5 and 7.5. 5 / OXYGEN ATMOSPHERE: The test item shall be placed in an atmosphere of 100 per cent oxygen at a pressure of 5.5 psia (0.35 atm) for 48 hours. Performance outside of specification, tolerance, visible burning, creation of toxic gases, obnoxious odours or deterioration of seals or lubricants shall

7 / ACCELERATION: The equipment shall be accelerated linearly from 1 G to 7.25 Gs within 333 seconds, along an axis parallel to the longitudinal spacecraft axis. 8 / DECOMPRESSION: Ninety minutes in a vacuum of 1.47 x 10-5 (10-6 atm) at a temperature of 71°C and 30 minutes at 93°C. 9 / HIGH PRESSURE: The equipment to be subjected to a pressure of 23.5 psia (1.6 atm) for a minimum period of one hour. 10 / VIBRATION: Three cycles of 30 minutes (lateral, horizontal, vertical), the frequency of varying from 5 to 2000 cps and back to 5 cps in 15 minutes. Average acceleration per impulse must be at least 8.8 Gs. 11 / ACOUSTIC NOISE: 130 db over a frequency range of 40-10,000 Hz; duration: 30 minutes.

Today, the space race has expanded. But while astronauts of the future may be armed with teleporters and tractor beams, when he or she makes it to Mars, Ragan believes he or she will be wearing a mechanical timepiece. “There will always be a requirement for a personal chronograph on all future manned missions,” Ragan says. “I also believe that when the first astronaut sets foot on the Martian soil, the chronograph will be an Omega.” Omega Speedmaster Professional Chronograph 42mm; $6825 August 2019

I N PA R T N E R S H I P W I T H

THE CHANGING FACE OF PAYNE 56

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FRESH OFF HIS MH COVER, FORMER ONE DIRECTIONER-TURNED-FITNESS ADDICT LIAM PAYNE HAS TURNED HIS HAND TO FASHION, TEAMING WITH HUGO BOSS FOR A ONE-OF-A-KIND PARTNERSHIP

“I knew if I wanted to do something in fashion it should be with HUGO,” says the singer-songwriter. “They design clothes that guys like me want to wear. Fashion started out as a hobby for me, but I’m loving being part of the creative process.” The German fashion house has also collaborated with Liam on an exclusive ‘HUGO x Liam Payne capsule’, inspired by the singer’s personal style. The capsule is due to be revealed during July’s Berlin Fashion Week, accompanied by a concert and presentation, with the collection available to buy immediately after the event. “Liam is not only a very talented musician, he’s also got great style”, says Peter Deirowski, brand and creative director for HUGO. “This type of creative partnership is something we’ve never done before and we can’t wait to show everyone what we’ve been working on behind the scenes.” “Designing the capsule itself has been really, really fun and I actually knew more about it than I thought I would,” Deirowski continues. “I could look at something and kind of go, ‘Oh, good idea if we did this’, and everyone was kind of with it. So it’s been super easy.” And while the singer has been deeply involved in every aspect of the design, including

fabric selection, working in the world of men’s style has been a steep learning curve for Payne, who, with a touch of his trademark modesty, admits to experiencing the odd difficulty. “I know fuck-all about what production entails,” he says. “So I can’t really tell people what to do in that respect.” Advance interest in the collection has been huge – good news for fans of the collab as it seem this won’t be the last you see of Payne and HUGO working as one. “Some of the things that I wanted to do, we haven’t been able to get done in time,” says Payne. “So there will be more.”

GROOMING

SUPER STYLIN’

Four quick and easy hairstyles every guy needs to kn now You know the feeling when you’ve just had a fresh cut, but have no idea where to start when it comes to product, tools and styling techniques? Yeah, it sucks. There’s nothing worse than that conspicuous glob of hair gel that’s just sitting there with no purpose. So, what’s an unkempt head of hair supposed to do? Don’t worry: we’ve got you covered. We asked hairstylist and Uppercut ambassador Tommy J – from Hair By Tommy J in Sydney – for his best tips and tricks for styling your locks.

How to nail it: “The thing you have to remember with hairstyles is that it’s not one size fits all,” says Tommy J. “To really get that tousled look you need length and a slight wave to the hair. The tools you will need are a blow dryer and a great product like Uppercut Easy Hold. Basing this style off a loose throwback, you want to be able to run your fingers through your hair while blowdrying it back to create volume. Finish off the style with a touch of Uppercut Easy Hold to create separation.”

THE TEXTURED QUIFF How to nail it: “The textured quiff is fairly easy to style and works best with hair that has a wave to it and straight hair,” says Tommy J. He says the key is to blow-dry your hair using a quiff roller, as this will create volume, before finishing with a scoop of matte pomade (try Patricks M3 Matte Strong Hold Pomade). “The best tip is to shampoo and condition the hair beforehand, because any built-up product is going to weigh down the style and you won’t get the texture or volume you want.”

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THE ‘PREPPY’ IVY LEAGUE LOOK How to nail it: Add a touch of pomade to your hair (while it’s damp, work it through the mid lengths and ends using a comb). Next, perfect the part. “Draw in your part and use a blow dryer and brush to push the hair into the desired shape. As the hair dries, the product will help set the hair into a neat style while keeping any volume you create,” says Tommy J. Finish with a touch of hairspray (try Laybrite Grooming Spray). “Longer looks suit this much better, as the weight of the hair cut should hold with minimal product.”

THE SLICK SIDE PART How to nail it: One of the main tips for nailing a slick side part? Get yourself a medium-to-high shine pomade like Reuzel High Sheen Pomade. “Once you come straight out of the shower you want to find your natural part by combing all your hair back and letting it fall into place. Then, blow-dry the front back again using a quiff roller to create some volume,” says Tommy J. “After blowdrying, smooth the product around the perimeter of the style then work through with a comb.”

WORDS: ERIN DOCHERTY

THE ‘MESSY’ LOOK

THE

W I N T E R

R E STYLING BY JEFF LACK PHOTOGRAPHY BY BEL JONES WORDS BY HARRIET SIM

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STYLE

WHETHER YOU CLEANED UP ON THE BLACK DIAMOND RUNS OR CRASHED AND BURNED, HERE’S HOW TO TRANSITION FROM SLOPES TO CHALET

T R E A T

Ski season brings out three kinds of mountain men: those who see themselves slaloming down snow-capped peaks; those keen to partake in the fireside apres-ski scene; and those up for both! Whatever the case, packing the right kit is crucial. Sure, last year’s gear will do the job. But for the man who wants to shine in the cold, it’s time for a seasonal upgrade. Your best bet? Go retro. Think Robert Redford ruling the mountain in his signature aviators. “Nail the alpine aesthetic with a nod to the ’70s,” advises MH Style Editor Jeff Lack.

Moncler 1952 jacket $2640 Huffer pant $129.90 Zegna boots $2495 One Point Seven Four sunglasses Belstaff Magnum $470 Zegna gloves $1135 August 2019

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STYLE

LEFT

Zegna top $955 Zegna outerwear vest $1015 Zegna pants POA

Regardless of your talent level on the slopes, ski boots are calf killers. After a day’s activity, ditch the hardware for a cosier alternative. Your feet will thank you. “Play with patterns but keep it heritage when it comes to footwear,” advises Lack. While the desire to raise your body temperature may override all other concerns, rugging up needn’t mean sacrificing style. Embrace the autumnal tones of your surroundings and opt for a crisp merino sweater, not your team’s hoodie.

BELOW

Ferragamo jacket $3790 Tommy Hilfiger jeans $219 Bally boots $1750

August 2019 63

WANAKA GUIDE Jetstar flies direct to Queenstown from Melbourne, Sydney and the Gold Coast. jetstar.com

FLY

STAY

Aurum Some of these shots were taken at this exclusive private villa with breathtaking views of Lake Wanaka. releasenz.com Westlands Large, stylish home with incredible 360° views and just five minutes by foot to Lake Wanaka. releasenz.com

SKI

Cardrona and Treble Cone Two world-class ski areas located within 40 minutes’ drive from Wanaka. cardrona.com/winter treblecone.com

APRES

KIKA Innovative sharing-style plates in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere. Be sure to try the sprouts! kika.nz Cardrona Distillery Warm up after the slopes and sample bespoke whisky, gin and vodka. cardronadistillery.com Maude Tasting Room Custom-built Otago winery amid the stunning backdrop of Lake Wanaka. cardronadistillery.com

TOP LEFT

Mountain Designs backpack $230 North Face jacket $650 North Face beanie $40 One Point Seven Four sunglasses Belstaff Hayford $560 ABOVE

Huffer jacket $519 North Face gloves $100 Chimey sunglasses $159

When venturing into an icy realm, staying warm enough to perform at your peak can be challenging. “Ski jackets are the hero of outerwear,” says Lack. ”Have fun with patterns and embrace pops of colour for maximum visibility.” For the wanderer of the group, high-performance threads mean hours of insulation, which should keep you toasty until the snow patrol arrives. As for your impatient mates at the end of the trail? We hear the alpine bar has some great winter warmers. This round’s on you.

LEFT

Bally cap $350 Bally jacket $7600 Mountain Designs cargo pant $150 Ferragamo boots $1590

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STYLE

Zegna hat $1275 Hugo Boss jacket $549 MJ Bale cable knit $139 Zegna pants POA

August 2019 65

. . .

LEFT

Boda Skins jacket $975 Zegna knitwear $2735 Huffer pant $129.90

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STYLING ASSISTANT: STEPHANIE TARLINTON; MODEL: KIERAN PRICE @ N MODEL MANAGEMENT

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FITNESS

THE

STRENGTH OF SAMPSON

Your mind is holding you back. Body Hack presenter Todd Sampson reckons it’s time to regain control by harnessing your physical potential. Here’s how . . . BY LUKE BENEDICTUS

PHOTOGRAPHY BY DANIEL LINNET

“I SEE THIS 150-KILO WRESTLER, covered in blood, come flying out of the ring and he lands on the ground right beside me. And I’m thinking: ‘Okay, what the fuck’s going on, now?’” This is what Todd Sampson is like. We’re midway through the photo shoot – the interview hasn’t even begun yet – but already he’s tossing out electrifying tales, the by-product of his all-action lifestyle. For this particular caper, Sampson was filming an episode of Body Hack, where he was set to undergo a two-week crash course in Mexican wrestling before putting his body on the line (again) in the ring. On arrival in Mexico City, Sampson took a ringside

seat at a wrestling match to film a quick intro to camera. That’s when he was rudely interrupted by the aforementioned bloodsplattered heavyweight . . . “So then the other wrestler comes out of the ring and hits this guy who stumbles back and lands right in my lap. I’m thinking, ‘Okay, this is a joke, right?’ But then this 120-kilo massive guy just starts running towards him. I was like: ‘No! No! No!’ But he smashes into him, we break through the chair and this huge wrestler lands right on top of me. That’s when he cracks my ribs . . .” Sampson copped two broken ribs on day one of filming (“I couldn’t breathe well and the pain was so bad because it then seized August 2019

BREATHE AWAY FEAR Feeling nervous? Whether it’s pleading with your boss for a pay rise or asking a cute girl out for a date, use Sampson’s tactic to trick your brain into feeling more confident Sit with a straight back and take a deep breath in, then breathe out. That’s one. Repeat 10 times. If you can hit double figures straight with no mind drift then do another set of 10 breaths. “If you can get through 10 sets of 10 then you should start a cult,” Sampson says. “But that’s not going to happen.” “Here’s what will happen for 99.9 per cent of us. On the third set at about seven, your mind will drift – ‘I’m fat. My wife hates me. What about my future…’ That’s when you start again at one.” This process achieves two things. Taking just eight controlled breaths, Sampson explains, can kick-start your parasympathetic nervous system, which lowers your heart rate and blood pressure to leave you feeling less stressed. But this exercise also works as a self-awareness technique to identify your personal trigger points. “It’s a way of understanding the songs that you sing to yourself over and over again.”

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up my neck as well”). Most normal people would have quit at this stage. Sampson just necked some painkillers and knuckled down to his Lucha Libre training, which basically amounted to a fortnight of getting pummelled by masked brutes. It’s fair to say Sampson has learned to expand his pain threshold over the years. He hasn’t really had much choice. There was the Body Hack episode when he was knocked unconscious while training to take on a professional MMA fighter – “That busted my jaw a bit,” he admits. And the time when he attempted a high-wire walk between two 22-storey buildings with no safety net (let that sink in for a second). When he suddenly fell, Sampson just managed to grab hold of the wire to avoid breaking his back, but he tore his rotator-cuff and biceps in the process. The new series of Body Hack opens with Sampson travelling to Gaza and getting pitched straight into chaotic violence as Israeli soldiers open fire on Palestinian protestors. “When I heard the bullets whizzing by and a kid got hit behind me, my heart rate was going so fast,” he says. Amid such daredevil exploits, it’s easy to forget that, until quite recently, Sampson worked in advertising. He scaled the heights of the industry to become the CEO of Leo Burnett Australia, inventing the Earth Hour initiative along the way. Today, while he’s knee-deep in his second reincarnation as a TV presenter and documentary maker, he retains a foot in the corporate world as a board member of Qantas and Fairfax. The point is that Sampson isn’t some crazed thrillseeker chasing down his next dopamine hit. He’s just an optimistic guy with a “can-do” mentality who’s hell-bent on redefining his limits. In that respect, the only difference between you and him is between your ears.

HUNT FEAR “I’m scared a lot,” Sampson says of his challenges. “It’s just that I’ve learned over time through life experience to better manage it.” Fear is a constant companion. It was there when Sampson embedded with Iraqi Special Forces in the battle of Mosul and when set on fire while training to be a Bollywood stuntman. Many of his escapades are hard to stomach (much like the freshly killed baboon he ate with Tanzanian nomads despite having lived meat-free for more than 20 years). So why does this father-of-two choose to put himself through the broken bones and warzones? Why does he risk his life for TV?

FITNESS

“My fundamental belief, and it’s really at the heart of the series, is that we humans are arguably the greatest adaptable survival machine on the planet,” he says. “What we can do is incredible. Our potential is incredible.” Yet this potential is invariably stifled, Sampson suggests, because modern life insulates us from the growth stimulus of physical danger. In the process, it detaches us from those heightened senses and primal instincts that enable us to do incredible things. “In the western world, when we’re cold, we turn on the heat. When we’re hungry, we eat straight away. So those evolutionary switches are mostly just switched off,” he says. “We have the ability to switch them back on. But to do that, we have to put ourselves in uncomfortable situations and allow our bodies to adapt and believe that we can adapt.” Sampson is very much a true believer. In his shows, he puts this faith to the test, whether it’s shadowing Sherpas on Himalayan peaks or being blindfolded, chained and dropped into a four-metre swimming pool to attempt a Houdini-style escape. Through his gonzo adventures, he’s explored the ceiling of human potential first-hand and in a way that few other men have ever done. What he’s learned is that your mind and body are capable of far

more than you can possibly imagine. “When you think you’ve hit the wall physically and in life, for the majority of us, you’ve got 30 per cent more to go,” Sampson says. “You are not near ‘the wall’. What we think is the wall is neurological failure; it’s mind failure.” “To take yourself to the brink of real failure, you have to be a seriously good athlete. You have to be mentally so strong. But you can push well beyond that 70 per cent because the human body is built to succeed.”

“WHEN YOU THINK YOU’VE HIT THE WALL , YOU’VE GOT 30 PER CENT MORE TO GO ” August 2019

FIT FOR PURPOSE Sampson can speak with more than a little authority on physical conditioning. That’s because he’s painstakingly trained himself to be, well, a serious athlete. Hidden beneath those quirky T-shirts lurks a physique with the sort of muscle definition that would make Bruce Lee proud. And Sampson, don’t forget, is 49 years old. “I’m seriously into fitness,” he insists. “I study fitness every single day.” This is no exaggeration: Sampson trains hard and has done so religiously for the last 30 years. Every day, he wakes around 5.30am, meditates for 30 minutes and then goes to his local Bondi coffee shop (he doesn’t eat

breakfast as he practises intermittent fasting for the immune-system benefits). Cup in hand, Sampson then dives into his daily fitness research. Via the Flipboard app on his iPhone, he receives an aggregated feed of material on exercise physiology, performance psychology and research on the latest training methods. “Every day I’m reading something new about fitness in some way, shape or form,” he says. “Then I go to my workout.” Sampson’s workouts don’t follow a standard template because they’re purposebuilt to prepare him for his next challenge. Right now, he’s readying himself for a stint as a circus performer. “So I’m doing lots of functional training with a focus on wholebody, lateral movements.” If he’s rebuilding himself after a gruelling challenge, Sampson’s go-to is German Volume Training, the notoriously intense regimen designed to forge muscle via a system of 10 sets of 10 reps. Otherwise he switches things up regularly. “My programs change every three weeks because, when you’ve been training as long as I have, your body adapts really fast,” he says. “So I might do a Navy Seal program for three weeks and then swap into an AFL program.”

MIND OVER MATTER There’s one part of Sampson’s training that remains consistent: he swears by visualisation. In the gym, whenever he’s undertaking a complex move like a deadlift, he’ll first watch an expert on YouTube demonstrate the move with perfect form. With their example fresh in his mind, Sampson will close his eyes and imagine himself performing the lift step-by-step. It’s only then that he finally squares up to the bar. “If you can’t visualise perfect form in an exercise, standing with your eyes closed, then you should never do that exercise because you’re not ready to do it,” he says. “The best athletes in the world use visualisation.” Sampson also depends on this technique when the stakes are significantly higher. He visualised his wire walks “thousands of times” before stepping off the side of that building. Similarly in Gaza, to prepare mentally for the ordeal, he visualised all the gunfire and madness. “But it was worse than I visualised. More random.”

“I’M SERIOUSLY INTO FITNESS. I STUDY FITNESS EVERY SINGLE DAY” 74

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FITNESS

This reliance on visualisation stems from Sampson’s belief in the mind/body connection. Whenever he’s plunged into a hairy situation, he’ll focus on controlling his physical reactions – calming his heart rate and slowing his breathing in order to calm his mind. Whenever the going gets tough, Sampson uses mental tricks to push through. That strategy was put to the limit in Body Hack when he joined the French Foreign Legion for elite jungle warfare training in the Amazon jungle. “It was,” he says, “unbelievably punishing.” During the preliminary assessment, Sampson slid down a rope and burned the skin off his fingers. He was told he had two options: leave now or go into the jungle and attempt the course. Predictably, he elected to stick it out, but what followed wasn’t pretty. For the next 10 days he battled sleep deprivation, mud and physical exhaustion, wading through snakeinfested swamps with every task reopening the wounds on his shredded hands. “They smashed me. They smashed me,” Sampson says. “That brought me to my 30 per cent. “I had to keep telling myself over and over again: ‘I can do it. I can handle this. I have to try. I have to at least try . . .’ And what I learnt is that even in that condition, surprisingly, most things you can still actually do okay.” At the end of the course, the sergeant who’d tortured Sampson shook his hand. Deposited in his palm was a Foreign Legion medal that civilians never normally receive. The sergeant felt compelled to make an exception. “You deserve this,” he said. What that dark ordeal underlined for Sampson was that “we are in control of our bodies and our minds are linked up”. In the depths of the jungle, it was Sampson’s head that kept him in the game. But the willpower that sustained him was largely forged in the thousands of gym sessions that preceded it, the mental and physical disciplines bound together in an endless, self-reinforcing loop. Training your body, in other words, will fortify your mind. Master control of both and your horizons will expand to the stars. This is why he’s so evangelical about fitness. As a guy determined to reach his potential, Sampson knows his body is the vehicle that’ll get him there. Albeit via some mind-blowing adventures en route . . . “Fitness has been an enabler for my whole life,” Sampson says. “And there’s nothing unique about me, so I think it could be a key enabler for a lot of other people, too.” Todd Sampson’s Body Hack airs Tuesdays at 8 .30pm on Channel 10.

Question: Are you as strong as Todd Sampson? Answer: Probably not Do 10 push-ups. Rest for 10 seconds.

Do 10 close-grip chin-ups (underhand) Rest for 10 seconds

That’s one round. How many can you complete back to back? The day we meet, Sampson had cranked out 16 rounds.

SHOCK & AWE Here’s how Sampson conditions in the gym himself to withstand tand the physiological effects of terror Grab a stopwatc ch and hit the airbike Pedal flat out for or 20 seconds Rest for 30 seco ds onds Repeat for six and a half minutes “Physically, that’s ’’s the equivalent equivalent of being scared shitless,” Sampson says. “Your heart rate’s up, your blood pressure’s up, your body’s pumping and you’re saying to yourself ‘If I don’t catch my breath now, that 30 seconds is going to be over and I’ll have to go again!’ It’s going to be punitive . . .”

August 2019

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MIND

(LEGAL) WAYS TO BOOST YOUR SEROTONIN The so-called happy hormone is your body’s in-built moodimproving switch. But securing a regular buzz needn’t mean indulging your more libertine impulses. Use our score sheet to enjoy a healthy high, whenever you want it. Consider it self-care without the scented candles WORDS BY LOUEE DESSENT-JACKSON AND SCARLETT WRENCH PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROWAN FEE

August 2019

GET A GRIP ON YOUR MOOD Skin-on-skin contact is a proven antidepressant: simply holding hands with your partner releases serotonin, as well as regulating your heart rate. Or, for a more high-octane hormone hit, take up a close-contact sport such as Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Grappling with your foe will flood your body with stress-relieving chemicals. A chokehold isn’t so different from a cuddle, is it?

FAST FIX!

TAKE THE PLUNNGE Go wild swimming ng. Cold-water immerersion fires up yourr endorphin produ uc-tion, which givess you a warming hiit of serotonin. Plus, ju ust think how good tthat warm towel will fee feel..

LIVE IN THE PAST The irrepressible popularity of mindfulness meditation might have you convinced that “staying in the moment” is the key to enlightenment. But that, ironically, is old news: San Francisco State University found that nostalgia correlates strongly with life satisfaction and that looking at photos of loved ones will trigger the production of mood-improving hormones. It seems that Facebook Memories might have a purpose, after all.

START A NEW PET PROJECT Not only does man’s best friend provide plenty of fodder for your Instagram feed, but a University of Missouri study found that a #doggo can keep depression on a tight leash. Just a few minutes spent petting a dog releases serotonin, as well as the feel-good “bonding hormone” oxytocin. No pet of your own? Volunteer as a dog-walker and you will enjoy the healthy brain-chemical boost that altruism als also bestows. b s s

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That “chill” you feel at the d song crescendo of a well-loved g is a sign that your brain iss pumping out dopamine,, a “reward” neurotransmittter onin. In closely linked to seroto fact, a study in Nature NeurosciN s ience found that levelss off the per cent in chemical rose nine p pine-tingling those listening to sp gl g ason to tracks. It’s a valid reas ystem upgrade your sound system.

HAPPY MEALS

When it comes to pumping up yo our mental well-being, even the be est gyms can’t match the great ou utdoors. Training in green sp paces will brighten your day, but loo ok for blue to really give your brain a lift. A University of Essex study found that wa aterside training is the best way to t improve your mental health. Try a soft-sand j ft sand jog, or, better still, book a holiday. y

Optimise the way you feel, one bite at a time

LIGHT A BONFIRE The sound, smell and sight of crackling flames will trigger your relaxation response, reports Evolutionary Psychology. Marshmallows help too.

Breakfast Swap out trending plant milks for kefir in your oats. A study in Beneficial Microbes found that the fermented drink’s probiotics raised serotonin levels in overworked medical students. Just what the doctor ordered.

Lu Lunch Opt for egg g mayo in your lunchtime ssandwich. The tryptophan h n it contains helps the brain to m make serotonin. The effect is so s strong that the Leide en Institute found men were tw wice as likely to donate to good c g causes after eating it. Good eggs, gg iindeed.

Dinn ner

FAST F T FIX!!

BOOK GIG TICKETS TICKE FAST FIX!

10 – 12

DRRINK IN THE SCENERY

WAIT FOR THE DROP

Alternatively, go to a live show show. When enjoying music as part of a crowd, your feelings of self-worth and closeness to others rise by 25 per cent, according to research by Goldsmith’s University. Until the stampede forr the last train,, presumably. p y

MAKE YOUR PERFECT PIT CH

For the average desk monkey, life in n the urban jungle cuts exposure to daylight well below optimal levels, disrupting the production of sleep hormone melatonin – and an offkilter sleep cycle will sink your mood od. But there’s a simple solution. A stud dy in Current Biology found that a weekeend y clock spent camping can bring your body ough to forward by 100 minutes. That’s eno get you out of the woods after a sleep pless week.

Fish h and chips. Research in Neu uropharmacology found fats in oily y fish f increase e serotonin sy ynthesis, y h while h l carbs b aid d sleep. l

MIND

BUY NEW THREADS The priciest of spices may be worth its weight in gold, but saffron could justify the outlay. An eight-week study by Murdoch University found that supplements containing saffron extract had a similar effect to drugs that act on the brain’s serotonin receptors. Sprinkle some onto your seafood paella or, if you want a sweeter way to help the medicine go down, combine 20 threads of crushed saffron with 450g of strawberries to make a jam that will, ahem, preserve your mental well-being.

STREAM SOME PEACE AND QUIET The snappily named autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is best described as a pleasant “tingling” that is triggered by specific soothing sounds, such as that of a person whispering or a cat purring. You’ll find plenty of clips purporting to activate this response on YouTube. Sound like a load of pseudoscience? A Sheffield University study found that subjects’ well-being improved after listening to ASMR clips, with their heart rate dropping by 3bpm. Sounds rather lovely, doesn’t it?

FAKE IT Marathon world-record-holder Eliud Kipchoge uses “periodic smiling” to break through the pain barrier. You can employ the same technique at work: forcing yourself to crack a smile at random intervals keeps your heart rate lower during stressful tasks, as well as releasing endorphins and serotonin. It might not take the sting out of a marathon, but we bet you just tried it . . .

MAKE DO ANDD MEND

Creative pursuits h have a d padding purpose far beyond out your dating pro ofile. A study published in the py y found journal Art Therapy that 45 minutes off craft work can reduce seroton nin-crushing g stress hormone levels by 75 per cent, w while knitting g has been shown to lower heart ra rates by y 11b 11bpm. Our tip? Try y woodwork: scientists foun und touching g wood (yes, we said it) stimulates your body dy’s relaxation response.

FAST FIX!

MAKE WAVES If two minutes of a woman running a hairbrush over a microphone (see tip 14) is a bit much for you, try an ocean-wave sounds app, which studies show can improve sleep – and your mood tomorrow.

FAST F S FI ! FIX!

BOOK IN FOR A TWEAKMEENTT A Cardiff Universsity y study y found that people who struggled to frown following Botox were happier than those who could. Being ID-ed at after-work drinks ought to brighten your day, too.

GEET DOWN AND DIRTY

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EAT BEIGE FOODS OO S There are many factors at a play p y in your post-lunch slump: low blood sugar, tiredness, the prospect of another three hours spent grappling with multiple Google e docs. Some researchers believe that our serotonin levels may also dip at this point in the day. o Crashing? Starchy carbs help to reverse this. Swap your mid-afterrnoon berry-based snack for a thick slice of peanut butter on toast. Peanuts contain tryptophan, which plays a vital role in serotonin production.

Ac chic fitness studio with staff on hand to disinfect the mats and dish out bottles of an alkaline water may sound like a a wellness utopia. However, to get the most out of your workout, you need to get your hands grubby. Really grubby. The University of Bristol found exposure to soil bacteria can have a similar effect on the brain to antidepressants. So, to unearth greater mental well-being, rep out burpees in the h park, k or spend d an arvo tending to your garden.

2 21

WEIGHT FOR O IT Ag good squeeze from a friend will, under the right g circumstances, flood you with feel-good hormones. Hugmimicking devices such as weighted “therapy” blankets encourage the release of serotonin and melatonin, lulling you into a recharging slumber. Check out gravid.com.au for your heaviest sleep yet.

FAST FIX!

DRUM UP SUPPORT Alternatively, you could just hit things loudly with sticks. Weekly drum sessions can reduce feelings of depression by 38 per cent, according to a Royal College of Music study.

SOAK IT UP Finally, wash away the blues with a bath. According to a University of Freiburg study, two soaks per week will improve your mood more than aerobic exercise. In the study, baths followed by chill time in a warm towel reduced depressive symptoms more than an interval class. Not a hard sell. August 2019

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NUTRITION

Every Question You Ever Had About Really

Eating Well (Answered in 12 Minutes)

Nutrition is a maddening business. Foods are in one day, compost the next; vitamins that cured ills last week are promptly debunked. We all want to eat better, but who has the time to sift fact from fad? Rest easy because this is your easily digestible, bite-sized guide to doing precisely that By

Scarlett Wrench Sun Lee

Photography By

August 2019

Give it to me straight: which of my vices do I need to give up for good? A: We’re talking strictly foodrelated, presumably? Let’s say yes. Or else that’s a whole other conversation. Then, unless you have an allergy, a persistent medical condition, or adhere to a prohibitive religious doctrine, there’s nothing in particular you need to cut out. As in… nothing? Nothing. In fact, we’d caution against this kind of intervention. Variety and flexibility in your diet are crucial to maintaining a healthy relationship with food. More pertinently, eliminating specific foods can reduce your tolerance to them, making it hard to reintroduce them to your diet when the wind changes on the latest nutritional thinking. Does that mean I should switch back to dairy? Well, you could argue that cow’s milk is more nutrient dense than plant milks, which tend to be fortified with extra vitamins and minerals. But, ultimately, they’re just different, with their own kilojoule counts and macro balances. It depends on what else you’re eating and

Voices of Reason MH’s no-nonsense nutrition experts

Steve Grant

Rick Miller

Adam Collins

A specialist in nutrition, athletic performance and functional medicine stevegranthealth.com

A leading clinical and sport dietitian rick-miller.co.uk

A senior tutor in nutrition and metabolism nutriffic.com

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I wouldn’t recommend getting it all from shakes. Roughly speaking, you’d need about six protein bars a day for an 85kg man. Or, for a more balanced menu, a couple of fish fillets, five eggs, a block of tofu and a portion of rice. Though you’ll find protein in most things you eat, even veg. Wait, rice? Did you mean quinoa? Isn’t that the one with all the protein? Quinoa is a good source of essential amino acids, and it offers a good variety of vitamins and minerals. But so do many other wholegrains and seeds. Eat it, by all means, but don’t restrict yourself to it under the assumption that it’s superior. It’s not a real superfood, then? There are no set criteria

for superfoods. They can’t be categorised by racking up their antioxidant concentration. Nor the frequency with which they feature on Goop, presumably? Quite. Plenty of the foods awarded arbitrary “super” status are very good for us when it comes to nutrient density – blueberries, leafy greens, wild salmon – but they don’t possess any special powers. Not even coconut oil? Nope. In fact, overdoing it can increase your “bad” cholesterol levels. How about powdered charcoal? We’d steer clear of that one. Is there anything in the organic section that’s actually worth buying, then? If budget allows, there is plenty of nutritional benefit FOOD STYLING: NICO GHIRLANDO AT HERS

which nutrients you might be short on. So, I don’t need dairy, but I don’t have to give it up if I don’t want to? Exactly. There are other ways to source your calcium: leafy greens, nuts and soya all work. In this case, environmental and ethical arguments for avoiding animal products might be more convincing. Yes, I’ve seen that Netflix documentary. But eco props aside, is veganism any better for me? Or is it just a marketing ploy to sell cauliflower steaks? Let’s be clear here: Bourbon biscuits are vegan. There are vegan “sausage” rolls. Stripping out animal products does not automatically make a meal healthier. Think in terms of additions, not eliminations: eat more vegetables and pulses or beans. A 10-year study from the University of Navarra in Spain found that omnivores who eat more plant-based foods and cut back on meat – going down to about 140g per day – almost halve their risk of obesity compared to those with more carnivorous appetites. It’s not a case of one or the other. But what about the protein? What about it? I need more, right? That’s why everything is fortified with the stuff. If you thought to ask, chances are you’re doing all right. Our protein needs vary according to our activity levels and body goals, but most men require something like 1g or 2g per kilo of their weight. Can you give that to me in litres of protein shakes?

NUTRITION

to choosing organic vegetables, which often have a higher antioxidant content, and grassfed meats, which have a better ratio of healthy fatty acids than meats from grain-fed animals. Just don’t be fooled by rebranded junk food: a $10 bag of kale crisps is still a bag of chips. I blend my kale into shakes. That must be good, because Joe Rogan does it. Shakes and juices offer an easy way to squeeze more fruits and veg into your diet, but they can also be a very concentrated source of quickly absorbed kiojoules and carbs. That can be good thing or bad, depending on what your goals are. What if I want to lose a little bit of weight? Ensure those shakes contain satiating fibres and proteins, and view them as light meals, not drinks. Downing what equates

to a banana milkshake alongside your regular breakfast could bump you into a kilojoule surplus. Ah, but I never add any sugar. I sweeten mine with organic date syrup. As far as your organs are concerned, that’s still sugar. But… it’s made from fruit. By that logic, you could argue that sugar cane is just a grass from south-east Asia. Sweeteners such as manuka honey, maple syrup, coconut sugar, and so on, might bring a few extra nutrients to the table, but there’s not a lot in it. Surely they beat artificial sweeteners. I’ve heard they cause cancer. In reality, research into the impact of artificial sweeteners on our health is still pretty limited. Wait, that sounds ominous. I was joking about the cancer thing, you know?

Don’t lose sleep over it. Some animal studies have inferred a link between chemical sweeteners and the development of certain cancers, hence the headlines you’ve seen. But the dosages applied to create this effect are way beyond what humans consume. Trust us: no one’s taking that many Diet Coke breaks. So, while we would personally limit sweeteners, the current research suggests that a normal amount of exposure is unlikely to be a major issue. So, which foods will give me cancer? Try not to think of it in those terms. Yes, some studies have correlated certain foods with an increased risk, but these figures are often manipulated or exaggerated by the media for shock value. Remember: correlation is not causation. So, I can still eat red meat?

If you’d like, yes. As many steaks and sausages as I want? Hang on. An excessive intake of red meat has been linked to colon cancer, so best keep it to two meals a week, while putting further limits on anything that has been cured or preserved when possible. Because salt is bad? It’s not as much about the salt as you think. In fact, the latest evidence suggests that a moderate salt intake might not be damaging for those with healthy blood pressure readings. The link is more likely to be caused by chemicals present in red meat itself, as well as nitrite preservatives. But there are a whole host of other factors at play in your chances of developing cancer – an inadequate intake of fibre and omega-3 fats, for example. Red meat is far from the lone gunman, and that goes for its links to heart disease, too. It’s one piece of the puzzle. Still, that’s the “carnivore diet” crossed off my list. But what about this new ketogenic diet that everyone’s talking

Which oil is best?

“VARIETY AND FLEXIBILITY IN YOUR DIET . ARE CRUCIAL TO MAINTAINING A. HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP WITH FOOD”

Monounsaturated fats (olive, rapeseed, avocado) are good for dressings. Saturated fats (coconut) are more stable when cooking on high heats. Polyunsaturated oils (sunflower, canola) are best avoided.

Wait, what’s a nitrite? Nitrates and nitrites are preservatives: they’re the reason why processed ham has a bright-pink hue. When they interact with natural compounds in red meat, they can create harmful chemicals. So, make those bacon rolls a weekly treat.

Full-fat or skimmed? Recent research suggests that not all animal fats are bad. A 22-year study from the University of Texas Health Science Center linked dairy fats to a lower risk of heart disease and stroke. August 2019 83

about? How does that work? Essentially, you deplete your body’s stores of glucose, its preferred fuel, by eating mostly fats instead. This tips your body into a state called ketosis, which mimics the effects of fasting. But it’s not new: it dates back to the 1920s, when doctors first developed it as a way to manage seizures for patients with epilepsy. Even so, keto is still best considered a selective therapeutic diet. No, wait – you must be thinking of something else. I’m talking about the one A-listers use to get lean. Those UFC guys do it and maybe a Kardashian. It’s one and the same. When your body runs out of glucose, it starts to burn its own fat for energy. In this way, the keto diet often leads to quick weight loss. However, it’s very difficult to sustain, and it can be hard to ensure you’re taking in enough fibre, vitamins and minerals, since you’re limiting your intake of fruits, vegetables and beans. It’s low on protein, too, which can impair muscle repair if you’re training hard. I saw a recipe for keto bread rolls the other day. What’s that about? Not the foggiest. I think it was made with mulched nuts. Speaking of which, is bread still considered bad? The real kind, not the keto rolls. Again, it depends on the context. If you need to refuel quickly – after intense exercise, say, or midway through a hike – there can be an argument for choosing foods that have a faster impact on your blood glucose levels, known as their “glycaemic load”. Bread can scratch that itch. Generally speaking, however, it’s neither very beneficial nor particularly harmful. Keep in mind that nothing you eat can be viewed in isolation. Pairing those two slices with a filling based around healthy proteins and fats will slow the release of glucose, keeping your energy steady. A chip sandwich will do the opposite. But what if my chip sanger is made from wholegrain bread and sweet potato fries? Those are “good carbs”, right? 84

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Sweet potatoes are fairly nutrient dense, though less so when deep-fried, and wholegrain bread will have a gentler impact on your blood glucose. But it’s all about where they sit among the rest of your diet. Even good carbs, when eaten in large portions or without other foods, can lead to energy crashes. Is that why I feel so tired after lunch? Perhaps. Carbs don’t affect all of us in the same way. For example, you could split your sandwich with a friend . . . No chance! We’re speaking hypothetically here. The point is, if you each ate half of the exact same sandwich, it would affect your blood sugar in very different ways. This could be due to your body composition, recent exercise habits, your

gut bacteria, or even your genetics. It’s sometimes called “carbohydrate tolerance”. Oh, I don’t have a problem with that. If anything, I think I’m a little too tolerant of my carb habit. Look, in short, carbs are good, but we all thrive with different amounts, so pay attention to your body’s signals. If you mostly choose low-glycaemic-load carbs, paired with protein-rich foods, and eat the bulk of them around training or on days when you’re particularly active, you’re probably on to a very good thing. That all sounds a bit too simple. The truth often is. I still want to lose a little bit of weight, though. If I’m not cutting out carbs, how about intermittent fasting?

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that fasting can play an important role in health. A wellfunctioning body should be able to go without food for more than a few hours with relative ease. However, this is a skill we quickly lose without practice. If you want to give it a try, we’d recommend introducing it slowly. Gradually increase the gaps between meal times, eating dinner earlier and breakfast later. It’s not always easy, but it shouldn’t make you feel ill and lethargic. Is fasting better than a detox? How do you define “detox”? No meat, no booze, no sugar, that sort of thing. Raw vegetables for dinner. You’ll always see benefits from cutting back on processed foods and alcohol, particularly if you’re also increasing your intake of phytonutrient-dense, high-fibre foods. That’s just common sense. But those benefits will be reversed once you revert to your former habits. But isn’t it supposed to make my

“EVEN GOOD CARBS, WHEN . EATEN IN LARGE PORTIONS,. CAN LEAD TO ENERGY CRASHES”

NUTRITION

body less acidic? Though I’ve never been entirely sure what that means . . . The theory is that certain foods, such as meat, refined sugar, dairy and caffeine, cause your body to produce acid. Ostensibly, this can then be counteracted by eating more alkaline foods, which tend to be mostly fruits and vegetables. Does it work? Not as advertised, no. Most of the diet’s benefits are sold on the idea that it will influence the pH of your blood, but blood pH is tightly regulated and minimally affected by what we eat. Any benefits you experience will come from – you guessed it – an increase in your vegetable intake. Raw veg pots are still the answer, then? There’s no real reason to eat all of your vegetables raw. Cooking some foods can “unlock” their nutrients (as is the case with carrots and tomatoes) and reduce bloating (broccoli and other leafy greens). So, we’d advise a mixture of cooked and raw vegetables. Adding a little fat in the form of olive oil or even a drizzle of melted butter can

also improve the absorption of certain vitamins. An undressed plate of lettuce and cucumber has minimal nutritional value. It’s mostly water. All it really offers to your health is a low kJ count. Should I be counting kJs? The whole concept feels a bit dated now. Isn’t there a better system? Maintaining a kJ deficit – burning more energy than you’re taking in – is still a good basis for managing your weight and body composition, but it’s not an exact science. For example, it requires more energy to break down 100kJ of protein than it does 100kJ of carbs, so the net effects on your body aren’t equal. But the concept roughly holds true, yes. What about negativekilojoule foods?

I assume you’re talking about the theory that you burn more kJs digesting some foods than you absorb from them. Regrettably, this is a myth. Even a piece of celery will provide more kJs than you’ll expend chewing on it, unless you have some fairly weird eating habits. Stick to using it as a hummus spoon. What about green tea? That burns kilojoules, doesn’t it? Barely – assuming you’re not ingesting it in pharmacological doses. In that case, I’ll stick to coffee. I can still drink coffee, can’t I? How much are you drinking? Two cups a day. Okay, maybe three or four if I’m hungover, or it’s a Monday. We all metabolise caffeine at different rates. Those who

metabolise caffeine very slowly are more likely to experience issues such as heart palpitations, sleeplessness and anxiety, so if that rings true, you might want to keep tabs on your intake. However, in most people, three to four cups a day are linked to a lower risk of diabetes, depression and liver damage. As long as those cups you’re sinking aren’t quadruple-shot grandes, you’re probably doing yourself some good. And I don’t need to put grass-fed butter or turmeric syrup in it? Absolutely not. Final question, and this is the big one: I can still drink booze, right? You can, but would you listen if we told you to stay within the recommended two-drink daily limit? I certainly intend to . . . Then consider this: take two consecutive days off each week, never free-pour your spirits, avoid using sugary mixers – and always, always eat a proper dinner. That last prescription, at least, shouldn’t be too tough to stomach.

Is gluten still evil? There is such a thing as “noncoeliac gluten sensitivity”, so if you find yourself reacting badly, you may have cause to cut it out. But the condition is not common, so we would advise against jumping to conclusions.

Is my body toxic? Dairy, grains and meat are not “toxins”. They’re just foods. Your liver does a solid job of removing most bad things from your body, and surviving on laxative tea for 24 hours will not get the job done quicker.

Can I microwave them instead? Some studies suggest microwaving depletes nutrients; others disagree. It’s better than boiling them to death, though. August 2019 85

Visions of Perfection The quest for self-improvement has entered an edgy new realm: microdosing with psychedelic drugs. Proponents say it could unlock your true cognitive potential. But does it work? And how far would you go in the pursuit of your best self? BY JACK PHILLIPS

menshealth.com.au

MIND

August 2019

“It’s not so much about seeing the face of God, just clearer code.” IN A WHITEWASHED start-up space peppered with green ferns and old movie posters, two men lounge on oversized beanbags, their laptops perched precariously on their laps. Two more sit hunched over a desk by the window, a view of Sydney’s Surry Hills beneath. All are furiously typing as house music roars from a UE Boom speaker by the door. It’s an innocuous scene, save for the water cooler in the corner, concealed by a blanket, its little blue spout peeking out the bottom. I’m told the cooler is covered to block light from reaching the LSD that’s been dissolved in the water. Two of the four men in the room claim the hallucinogenic drug helps them reach their “peak potential” when it comes to coding crunch time – certainly a less lofty goal than the glimpse of the almighty one of them had referred to earlier. “Using LSD is illegal here. We kind of have to be careful,” explains the 25-year-old Elon Musk wannabe, surveying his little slice of workplace nirvana. “I’ve always been interested in biohacking and this microdosing thing just seemed like it was worth a go. I’ve been dosing every three days for a few months now. My mind is clearer for sure.” Taking small amounts of psychedelic drugs to boost brain power is a trend that’s been intriguing Silicon Valley’s finest minds, athletes and scientists for years. Lately it’s been titillating the more intellectually curious and innately adventurous among us, as well as those of an aspirational bent seeking that elusive ‘edge’. Collectively, this clandestine group of people are known as ‘dosers’. I myself am a doser, of sorts. I have always been intrigued with the concept of biohacking. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a reckless fool who treats his body like an ongoing lab experiment. Unlike my start-up friend, I’ve swerved the LSD for something a little more accessible: legal mushroom extracts from Aussie firm Life Cykel. Because, truth be told, I’ve always wondered how the world would reveal itself to me if I had Hawking or Sidis levels of smarts. I want to solve unfathomable mathematical equations, invent the thing after the next thing, discover an object worthy of its own Wikipedia page. But, if that proves beyond me, I’d settle for jumping a few IQ points so I can better enjoy an episode of The Chase. 88

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Peak Performance “Perhaps we’re finding a way to unlock untapped potential?” asks Paul Austin, founder and director of Third Wave, an online compendium of information and research on psychedelic substances. He says people are taking subthreshold doses of psychedelic drugs in an attempt to spike creativity, boost energy, create emotional balance, improve performance and temper anxiety, depression and addiction. “Microdosing is just part of the wider conversation we’re having right now,” he says. For me, those small sub-threshold doses come via droppers. A few drops under the tongue twice a day and you’re done. No freak out, nothing fancy. To an observer, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a medicinal treatment for halitosis. As humdrum as that sounds, I have to admit my first dose still felt transgressive and loaded with possibility. Even though, in my case, I was taking a non-psychoactive substance, I couldn’t help expecting a ‘high’ or a ‘come up’ or any of the other descriptors recreational drug takers use. Something like the blue-iris moment Bradley Cooper experiences in Limitless. Alas, no. I perhaps felt a wave of endorphins shoot around my jawline in anticipation of a boosted IQ, but other than a strong medicinal taste there was little in the way of an ‘effect’. That’s kind of the point. Unlike comedian, podcaster and fight commentator Joe Rogan’s famed commentary on tripping on LSD and DMT, with microdosing – whether it’s psychoactive drugs or something else – there is no existential removal from planet Earth. You take a dose and go about your day. You can leave the pink ponies at home because you’re off to work like everybody else. It’s been three years or so since dosing for productivity became the latest trend to hit California’s 20-something start-up community. And if the American press is anything to go by there are hundreds, if not thousands taking up microdosing in a bid to boost their brainpower. But is there any science behind the individual claims or is it just another case of placebo BS talked up by influencers? “Right now, the results are preliminary,” Austin says. As with any ‘trend’ or ‘fad’, there is often a misrepresentation of the facts when it comes down to the science. And where

MIND

“With microdosing, there’s no existential removal from planet Earth. You take a dose and go about your day”

August 2019 89

Common Psychedelic Microdosing Drugs Psilocybin FOUND IN:

Mushrooms or truffles LEGALITY IN AUSTRALIA:

Illegal

DMT FOUND IN:

Plants, predominantly in South America LEGALITY IN AUSTRALIA:

Illegal

LSD FOUND IN:

Ergot fungus LEGALITY IN AUSTRALIA:

Illegal

CBD and THC FOUND IN:

Cannabis LEGALITY IN AUSTRALIA:

Illegal

Ayahuasca FOUND IN:

Ayahuasca vine and chacruna shrub LEGALITY IN AUSTRALIA:

Illegal

Ibogaine FOUND IN:

Plants from Central Africa and Amazon LEGALITY IN AUSTRALIA:

Illegal

4-ACO-DMT Synthetic psychedelic LEGALITY IN AUSTRALIA:

Illegal 90

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microdosing is concerned, it’s no different. A couple of clinical studies have been done, including one that involved microdosing DMT in rats that showed it helped with neurogenesis – the birth of new neurons – and relieved depression. It also decreased anxiety. Taken together, the effects are similar to those people are reporting with microdosing, Austin says. Current research shows what the journal Scientific American called “encouraging” and “intriguing” results. Perhaps the most interesting evidence for efficacy came late last year from a team in the UK who conducted a placebo-controlled trial. They found small amounts of LSD noticeably “altered subjects’ sense of time”, allowing them to more accurately “reproduce lapsed spans of time”. (This isn’t quite as trippy as it sounds. Basically, you can better determine how long a kettle took to boil and replicate that time period, useful if you’re weighing up a cup of tea during an ad break.) Although it doesn’t quite prove LSD is a definitive cognitive enhancer, the study does point to the drug’s potential for increased creativity and focus. Brad Burge, director of strategic communications at MAPS, a non-profit research and educational organisation focusing on psychedelics, admits a global revival of research into the therapeutic benefits of MDMA, psilocybin, ketamine, ibogaine, ayahuasca and LSD is taking place. Much of that research, he adds, has been focused on full doses combined with various forms of therapeutic support. “The media headlines have routinely exaggerated the extent of the research that has been completed,” he says, but cites a Dutch study that found that psilocybin (found in magic mushrooms) had no noticeable effect on problem solving or rational thinking but did improve creative thinking. This is echoed by another study from the University of Oxford that found people injected with two milligrams of psilocybin – enough to trip – “destabilised” logical thought and encouraged “mind wandering” and creative thinking. Julian Mitchell, cofounder and CEO of Life Cykel, says these symptoms are also commonly observed by users of his nonpsychoactive products. As an Australian proponent of mushroom biotechnology, his company originally started out growing and selling speciality fungi before diversifying into mushroom extracts using legal reishi, lion’s mane, turkey tail and cordyceps varieties. It’s this creative dimension that excites me the most. I write, I draw, I make videos, I write scripts for TV shows that will never be made. So, naively, I didn’t think my creativity needed a boost. Turns out it did. I noticed that when I’d been dosing regularly my thoughts seemed

clearer, my writing flowed from my fingertips a tad easier and I slept deeper – dreams became more profound and longer too. Ever so slightly, the world seemed a little closer to being within my grasp.

Dabbling In Divinity If we’re being honest, it’s anecdotal accounts that are really propelling microdosing forward among business leaders, athletes and the chemically-curious. Nobel Prize-winning American biochemist Kary Banks Mullis credits LSD dosing for his ability to “get down with the molecules”. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have admitted to using LSD in the past. So, what’s at the heart of this cult of chemical enhancement? Ayelet Waldman, author of A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life, believes interest in the field is indicative of a grey cloud hanging over modern society. “There is a general, worldwide malaise, even among those of us who have everything,” she explains to me on the phone. “It’s the same reason anti-depressants are so widely prescribed. People are seeking answers and solutions. Additionally, there are those who seek performance enhancement, though I would argue that has its roots in insecurity as well. People want to be better, stronger, faster because they don’t feel like they are enough.” So where to now? Commentators and the scientific community agree that the initial signs are encouraging and that additional research will quickly follow. Austin points to double-blind placebo-controlled studies in human subjects as the next step but admits “we’re still two or three years away from any of those being finished”. As a doser-in-training, I can see why millennials, entrepreneurs and biohackers are looking to ancient substances to boost and improve brainpower. Why wouldn’t they? It seems there is a lot to be gained from bigger and better brains. The world’s problems are there to be solved. There are financial crises to fix, environmental disasters to avert, narcissistic political leaders to topple and planets to colonise. Microdosing is perhaps the latest example of how some among us are no longer willing to accept the natural limits of their mental and physical powers and are instead looking to accelerate evolution. Nowadays, there may be little attraction in “seeing the face of God,” but there is certainly a desire to be more than we are. And if microdosing allows me to safely access my untapped potential and achieve more, I’d consider myself a fool not to dabble. But if it does little more than give me a two per cent placebo-induced edge to beat an impossibly smug ‘chaser’ from my couch on a Thursday afternoon, I’ll take that, too.

MIND

“People want to be better, stronger, faster because they don’t feel like they are enough”

August 2019

Frustration lies everywhere for some men, with the most trifling inconveniences triggering volcanic outbursts. Discover how one man set about taming his temper and freeing himself from a life of fury BY LUKE BENEDICTUS

menshealth.com.au

MIND

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t’s early y Monday y ev veniing g an nd I’m waiting for the ock k. My two-year-old son lifft in my aparttment blo is cluttchiing my hand, whilee his baby brother is happily y droolling g ov ver my y leeft shoulder. We’re headin ng off to th he park.. Th he lift door opens and out co omes my neiighbour from across the landing. “H Hey y Monica,,” I sa ay, “H How are . . .” “I’ve got a migraine!” she snaps. “You’ve had the door open to your flat and the smell of whatever the hell you’re cooking is so strong that I haven’t been able to concentrate on my work. I’ve had to spray my expensive perfume all around my apartment just to cover up the smell! Why keep your door wide open?” “Hang on, I’ve just got back from work. What’s happened?” “And your children make such a bloody row! Screaming. Crying. Carrying on. Day and night. Can’t you think about your neighbours?” I feel a slight tightness in my shoulders. “Uh-oh, have the kids been causing a ruckus?” “Keeping your pram outside the door is so dangerous, too. I’m going to report it as a fire hazard. I’ve had a migraine all day.” “Look Monica, I’m sorry for any bother. The good news is we’re actually moving out in a couple of weeks.” “You’re moving out? Fantastic! What date?” There’s something in her gleeful tone that does it. Suddenly it’s like my mind has been hijacked. I tell Monica that she’s got a fucking nerve lecturing me on being a good neighbour after I’ve lived opposite her for 13 years and she still doesn’t even know my name. I tell her she’s so loathed in this building that most people take the stairs rather than share a lift with her. I tell her she’s a mean-spirited, old cow. And I go on and on and on – the words spilling from my mouth with murderous ease. She backs away but I keep on ranting until the door of 94

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her apartment slams shut. It’s only then that I notice that my bewildered toddler is cowering behind me and the baby has begun to cry as I’m gripping him way too tight. Outside in the park, I feel light-headed. The visceral thrill of letting loose has already curdled into a familiar sense of remorse. I’ve just lost my temper. Again.

MAD AS HELL Bad avocados. Queue jumpers. The nanny state. Yappy dogs in offices. World politics. Matt Preston’s cravats. UEFA officials. People who wear beanies in the gym . . . These are just a few of the niggling, serotonin-sappers that have already riled me up today. It’s barely 10am. Yes, they may seem trivial (beanie-wearing gym-goers notwithstanding). But my brain often feels trapped in a demolition derby where fresh irritations jolt it from every direction. Some days, I just feel angry at the world. It seems like I’m not alone, either. Right now anger is all the rage. When the latest Australian Wellbeing report came out last November, it reported that 75 per cent of us believe our society is becoming angrier and more aggressive. Worldwide the pattern is the same: in Gallup’s annual Global Emotions Report, 22 per cent of respondents told the organisation they felt angry – the highest proportion since the question was first asked. This isn’t a positive development for anyone. That’s because anger doesn’t just make you overreact, punch walls and

act like a dick. It can also have a toxic effect on your health. Sydney University researchers found you’re nine times more likely to have a heart attack in the two hours after a heated outburst. Other studies show anger can weaken your immune system, decrease your lung capacity and crank up your risk of diabetes, back pain and stroke. Clearly, anger is selfdestructive. But that’s not why I want to learn to cage my rage. Partly it’s because I’m fed up with allowing piddly little incidents to yank me into a tailspin. Partly it’s because I’m not always a nice person to be around and don’t want to snipe and bicker my way through life. But it’s also because when my son regrettably learnt to say the word “shit” last week he was, of course, copying me. Since then, I’m more painfully aware than ever that my behaviour plays a defining role in my kids’ actions. Frankly, I need to set a better example. And yell fewer obscenities at taxi drivers that cut me off at the lights.

DOUSE YOUR IRE It doesn’t exactly look like a palace of Zen. Angermanagement specialist Robert McInnes operates from a windowless room with yellow walls that sits above a hairdresser in the Melbourne suburbs. Right now, he’s busier than ever. When McInnes started his counselling practice nine years ago, ‘explosive anger’ represented about 15 per cent of his client base. Today, it accounts for over 50 per cent. So what’s happened?

“It’s a reflection on our greater sense of entitlement,” reasons McInnes, an avuncular figure in spectacles and tweed. “Social media has made us impatient. Now people need everything to be resolved quickly.” Or they take matters into their own hands, often with disastrous consequences. Like one of McInnes’ former clients who held up a liquor store with a shotgun for two bottles of Jim Beam, then shot a passing driver and stole his car. “An angry man,” McInnes concedes with a sigh. Like most of McInnes’ clients, that man didn’t come to see him voluntarily. Of the 25 new clients

MIND

“YOU’RE MORE LIKELY TO HAVE A HEART ATTACK IN THE TWO HOURS AFTER AN OUTBURST ” that sign up each week for his one-on-one sessions or online course, 70 per cent are sent by a court after being slapped with a restraining order or following an incident of domestic violence or criminal assault. But McInnes believes he can help them with the anger-management technique he’s developed to get fast results. “What I’ve worked out is how to change your habits subconsciously so that you change without even thinking,” he says. “I got the idea from hypnosis.” Sitting across from each other in armchairs, I explain

my issue. When I feel provoked – as with the Monica incident – my response is often way out of proportion. In fact, I almost pounce on those chances to unleash my frustrations. “A bit like a soft-cock version of Michael Douglas in Falling Down,” I suggest. McInnes jots down some notes and begins gently probing my life. We talk about the death of my father, my mother’s depression, ex-girlfriends, sibling rivalry and my relationship with my long-suffering wife. At the end, McInnes frowns thoughtfully and delivers his verdict. “This is just theory,” he says. “But it

sounds like you have minor trust issues because your father died when you were at a vulnerable age. I think you trust your partner, but this is really about if you’re pushed: can you trust yourself to control yourself?” In the context of McInnes’ more colourful clients, “minor trust issues” are fairly benign. But his anger-management technique is the same whether you’re a violent armed robber or a grumpy journo belatedly overcompensating for a lifetime of not asserting himself enough. Essentially, the aim is simple: to train your subconscious brain to stay calm during the 90-second

Why Mantras Work Actions may not speak louder than words. University of California researchers found repeating a key word or two can slash your stress levels. When 66 people silently said a mantra during tense times, 83 per cent felt less stressed. Anything from ‘Shalom’ to ‘Take it easy’, works.

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Red Alert Necessary corrective measure or crazy overreaction? Find out if your anger is out of control. In Anger: Taming the Beast, therapist Reneau Peurifoy proposes a threepart test to decide whether your anger is constructive or damaging. Next time you blow your top ask yourself these questions: Did a real threat exist? Was the level of your anger proportionate to the threat? Did your actions effectively reduce the threat with the least amount of harm to yourself and others?

burst during which any emotion is at its most volcanic. For my rage-reduction homework I am given a mantra that I must repeat for five minutes a day when driving or performing any activity that keeps my mind off the actual words. “Say these five words: ‘Stop, Find calm. Big picture’,” McInnes explains. “Don’t think about what you’re saying. Just keep repeating it. It is a mantra, not positive thinking. The phrase is a direction from the conscious mind to the subconscious mind.” On the rainy drive home, I 96

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figure that now is as good a time as any to start. “Stop. Find Calm. Big Picture,” I repeat. “Stop. Find Calm . . .” But there’s a Mitsubishi Pajero hogging the middle lane of the freeway while dawdling at 60km/h. Hemmed in, I flash my lights, but the driver repeatedly ignores me. I gesticulate and honk. What is this moron playing at? Returning to my mantra, I realise this is going to take some time.

BOILING POINT But I persevere because my wife reckons this is long overdue. “Do you think I’m an angry person?”

I ask her. She waits a split-second too long before answering. “Well, you’re very impatient,” she says. “Plus you roll your eyes a lot. Look, there you go again.” I storm off to stew on her assessment. Yet I know that I could actually do with some pointers. Our family has just moved interstate and we’re staying with the in-laws until we find our own place. It’s a convenient arrangement and my wife’s parents are kindhearted folk. Just as long as the conversation steers clear of race, the economy or the environment. Unfortunately, it’s election time.

Trying to be polite all the time is exhausting – I feel like a chained zoo bear. Meanwhile the pressure is on, too, as I’m working round the clock on a start-up while rushing to finish a deadline for a book. Then one morning I wake up with a dull ache in the left side of my jaw. This quickly degenerates into an evil throbbing that will turn out to be a tooth abscess. Suffice to say, this does nothing to improve my mood. The pain makes it hard to concentrate on anything. But I’ve got a big work project to deliver so need to be on my game and,

MIND

“I’M REMINDED OF A DALAI LAMA QUOTE: ‘THE TRUE HERO IS ONE WHO CONQUERS HIS OWN ANGER’” preferably, stop punctuating every sentence with “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” So I cling to the mantra. I repeat it to myself when I’m rocking the baby, when I’m washing the dishes or mowing the lawn. Astonishingly, after a few days, it seems to kick in. When for example, I discover the local dentist is closed due to “electrical work on the street” (what sort of provincial hellhole is this?) I still feel a surge of blinding rage. But then “poof!” Somehow it magically disperses before finding expression. My subconscious is apparently submitting to the mantra, even while my conscious is plotting to have all my teeth extracted and to subject me to a diet of pumpkin soup for life.

PLAY THE BALL It’s session number two. I’m back in the windowless room (after expensive/extensive dentistry) eyeballing McInnes once again. As we’re in Melbourne, with thudding inevitability the conversation turns to AFL. “When you watch good footy players, they’re focused on the ball,” McInnes says. “That’s how they can best influence the course of the game. Bad players that don’t have any skill? They’re forced to resort to going for the man instead.” McInnes wants me to apply this same principle to those tinderbox situations that threaten to ignite a flare-up. I need to focus on the mechanics of the problem rather than taking a verbal swing at the perpetrator. “Separate the behaviour from the person,” he says. “That way you’re focused on finding a solution.” The next morning my son

wakes at 4.30am without a sense of humour. For the next three hours he’s impossible. Between a maelstrom of tears and tantrums, he manages to break a lamp and push his brother headfirst into a bucket of Lego. During my second attempt to cajole him through breakfast, he erupts because his porridge isn’t in the right-coloured bowl. As soon as I’ve completed the switchover to the orange one, he demands the other bowl with the bunnies. Which he promptly upturns over the floor. I shut my eyes. Playing the ball here, I realise, is simply to persevere and coax some food into my son in the hope it’ll make him slightly less demonic. I turn on Play School, clean up the mess and make him some Vegemite toast. Eventually, he eats a few soldiers and his mood brightens. Heady with triumph and a contented child nestling in my lap, I’m reminded of a recent Instagram post I saw quoting the Dalai Lama. “The true hero is one who conquers his own anger,” I whisper into my son’s ear. Within the hour he’s scrawled a felttipped mural on the kitchen wall.

MOMENT OF TRUTH Returning to McInnes’ yellow room, I tell him that I feel like I’m making progress. I’m calmer, less indignant and not getting sucked into so many internal fantasy arguments about issues that never materialise. I’ve also realised that losing my shit rarely ends well. “Who are you?” McInnes asks. The question throws me. Disorientated, I mumble and stall, before McInnes finally intervenes. Everyone finds that a hard question to answer

because there’s no context, he explains. You don’t know whether you’re being asked about your family, your values or your work. But there’s one question you do constantly need to ask yourself, he insists: “Who are you now?” This is the final piece in McInnes’ tool kit – basically a mindfulness tactic for hotheaded loons. The idea is to retune your mental antennae to synch with your current situation. Ask yourself “Who am I now?” when you get into work, for example, and your answer might be: “I’m a team leader”. Rather than, say, a disgruntled commuter still raging because your train was 25 minutes late. By adjusting your mindset to the task at hand, the aim is to park your ancillary problems to stop them infecting your new scenario. Make an effort to keep your head in the game that you’re actually playing, McInnes suggests. “Try to focus on the present.” I walk out of the session into the autumn sun, feeling an unlikely sense of hope. After all, from sour-faced neighbours to emergency root-canal work, bad things are always going to happen. All you can really control is how you respond (note to self: do not hold up liquor stores with a shotgun even when seriously peeved). I walk over to my car and can scarcely believe what I find waiting for me: there on the window is a parking ticket from Monash City Council. I pluck it off the windscreen and crumple it up into my fist. Then I take a breath and smile. Robert McInnes’ online angermanagement course is available at: cognitiveprinciplematrix.com.au

Your RageReduction Tool kit WEEK 1: TRAIN YOUR BRAIN Whether silently or aloud, repeat the phrase: “Stop. Find Calm. Big Picture”. You need to say this mantra for five minutes, everyday for a week while doing a low-level physical activity like walking, driving or vacuuming. “The phrase is a direction from the conscious mind to the subconscious mind,” McInnes says.

WEEK 2: EYES ON THE BALL Stare at an empty chair, then drop your head to look at the floor and say the word “ball”. Bring your eyes back to the chair and repeat the process. Perform this exercise for two minutes daily for a week. The next time you’re confronted with a frustrating situation, look down for a second, then back at the person. Focus on their behaviour not the person.

WEEK 3: FIND YOUR FOCUS Faced with a trigger situation, ask yourself: “Who am I now? You are only ever in the now, not the past or the future,” McInnes says. “Ask yourself whether you’re solving the problem as a father, employee or friend. Once you’re focused on who you are, then you can focus on what you want and how to get it.”

August 2019

AN EXHAUSTI E GUIDETO

CAR Stamina. Endurance. Gas. Call it what you will, your cardiovascular system is the engine of your real-life fitness, and the good news is that it’s easy to upgrade. Our user manual will dismantle your body’s mechanics to provide more power, improve your economy and push you further and faster than ever. We all have a high-performance engine inside of us. You simply have to turn the key By

The Men’s Health Team

menshealth.com.au

Photography By

Peter Crowther

FITNESS

RDIO! A well-oiled cardio plan will put more fuel in your tank.

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YOUR PRIMER

Cardio? That’s Just Running, Right? If the mere mention of the C-word conjures images of wiry 10K-ers stoically looping the local park, your understanding of “cardio” is in need of an update. Here’s the rundown Don’t Waste Your Breath Your ability to use oxygen can be measured with your VO2 max or “maximum oxygen uptake”. The higher your score, the more efficiently you can work. It’s genetic in part (we can’t all be Mo Farah), but few people operate at anywhere near their potential. To boost yours, you need to train at a minimum of 75 per cent of your max heart rate (below), reports Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport. Slow and steady won’t win this race.

Supply and Demand At its core, cardio is “aerobic” training – any activity during which the heart is able to supply enough oxygenated blood to fuel your efforts, whether you’re skipping or squat jumping. In anaerobic training, however, your O2 reserves dry up. Without sufficient oxygen, you’re limited to brief, intense bursts. Put simply, if you can grind out an exercise for two minutes non-stop, that’s your aerobic system at play.

Know Your Type Not all muscles are created equal. Your slow-twitch muscles are built for stamina, while your fast-twitch muscles power short blasts. Developing the former with endurance exercise can boost their mitochondria, the body’s energy generator. But it’s not all jogging, jogging, jogging. Low-rest circuits will get the job done, too.

Hit You r

Max Your m ax heart rate = 220 – y our age So, if yo . u’re 35 and aim to work ing at 80% of your max, you wa nt to sta y at about 14 8bpm

PACE SETTER

HIITor LISS? Unsure if you should be thinking fast or slow? Use this guide to pick the speed you need

THE LONG-RUNNER

THE JUST-IN-TIMER

THE STRESS TESTER

THE SLOW GRINDER

THE FIRST TIMER

Yes, he wants to shift a bit of weight, but this man is well aware of the march of Father Time and wants exercise to increase his lifespan as well as decrease his BMI.

The clock is ticking before he leaves for his annual fortnight on the beach, but chaos at work is sabotaging his body goals. He is after maximum fat burn in the minimum time.

This overburdened office worker is too busy to think about his six-pack. What he does worry about is having enough headspace to stay sane as the deadlines close in.

This dedicated marathon runner is a cardio-head who, despite his weekly mileage, isn’t getting any faster. He wants this to be the year he finally smashes his PB.

The total beginner. He knows jogging is good for him, but it looks pretty boring. He’s heard that going hard promises greater fitness and fat-burn in far less time.

The Method

HIIT

LISS

LISS HIIT noun High-intensity interval training. Short bursts of hard effort with recovery periods.

LISS noun Low-intensity steady state. Longer-duration cardio at a steady, consistent effort.

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The Method

The Final Kicker A study by Brigham Young University found steady-state running for 30 minutes per day could be the most effective exercise to beat the Reaper. On average, runners live nine years longer if they lace up before work.

The Final Kicker Short and very sharp interval sessions won’t clog up your diary but will keep your metabolism burning kilojoules at your desk. A daily 15-minute session can cut 5 per cent body fat in just 45 days.

The Final Kicker Anxiety may be at a record high (3.2 million cases in Australia), but the humble jog is a true tonic: Frontiers in Psychiatry showed a correlation between aerobic exercise and a reduction in mental health problems.

HIIT

The Method

LISS The Final Kicker The University of Western Ontario found that six weeks of sprint interval training resulted in greater jumps in VO2 max and running times than regular endurance training. Get faster and train less.

The Final Kicker Start slowly. A study in the American Journal of Medicine reported a case of rhabdomyolysis, a condition commonly associated with military bootcamps, in a healthy but basically untrained newcomer to HIIT.

FITNESS

FUEL YOUR ENGINE

The Breakfast of Champions

There are smarter ways to prepare for endurance sports than putting yourself in a pasta-induced coma. We asked James Moran, a performance nutrition expert who advises Olympic athletes, to rewrite your recipe for success

Simply combine your core ingredients to form batter, then fry.

Your Starter pancake

For… Easy-Effort Training

For… Hard-Effort Racing

• Free-range eggs, 2, whisked • A ripe banana, mashed • Whey powder, 2 scoops 22g Carbs, 38g Protein, 12g Fat

• Low-fat Greek yoghurt, 100ml • Almond butter, ½tbsp • Fresh berries, handful 37g Carbs | 53g Protein | 21g Fat

• Oats, 30g • Mango, handful, diced • Honey, 1tbsp 75g Carbs | 30g Protein | 14g Fat

Why it works: “Endurance athletes often overlook protein, focusing on carbs,” says Moran. But protein is crucial for tendons and ligaments, as well as haemoglobin (oxygen transporters) and mitochondria (muscles’ energy source). Tailor your toppings to stack up the benefits, whether fuelling a regular jog or the big race.

Why it works: A breezy 10K planned? “It’s common for elite endurance athletes to split up their carb intake to match the demands of their training,” says Moran. Topping your pancakes with yoghurt, nut butter and berries keeps the carb count fairly low. Opt for blueberries or cherries: they contain anti-inflammatory nutrients that curb muscle soreness, so you can go harder tomorrow.

Why it works: “For heavy training, carbs aren’t just crucial for energy: they also fuel the immune system, which will be under increased stress,” says Moran. Replace half of the whey with oats, then top with quick-acting carbs. “As a loose rule, your pre-event meal should pack 1g of carbs per kilo of your bodyweight.”

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GOLDEN AGE

The Eleventh-Hour Athlete

While your squat strength and six-pack might peak in your twenties, your capacity for cardio endurance is relatively unfettered by age. Keith Simpson – a 69-year-old with 26 marathons under his well-worn running belt – gives your excuses the runaround “I DID VERY LITTLE exercise before my sixties, when, inspired by my daughter’s running, I took up marathon training. At 64, I set myself the challenge of completing 26 marathons, in alphabetical order, in 26 different countries. The first, in Athens, took me four hours and 49 minutes. My PB is now three hours and 51 minutes, and I’ve progressed to ultramarathons. I’ve even got my eye on a 100-miler. “I built up distances slowly. My original motivation was to lose a few kilos, but running soon became a hobby. I run three or four times a week, at least 10 miles (16km) per run, nearly all on trails. I am fitter now than I’ve ever been, and I can eat more because of the kilojoules I’m burning. Not to mention I get a real buzz out of finishing races in front of people who are half – or even a third of – my age (1).

“I’ve seen my body shape change, especially my leg muscles (2), and running has given me better knee and ankle joints. The only downside is that I’ve shrunk in height by a few millimetres, due to running on hard surfaces, which has compressed my spine. That’s why I prefer trails now. I don’t do any speed training, since I don’t need it for ultras. “As I get older, I fare better at longer distances (3). Psychologically, the endorphins from running give me a huge boost, which lasts the whole day. The feel-good factor from running spills over into the rest of my life.”

CITY SLICKNESS

Put Your Commute To Work You might not expect to set PBs on your way to the office, but your journey in can form a key part of your fitness plan. Choose the right kit to streamline your efforts and your training can beat the train in

1 Pain Killer

(1) Time Lords A study by the University of Madrid found an average 18-year-old completes a marathon in the same time as an average 60-year-old. (2) Muscle Up While fast-twitch fibres are smaller in older people, the slow-twitch endurance muscles are less affected by ageing, according to the Lund University Hospital in Sweden. (3) Long Game Experts at the University of Zurich found the age of peak performance in distance running increases with the race duration.

Co-developed by mobility maven Kelly Starrett, this deep-tissue massage ball is small enough to pop in your desk drawer, but tough enough to dig into the gnarliest of knots in your legs and glutes. You might not be able to perform a full MobilityWOD in the office lift, but it will fend off DOMS better than foam rolling. MobilityWOD Supernova 80mm ($55; rogueaustralia.com.au)

2 Light Touch This reflective body wax can be applied to your arms and legs – or anywhere else, if face paint is your thing – ensuring you stay visible to drivers. Sweat won’t wash it away, but a shower fortunately will. Safety Skin Reflective Skin Spread ($18.95; safetyskinproducts.com)

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FITNESS

RATE OF IMPROVEMENT

3 Hard Case This backpack has smart compartments to keep your laptop secure and work attire uncrumpled, plus string attachments for your shoes. Crucially, it also weighs less than 1kg, and strong waist and sternum straps with “antibounce tech” keep it in place. Backpack Pro ($244; fastgear. com.au)

THE 2019 EFFORT SCALE

You don’t need to be covered in wires to know how hard you’re pushing. Consult our updated intensity chart IF YOU CAN ACTUALLY CONCENTRATE ON A PODCAST Training Zone: Endurance Heart Rate: 60-70 per cent Best for: Recovery We mean genuinely following the intricacies of your favourite true crime series without realising you’ve zoned out and skipping back 20 minutes. Slow runs, easy Wattbike rides or even a long-ish DOMS-busting walk, really.

IF YOU CAN JUST ABOUT TALK TO SIRI/ALEXA Training Zone: Stamina Heart Rate: 80-90 per cent Best for: Lactate threshold

Don’t loses your focuretch?

-free st Pedestrian d of point ahea a Fixate on ich w nd sa xt you – the ne ach it re to – y sa shop, faster 23 per cent

“Alexa, play next track!” should be what you can manage. Think rest periods during easier intervals, or steady, up-tempo rows. This is lactate threshold stuff, which will help you sit comfortably at 50-80 per cent of your max.

IF YOU CAN’T MENTALLY RECITE POSITIVITY MANTRAS

4 Power Player Roadside workouts don’t mean you have to ditch your Spotify playlist. Try these wireless earbuds, the first specifically designed for runners, featuring JBL-charged sound and Bionic Hearing to stay conscious of surrounding noise. That way your final push-to-the-finish power track won’t block out oncoming buses. (UA True Wireless Flash Headphones ($249.95; jbl.com.au)

Training Zone: Speed Heart Rate: 90-100 per cent Best for: Peak performance Close to, or up to, your max effort: you’re doing hard intervals, deadlier CrossFit workouts or running far too fast for far too long, considering your last 10K was in 2010. Triathletes, sub 3-hour marathoners and masochists need to hit this level.

IF YOU CAN’T EVEN INSTAGRAM HOW HARD-CORE YOU ARE Training Zone: Sprint Heart Rate: 110 per cent Best for: Vomiting Max effort sprints of any sort, repeated ad nauseum. That taste of battery in your mouth is lactic acid trying to escape. Ideal for building mental fortitude. Not ideal for doing anything afterwards except lying down.

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WE’VE BEEN REAL DICKS WITH OUR PENISES LATELY. UNWANTED PICS AND STIS, BAD BEHAVIOUR AND TOO-TIGHT PANTS. AND YET! THE PENIS IS ABOUT JOY AND SEX AND LOVE, TOO. HERE’S A HUGE UPDATE ON THE LITTLE GUY

The

PHOTOGRAPHY BY LEVI BROWN

State of the Austra SP ECIA L R EPORT

Pen

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HEALTH

Australian men disagree on a wide range of issues – climate change, superannuation, immigration, along with which of our football codes is superior. Yet for all our differences, there is one thing that binds male Homo sapiens together, helping to distinguish us from our double-Xchromosome’d female counterparts: a borderline familial relationship with our genitalia. But with family, it’s always complicated.

lian

Intersecting not only with sexuality but with issues like privacy, technology, power and public health, the penis is a symbol of our desires, our vices, our wellness. To investigate the nature of this relationship, Men’s Health partnered with scientists, investigative reporters and a phallically shaped wind puppet named Flappy to examine the State of the Penis. What it’s got going for it. What it’s got working against it. How we can make the most of it. Consider the dick pic. One third of male respondents in a new Men’s Health survey admitted that they had sent one, while more than half of female respondents shared that they had received one. Once the territory of D-list Hollywood, dick pics have infiltrated the news cycle on a regular basis, ensnaring everyone from Anthony Weiner to Jeff Bezos to Warnie. And if the richest man in the world is taking hackable pictures of himself, does this mean we’re more confident about our penises? That we always had the urge to show them off but were waiting for technology to allow us to? Or does it mean that we’re somehow less confident? In a dick pic, a penis is merely a subject. Yet we treat it as if it took a selfie. Almost 40 per cent of respondents blamed their penis for flirting with someone they shouldn’t have, for causing horny thoughts that led them to, say, text or email something they regretted, for causing injury to their penis, or for leading them to illegal activity, like having sex in public. Which is, in a word, nuts. The penis itself isn’t determinative. It’s not doing anything wrong . . . or even right. It’s doing what our brains tell it to. It’s along for the ride. As we look forward to a future filled with both creeping uncertainty and endless possibility, let’s figure out what this thing is and what it isn’t and what it needs from us. Understanding the penis doesn’t need to be so hard. – Spencer Dukoff August 2019 105

O A

D O CT C OR O S C A N NO O T AGR G EE ON T H E R IGH O G T WAY T O M E A SU R E A PE N IS . M A R K H AY I N V E ST IG G AT E S W H Y

You Y probably b bl think h k it’s pretty y dick. eeasy y to measure a d k Whip h it ou out. G Grab Get it hard. ab a ruler. u e Ge a d Have a look. Men do it all the time – 62 H 2 h MH survey said they had per cent iin the measured it – with a ruler (42 per cent) or tape measure (18 per cent) or other device (2 per cent), whether out of boredom, curiosity, insecurity or any number of other motivations. Scientists do it all the time as well. Their efforts have generated data on average penis sizes, which many media outlets, educators and average men take as gospel. But think for a moment about all the ways you could measure your penis and you’ll pretty quickly find it’s not as straightforward as it seems. Do you measure from the top or the side? Flaccid or erect? Morning or evening? Scientists have been pondering these issues for decades, developing varied measurement tactics. But as researchers reported in a study on some of these approaches last year, “little data exists on the best technique to measure penile length”. That could be cause for concern, as getting a solid sense of average penis sizes is important for more than just personal interest. Accurate measures may aid in developing betterfitting condoms with lower tear rates or help men with confidence issues who believe their penis is smaller than average. So it’s worth taking a look at when, where and how some of the most common figures on average penis sizes were determined and understanding exactly how much uncertainty remains. Doctors have been trying to gather solid data on average penis lengths since the early 1940s. One of the earliest papers on the subject dates from 1942, when two researchers in New York measured nearly 200 boys’ and men’s members by stretching

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them while flaccid and placing g a wooden ruler butted their l atop them, h b d up against g h pelvis. But the first study off average f g penis lengths to garner attention came from the g father of sexual research, Alfred Kinsey. His investigation, published in 1948, concluded that the average stretched penis was about 16.73cm long. “And because he asserted [his] expertise of science in sexual matters,” notes Dr Alicia Walker, a sociologist who has explored the relation of penis size to male self-esteem, “others assumed he really did know” the best way to do this research. In retrospect, though, Kinsey used shoddy science. He interviewed 4000 mostly white and university-aged men and asked them to estimate their penis size. They were each given a take-home card with instructions to measure themselves, then send the card back with data. Some 2500 replied. Kinsey’s figures have been 2.54cm longer than many subsequent clinical studies found, as often happens when you ask people to measure their dick and just tell you about it. Thanks to Kinsey’s influence and the fact that no one questioned his methodology, length data was a little spotty throughout the mid-20th century. In fact, Gordon Muir, a urological surgeon in the UK who has worked on some of the more influential studies on penile length in recent years, contends that “all the data gathered before 1980” on this subject “is completely unreliable”. More often than not, modern researchers have turned back to the 1942 methodology of having a clinician stretch a flaccid penis and measure it with a ruler laid atop it and pushed through the fat toward the pelvis. (Jamming the ruler against the pelvis emerged gradually as the best way to control for body-fat levels, which can make penises of exactly the same size seem to differ.) This was the gold standard Muir and four

Compared with the AVERAGE GUY, do you think you are: LARGER

17% ABOUT THE SAME

57% SMALLER

26%

Answering “larger” was more common among younger guys. In regard to income, the bigger your salary, the bigger you think you are: 23 per cent of men earning more than $175K answered larger.

PROP STYLING: MIAKO KATOH. KEVIN SWEENEY/STUDIO D (TAPE MEASURE).

A NO

of his co c lleagues used d in their seminal 2015 g 0 5 review of p previous clinical studies. That study, 20 p previous studies y which identified 2 d that h met its criteria and d ended d d up using g the h combined co b ed data da a from o 15,521 , 1 men e aat least eas 177 years old ld with h healthy h l h penises, concluded l d d that the average g erect dick (based on four relevant studies)) is 13.10cm long 3 0 g and has an average g circumference (based on two relevant studies) of 111.69cm. 69c Muir u noted o ed that the data came largely g from Caucasian and d Middle ddl Eastern men, making k g it unlikely l k ly they’d h d captured d a truly l global gl b l penile l average. g Seeking g to get g a better sense of natural erections, and possibly pull data from a wider field of subjects than expensive and j geographically restricted clinical studies g g per it att lleast some researchers have permit, opted for self-reporting that tries to control for the kind of overstatements that proliferated in Kinsey and company’s data. Debby Herbenick, a professor and sexuality researcher, and her colleagues at Indiana University published a notable paper in

HEALTH

A R E YO U R HABITS KILLING

YOUR ER

T H E L I T T L E CHOICE C O C S YOU O M A K E I N A DAY Y O LY BU I L DI NG A N ER ECT C I L E HOUSE O O A R E SL OW OF C A R D S T H AT’S ’ J UST WA I T I NG G TO CO OM E C A SH I NG D O GEL REVEALS CR OW N. E R I C S P I T Z N AG T H E K I N D OF DAY (DAY ( A F T E R DAY)) T H AT C A N O U P FOR O A BON O ER DISA ST E R SET YOU

CTIO

2014 0 4 based on o 1661 661 self-measurements se easu e e s pulled from a larger study on condom fit. Investigating g g how condom fit influenced function, they found an average g erect length g of 14.14cm. . 4c . Herbenick’s b k study d revealed l d yet another h wrinkle for researchers,, however. She believes her team was the first to explore p how the mode of arousal may y influence the size of an erection. “Men who reported receiving g oral sex in order to get g their erection for measurement,” she says, y “had a longer g measurement” on average g than men who o used other o e methods e ods of o stimulation. s ua o This questions about h raises all ll new q b how researchers can find a real average g when en it’s it s possible that different types of arousal might yield perceptibly different measurements of the same penis, even on the same day. Ultimately, according to Dr Nicole Prause, a neuroscientist and sex researcher, “there are no studies that have measured the naturally erect male penis. So we really don’t know what the average size of a truly wild, representative erect dick is”. She is still dreaming up new ways of taking penile measurements and muses about using 3-D imaging or thermography technology for more accurate readings, to be conducted perhaps while a subject watches an erotic film in isolation to get naturally aroused. That plan might provide a more reliable measurement – of girth as well, a metric that has been far less studied and debated. But it would likely do little to tackle the sample-size and composition issues that plague measurement studies, or the issue of unclear turgidity differences across time and stimuli. The truth is, creating a practical study that could tackle all of the complications of dick measurement is way harder than you’d expect.

7:00 00 AM WAKE U UP EXHAUSTED US If you’re you re too busy to snooze snooze, it’s it s your erection you’ll lose. It’s a terrible rhyme, but the science is airtight. Even in younger men, less than five hours of shut-eye per night could slash daytime testosterone levels by up to 15 per cent.

9:00 AM RIDE YOUR BIKE TO THE OFFICE Bicycle seats can kill boners, especially narrow saddles. The pressure on the perineum – the real estate between the anus and genitals – can damage erectile tissue, argues Dr Irwin Goldstein, director of San Diego Sexual Medicine.

10:00 AM POP PILLS FOR A NAGGING KNEE Multiple studies have found that the consistent use of nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs (like Ibuprofen) is related to decreased testosterone levels, ED and loss of desire. See a doc or physiotherapist, already.

3:00 PM SKIP THE GYM Activity is an erection preserver, says Helle Gerbild of Aalborg University’s Center for Sexology Research in Denmark. It’s also a reviver: 40 minutes of at least moderate exercise four times a week for six months may improve erectile problems.

10:00 PM “FORGET” TO BRUSH YOUR TEETH If you don’t brush and floss for your smile, do it for your penis. Periodontal disease can make you more likely to suffer from ED.

10:15 PM WATCH TV IN BED “Use it or lose it” is true, but it doesn’t take much to see improvement. A 2007 Finnish study found that men who had sex just once a week – compared with, well, men with any amount less than that – were 50 per cent less likely to have ED. Three-times-a-week guys were 80 per cent less likely to have it. The blood flow that a boner brings prevents scar tissue that can cause ED.

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W H AT YO U R P E N I S I S

TELLING YOU RIGHT NOW

YOU CAN TELL a lot by taking a close look at your penis. Sometimes you look at it and everything seems perfectly normal. Other times it can feel fraught with danger, covered in lumps, spots, nodules and protuberances that all look like evidence of your certain doom. We’re here to help you separate the facts from the panic attacks.

A CURVED PENIS It could be Peyronie’s disease, a condition caused by scar tissue that pulls your penis toward one side. FIXABILITY: It can be treated with drugs, injections or even surgery, but the third option is for the worst cases, says Dr Larry Lipshultz, a professor of urology at Baylor College of Medicine. If it curves less than 10˚ in either direction and you can still have sex that doesn’t hurt either of you, leave it alone.

The Fast Times of the Eggplant Emoji To paraphrase Freud, sometimes an eggplant is just an eggplant. Unless it’s an emoji, and then it’s definitely a dong. For most of history, bananas were the universally accepted metaphorical penis. But it’s now impossible to look at an eggplant and see anything but a purple pecker. How we got here:

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WHITE, YELLOWISH, OR REDDISH BUMPS These are often just enlarged oil glands, called Fordyce spots, says Dr Elizabeth Kavaler, a urology specialist at Lenox Hill Hospital. No treatment is needed, and they typically disappear on their own after a few years. They can resemble an STD, such as the bumps you see with herpes, but aren’t painful or itchy and don’t pop and scab over. FIXABILITY: Time is all it takes.

2010 _ The debut of the eggplant. Angela Guzman, who helped design the original 500 emojis, explained years later that her drawing becoming a go-to phallic symbol

A PURPLE OR SPLOTCHY PENIS An inexplicably purple p pen nis is alarming. It might jusst b be the way your blood vesseels react to all the extra bloo od flowing to the penis during g an erection. Or it could b be a “rupture of the fibrous laayeer that surrounds the erecttilee cylinders,” says urologoiist D Dr James Kashanian – meaaning you’ve fractured your peeniss via a “significant bending in nju ury” d ing sex. dur FIXA XA A BILI B TY: If you feel a “po op p”” du d ing sex, follow dur wed by bru ruis issing n or swelling, seek im mm mediate e medical attention on.. As if a penile fracture wer weren’t e bad enough h, not getting immed edi diiate ate attention can leead d to iss issues ues yo you don’t want to have to o deaal with h, incl including d “siign gnificant erectile dy ysfunction,” fu says Dr. Kaashanian, or “pe “p peenile deformity”.

A SMALL, CLEAR BLIS STE ER If it pops and scabs over,, it’s usually herpes, says D Dr Aaron Spitz, author of The Penis Book. “The b blissters can also be tender or painful,” he says. “As a

#F RE ET HE EG GP LA NT

2013 _ Fred Benenson, who crowdsourced translating Moby-Dick entirely into emojis, suggests that eggplant emojis are ideally suited for “sexual innuendo”.

2014 _ Rapper B.o.B. Instagrams a selfie in revealing sweatpants tagged #EggplantFriday. Soon IG bans the eggplant emoji from its search algorithm. Fans respond with #FreetheEggplant.

HEALTH

general rule, if it’s on your penis and it hurts, call your doctor.” FIXABILITY: If you see something suspicious, it’s important to get tested right away. If it’s herpes, you can’t rid yourself of the virus; it can lie dormant in you. But you can get antiviral drugs to reduce outbreaks, and using condoms can lower the risk of spreading the infection through sex by 30 per cent.

A CAULIFLOWER-SHAPED GROWTH If there’s no pain or itching, you’re likely dealing with genital warts, says Kavaler. They’re caused by exposure to human papillomavirus (HPV), which will infect around 80 per cent of people in their lifetime and can sometimes lead to penile cancer. FIXABILITY: “Genital warts do not regress on their own,” says Kashanian. Treatment can include topical lotions, cryotherapy (freezing them off), laser therapy or having them surgically removed. If you’re not going to avoid sex until they’re gone, you’ve got to glove it. “However, the virus can still be transmitted by direct skin-to-skin contact,” Kashanian says. – E S

2016 _ The American Dialect Society dubs the eggplant the year’s Most Notable Emoji. Linguist Ben Zimmer notes that it refers to “male genitalia . . . and eggplants”.

S A T U M R L B U AT I O N F D NI IS A

THING

A N D I T’S NO T A S BOR I NG A S I T S OU N D S . H E R E’S HOW T O E X PA N D W H AT YOU T HOUGH T W E R E YOU R SE X UA L L I M I T S

So the mindfulness trend has hit masturbation now? Stay with us for a second. For many guys, masturbation is about focusing on one organ and getting the job done as quickly as possible. But to mindfully masturbate involves “utilising your whole body, and all your senses,” says sex therapist Chris Donaghue, author of Sex Outside the Lines. That means you’re not racing for the finish line and your orgasm isn’t the primary goal.

Then what’s the point? It can make sex better by broadening your horizons. When masturbation becomes so formulaic that we’re depending on certain habits and techniques every time, “it neurologically wires our body and arousal in a limited and rigid way,” Donaghue says.

Okay, fine. So how do I do this mindful thing? Try other approaches: see if your body might like something different just as much as (or more than) your standard session. “Do you always sit? Try standing. Are you always quiet? Make some noise. Try it all,” says Donaghue. Pay attention to everything, says Jessica O’Reilly, a sexuality and

2016 _ The Emojibator, a nearly five-inch vibrator that resembles an eggplant, goes on sale for $32.

relationship counsellor. “How does your skin feel? What temperatures, textures and sensations do you experience?” she says. You’ll become more focused on your senses rather than just on your ejaculation. You’ll start to slow down and experience sex in ways you might have been too impatient to notice before. And if you only masturbate with porn, take a porn break.

No porn? Then what gets me in the zone? Each of us has an inventory of sexual experiences, both fictional and real, that we can draw on while masturbating to get us to that next level. A poll earlier this year from dating website IllicitEncounters.com found that these fantasies can run the gamut from coworkers (27 per cent) to friends (25 per cent) to complete strangers (29 per cent). But the most popular material, picked by 55 per cent of respondents, is sex with an ex.

If I’m with someone new, should I really be thinking of an old flame? Yup. “This is perfectly normal,” says Justin Lehmiller, a research fellow at the Kinsey Institute. Reliving or replaying past

experiences doesn’t mean you have unresolved feelings for a former partner. “People are capable of having fantasies that they don’t want to make a reality,” Lehmiller says.

I guess, but I still feel weird about this. You shouldn’t. First of all, those sex throwbacks in your memory bank aren’t very accurate. And second, they’re less about your memories of your ex and probably more about your memories of yourself.

What does that mean? I’ve been getting off thinking of myself? The hottest memories in your vault may be of you being a sex god in a past relationship – even if it’s not true. A 2014 Duke University study found that men were more unreliable narrators than women when it came to certain aspects of their sex backstories. “And when men were in a great mood, they recalled having better erections and better orgasms than they actually did,” says Dr Kevin P. Weinfurt, the Duke professor of psychiatry who led the study. That distorted memory of yourself may help you feel more confident and valid the next time you have real sex. – ES

2018 _ In a survey by Plenty of Fish, 75% of singles say they’re unlikely to respond to an online flirtation that uses an eggplant emoji, because gross.

2017 _ Comedian Anders Holm hosts a Twitter poll on which end is the tip. Almost 35,000 people vote, and the green end just barely wins.

2019 _ The Unicode Consortium approves 230 new emojis. One of them, the pinching hand, rapidly becomes the small-dick emoji, and the eggplant’s archnemesis.

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Q U E S T I O N S T O A S K YO U R S E L F BEFORE SENDING A

DICK PIC

DO YOU KNOW THE RECIPIENT? In general, men are more familiar with erotic visuals (i.e., porn) than women, which partly explains why I periodically receive unsolicited dick pics from strangers on dating apps. It’s comparable to how cats 110

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sometimes bring their owners critters they’ve killed – cats enjoy eating dead animals, so when a cat leaves one, dead or dying, in his owner’s bed, he thinks he’s bringing her a tasty treat. To clarify: a dick pic from a stranger does nothing for women. It is a dead vole. Never

send a dick pic to someone who is not already intimately acquainted with the dick in question.

DOES THE RECIPIENT WANT A DICK PIC? Even when someone is intimately acquainted with your dick – even if you’ve sent them oodles of noodle pics – they might not want to see it right then. They might be babysitting, and in the same instant you send your dick pic, the babysittee might have wrestled their phone

from their death grip and be running around the room with it shouting, “Pee-pee picture! Pee-pee picture!” It’s smart to preface any dick pic with something along the lines of: “I’m so hard, want to see?”

HOW CONFIDENT ARE YOU THAT THIS PERSON WILL NEVER SHARE YOUR DICK PIC? Before you send a sexy photo, you should make two assumptions: first, that the recipient will save it in her phone as collateral in case you

HEALTH

one day wrong her; second, that you will become a politician. (See also: Anthony Weiner.) If you don’t completely trust the recipient to use your dick pic for good and not for evil, don’t send it.

IS THERE ANYTHING UNSEXY IN THE BACKGROUND? I probably won’t notice whether you’ve manscaped or not, but I will definitely notice that unidentifiable stain on the towel hanging behind you. Avoid taking any sexy pictures in your bathroom – there’s nothing attractive about your toilet, and mirror selfies in poor lighting are so Myspace. I recommend taking a photo in your bedroom, where the magic happens. If you’re having trouble positioning your phone without a mirror, put your laptop on something waist height, open up Photo Booth, and do a quick spin to make sure there’s nothing embarrassing in your shot. Besides bathroom stuff, other things that will distract from your dick include: a pile of laundry, a pile of dishes, and your child. (See also: Anthony Weiner, again.)

IS THIS DICK PIC REALLY ON-BRAND FOR YOU? A lot of men think every dick pic has to be a full-frontal shot of their throbbing dong. But if you’re new to dick photography or just feeling shy, I recommend starting out with something a little less self-serious. One particularly Photoshop-gifted boyfriend would decorate his dick pics with little hats or, on one occasion, Joe Biden’s face. (Not not arousing.) I appreciated that his dick pics reflected his personality. His photos also made me really comfortable sending him funny-sexy photos in return, and why are you giving out nudes if not to get nudes back?

Women: Have you ever received a All Women YES 51%

DICK PIC? By Age

YES

NO 49%

18–29

30–44

45–60

>60

The preferences are:

10%

UNPROMPTED, AT ATTENTION

27%

AT MY REQUEST

61%

BEYOND VIAGRA New Biohacks for ED

UNPROMPTED, HANGIN’ LOOSE NONE. SEND PIC OF ABS OR OTHER PART.

“We already have excellent ED treatments that work,” says Dr Tobias Köhler, a Mayo Clinic urologist. But they’re not immediate and often require effort – as in exercising, losing weight or quitting smoking. So researchers keep looking for that quick fix that will lead to boners on demand

THE GOOD

BOTOX

NITROGLYCERIN GEL STEM-CELLS

SHOCK-WAVE THERAPY

Our results revealed a generational gap: 74 per cent of women aged 18-29 and 60 per cent of those 30-44 have received dick pics. That drops to 40 per cent for ages 45-60 and 19 per cent for 60+. Guys, take note: most women said they’d prefer a pic of your abs or another body part.

THE BAD

Botox, otherwise known as botulinum toxin type A, is injected into the penis. Yes, with a needle. The toxin paralyses the smooth muscles inside the penis, which, surprisingly, ends up stimulating blood flow.

The effects last for several months, so it would be a four-to-five-timesa-year procedure rather than a pop-a-pill-every-time-you-want-sex situation. Scientists still haven’t figured out why using Botox doesn’t leave guys “wandering about with an erection,” says Dr Nicole Prause, a neuroscientist and sex researcher.

One in four men with ED reported an improvement in their erections after using a topical gel containing nitroglycerin, according to a recent study. The gel gives your body a hit of nitric oxide, which causes the muscles of the penis to relax so it can become erect.

What good is an erection if you’re not awake to enjoy it? Nitroglycerin, explains UCLA urologist Dr Jacob Rajfer, “makes your blood vessels dilate. And when they dilate, your blood pressure drops and you get light-headed”. You may get an erection from the gel but may feel faint, or even lose consciousness.

Stem cells are extracted from various parts of your body and injected directly into your penis, says Dr Jesse Ory, a urologist at Dalhousie University in Canada. Animal studies have shown promising results, and a Danish study with humans found that nearly half the guys got boners sturdy enough for “penetrative sex”.

Those Danish results sound great until you read the fine print and notice that the study was so small that only eight guys achieved erections. Not enough for anyone to flush their blue pills down the toilet just yet. And stem cells are tricky; they don’t always turn into what you want them to, says Köhler.

Low-intensity extracorporeal shockwave therapy involves shooting sound waves through erectile tissue, which clears plaque from blood vessels and may promote the growth of new blood vessels.

Shockwave therapy is effective for short-term treatment of erectile dysfunction, but its efficacy declines after two years, particularly in those with initial severe dysfunction, according to a study published in The Journal of Urology. – ES

– LAUREN LARSON August 2019

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THE P E N I S DIET

The

Surprising, Thriving Life of STIs

N U T R I T ION IST M I K E R O U S S E L L R EC OM M E N D S E AT I NG T H E SE EIGH T FO OD S T O BO O ST YOU R T E ST O ST ERON E L E V EL S , WA R D OF F ER ECT I L E DYSF U NCT ION A N D GET YOU R SPER M S W I M M I NG FA ST E R!

Getting older is brutal on your penis. Testosterone levels plummet about 1-2 per cent a year after you hit 30, which can impact your erection. ED affects around 40 per cent of men at age 40 and 70 per cent of men at age 70, according to the Massachusetts Male Aging Study. Fortunately, there are simple diet fixes that help you stay hard. And because your brain, heart and penis are intimately connected, these foods are good for your overall health, too.

SARDINES

BEANS

AVOCADOS

OYSTERS

One 85g serving contains 28 per cent of your daily intake of vitamin D. The D, the vitamin, is a critical nutrient for healthy T levels, which is important for the D, the organ.

One of the best ways to boost testosterone and reproductive health is to be lean. Beans, a high-fibre carb, help control blood-sugar levels and keep you fuller longer.

High in fibre and heart-healthy fats, avocados lower your LDL cholesterol and promote blood-vessel function, including the plumbing for your erection.

Just two of these shellfish satisfy your daily intake of zinc, a mineral that’s vital for maintaining healthy testosterone levels, as well as sperm numbers and motility.

Only nine per cent of men in our survey copped to having had an STI although data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare shows STIs are on the rise. But prevention is easy. “Wear condoms, look for sores, blah blah. What else is there?” Quite a bit, actually.

We’re breaking STI records. Research from the Kirby Institute found the number of annual cases of gonorrhoea in Australia has more than doubled in just a decade. Meanwhile, cases of syphilis have more than tripled, while cases of chlamydia have increased by 43 per cent. Plus, there are more than 35 different types of infectious organisms recognised as being sexually transmitted. Not every STI comes with symptoms, so if you have a new partner, get tested.

A urine test isn’t the only test. Many people get a urine test for two common STIs – gonorrhea and chlamydia – but don’t realise they weren’t tested for other diseases, like syphilis and HIV, that require a blood test, says Dr Mellissa Withers, an associate professor at the Keck School of Medicine at USC. Make sure you’re getting a complete STI screening panel.

Herpes “types” are mixing.

SPINACH This leafy green houses a range of vitamins and minerals, including magnesium, a key nutrient for sustaining healthy testosterone levels as you age. Eat it daily.

SPROUTEDGRAIN BREAD Men who eat a diet rich in inflammationfighting whole grains are less likely to suffer from ED.

Underwear Party

Saxx Ultra boxer briefs ($44.95; saxxunderwearaustralia. com.au)

menshealth.com.au

BOK CHOY Cruciferous veggies like bok choy (and cabbage and broccoli) contain glucobrassicin, a compound that helps your body clear excess estrogen. That can help boost your sex drive.

Here are three ways to pamper and protect your privates

Hammock-Like Support Pouch

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SALMON Salmon contains vitamin D, selenium and magnesium – all of which are necessary to support testosterone levels and healthy sperm.

Herpes simplex virus type 1, the virus commonly associated with cold sores used to live in a different universe from herpes simplex virus type 2, associated with genital herpes. “Due to the current popularity of oral sex, you can get oral infections from genital infections, and genital infections from cold sores,” says Dr Bryan Cullen, director of the Center for Virology at Duke University. Don’t assume these viruses will stay where they originated.

Protection from Phone Radiation Owayn boxer briefs made with silver thread ($45; owayn.com)

Even Easier Access via an H-Front Tommy John 360 Sport 2.0 Colorblock trunks ($32; tommyjohn.com)

HEALTH

THE FUTURE OF CONDOMS One problem is that no matter how much you innovate, a balloon is still just a balloon, says Dr Robert Gorkin, an associate professor and biomedical engineer at the University of Wollongong. Gorkin and his team received one of the grants and are developing a condom made from hydrogels, the nearly frictionless material used to make soft contact lenses. “Our hydrogels are skinlike materials – they feel like nothing’s there,” he says. The hydrogel condom is odourless, tasteless and doesn’t come with any of the allergy issues associated with latex. But since condoms are considered medical devices, bringing a new one to market requires clearing regulatory hurdles. “A $1 million clinical trial involving more than 35 couples should begin this year,” he adds. Some innovations are already available. Another Gatesgrant recipient developed an “applicator” that allows you to slip on a condom in less than five seconds ($9; instantcondom.com). One offers condoms in 60 different sizes ($10; myonecondoms. com). And Lelo now makes a condom with a hexagonal rib design ($35; lelo.com). It’s a start, but unless people wake up and remember what’s at stake when they’re not wearing a condom – STIs, unwanted pregnancy, etc. – then no innovation in the world is going to help.

T H E Y H AV E BEC OM E T H I N N ER A N D SL ICK ER , BU T C ON D OMS T ODAY A R E PR ET T Y M UCH T H E SA M E CLU MS Y T ECH NOL O G Y YOU R GR A N DFAT H ER F U M BL ED W I T H N I N E MON T HS BEFOR E YOU R DA D WA S BOR N. TH A NK FULLY, TH AT’S CH A NGING, A S M A R K H A M H E I D R EP ORTS

Condom-related hijinks are funny on TV, but their sensation-numbing, userunfriendly design means a lot of men either don’t use protection or do so improperly. In our survey, 30 perc ent of men said they would never use a condom, because it ruins sex. As for guys who wear condoms, as many as 60 per cent make mistakes that increase the risk for unplanned pregnancy or STIs, according to Kinsey Institute research. Millions of people worldwide would be spared infections – some deadly – if condoms were easier to use. Recognising this lack of condom innovation as a problem, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced in 2013 that it was awarding $100,000 grants to help bankroll the“next generation” condom. So far, the foundation has dished out 22 grants to scientists and product developers. So far, though, there’s been no real game changer.

24 %

X SE S IT O, RU IN

S IF OM RE E Q TI M U E ES S TE , D

Y A ES N ,W EW I T PA H RT N

E M TI E TH LL A S, YE

Really guys? Of men aged 18-29, only 22 per cent said they wear a condom with a new partner. That increased to 36 per cent among men 30-44. Time to lift your game!

22 %

WEAR A CONDOM?

Do you usually

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CHARGED SOUND

ESSENTIALS YOUR MONTHLY GUIDE TO WHAT’S HAPPENING AND WHAT’S NEW

Check out the clever new Under Armour Train Sport Wireless On Ear Headphones – engineered by JBL. The UA|JBL Sport Wireless Train have SuperVent washable ear cushions for comfort to help you stay cool and dry. Get motivated with JBL charged sound and 16 hours of battery life. Touch the UA logo, and TalkThru Technology lets you talk to your partner without having to take your headphones off. Designed and tested by athletes for the gym. VIsit jbl.com.au

HEALTHY CARE Healthy Care’s Grape Seed Extract highquality formula helps to maintain the health of capillaries, assists in the maintenance of a healthy cardiovascular system and provides antioxidant protection against free radical damage. Available at Chemist Warehouse. CHC73200-0818

A CLASSIC REIMAGINED The OMEGA Seamaster Diver 300M collection received a full face lift last year, and this year it has been released with a new white ceramic [ZrO2] dial. The colour works perfectly with the surrounding black bezel and stainless steel case. RRP $7,100. Find a stockist at omegawatches.com/stores

WELLGROVE OLIVE LEAF EXTRACT Wellgrove Olive Leaf Extract products. Available nationally from Chemist Warehouse, Coles supermarkets, selected pharmacies and health food stores.

FIRST WATCH ON THE MOON The Speedmaster made watchmaking history on the 20th of July 1969, when it became the first watch worn on the moon. On the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, OMEGA is proud to unveil a new Speedmaster Limited Edition that pays tribute to the world-changing moments that defined the first lunar landing. RRP $13,175. Visit omegawatches.com.au

BUILD IT UP Designed for home-based training, the Cyberfit half-rack system allows the trainer to start with the basic rack frame and customise it with options including lat pulldown seated row, core trainer, battle rope anchor, suspension trainer hook and dips station. Find out more at cyberfit.com.au

TRAINER

119 Nail the ultimate delt-builder

126 The worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fittest emcee

B E C AU S E

F I T

I S

T H E

129 Take your training to the wild side

N E W

R I C H

NEVER SETTLE CrossFit champion James Newbury is proof that no matter how bang-on you think your training is, there are always ways to make it better DANIEL WILLIAMS

DEAN K YRITSIS

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BEAST OF BURDEN James Newbury will carry his own high expectations into the CrossFit Games, having first identified, then crushed, his weak link

For a busy guy who’s been up since the predawn, James Newbury is in high spirits: loquacious, solicitous – and apologetic, even though I’m the nong who’s forgotten about the time difference between the eastern seaboard and his home city of Adelaide, and phoned early. Turns out his mood’s copped a boost from his having just eaten for the first time today – at 10am – breaking a fast that had started early the previous evening. “I have an eating window now,” says Newbury, who’s juggling tasks at Soul 365, the inner-city gym he’s owned and run since 2013. “With all the training I do, and the amount of oxidative damage that I’m doing to myself, I feel I need to go through a daily period of fasting to activate the purge of cells that aren’t working quite the way they should be anymore.”

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That’s a sound indicator of how Newbury operates. At 28, he’s been one of Australia’s best athletes for seven years, placing 18th in the world at last year’s CrossFit Games. By virtually any yardstick, he’s a stellar performer. But he wasn’t satisfied. At the gym and in the kitchen, he was convinced he could do things better. And on the back of various refinements, he’s

aiming for a career-best showing at this month’s Games in Wisconsin, beginning August 1. “I definitely think I’m going to be in the best shape I’ve ever been in,” he says. “I want to go out and show my best, which I don’t feel I have at my first three Games. I think this year will be a very different story. In terms of placings, I’d be happy if I was in the top 10. I’d be stoked if I could be in the top five.” While you mightn’t be bound for Trump’s America to perform in torturous events alongside some of the world’s most imposing physical specimens, tapping into Newbury’s quest for continuous improvement will help take your fitness and health to new heights. The

takeout: there’s no endpoint in this game, just steps along the way to getting closer to your best self.

DEMOLISH DEFECTS CrossFit competition is like a school exam: you don’t know what’s coming. As a result, you have to be prepared for anything. Certain components of fitness come naturally to Newbury, who in his teens was eyeing a career in the NRL. Running, for example: he can cover 400m in 53 seconds and five kays in 18:44. He’s strong on a bike and excels in bodyweight workouts. But if he’s had a weakness it’s been the Olympic lifts – hoisting Hurculean loads above his hirsute noggin. Rather than accept this

as an unfixable deficiency (and hope like crazy it wouldn’t be exposed), Newbury chose to attack it, late last year hiring six-time CrossFit Games veteran, Montreal resident and “pocket rocket” Michele Letendre as his long-distance strength coach. “I just got back from a week’s training camp with her and I’ll be heading back over there to do a monthlong camp before the Games,” says Newbury, who credits Letendre for raising his maximum clean and jerk from 150kg to nearly 160kg and his peak snatch from 120kg to 128kg. “She’s very small but super strong,” adds Newbury. “She’s also very smart and analytical.” How do you improve at

NEVER SETTLE

something? You do it more often for starters. You prioritise it, says Newbury. “I’m in the gym for 10 sessions per week. And each session lasts anywhere from 1-3 hours. Right now, for me, 60 per cent of those sessions are heavily focused on weight lifting. Because that’s what’s required.”

BOUNCE BACK You’d struggle to find an athlete in any sport more clued up than Newbury on the finer points of recovery. An early adopter of floatation, he uses it not only to infuse his muscles with DOMS-alleviating magnesium, but also to disconnect from all electronic stimuli. Floatation is, he says, the perfect environment for an advanced form of visualisation. “As someone who’s about to compete at my fourth Games, I know all the sights and sensations I’m going to experience,” he explains. “And I can replay them back in my head while I’m in the float tank. So when it comes time to compete, everything’s familiar. By the time I’m there, I already know what it’s going to feel

like, what it’s going to smell like, so I can just attack straight away.” Regular doses of sunlight. Earthing. Ice baths. Yoga. Nose-only breathing during moderate aerobic exercise. Sauna. Meditation. All these have a place in Newbury’s regimen. Does he believe that, collectively, they give him an edge? “This is stuff I’m super-passionate about,” he says. “I’ll always have an open mind to new ideas, whether they end up being true or false. My feeling is a lot of the other guys are being told to jump into a sauna, say, but they don’t truly understand, or buy into, its potential benefits.”

FUEL THE FIRE If any of the above practices belong on the fringes of sports science, Newbury’s much nearer to the centre with tweaks he’s made to his diet. In this area he has an ally – partner Kayla Banfield is the brains behind the online nutrition service The Method. Until recently, Newbury says, with the best of intentions he was eating too much fat and protein and not enough carbs. “But having reintroduced carbs in

“I go above and beyond what most people do in terms of recovery”

a higher quantity, it’s helped me to max out during those high-intensity workouts that last between 10 and 15 minutes.” Carbs such as berries and bananas, potatoes, basmati rice, organic Canadian maple syrup and raw honey now comprise 60 per cent of his total kilojoules – or about 400g daily. But he’s most excited about his foray into intermittent fasting. For now, his eating window is about 10 hours. He’d like to extend that to drill deeper into the process of autophagy, where your energy-starved body starts gobbling up damaged cells. But right now, while he’s training 3-6 hours a day, he believes he needs a longer eating window to cram in the 16,700kJ he consumes daily. “I feel like fasting’s a natural process for our bodies to go through,” says Newbury. “I feel like it’s going to invigorate my mitochondria to work better and it’s going to activate all the things I need – better hormonal production, better sleep, a longer period dedicated to repair rather than digestion.” It’s certainly delivered more tangible NEWBURY HAS HONED BOTH HIS SNATCH, LEFT, AND PRE-TOURNAMENT MENTAL ROUTINE.

benefits: the shedding of about 3kg of surplus tissue that has left an 87kg Newbury “moving better in the pool, running and riding better while lifting heavier”. Recent testing put his body fat at an abs-popping 7.8 per cent. As he matures as both athlete and man, Newbury is looking beyond his next competition to his prospects for a long life. Presently, for example, he feels he needs 2-3 servings of meat per day for strength and repair. But when he finally hangs up his knee sleeves, he’ll cut that back to one serve per week, he says – maybe even one a fortnight. And while his current training load is massive, only 10 per cent of it involves redlined intensity. “I want to play the smart game,” he says. “For me, longevity is key. If I wanted to be smarter about things and live to 110 years old, I wouldn’t be doing the amount of training I currently do. But in saying that, I go above and beyond what most people do in terms of recovery. I’ll push myself hard when I need to, but it won’t be at a cost to how I can operate when I’m 50.”

ELITE POWER Do 5 rounds of this E2MOM, go-to Newbury circuit. Advanced trainers only; 8 reps per move 1

POWER SNATCH Swot up technically before launching into this Olympic lift, which hits every muscle group.

CHEST-TO-BAR Use kipping to add serious oomph to your pull-up, raising your chest to bar level.

POWER CLEAN Bring a bar from floor to chest, going no deeper than a quartersquat. Stand up.

TOES TO BAR As in move 2, employ a kipping motion – this time to raise your feet to touch the bar.

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E W !

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TURN YOUR TRAINING UPSIDE DOWN

HEADED FOR GLORY Work through moves 1, 2 and 3 over a month before trying move 4. In time, aim for 3x10 of the target exercise. Gun! 1

(a)

BOX PUSH-UP Place your knees on a box and your hands on the floor beneath you (a). Hinge at the elbows and lower your upper body under control towards the floor. Push back up (b).

(b)

WALL WALK-UP Get into a push-up position, feet against a wall. Brace your core and walk up the wall – carefully (a). Keep going until you’re at or near vertical, back straight (b).

(a)

(b)

KICK-UP INTO HANDSTAND HOLD

TURN YOUR TRAINING UPSIDE DOWN

Assume a sprinter’s start position (a). Use leg and glute power to kick up into a handstand, feet against a wall (b). Now raise the stakes! Hinge your elbows to lower your head to the floor, simultaneously bending your knees (c). Kick out to return to vertical (d).

Splice the handstand push-up into your workouts and get a whole new perspective on what fitness looks like DANIEL WILLIAMS

JASON LEE

NO ONE’S arguing the classic military press is suddenly out of fashion. Same deal for the lateral raise, upright row and reverse fly. But how does a radical change-up sound? A move bordering on a party trick that not only hits all three heads of your shoulders for big and balanced gains, but has the potential to deliver numerous other benefits besides? If you’re nodding vigorously then you’re ready to attempt the handstand push-up – “the hardest functional movement you’ll complete,” says MH fitness director Todd Liubinskas. While it’s a proven shortcut

to superhero delts, the handstand push-up is more than just a shirt-stretcher. “By forcing you into an unfamiliar, precarious, upside-down position, it’s demanding your body respond by turning on your back, butt and abs,” says Liubinskas. He’s not wrong: if it’s been a while since your last high-school gym class, the sensation of being suddenly upside down could send you into a state of mild alarm. Hang in there. (Or, better still, follow the progressions in “Headed For Glory”, right.) Upside-down training will rapidly improve your proprioception, or your sense

of where your limbs are in time and space – a key attribute not just for acrobats but for any guy aiming for total fitness. “Something else I like about the handstand push-up is that it reveals inefficencies or imbalances in your musculature, like tight shoulders,” says Liubinskas. If some part of the movement feels anatomically impossible, you may want to book a session with a physio. “One very important tip: keep your spine neutral through the move,” adds Liubinskas. “Prolonged hyperextension could really hurt your back.”

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

HANDSTAND PUSH-UP The time has come! Kick into a handstand (a). Now bend at the elbows to lower yourself to the floor (b). Keeping your legs straight this time, drive back up.

(b)

(a)

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THE POWER PLAN FOR LIFELONG FITNESS Hit pause on ageing with two workouts that will build muscle mass and enhance your stamina, whatever your stage of life. Your age is no longer an excuse for half-arsed training. Execute our plan and then stand by y to unveil your y sharpest-ever physique y e

LASTING STRENGTH All aspects of fitness – speed, flexibility, mobility, endurance – require a base of strength. But strength, if not maintained, wastes away as you grow older, causing problems all along the way. This workout from PT Luke Worthington recruits the four fundamental movements – squat, hinge, push and pull. Perform it at least once a fortnight to ensure you get stronger for every candle on the cake.

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1|| FRONT SQUAT

2|| DEADLIFT

(4 sets of 6 reps)

(4 sets of 5 reps)

Start your session with a squat variation that builds strength in your legs and positions the weight to fire up your abs. With a barbell resting on the front of your shoulders, your palms up and fingers underneath (A), drop your hips back to sink into a squat (B). When you are as low as possible, hold for a second, then drive up. Rest for 90 seconds between sets on all moves.

Switch to another compound exercise to develop your posterior chain – the base for all athletic movement. With your back straight, bend down to hold the barbell in a shoulder-width, overhand grip (A). Tense your back and think about driving your hips towards the bar as you stand, lifting the weight in front of your thighs (B). Reverse the movement back down.

WORDS: MICHAEL JENNINGS; PHOTOGRAPHY: PHILIP HAYNE ES

2 2a

THE POWER PLAN FOR LIFELONG FITNESS

THE SPEC MUSCLES TARGETED

WORKOUT

45 MIN

RESULTS FOR

LIFE LEVEL

ALL

4b b

3|| HALF-KNEELING LANDMINE PRESS

RM K’BELL ROW 4|| ONE-AR ’B O (3 sets of 10 reps per arm) )

(3 sets of 8 reps per arm) Undo muscle imbalances by working one side of your body at a time. With a barbell in a landmine attachment, halfkneel with one knee on the floor and the other leg bent in front. Hold the barbell in the opposite hand to your front leg (A). Keep your elbow under your wrist as you press the bar forward and up (B). Lower under control.

Go from pre i g to pulling i g essing muscle acro cross ross s you y r yo and build m entire back k. Wi ith th on one ne hand hand and knee on h, n the he be he bench, bench ,h hol old ol old d a kettlebel e t to th ll next the bench with your other hand, your arm ex xtended below your shoulder (A) A). Form a solid base with y g out your back leg to the side. e Row the weight towards your waist, not your shoulder (B). Slowly lower the dumbbell.

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2 2a

1b b

SUSTAINING STAMINA The idea that your fitness spirals inexorably downward the older you get is flawed: you can improve it incrementally your whole life. This circuit from trainer Callum Nicholls uses conventional cardio kit, your bodyweight and a pair of dumbbells to build functional endurance as you increase the intensity each round. Perform this session at least once every two weeks to ensure that your stamina is in it for the long run.

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S 1|| ROW 5 ROUNDS

2| 2 |THRUSTERS T S S 5 ROUNDS O S

d) (Going up by 100m every round)

(G i up by b 5 reps each h round) d) (Going

Rowing will raise your red blood cell count, feeding more oxygen to your muscles. With your knees bent and arms straight (A), drive your legs away. Keep your arms straight until your legs are fully extended, then pull the handle towards your chest (B). Beginners start at 100m; intermediates at 200m; advanced at 300m. Increase by 100m each round.

This compound move will send your metabolism soaring. Hold a dumbbell in each hand at the top of your shoulders and squat down (A). When you reach the bottom, drive up and lift the dumbbells simultaneously, so you finish standing with your arms extended (B). Start with five reps, using a weight with which you can do 25 reps in your final round.

THE POWER PLAN FOR LIFELONG FITNESS

THE SPEC MUSCLES TARGETED

WORKOUT

30 MIN

RESULTS FOR

3b b

LIFE LEVEL

ALL

3a 3

3 3|| BURPEES 5 ROUNDS,

4|| RUN 5 ROUNDS,

(G (Going up by 5 reps each round)

(Going up by 100m every round)

This bodyweight staple boosts your VO2 max. Squat and place your palms on the floor in front of your feet. Jump your legs back and bring your chest down to the floor (A). Bring your feet back in and jump up in the air, touching your hands together overhead (B). Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s one rep. Do five reps in round one, then increase by five reps in each round that follows.

Complete the t i i with i circuit a spiking stamina-s i i g shock. Beginners s should start at 100m, inte i ermediates at 200m and advan nced at 300m, increasin ng the distance by 100m in ea p ach round. Keep your shoulders down and elbows in and drive i y your knees hig gh (A) A). A). ) Ta Tak ake ke a breather wh whe hen you com omple plete pl ple te your dista an nce (B), (B) then head to the row wer er r fo for round two. for

4a a

August g 2019 123 23

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UNWRAP IN CASE OF EMERGENCY

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710

When afternoon hunger strikes, satisfy your

What you’ll need 1 2

KILOJOULES

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4 5 6 7

19 G CARBS GO ONE BETA

20g per bar Oats are one of the richest sources of cholesterolimproving beta-glucans. Paired with the equally ﬁbrous chia seeds, you’ll enhance your heart health in just a couple of bites.

11G

PROTEIN

Oats, 100g Amazonia RawFIT protein, Rich Dark Chocolate flavour, 50g Dark chocolate chips, 25g Chia seeds, 15g Banana, 100g, mashed Peanut butter, 25g Orange juice, 40ml

Method STEP 1 This meal prep couldn’t be easier. Throw all of your ingredients into a large bowl. Feel free to mash up your banana first to make mixing easier. STEP 2 Thoroughly combine the components. You should aim for a “solid” consistency. If needed, add a splash of extra juice to soften the mixture, or scatter in more oats to firm it up. STEP 3 Separate your mixture into five and mould into rectangles. Wrap each in cling wrap, twisting the ends to keep them tight. Set in the fridge. Grab one before leaving the house – you’ll need it at some stage.

BUTTER UP

5g per bar Gram for gram, peanuts are even higher in potassium than bananas. These bars have both. They’ll top up electrolytes lost during training, plus reduce lactic acid for faster recovery.

WORDS: MICHAEL JENNINGS; PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHAEL HEDGE

HAPPY JUICE

8ml per bar The orange juice that binds your mixture is a godsend post-workout. It’s bursting with the antioxidant vitamin C, which, along with the dark chocolate, cuts inﬂammation and ﬁghts free-radical damage. Opt for freshly squeezed.

A SCOOP YOU CAN TRUST 10g per bar Amazonia RawFIT protein is a premium plant-based formula designed to support muscle growth and accelerated recovery. The protein comes from peas and brown rice rather than cows. Choose the chocolate ﬂavour and you’ll enjoy an even tastier bar.

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HUMMER DRAGS AND CINDER-BLOCK WORK HAVE HELPED CANNON PACK ON FOUR KGS IN THE PAST SIX MONTHS.

THE WORLD’S FITTEST EMCEE Nick Cannon’s early-morning workout is as wild as his career

The only thing in front of him is a pile of cinder blocks, an empty parking lot and a onemetre-high cinder-block wall. And for some reason, this has Nick Cannon grinning. He grabs a pair of 15-kilogram concrete slabs, hoists them onto his shoulders, and starts lunging toward the wall. Once there, he stacks the blocks on the wall, then trudges back toward the pile. “This,” he says, “is great.” The metaphor can’t go unacknowledged – and it was Cannon’s idea. To spice up his workouts, he bought more than 100 cinder blocks and made a small wall out of them in the parking lot at his Ncredible Studios office in Los Angeles. Every few days, he breaks it down, unstacking the blocks and rebuilding the wall in a new spot 10 metres away. “It’s the mental side of training,” Cannon says. “You’re breaking a wall

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down, and building it up.” And it’s only one of many unorthodox moves that the 38-year-old host and producer of Fox’s sleeper hit The Masked Singer packs into his workout on this rain-splattered morning at the gym just outside his studio. This isn’t a normal workout. But by Cannon’s rationale, he’s spent his whole career working hard in Hollywood, so why not do it in the gym? It’s something he learned from Will Smith

when he was the opening act for Smith’s concerts as a teenager. “Will Smith told me, ‘Even if you’re not the most talented person in the room, you still need to outwork the most talented person in the room,’ ” he says. Cannon’s training reminds him of the effort he needs at the office – as well as what he’s capable of. Before his 90-minute grind is done, he’ll smack a tyre with an 8kg sledgehammer, do sets of upside-down pull-ups, and drag his 3000kg Hummer across the parking lot. “You pull that truck,” he says, “and you feel like you could move a mountain. I feel like a new human after a workout.” Cannon’s dedication to his health started when

he was hospitalised while vacationing in Aspen in 2012. He was later diagnosed with lupus, an incurable autoimmune condition. That began a year of meds, chemotherapy and a diet free of meat and processed foods. When he recovered, Cannon adopted the crack-of-dawn body blast. “I’m doing this to stay alive,” he says. Working on his wall centres him. “It’s a meditation,” says his trainer Arron Sain. It can be monotonous, but it’s uncomplicated – a perfect foil to hosting The Masked Singer, recording and collaborating with artists under the title Ncredible Gang, and leading conversation on his

THE WORLD’S FITTEST EMCEE

BETWEEN POUNDING TYRES AND NAILING HANDSTANDS, CANNON HAS THE FITNESS CAPER COVERED.

BREAK OF BRAWN Bodyweight ab workouts take you only so far. That’s why Cannon chisels his core with weight-room moves. He ends most workouts with this ab crusher from trainer Arron Sain. “Weighted ab exercises provide resistance and aid in muscle growth,” says Sain. 1

CABLE CRUNCH

TOTALLY HATES

REALLY LOVES

Squats

Strongman Moves “Anything to get core strength I love. We do a lot of stuff with tyres and wheelbarrows”

“Everybody’s always making fun of my legs. But I hate doing squats”

“Pull that truck . . . you feel like you could move a mountain. I feel like a new human after a workout” WORDS: ANDREW HEFFERNAN; PHOTOGRAPHY: IAN MADDOX

Fix a rope attachment to a shoulder-height cable column. Kneel in front of it, grasping the rope so its handles are near your ears, torso still upright. Pull your elbows to your knees. Reverse the move. That’s 1 rep. Do 4 sets of 25. Rest 30 seconds between sets.

NICK’S PLAYLIST #

Title

Artist

“NoBody Else”

Ncredible Gang

“Solid”

The Black Squad

“Diddy Dum Dum”

Hitman Holla

“Lifestyles of the Justina Valentine Sick and Brainless”

“Short Summer”

Joe Budden

“Hit ’Em Up”

2Pac

“Victory”

Notorious B. I. G.

YouTube show about college, Cannon’s Class. He’s constantly running between projects on next to no sleep. “I don’t like to live by man’s clock,” he says. Unless the clock says 5am, precisely when his daily workout begins. “Just knowing I’m out here getting it in, that makes me feel like I’m doing more than most,” he says. Then he hoists another block.

FEED THE FURNACE Cannon has an unusual relationship with food. “I eat during workouts,” he says. “Since I don’t like to eat, it kind of makes it an exercise, because otherwise, like sitting down and eating, I never finish my food. I eat a lot of salmon, broccoli and

D-BELL BENCH V-UP

rice.” That said, he’s never managed to shake his sweet tooth. The man loves lollies – or candy as he calls it. “I couldn’t have it when I was a kid, so now that I’m an adult, I like to have it around. I have candy stores in my house. I’m building a candy store downstairs. It’s more like to have it, like an arcade.” When it comes to liquid, Cannon could hardly keep things simpler. “Water saved my life,” he says. “It’s the fuel that keeps you going. Just like two gallons [7.5 litres] a day. There’s a reason they call it the fountain of youth and not the dessert of youth. It’s definitely water that’s the key to life.” It’s a sentiment that would have pleased his workout hero, Bruce Lee. Two ferocious trainers.

Sit on a bench with your legs hanging off one side and your torso off the other, a light dumbbell on the floor wedged between your feet. Hold the edges of the bench and lean back. Lift the dumbbell and pull your knees to your chest. Reverse the move. That’s 1 rep. Do 4 sets of 25. 3

RAINBOW LEG RAISE Hang from a chin-up bar, legs straight. Raise your feet in a wide arc to the right, then upward in front of your torso. Lower them in a wide arc to the left; return to the start. That’s 1 rep. Do 4x12, alternating directions on each rep.

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T H E U LT I M AT E L I V E E X P E R I E N C E

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