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ANTONIO BROWN J. J. WATT // RUSSELL WILSON // DEVONTA FREEMAN

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SLEEP BETTER LIVE BETTER 24 Ways to Optimize Your ZZZZZs

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S EXT A L E RT ! YOUR PHONE WANTS TO HAVE A THREESOME

FLU SHOT? Read this first. OCTOBER 2018 MensHealth.com

10.2018

“ALL I CARE ABOUT IS HAVING A GOOD PRACTICE TOMORROW. THAT’S IT.” —J. J. WATT, p. 81

FEATURES 81 NFL STRONG Our blowout special, featuring training, recovery, and mental advice from the game’s biggest stars. BY AUSTIN MURPHY AND THE MH EDITORS

96 TOFU QUEST! Great for you. But great tasting? A Men’s Health investigation. BY TODD KLIMAN

104 THE NEW WAR ON FLU Why don’t flu shots work, and why do we even bother with them? BY JEANNE LENZER

110 FITNESS TO SERVE How much does it matter to voters if a candidate actually, physically, runs? BY MATTHEW KASSEL

112 THE ART OF THE BLUFF How to bend, twist, and massage the truth and still maintain some integrity. BY TOM WARD On the cover: J. J. Watt, Antonio Brown, Devonta Freeman, and Russell Wilson photographed by Ture Lillegraven exclusively for Men’s Health. Grooming: Tasha Brown/Exclusive Artists using Baxter of California (Freeman, Brown, and Wilson), grooming: Victoria Callaway/Zenobia Agency (Watt), hair styling: Mark Jacob Baysinger/On the Mark (Wilson), prop styling: Faethgruppe.

PHOTOGRAPH BY TURE LILLEGRAVEN

MEN’S HEALTH

/ October 2018

LIFE A suit you can bike, board, or ball in. (Seriously.) 1. Jacket and trousers by Michael Kors. 2. Shirt by Express. 3. Sneakers by Z Zegna. 4. Backpack by Banana Republic. 5. Water bottle by Takeya. 6. Premium fixed-gear bike: Cleveland by Pure Cycles.

37 Put together a

chef-approved tailgate.

44 An early-morning workout with a video-game mogul.

46 Ask Her Anything: The couple that works out together stays together.

48 The best way to talk to a barber.

51 Style: How to put some gym-clothes performance in your workwear.

57 Bear Grylls tells the story of his (many) injuries.

58 Cool Dad: Novelist

Gary Shteyngart learns tech lessons from his four-year-old son.

60 Twelve secrets to living longer— and better.

MIND 63 The Men’s Health

68 #MeToo, one year later: A special survey with Women’s Health. 72 Your new sex advisor is your phone.

74 How to find help

MH WORLD 9 Mr. Britney Spears takes on MensHealth .com; a BBQ chef joins the Belly Off! Club; plus the movies, video games, and running shoes we’re obsessed with.

BODY 17 How training with

one arm makes the whole body stronger.

20 Trend on Trial: Vicious yoga.

22 Four weeks to killer abs: Our brand-new plan.

and fight depression.

24 A master class in rowing for your best time.

26 Lose your gut, save your life.

32 Is your workout messing with your blood test?

76 When the pressure’s on: How not to choke.

+ 120 Above Average Guy: Risk

34 Cauliflower, made (actually) delicious.

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

PHOTOGRAPH BY ERIK TANNER

Styling: Ted Staford, tailoring: Antonio Marquez, grooming: Lisa-Raquel/See Management

Sleep Awards: The bed, the wearables, the naps.

BORN IN THE WOODS. RAISED IN THE CITY.

THE NEW 1978 FLYROAM™ HIKER Available at Timberland and Nordstrom

Timberland,

Editor’s Note

THE FOUR-COVER FORMATION UYS: WE HAVE A LOT TO COVER.

This month, our crack circulation team (led by the indomitable Jim Miller) targeted our newsstand deliveries so that each geographic region would receive copies of Men’s Health featuring their local (or localish) favorite on the cover. Here’s who went where:

Where to begin? Oh, how about a cultural juggernaut whose social and economic impact is almost too great to comprehend and whose beauty and brutality bring up so many conlicting emotions, we’re not even sure how to watch it? Fun! For our covers, we chose four of the 1,696 players who make the NFL the most watched sports league— the most watched anything—on TV right now. Last season, NBC’s Sunday Night Football was the highest-rated show of 2017. In fact, three quarters of the 50 most watched broadcasts in all of 2017 were NFL games, a 32 percent increase on 2016. For as much as the sport has become a political and cultural, er, football, millions of us ANTONIO BROWN RUSSELL WILSON D E VO N TA F R E E M A N J . J . W A T T still tune in for a simple reason: the staggering Wide receiver, Quarterback, Running back, Defensive end, Pittsburgh Steelers Seattle Seahawks Atlanta Falcons Houston Texans physical and mental strength—the jump-offThe NFL’s finest In leading Seattle Local hero Freeman Texans know him as the-couch, rewind-the-DVR, can-you-believewideout got his start to two Super Bowl plays for the Falcons, an NFL star. Big 10 that athleticism—of the players. In our 15-page at Central Michigan berths, he’s carved a was born in Georgia, country knows him as feature, starting on page 81, we find out how before dominating the name for himself all and starred at Florida one of the University Antonio Brown, J. J. Watt, Devonta Freeman, AFC North division. over the West Coast. State. of Wisconsin’s finest. Russell Wilson, and others develop that muscle and focus—and how the rest of us can, too. writing) to talk about parenting in the age of social-media addicThen there’s fatherhood. This month marks the second tion. It’s a great read for even the non-dads out there. installment of our new column called Cool Dad. (We’re into Finally, there’s our collaboration with Women’s Health soft opens.) Anyone who’s spent some time around a group of and Survey Monkey on what men and women have learned fathers—or even just watched Phil Dunphy klutz it up on Modern about communication, consent, and assault in the year since Family—can spot a “cool dad” from a mile away: He’s the one who the Harvey Weinstein revelations lit the #MeToo fuse. There tries waaaaaay too hard to be down with his kids. We joke about are so many conversations that men and women need to have him, but the thing is that a lot of dads today want to have fun with (and keep having), and along with Liz Plosser, Abigail Cufey, their kids, and we want to know about the shows and songs they’re Tracy Middleton, Kristin Canning, and the rest of the WH staf, streaming, and we want to be our full, authentic selves around we hope our survey’s indings will lead you to ask yourself, and them instead of the mysteries that so many of our fathers were to others, what you’ve learned this past year. The conversation is us. A lot of us want to be cool dads, too. Hence: the Cool Dad column, and in each issue, a diferent writer will explore the opportunities and challenges of modern fatherhood. This month, one of my favorite living writers, Gary Shteyngart, takes a break from his Twitter feed (and, you know, future-best-selling-novel

Richard Dorment EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Helene F. Rubinstein Executive Managing Editor Jamie Prokell Creative Director EDITORIAL Ben Court Deputy Editor Ross McCammon Special Projects Editor Paul Kita Senior Editor Ebenezer Samuel Fitness Director Janna Ojeda Assistant Managing Editor Matt Goulet Senior Associate Editor Danielle Nussbaum Contributing Editor, Entertainment Joshua St. Clair Editorial Assistant Mary Ann Vaccarello Editorial Business Coordinator ART Haley Kluge Designer PHOTOGRAPHY Alix Campbell Chief Photography Director, Hearst Magazines Jeanne Graves Director of Photography Sally Berman Deputy Director of Photography Sinikiwe Dhliwayo Photo Production Coordinator FASHION Ted Stafford Fashion Director COPY John Kenney Managing Copy Editor Alisa Cohen Barney Senior Copy Editor Connor Sears, David Fairhurst Assistant Copy Editors RESEARCH Robert Scheffler Research Director Jennifer Messimer Research Chief Kevin McDonnell Senior Associate Research Editor Alex Gardner Researcher Nick Pachelli Assistant Research Editor DIGITAL Sean Evans Digital Director EJ Dickson Deputy Editor Jordyn Taylor News Editor Louis Baragona Style, Grooming, and Gear Editor Brett Williams Associate Fitness Editor Melissa Matthews Health and Nutrition Writer Eric Rosati Designer Ashleigh Morley Branded Content Editor Mark Emery Senior Social Media Editor Ryan Bird Video Producer Connor Reid Video Producer Angela Kim Executive Director, Business Development and Global Licensing Natanya van Heerden International Editorial & Content Analyst HEARST MEN’S FASHION GROUP Nick Sullivan Fashion Director Matthew Marden Style Director Michael Stefanov Market Editor Alfonso Fernandez Navas Fashion Assistant HEARST PHOTOGRAPHY GROUP Darrick Harris, James Morris, Justin O’Neill Directors Cary Georges, Fiona Lennon Deputy Directors Lauren Hechel Senior Editor Lauren Brown Editor Sarah Eckinger, Cori Jayne Howarth, Larisa Kline, Ignacio Murillo Associate Editors Amy Cooper Assistant

Ronan Gardiner

PUBLISHED BY HEARST COMMUNICATIONS, INC. Steven R. Swartz President & Chief Executive Officer William R. Hearst III Chairman Frank A. Bennack, Jr. Executive Vice Chairman Catherine A. Bostron Secretary Carlton Charles Treasurer HEARST MAGAZINES DIVISION Troy Young President Michael Clinton President, Marketing and Publishing Director Kate Lewis Chief Content Officer Debi Chirichella Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer David Carey Hearst Magazines Chairman Gilbert C. Maurer, Mark F. Miller Publishing Consultants HEARST MAGAZINES INTERNATIONAL Simon Horne SVP/Managing Director Asia Pacific & Russia Richard Bean Director of International Licensing and Business Development Kim St. Clair Bodden SVP/Editorial & Brand Director Chloe O’Brien Deputy Brands Director Shelley Meeks Executive Director, Content Services Men’s Health is a registered trademark of Hearst Magazines, Inc. HOW TO REACH US: Customer Service: To change your address, pay a bill, renew your subscription, and more, go online to menshealth.com/customer-service, email HLHcustserv@rodale.com, call (800) 666-2303, or write Men’s Health Customer Service, P.O. Box 3064, Harlan, IA 51593-0128. Editorial offices: 400 South 10th Street, Emmaus, PA 18098; Feedback: MHLetters@rodale.com; Licensing & Reprints: Contact Wyndell Hamilton, Wright’s Media, (281) 419-5725, ext. 152, whamilton@ wrightsmedia.com. Absolute satisfaction guaranteed. Scent-free subscription available on request. From time to time we make our subscriber list available to companies that sell goods and services by mail that we believe would interest our readers. If you would rather not receive such mailings by postal mail, please send your current mailing label or exact copy to: Men’s Health, Mail Preference Center, P.O. Box 3064, Harlan, IA 51593-0128. Men’s Health carries the latest health, fitness, and nutrition reporting to provide you with useful information about your health. But every body is different; individual diagnoses and treatments can come only from a health care practitioner. Printed in USA.

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

Photographs by TURE LILLEGRAVEN

VICE PRESIDENT/PUBLISHING DIRECTOR ADVERTISING SALES NEW YORK (212) 649-2000 Caryn Kesler Executive Director, Luxury Goods John Wattiker Executive Director, Fashion & Retail Doug Zimmerman Senior Grooming Director Joe Pennacchio Eastern Automotive Sales Director Sara Schiano Integrated Account Director Gil Tiamsic Advertising Sales Director John Cipolla Integrated Account Manager, Southeast Brad Gettelfinger Sales Manager, Hearst Direct Media CHICAGO (312) 964-4900 Autumn Jenks Midwest Sales Director Emily McCoy Midwest Sales Manager LOS ANGELES (310) 664-2801 Patti Lange Western Ad Director Anne Rethmeyer Group Sales Director, Auto SAN FRANCISCO (628) 208-0648 Andrew Kramer Kramer Media DETROIT (248)-614-6120 Marisa Stutz Detroit Automotive Director Samantha Irwin General Manager, Hearst Men’s Group Karen Ferber Business Manager Paul Baumeister Research Director Mike Ruemmler Senior Production Account Manager Cindy Wenrich Production Account Specialist Madeline Bednar, Savannah Bigelow, Zoe Fritz, Shelby Iannello, Kayla Savage, Toni Starrs Sales Assistants MARKETING SERVICES Cameron Connors Executive Director, Head of Brand Strategy & Marketing Stephanie Block Associate Integrated Marketing Director Jackie Lebowitz Integrated Marketing Manager Alison Brown Special Events Director Jiri Seger Creative Director, Marketing PUBLIC RELATIONS Nathan Christopher Public Relations Executive Director Kelsey Leiter Public Relations Manager

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Ascent. Well-equipped at $31,995.** Subaru is a registered trademark. *Maximum towing capacity varies by trim level. Trailer brakes may be needed. See your retailer for details. †EPA-estimated highway fuel economy for 2019 Subaru Ascent and Ascent Premium models with standard equipment. 2019 Subaru Ascent Touring shown is rated at 26 mpg highway. Actual mileage may vary. **MSRP excludes destination and delivery charges, tax, title, and registration fees. Retailer sets actual price. Certain equipment may be required in specific states, which can modify your MSRP. See your retailer for details. 2019 Subaru Ascent Touring shown has an MSRP of $44,695. Vehicle shown with accessory equipment.

World

B E H I N D T H E S C E N E S W I T H T H E E X P E RT S , A DV I S O R S , A N D R E A D E R S W H O B R I N G M E N’S H E A LT H T O L I F E .

Chris Clinton (Asghari), Connor Reid (MH.com video stills), Bauer Griffin (Asghari and Spears)

Asghari’s full-body workout includes everything from straight curls to exercises like a renegade row and an L-sit using elevated handles. Tough to argue with results like that.

FIT ME BABY, ONE MORE TIME ONE OF the most popular Part of the couple’s workout circuit features this plankleg-kick/floor-press mash-up that has Asghari literally lifting Spears while on his back. Show-ofs.

stories on MensHealth.com this summer (clicked on more than 72,000 times) was Eileen Reslen’s proile of Sam Asghari. Six months of two-hour early gym days and Asghari went from a 290-pound regular guy to a 190-pound model. The major diet-and-workout overhaul also landed him a new girlfriend: one Britney Spears. Find the story at MensHealth.com.

MEN’S HEALTH

/ October 2018

World 4 NFL Superstars, 2 Days How our October cover almost didn’t happen. IF WE ALL rooted for the same team, things would be

simple: one guy, one team, one Men’s Health cover. But we don’t. Which meant tasking director of photography Jeanne Graves with assembling four diferent cover shoots, making her this issue’s all-pro. “We wanted to shoot around the ESPYs and photograph these guys when they were all together in L.A.,” she says. “Not so easy. J.J. would be in Texas. And Devonta gave us a conirmation on the cover but no word on where or when three days before the shoot. We were hopping early lights between L. A. and Houston.”

THE FIRST IN-PRINT MEETING OF THE MEN’S HEALTH RUNNING CLUB Four editors are independently breaking in a new pair of running shoes this month. Their recommendations:

Zoom Pegasus Turbo BEN COURT, Deputy Editor: “Nike’s new ‘unicorn’ foam is light and responsive. Just right. More like Goldilocks foam.”

MEET THE MEN’S HEALTH ADVISORY PANEL We’d be nothing without our panel of experts. These are the doctors, scientists, and trainers who keep us accurate and updated on the latest in health and fitness. BRAIN HEALTH:

GASTROENTEROLOGY:

SLEEP MEDICINE:

P. Murali Doraiswamy, M.D. David Liebeskind, M.D.

Mark Welton, M.D.

W. Christopher Winter, M.D.

MENTAL HEALTH:

SPORTS MEDICINE:

CARDIOLOGY:

Thomas Joiner, Ph.D. William Pollack, Ph.D.

Bill Hartman, P.T., C.S.C.S. Nicholas DiNubile, M.D. Jordan Metzl, M.D.

DENTISTRY:

Mark Wolff, D.D.S., Ph.D. DERMATOLOGY:

NUTRITION:

Alan Aragon, M.S. Jeffrey Blumberg, Ph.D., F.A.C.N., F.A.S.N., C.N.S. Mike Roussell, Ph.D.

Adnan Nasir, M.D., Ph.D.

OPHTHALMOLOGY:

EMERGENCY MEDICINE:

Kimberly Cockerham, M.D., F.A.C.S.

Travis Stork, M.D. ENDOCRINOLOGY:

Sandeep Dhindsa, M.D. EXERCISE SCIENCE:

Alexander Koch, Ph.D., C.S.C.S. Mark Peterson, Ph.D., C.S.C.S.*D FAMILY MEDICINE:

Ted Epperly, M.D.

OTOLARYNGOLOGY*:

Jeremiah Alt, M.D., Ph.D., F.A.C.S. PAIN MEDICINE:

Paul Christo, M.D., M.B.A. SEX & RELATIONSHIPS:

Debby Herbenick, Ph.D., M.P.H. Justin Lehmiller, Ph.D.

TRAINING:

Mike Boyle, M.Ed., A.T.C. Ben Bruno Alwyn Cosgrove, C.S.C.S.*D David Jack UROLOGY:

Elizabeth Kavaler, M.D. Larry Lipshultz, M.D. Judd Moul, M.D., F.A.C.S.

JOSHUA ST. CLAIR, Editorial Assistant: “They’re minimal trail shoes—that means I can go sans socks, which I hate.”

WEIGHT LOSS:

*OTOLARYNGOLOGY is the medical term for the ear, nose, and throat (ENT) specialty.

W. Christopher Winter, M.D., D-ABSM, D-ABIM (sleep), D-ABPN (neurology), F-AASM, and owner, Charlottesville Neurology and Sleep Medicine THERE’S NEW EVIDENCE that napping has more power to affect our health positively than we thought. Studies show that regular napping in individuals who don’t get enough sleep allows them to live as long as disciplined sleepers. A recent study in The Journal of Biological and Medical Rhythm Research found that napping can effectively counterbalance sleep loss in soccer players.

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

New Balance Minimus 10v1 Trail

David Katz, M.D., M.P.H., FACPM, F.A.C.P. Jeff Volek, Ph.D., R.D.

AND THE GOOD NEWS THEY’RE DELIVERING

BRETT WILLIAMS, Digital Fitness Editor: “I’m training for the Philly half marathon in Brooks’ AmpDNA technology.”

What All Those Letters in His Titles Mean M.D. = Medical Doctor D-ABSM = Diplomate (it means he’s certified as a specialist by the board) of the American Board of Sleep Medicine D-ABIM = Diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine D-ABPN = Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology F-AASM = Fellow, American Academy of Sleep Medicine

Reebok Floatride Run Fast Pro EBENEZER SAMUEL, Fitness Director: “I’ll be running (and sprinting, because everyone forgets how valuable that is) to see just how fast they are.”

Plus: Stryd Power Meter MARTY MUNSON, Health Director: “I love to train by data; I’m going to test if tracking by power will be a game changer for me.”

TURE LILLEGRAVEN (Brown), KYLE HILTON (illustration), courtesy Nike (runners)

John Elefteriades, M.D. Prediman Krishan Shah, M.D. Eric Topol, M.D.

Brooks Levitate 2

Strong on the outside. Safe on the inside. Every day, countless businesses and customers rely on boxes to do the heavy lifting. That’s because the engineering of corrugated boxes provides protective cushioning and rigidity to resist pressure from all directions. Don’t forget to recycle your boxes. They have more packages to protect. Learn more at howlifeunfolds.com/protect.

From the Makers of Paper and Packaging

World ASK MEN’S HEALTH

BELLY OFF! CLUB THE 210-POUND JOURNEY OF A BOSTON PITMASTER

You’ve got questions. We’ve got experts.

Can I actually predict if I’ll go bald?

THE SETBACK I always say that I fell into cooking because I fell in love with eating. My first job was as a dishwasher at a local hotel, but when the prep cook called in sick one day, I took over for him—and ended up taking his job. When I graduated from high school three years later, I weighed 350 pounds, but I put on 30 after starting at the Culinary Institute of America. During that time, I tried dieting—sometimes losing 50 to 60 pounds at a time— and even took ephedra before it was banned, but I always regained the weight.

THE WAKE-UP CALL After working for almost 20 years in the restaurant industry, I looked around and realized that I was proud of my career. But my weight was taking its toll on my confidence, and I found myself growing depressed. For comfort, I turned to food, and I ended up gorging on pasta and bread—which would cause me to become even more depressed. It was a vicious cycle that I couldn’t seem to break. In 2016, I reached an all-time high of 441 pounds, and I was so miserable that I decided to undergo gastric-sleeve surgery— something that I never thought I would be desperate enough to do.

THE FOOD Out went the starchy pastas and rice; in came lean cuts of chicken and sweet potatoes and quinoa. For breakfast, I’ll eat oatmeal or Greek yogurt. As a chef, I still have to taste food throughout the day, so I’ll limit myself to one spoonful. Now that I’ve had gastric-sleeve surgery, I don’t eat as much, but I’m still teaching myself not to grab a slice of bacon from a sheet pan. I’m learning to think before I eat. 12

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

DAN RAIA: STATS AGE: 34 LOCATION: Boston,

Massachusetts OCCUPATION: Chef at Sweet Cheeks BBQ BEFORE WEIGHT: 441 CURRENT WEIGHT: 230 THE FITNESS To make sure I didn’t have an excuse to skip the gym, I joined two: one across the street from my work and a 24-hour gym near my house. I’ll challenge myself on the elliptical by trying to burn 1,000 calories in a 65-minute session and switching up the resistance and elevation on the machine. I also do an hour of strength training and target the big muscle groups: legs twice a week, back and biceps one day, shoulders another day, and chest and triceps on the last day.

THE REWARD My confidence has skyrocketed. Don’t get me wrong, I still have to work hard to lose weight—but when you can see the numbers on the scale start to drop, you feel more motivated to keep going: to run longer, to lift heavier weights, to eat healthier. Even better: Now I have more energy to keep doing the job I love. I still love to cook. These days, I just eat a lot less of what I make.

B E L LY O F F ! B O N U S : Dan’s Honey-Garlic Brined Whole Chicken F E E DS 4

1. In a large stockpot, add 1 cup each kosher salt, honey, fish sauce, lemon, garlic, 10 twists of freshly ground black pepper, fresh thyme, and ½ gallon hot water. Stir well until the honey dissolves, and then add ½ gallon cold water. Add the chicken, and brine in the fridge overnight.

2. Remove the chicken from the oven, pat it dry with paper towels, and allow to air-dry, about 1 hour. Discard the brine.

3. Preheat your grill to medium heat or your oven to 350°F. In a large cast-iron skillet over medium heat, add canola oil. When the oil just begins to smoke, add the whole chicken, skin side down, pressing down with tongs to make sure the skin makes contact with the pan. Transfer the pan to the oven and roast until the skin is crispy, about 15 minutes. Flip the chicken and cook until a meat thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the breast and thigh reaches 160°F, 20 to 25 minutes.

4. Transfer the chicken to a cutting board and allow to rest 20 minutes before carving and serving.

That’s an unfortunate no. Sure, your ancestors play a big role—male-pattern baldness may be up to 80 percent genetic. But it’s also highly individual and hard to predict. The old “look at your mother’s father’s hair” idea is bunk, says Dhaval Bhanusali, M.D., a dermatologist and clinical instructor at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine in New York City. Here’s the real red lag: rapidly thinning hair in your 20s or 30s, he says. Men in this category can lose half their hair within two or three years. Try this: Take a few selies of your scalp and compare them to new shots three months later, suggests Dr. Bhanusali. See a diference? Check with a dermatologist to rule out medical conditions such as thyroid abnormalities, alopecia areata (an autoimmune disorder), and telogen eluvium (usually temporary hair loss triggered by stress). Also check your vitamin D and iron levels—if you’re low, a supplement may help stave of further loss. Once you rule those out, your options are preventive topicals minoxidil (Rogaine) or oral inasteride (Propecia).

Mike Diskin (Raia after)

—DAVE, Paterson, N.J.

CL E R MON T K . Y.

U. S .

THIS IS NOT YOUR PARTICIPATION TROPHY.

EVERY BIT EARNED

World THE REACTION

OCTOBER GAME PLAN What the Men’s Health staff is looking forward to this month.

BOOKS Five More Celebrities on How to Live Better Bear Grylls isn’t the only famous person with a new book offering sage advice (page 57). A few more we’re eagerly awaiting:

The Greatest Love Story Ever Told By Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally OCTOBER 2

Relationship advice from a beloved Hollywood couple.

Lose Well

Venom

By Chris Gethard OCTOBER 16

On becoming good at failing from a comedian and TV host who’s made a career of it.

Student Athlete

OCTOBER 5

OCTOBER 2

The coolest Spidey villain is finally coming to the big screen, and with the dark tone he deserves. Plus, we get to see Tom Hardy in his fourth recent masked role. We’ll leave the kids at home for this one.

In association with LeBron James, this HBO documentary follows athletes through the stages of their unpaid careers. Welcome to the exploitative world of youth sports.

VIDEO GAMES

First Man OCTOBER 12

Damien Chazelle (Whiplash, La La Land) brings Neil Armstrong to life as only he can: with jazz! Kidding. But the film does star Ryan Gosling as Armstrong. Houston, Oscar bait has landed.

Beautiful Boy

In tribute to the MensHealth.com story “Bald Men Are More Confident, Attractive, and Dominant Than Guys with Hair”

GuRu

WHERE TO FIND US: We’re on all your favorite platforms:

By RuPaul OCTOBER 23

Slightly new-agey thinking on creating the world you want, made accessible through drag queens.

Red Dead Redemption 2 (PlayStation 4, Xbox One) OCTOBER 26

It’s been eight years since we last roamed the Wild West and hunted bad guys. Now we get another shot at our own Westworld fantasies.

Instagram: @menshealthmag YouTube: /menshealthmag Twitter: @menshealthmag Facebook: /menshealth On the web: menshealth.com Pinterest: menshealthmag

OCTOBER 12

We’re anticipating another powerful performance from Timothée Chalamet (Call Me by Your Name), this time as a son battling addiction with the help of his father (Steve Carell). Based on the memoirs of a real father and son—expect a tearjerker.

Mamba Mentality By Kobe Bryant OCTOBER 23

Develop the mental acuity and competitive tactics that made Kobe, Kobe.

Follow, tweet, comment, like, respond, and tag us. You could be featured in MHWorld. And send us your feedback at MHletters@hearst.com. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.

GARY SHTEYNGART WANTS YOU TO READ HIS BOOK The author, master of the book blurb, and cool dad (page 58) shows us how to compliment someone’s work by complimenting his own. Men’s Health has asked me to blurb my new novel, Lake Success. As a promiscuous blurber 14

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

(I’ve blurbed more than 200 books so far), I jumped at the chance. Okay, here goes: “Gary Shteyngart’s new novel, Lake Success, has everything I’ve ever wanted in a novel. A failing hedge-fund guy under investigation by the SEC and FBI runs away from his beautiful and bril-

liant wife on a Greyhound bus in a madcap trip across the country as he tries to find his old college love and a meaningful life. Do the 0.1 percent get their comeuppance? Will our hero get a chance at redemption? Read Shteyngart’s new book and ind out!” —GARY SHTEYNGART, author of Lake Success

MOVIES

“We are your bouncers. We are your henchmen. We are your offensive linemen. We are your super-villains. We are your plumbers. We are your Silicon Valley CEOs. We are your police. We are your morally complex premium television antiheroes. We are . . . bald men.” —@joedonatelli

Hillshire farm® turkey is slow roasted for hours. And devoured in seconds.

At Hillshire Farm , right after we carve our deliciously seasoned turkey, we double seal every slice for freshness. Which leads to the best Turkey, Arugula & Tomato sandwich you’ve ever tasted. Visit HillshireFarm.com for more sandwich inspiration. ®

ALL THE ELECTROLYTES. ZERO SUGAR.

20 YOGA TH AT’LL CRUSH YOU 22 BUILD A BS—A N D MOR E 24 ROW YOU R FASTEST 500 26 BE AT YOU R BELLY BE AST

Body

GEEK TWEAKS

One Side Fits All Want to bulletproof your body and gain real strength? Join the unilateral-training revolution. BY EMILY ABBATE JAY T. MARYNIAK has gotten used to the

stares. They come whenever he does what looks like a plea for Instagram attention, grabbing a loaded barbell, lying on the floor, then standing and hoisting the barbell overhead with one arm. “It doesn’t bug me,” he says. That’s because Maryniak (pictured), a certified trainer (NASM-CPT, CES), knows what he’s doing. He’s venturing into the world of unilateral training.

SHORTS: Rhone SHOES: Reebok

PHOTOGRAPHS BY GIACOMO FORTUNATO

MEN’S HEALTH

/ October 2018

Body@

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

MAKING UNILATERAL MOVES Not sure where to start? Steal a few of these exercises from Maryniak and inject them into your workouts. Or do them all in order as a full-body workout, resting 60 seconds between sets and 90 seconds between exercises. 1. SINGLE-ARM FRONT RACK CARRY Stand holding a kettlebell in your right hand at your right shoulder. Keeping your chest tall and your torso as straight as possible, walk. Repeat with the kettlebell in your left hand at your left shoulder. YOUR GOAL: 20 steps forward and 20 steps backward (4 sets).

2. DEFICIT BULGARIAN SPLIT SQUAT Start with your legs shoulder-width apart, holding dumbbells or kettlebells at your sides. Place your left foot on a bench or step behind you and your right foot on a weight plate or small step. Bend your right knee, lowering your torso until your right thigh is parallel to the floor. Pause, then return to the start. YOUR GOAL: 4 sets of 8 per side.

LIGHT PLAN Unilateral training has plenty of benefits, but it’s placing new demands on your body. So check your ego at the door. “Since balance and stability are major components here, it’s important to start light and maintain excellent form throughout each rep,” Maryniak says.

Location: Please Space Brooklyn, grooming: Josee De Luc/Odiele/Honey Artists

Unilateral exercises engage primarily one side of your body to move resistance. That’s a changeup from classics such as pushups, deadlifts, and military presses. Those moves make you use your body symmetrically, muscles on both the left and right sides holding similar responsibilities. Unilateral-training concepts have been around since the late 1800s. Circus strongmen like Eugen Sandow performed the bent press, which had you lift a heavy weight to your right shoulder, bend to the left, and straighten your right arm with the weight overhead. It challenged more than sheer strength, demanding shoulder flexibility and stability, along with core strength. But that didn’t filter into mainstream workouts, in which bodybuilding moves have long ruled. In most gyms, you’ll see guys doing curls and bench presses, moves that don’t truly challenge your core—or mimic how your body moves in real life. When you lift a weight with just one side of your body, as you might when you hold your five-year-old in one arm, the abdominal and oblique muscles on your “nonworking” side work to stabilize your torso. The same thing happens during unilateral moves like the exercise that leads people to stare at Maryniak: a barbell Turkish getup. It’s comparable to a dumbbell curl with the weight only in your right arm (a simple example of a unilateral move). “We’re preparing our bodies for the unplanned events that take place in our daily lives,” he says. “And we’re building joint strength that bulletproofs the body.” That last part is why Maryniak fell in love with unilateral work three years ago. When he turned 30, he found himself battling minor injuries, many born from constantly lifting heavy. Unilateral moves challenged his stabilizing muscles so much that he often lifted lighter loads. Most weighted moves, from CrossFit exercises like the snatch to bodybuilding mainstays like the bench press, can be done unilaterally. The more unilateral work you do, says Jeff Cavaliere, C.S.C.S., M.S.P.T., the more athletic you’ll become. Most athletic actions, such as a sprint, don’t let your limbs operate symmetrically. Your body is “cross-wired,” says Cavaliere, left arm and right leg moving together. Training limbs individually hones those cross-wired mechanics. Master those and you’ll move better on the basketball court or soccer field—and maybe draw more attention at the gym, too.

3. SINGLE-ARM FLOOR PRESS Lie on your back, knees bent, feet flat on the floor, a dumbbell in your right hand, held directly over your shoulder. This is the start. Bend at the elbow and shoulder, lowering your upper arm to the floor, then straighten your arm. YOUR GOAL: 4 sets of 12 per side.

4. KNEELING BOTTOMS-UP PRESS Start kneeling on your right knee, left foot firmly on the floor. Tightly hold a kettlebell by its handle in your right hand, bell pointed overhead. Engage your core and straighten your right arm, pressing the weight overhead. Lower back to the start. YOUR GOAL: 4 sets of 8 per side.

5. QUADRUPED ROW Place your hands and knees on a bench, core tight. Straighten your right leg behind you, squeezing your glutes. Hold a light dumbbell (pro tip: Go lighter than you think) in your left hand, arm hanging naturally. Row the dumbbell toward your rib cage; keep your core tight so you don’t tip to either side. Return to the start. YOUR GOAL: 4 sets of 10 per side.

A NEW BAR Start your unilateral training with kettlebells and dumbbells. Then go to the next level.

If you’ve already done some unilateral training, take a page out of my book and integrate barbells (yes, seriously) and EZ-curl bars, building body control and strengthening your forearms and shoulders.

A longer bar shifts the load further away from your hand in both directions, leading the bar to teeter back and forth. You’ll need to slow your reps, piling up muscle-building time under tension and learning body

control. Not all exercises can be done this way (skip the bench press), but single-arm barbell rows, curls, and even shoulder presses are worth doing, once you have experience. —Ebenezer Samuel, C.S.C.S. MEN’S HEALTH

/ October 2018

Body@ The author in heat. Think twice before using heavy weights at Yoga Sculpt; even light dumbbells will tax your body.

TREND ON TRIAL

Welcome to Vicious Yoga In CorePower’s Yoga Sculpt class, you’ll do everything from vinyasa flow to strength to cardio with dumbbells to reassessing what the word “yoga” even means. BY BEN COURT THE CLASS starts like most yoga prac-

tices. You set an intention (a goal for the session) and establish your breathing (a four-count inhale, followed by an exhale through your nose). But it doesn’t look like most yoga practices. In front of each of the four men and 20 women at CorePower Yoga on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, there’s a set of 10- and 5-pound dumbbells, a rubber block, and towels. And a few seconds in, it stops sounding like a yoga practice. Instructor Adrianna 20

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

Perez yells, “Let’s get after it! Right here, right now!” Cue a Cardi B track. Uh, om? CorePower Yoga is a studio founded in Denver 16 years ago that now has more than 180 locations nationally. Along with traditional yoga classes, it ofers mixes of yoga and cardio. The signature class is Yoga Sculpt, a hybrid of free-weight work and vinyasa low yoga that includes both strength exercises and cardio drills. Plus heat and music. Yoga Sculpt is the itness

equivalent of Danger Mouse’s Grey Album (which remixed the harmonies of the Beatles’ White Album with rhymes from Jay-Z’s Black Album). Sculpt may put yoga purists’ Lululemons in a twist, but there’s a method to this mashup, explains Heather Peterson, chief yoga oicer of CorePower Yoga. “We took the proven mental elements of an ancient practice and modern exercise science to make it even more of a killer workout,” she says. “Music to reduce perceived exertion, weights to build muscle, and cardio to spike your heart rate.” It’s working. CorePower plans to open 10 more studios in 2018, and in the last two years the number of male members has hopped from 18 percent to 23 percent. Class kicks of calmly with spinetingling cat/cow moves (on all fours, PHOTOGRAPHS BY SASHA NIALLA

bending and arching your back) and progresses to sun salutations (forward bend, pushup, up dog, and down dog). Soon we grab the 10-pound dumbbells and bang out fast-paced chair-pose triceps kickbacks (see sidebar) for about a minute. Then we hold the weights extended back for 30 seconds. Despite the dumbbells’ puniness, it’s a burner. For respite, we drop the weights and low: standing forward Yoga Sculpt bend, half rise, step back, at CorePower plank, pushup, up dog, Yoga and down dog. Lab rat: Just when we’ve almost 6'2", 205 pounds got our breath back, Workout: we grab the weights 60 minutes again. We do a warrior Max heart rate: variation. Warrior 2 is a 178 bpm total-body power pose, Average heart rate: 110 bpm with your front leg bent at Calories burned: 90 degrees, your back leg 505 and glutes engaged, your torso braced, and your arms extended. Yoga Sculpt’s addition: While holding your front arm straight, reach the other hand forward and pull it back, as if drawing a bow. We do a rapid set of reps and then hold. It’s vicious. Our quads quiver, abs jiggle, and arms wilt. Sweat pools on the mat. There’s no mercy. We do another round, and then it’s four minutes of intense and jarring cardio: high knees, skater hops, split-squat jumps, and star jumps. Even my eyelids and ears are sweating. Soon we’re all on our backs, focused on our abs. We perform a series of leg raises and then do a glute-bridge thrust with a block and a dumbbell loor press. On your back, you grip a rubber block between your thighs, engaging your glutes. Then you thrust up, so your butt is of the ground, while pressing the dumbbells into the air. Repeat until your butt and biceps are fried (one minute). Then hold until you’re cooked (several seconds). The soundtrack is now more subdued— bird calls, thunder, and rain. I’m a hot mess, sweat gluing my limbs to the mat. Perez ends the class by urging everyone to engage in some self-care. “Thank yourself for getting after it today,” she says. “Find the balance between strength and comfort. You’ve embraced your vulnerability. You’ve opened up to your weakness.” It’s an awkward yet powerful moment, the vocalization of something usually left unsaid in the gym.

Illustrations by PETER SUCHESKI

STATS

NAMASTE AF! Insert these three Yoga Sculpt moves into your own workouts to challenge your core, glutes, and quads. 1. Warrior 2 variation with dumbbell archer pull Stand with light dumbbells at your sides. Step back with your left foot; bend your right knee so your right thigh is almost parallel to the ground. Straighten your arms in a “T” parallel to the floor. Anchor the movement by straightening your left knee and pressing your outer left heel firmly to the floor. Look over your right arm. This is the start. Move your left arm alongside your right arm, then draw it back across your chest, as if you’re pulling back the string of a bow. OPTIONS: Do 1 minute of reps, then do 3 slow reps that last 1 minute each. Do a 1-minute plank, then switch sides and repeat. Do 3 rounds, then hold the ending pose for 15 seconds.

2. Glute-bridge thrust with block and dumbbell floor press Start lying faceup on the floor, knees bent and feet flat. Squeeze a block between your thighs. Hold dumbbells over your shoulders, elbows on the floor. Lift your butt off the ground, and squeeze your glutes. At the same time, press the dumbbells up. OPTIONS: Do 1 minute of reps; rest 30 seconds. Do 3 rounds. Finish by lifting your butt and arms; hold for 30 seconds.

3. Chair pose with dumbbell triceps kickback Stand holding dumbbells at your sides. Exhale and bend your knees until your thighs are almost parallel with the floor. Lean your torso forward slightly, and squeeze your shoulder blades. Keep your elbows as high as possible. This is the start. Bend at the elbows to raise the dumbbells slightly, then extend your arms behind you, squeezing your triceps. That’s 1 rep. OPTIONS: Do reps for 1 minute, then drop the dumbbells and do a 30-second plank. Do 3 rounds. After the third set of reps, extend your arms behind you; hold for 30 seconds, squeezing your triceps. Finish with the 30-second plank. MEN’S HEALTH

/ October 2018

Body@ INSTANT TRAINING PLAN

Six-Package Deal A four-week workout that builds abs—and much more. BY MICHAEL JENNINGS

Yeah, you want a six-pack, but a strong core doesn’t just make you look great. The true reasons to train your core: Powerful abs reduce back pain, smooth your running stride, and boost your bench press. Fall is an ideal time to focus on this, prepping your body to both work (shoveling all that snow) and play (skiing!). This workout blends the ideas of three trainers with diferent specialties—biomechanics guru Andy Vincent, strength expert David Birtwistle, and pro-athlete trainer Tom Bliss—and it’ll challenge your abs to stabilize your body as you train other muscles too. Best of all: It’s a situp-free plan! DIRECTIONS Do this full-body workout 3 times a week, resting at least 1 day between sessions. If you’re new to the gym, this is all the fitness you’ll need for the entire month. You can also add these moves to your own workouts.

WARMUP

STRENGTH

Do these moves in order for 5 minutes, resting as needed, to fire up your glutes and core.

Do the exercises in order. Rest 1 minute between each set.

Start on all fours, knees below hips and wrists under shoulders. Tighten your core and keep your hips parallel to the floor as you extend your left arm in front of you and straighten your right leg behind you. Hold, return to the start, and repeat on the other side. That’s 1 rep; do 8.

“Make sure you’re really squeezing your glutes on every rep, and raise your extended arm as high as possible.”

2. Side-Plank Rotation

3. Half-Plank Hip Raise

Start in a left-side plank, right arm straight up in the air. Rotate your right arm down and slide it underneath your left armpit, twisting your torso. Return to the start. That’s 1 rep; do 10 per side.

Start in a right-side plank, right knee on the floor. Tighten your core and use your hip muscles to raise your left leg as high as possible. Hold. Return to the start. That’s 1 rep; do 3 sets of 15 per side.

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

1. Trap-Bar Deadlift Hinge your hips, bending your knees as you lower your torso until you can grasp a trap bar loaded with moderate weight. Without letting your back round, brace your abs and stand. Squeeze your glutes, then lower back to the start. That’s 1 rep; do 3 sets of 8.

Photographs by Phillip Haynes; illustration by Kyle Hilton

EB SAYS

1. Bird-Dog

YOUR MUSCLE MASTER

Ebenezer Samuel, C.S.C.S., Men’s Health’s fitness director, is a certified strength and conditioning expert who has trained with professional and Olympic athletes. You’ll be seeing his fitness tips throughout the magazine from time to time.

4. T-Bench Press Lie on a bench with only your shoulder blades, neck, and head supported, holding dumbbells over your chest, arms straight. Your feet should be hip-width apart, knees bent at 90 degrees, glutes tight. This is the start. Bend your arms at the elbows and shoulders, lowering the dumbbells to your chest. Return to the start. That’s 1 rep; do 3 sets of 8.

FINISHER Wrap up with a total-body move.

2. Three-Point Plank Row Set up 2 equal-height boxes so you can place your feet on a box and your forearms on another. Get into forearm-plank position on the boxes with only your left forearm on the front box. Hold a medium-weight dumbbell in your right hand, arm hanging naturally. This is the start. Keeping your hips level, row the dumbbell toward your right hip. Pause, then lower it. That’s 1 rep; do 3 sets of 8 per side.

3. Windmill Plank Get in pushup position, your feet on a bench. Grasp a light dumbbell in your right hand. This is the start. Rotate your torso until the dumbbell points toward the ceiling and your right arm is in line with your left. Pause, then return to the start, keeping your arm straight as you lower. That’s 1 rep; do 3 sets of 6 per side.

EB SAYS

“Don’t worry if you can’t fully get the dumbbell pointed directly toward the ceiling. These are tougher than they look.”

Single-Arm Farmer’s Walk Set a timer for 6 minutes. Hold a heavy kettlebell (or dumbbell) in your right hand. Tighten your abs and oblique muscles so that the weight does not tilt your torso toward the right side. Walk 10 steps forward, then take 10 steps backward. Switch arms and repeat. Continue until time is up, resting only as needed. EB SAYS

“Your torso will tip in the direction of the bell. Tighten your core and don’t let that happen.” MEN’S HEALTH

/ October 2018

Body@

#GOALS

Miracle Row How to slash ten seconds from your 500-meter row time in three weeks. SECOND FOR second, indoor

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

Location: EverybodyFights NYC, grooming: Josee De Luc/Odiele/Honey Artists

rowing is one of the best ways to torch fat, build muscle, and forge stamina. Sprint 500 meters—a popular CrossFit test—and you’ll strengthen your back, hamstrings, and glutes, and redline your engine in two minutes. But not everyone rows the right way, says Ian Creighton, coach and general manager of Brick New York. “Pull with your hamstrings,” he says. Use his tips and this program from coach Ryan Thompson of RowFit, a rowing-focused gym, to amp up your training.

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DIRECTIONS: You’ll do 3 weekly half-hour sessions for 3 weeks. Open each with a 2-round warmup. Do 10 inchworms: Start standing, put your hands on the loor, walk them out until you’re in pushup position, then reverse. Do 10 bootstraps: Squat low, place your elbows on the insides of your knees, and gently push your knees open. Stand. Finish warming up with a relaxed 500-meter row.

ROWING 101 Brick New York’s Ian Creighton breaks down the rower. To begin, adjust the rower damper to 6 or 7.

The Goal: Cut more than 10 seconds of your 500-meter time. Novices, aim to inish under 2 minutes.

M O N DAY

Focus: Gradually increase

mixing rowing with body-weight exercises, you’ll develop strength and aerobic capacity. Workout: Row 200 meters. Get off the rower. Do 3 pushups, 6 situps, and 9 squats. Complete 8 rounds, aiming to finish as quickly as possible.

total strokes per minute. (You’ll see this on the rower’s main screen.) Your 500-meter split should also progress. Workout: Row for 10 minutes. During the last 5, aim to increase your stroke rate by 2 each minute. Rest 5 minutes, then repeat.

Focus: Improve your overall conditioning by using Tabata intervals: 20 seconds of work followed by 10 seconds of rest. Workout: Do 1 Tabata of each move: row for distance, pushup, situp, squat, alternating lunge. Do 6 rounds. Rest 1 minute between each.

Focus: Set the rower damper to 10 and make each stroke as powerful as possible. Aim for less than 22 strokes a minute. Workout: Row for 30 seconds; rest 30 seconds. Row for 1 minute; rest 1 minute. Do a 90-90 interval, then row for 2 minutes. Rest 5 minutes, then repeat.

Focus: Go hard and fast while still focusing on perfect technique and rowing with a smooth rhythm. Workout: Row 250 meters, then rest 30 seconds. Do 6 rounds.

Focus: Ready your body for your test. Row at a sustainable but hard pace. Workout: Row 500 meters, then rest 4 minutes. Do 4 rounds. Monitor stroke rate. Aim for 22 strokes a minute the first round, 24 in the second, 26 in the third, and 28 in the fourth.

Focus: This is your final push. Go as hard as you can during the work periods. Workout: Survive 5 rounds of this 4-exercise circuit workout. Do each exercise for 45 seconds, resting 15 seconds: row for distance, alternating lunge, box jump, wall ball.

Focus: Pick up intensity by increasing your stroke rate. Workout: Row for two 10-minute rounds. Rest 5 minutes between. During the final 5 minutes of each round, try to up your stroke rate by 2 per minute. Shoot for 22 strokes in the first minute; finish with 30 in the last.

WEEK 1

can while still focusing on good technique and efficiency. Workout: Row 200 meters as quickly as possible, then rest 1 minute. Do 6 rounds.

WEEK 2

Focus: Don’t stop moving. By

F R I DAY

WEEK 3

Focus: Row as hard as you

W E D N E S DAY

The Start Sit with your torso leaned forward at a one-o’clock angle, knees bent, shins as vertical as possible. Your arms should be straight, your shoulders level, and the seat should be close to your heels. CrossFitters call this the “catch” position.

The Drive Press through your heels and use your legs to forcefully start a stroke. Once your legs are fully extended and your torso is perpendicular to the ground, explosively pull the handle toward your sternum. Focus on keeping the handle’s chain straight. Then hinge at your hips to lean your torso back to the teno’clock position. The handle should be just below your ribs.

+ISM (exercise illustrations)

EQUIPMENT: You’ll need a Concept2 rower, which can be found in most CrossFit boxes.

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The Recovery Before doing anything, fully straighten your arms. Then shift your torso forward. Finish by bending your knees, allowing the seat to slide back toward the start position. Immediately begin another row stroke.

MEN’S HEALTH

/ October 2018

Body@

Gut Punch Horrible news! Turns out carrying around even a little fat on your belly is dangerous. Great news: This story. BY RICHARD LALIBERTE

BELLY FAT is such an import-

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

at Rockefeller University in New York. “There clearly are genetic and hormonal influences.” While researchers learn more about how fat harms you, they’re also finding new ways to fight it. And it may not take much to reduce your health risks, according to a new, albeit small, study in Obesity. When people who had a normal BMI but excess body fat lost 5 percent of body weight, they saw major benefits: visceral fat down 11 percent, total fat down 9 percent, liver fat down 50 percent, and insulin sensitivity up 26 percent. If you weigh 200 pounds, losing 5 percent means shedding just 10 pounds. These four tips make it a little easier. Get after it!

“No matter how much you try, I’m not going to smile.”

Siri Staford/Getty Images (belly)

ant (and dangerous) factor for your overall health that it’s now discussed as an organ. The visceral fat that makes up a spare tire or, worse, a beer belly— and that surrounds your liver, stomach, and intestines— isn’t flabbily inert. It appears to be biologically active, pumping out hormones and other substances, and it may even increase your risk of metabolic problems like cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, and maybe even cancer. That’s most scary for the 35 percent of American men categorized as obese—guys who have a body-mass index (BMI) of 30-plus. It’s also a concern for the 38 percent of guys classified as overweight, whose BMI is in the 25 to 29.9 range. But even men sporting modest paunches are at risk. Yup, Dad Bods, Skinny Fat dudes, Beer Belly Light guys—maybe even you. Recent Mayo Clinic research shows that men who are in the normal range (with a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9) but have fat in their midsection are up to four times as likely as leaner men to have metabolic disorders. “Why some people predominantly carry fat in visceral deposits isn’t fully understood,” says Paul Cohen, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor and head of the Laboratory of Molecular Metabolism

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Body@ BUILD MUSCLE TO FIGHT FAT

“Muscle is the opposite of fat,” says Mayo Clinic cardiologist Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, M.D. All over your body, muscle is metabolically active in ways that counteract visceral fat—extracting glucose from your blood, helping your liver process fatty acids, and reducing inflammation. Dr. LopezJimenez and his colleagues have found that people with big guts often lack lower-body muscle mass, and the correlation is stronger as people age. It stands to reason: Strong muscles add bulk to your legs and butt—your biggest muscle groups—providing a better balance of muscle to fat in your body and powering a healthier metabolism.

Is Beer What Makes a Beer Belly? Research shows there may be a link between alcohol intake and excess weight, but it’s not a huge effect. Studies find if you stick to the recommended two brews per day, you won’t broaden your belly any more than a nondrinker.

How to Burn More Fat If you have to choose one type of exercise, strength training may be best for specifically trimming your gut. In a Harvard study, men who did 20 minutes of daily weight training had less of an increase in age-related abdominal fat than men who spent the same amount of time doing aerobic activities. Emphasize exercises that challenge your whole body: squats, deadlifts, pullups. However, the same study found cardio had a greater impact on overall weight. Dr. Lopez-Jimenez suggests a mix of both, but combine them the right way by alternating cardio and weight training on different days. Men who do that may burn more visceral fat than they would by stacking workouts on top of each other in the same session.

OUTSMART

YOUR BRAIN

Belly flab may be due as much to what happens in your head as in your gut. Losing visceral fat is difficult because your body defends fat like a castle on a very round hill, through the processing of hormones in brain circuits that control appetite. That’s because in evolutionary/survival terms, fat is good. It seems to be your body’s inherent system for stockpiling food, and it served mankind well when actual, edible stores were meager. Your ancestors who could sock away the most fat from the least food and release its energy in the most frugal, thrifty way possible had a genetic advantage. Your prepare-for-the-worst body isn’t in sync with the indulgeevery-whim bounty of food markets and restaurants—or the lack of exertion that comes from neither hunting nor gathering. Over the years, your body matches energy intake and output with about 99 percent accuracy, says Michael Schwartz, M.D., codirector of the Diabetes Institute at the University of Washington. But even a finely tuned system can’t compensate for gradual gains from endless calorie bombardment. As a rough estimate, “most obese people don’t gain more than five pounds of fat a year, but that adds up over ten years,” says Dr. Schwartz. Hack Your Metabolism Evidence suggests that keeping calorie consumption confined to an earlier window means less weight gain than eating more later in the day. One new study tested the 16:8 diet—16 hours of fasting and 8 of eating. Researchers instructed 23 obese participants to eat any food in any amount between 10:00 A.M. and 6:00 P.M., but stick to water and calorie-free drinks at

other times. After 12 weeks, volunteers ate about 300 fewer calories a day than a control group and lost about 3 percent of their body weight—enough to cause a discernible drop in visceral fat compared with the control. No participants leaving the study complained about the diet, so it’s likely that volunteers found it fairly easy to stick with. Researchers say that’s critical for improving metabolic health in a sustainable way.

IS YOUR BELLY A HEART THREAT? For an accurate determination of heart-attack risk caused by abdominal fat, calculate your waist-hip ratio, Mayo Clinic cardiologist Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, M.D., advises. Here’s how: 1. While standing, wrap a tape measure around your waist about midway between your lowest rib and the top of the bony part of your hips. Write down the number.

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

2. Then measure your hips around the widest part of your buttocks. 3. Divide waist by hips. If the number is 0.9 or higher, you have central obesity and

your metabolic risks are substantially higher. 4. For a more accurate assessment of fat, ask your doc for a dual X-ray absorptiometry scan.

Beware weight creep. Gaining several pounds a year is the diference between the guy on the right and the guy on the left.

NURTURE YOUR

INNER RAIN FOREST One of the most important parts of your metabolism is your microbiome—the ecosystem of gut bacteria that break down food and produce chemicals that may prevent obesity, likely by reducing inflammation. A healthy microbiome should be like a rain forest. A bigbelly microbiome is kind of barren. The key difference is biodiversity. “Obese people have fewer species of microbes in their gut,” says Dan Knights, Ph.D., an associate professor at the University of Minnesota’s Biotechnology Institute. “These microbes are like a factory producing thousands of compounds, good and bad. You want to provide food for the microbes making good compounds.”

How to Eat Wilder To restore your inner Amazon, eat food closer to nature. “Most Americans are living in a fiber desert,” Knights says. “Every plant has its own set of fibers, with different chemical structures and different microbes that break them down.” Aim for about 30 grams per day. Fiber-rich foods like fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains are linked to a rise in short-chain

fatty acids, which may reduce your risk of inflammation and metabolic problems. In one study, each ten-gram increase in daily fiber intake was associated with a 3.7 percent drop in visceral fat. Supplementing can help: Add two tablespoons of psyllium husks to your cereal or salad. Knights snacks on Nu’Go dLish bars, which deliver 12 grams of fiber from diverse sources.

What Your Poop Says about Your Microbiome Stool that has surface cracks and looks like a sausage, or is smooth and like a snake (scoring 3 or 4 on the Bristol Stool Scale—yes, that’s a thing), may be associated with greater bacterial diversity. Hard, lumpy stools had fewer bacterial species in a recent study.

CHANGE THE NATURE Roger Richter/Getty Images (men)

OF YOUR FAT

Turn the Color Wheel If brown fat can turn white, can white fat turn brown? It’s a hot area of research. Investigators have found a third type of fat called beige fat that can be activated so it has fat-burning power. “Beige fat tends to be embed-

YOUR GUT HAS A DISEASE— SO TREAT IT Doctors now have several meds considered effective and safe for long-term weight management. Four of the newest—Belviq, Qsymia, Contrave, Saxenda— are appetite suppressants that work in the brain. “Even if you’ve lost weight, use of a pharmacologic agent can be helpful to maintain what you’ve lost,” says Elise Brett, M.D., an associate clinical professor at Mount Sinai in New York.

Not all body fat is harmful. Visceral fat is white fat—a type associated with an unhealthy metabolism. But another kind—brown fat—burns calories and helps the body generate heat. We don’t have a lot of brown fat and lose it as we get older, says Dr. Cohen. Preliminary research also suggests that as you gain girth, you may actively switch healthy brown fat to unhealthy white fat.

ded in subcutaneous fat, which may be why subcutaneous fat is relatively benign and may even be protective,” Dr. Cohen says. “Our dream is to find a pharmacological target—five to ten years away—that would turn unhealthy white fat to healthy brown fat.” You

may already have a natural way to make beige fat brown. New research suggests you can turn on the beigefat furnace by notching your home’s thermostat down to 66 or below for ten hours a day. Cold temps activate beige fat to keep you warm.

MEN’S HEALTH

/ October 2018

Body@ IF YOU

LIFT ...THEN YOUR CREATININE MAY BE HIGH

Normal range: 0.9 to 1.3 mg/dL Normal change with strength training: 10 to 20 percent higher What it is: Creatinine results from the breakdown of creatine phosphate in the muscles. Kidneys filter this waste product from the blood, but if they’re not working properly, it can build up. (This is what happened to Ashman.) Who’s at risk: Lifters and guys with high muscle mass Why it rises: A well-muscled guy will naturally have more creatinine than a skinnier counterpart. Couple this with normal muscle breakdown from exercise (especially heavy weight training) and blood readings can spike. “The more muscle you have, the more it will break down and increase creatinine levels,” says Dr. Nadolsky. What to do: Tell your doctor if you’ve been lifting hard or packed on muscle since your last visit. If your number is above normal, skip the gym for a week and retest. When to worry: If levels are consistently high and you have other risk factors for kidney disease (diabetes, high blood pressure, family history), consider a cystatin C test or an ultrasound.

What Intense Training Does to Your Blood Intense exercise can make routine blood numbers look like a health crisis. Save yourself worry (and expense) by knowing what to watch for. BY CHRISTA SGOBBA LAST YEAR , 43-year-old Jay Ashman took

a routine blood test the morning after a vigorous leg workout at Kansas City Barbell. A few days later, the former rugby player got a call from his doctor saying two key indicators of kidney function were abnormal. “I went into panic mode,” he recalls. “I was thinking kidney failure, dialysis, dying early, all kinds of crap.” But additional testing determined his kidneys were normal. Heavy weightlifting had skewed the initial readings. Abnormal blood-work results are actually a common issue among men who work out hard or compete in extreme events. That’s because most lab reference ranges are based on the general population, not avid exercisers, explains Spencer Nadolsky, D.O., 32

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

BUT WAIT! YOUR WHITE-BLOOD-CELL COUNT MAY ALSO BE HIGH

a board-certified family-medicine and obesity physician in Maryland. “You need to look at labs in the context of each patient. Otherwise it can cause a lot of worry or excessive testing.” There aren’t any stats on how many athletic guys are affected, but more men than ever are exercising harder and harder. The number of half marathons is at an alltime high, more than 4.5 million people complete obstacle-course races annually, and experts say that high-intensity workouts are more popular than ever. Frequent, intense, or sustained exercise can change your body from the inside out, which can raise red flags on routine blood tests. Here’s what you need to know to protect yourself.

Normal range: 4,500 to 11,000 white blood cells per microliter

Normal change with strength training: Increase up to two thirds What it is: White blood cells are vital to your immune system, fighting viruses and other invaders. Who’s at risk: Intense exercise stresses the immune system, causing a temporary spike in the white-blood-cell count. Research has revealed that a 35-minute eccentric-based quads workout raises it by around two thirds. Why it rises: Probably an inflammatory response caused by muscle damage. White blood cells, particularly the first responders, arrive at an injury site to clear cellular debris and aid recovery.

PHOTOGRAPH BY GIACOMO FORTUNATO

News Feed /// HEALTH

NEW THINKING ABOUT BLOOD PRESSURE What to do: Tell your doctor if an intense exercise session may be to blame. You won’t have to wait too long to retest. Levels have been shown to return to the pre-exercise baseline within 24 hours. When to worry: Counts above 17,000 cells per microliter that don’t retreat after an exercise break can signal infection, inflammation, or even leukemia, says Brandee Waite, M.D., at UC Davis Medical Center, especially if you also have fever, chills, persistent fatigue, swollen glands, or easy bruising.

IF YOU

DO CROSSFIT ...THEN YOUR CREATINE KINASE MAY BE HIGH

Normal range: 44 to 196 units/liter Normal change with exercise: Up to five times the upper limit

What it is: Creatine kinase (CK) is an enzyme that aids muscle-cell function. Levels rise with muscle damage. Doctors often order the test to check for a condition called rhabdomyolysis (or rhabdo), which can be exercise-induced. By-products of muscle breakdown leak into the bloodstream and damage the kidneys. Who’s at risk: Elevated CK levels are commonly linked to high-intensity programs such as CrossFit, but regular strength training and running can raise them too. You’re also at higher risk once you resume exercise after a hiatus or when trying something new, says Dr. Nadolsky. Why it rises: Muscle damage from a workout is the usual cause, particularly if you were doing eccentric or “negative” moves like slow lowering from a pullup or bicep curl, or downhill running. This can result in tiny holes in the membranes surrounding muscle fibers, allowing CK to leak out. What to do: Let your doctor know if heavy WODs may be to blame, and retest after an exercise break. Make sure to give your body enough time to clear excess CK. Research has shown that levels can remain elevated seven days after a weightlifting workout.

When to worry: CK levels ten times the upper limit can indicate rhabdo, says Dr. Nadolsky. Other symptoms include severe muscle soreness, weakness, swelling, and cola-colored urine.

New research reveals that “white-coat hypertension”—the stress of

IF YOU

X being in a medical environment—is not benign. It can be indicative of

BODYBUILD

how your BP increases in response to stressful situations. If you’re among the estimated 30 percent of people whose BP usually spikes when they visit the GP, ask your doctor about wearing an ambulatory 24-hour monitor to record blood pressure throughout the day. This will provide the most accurate assessment. Don’t forget: The new normal for blood pressure is 120 systolic over 80 diastolic.

...THEN YOUR AST AND ALT MAY BE HIGH

Normal range: 10 to 40 units/liter for AST; 9 to 46 units/liter for ALT Normal change with exercise: Up to double the high end of normal levels

What they are: Aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) are generally called liver enzymes. High levels can signal liver disease such as hepatitis. Who’s at risk: Bodybuilders Why they rise: These enzymes aren’t just in your liver. Smaller amounts, especially of AST, are also in your muscles, says Dr. Nadolsky. So when they break down due to exercise, you may see a spike.

carry oxygen to their muscles,” Dr. Waite explains.

What to do: Red-blood-cell life span is about 120 days, so a recheck after a couple weeks off isn’t likely to make a difference, says Dr. Waite. Either stop running or drop to a very lowintensity level for a month or more to see if it declines. When to worry: Counts above 11 million cells per microliter could signal bone-marrow issues such as cancer. Specialized blood tests can check cell size and shape.

When to worry: Levels more than two times the upper limit are unlikely to stem from exercise, says Dr. Waite. That can indicate liver disease, especially if you also have abdominal pain, digestive difficulties, or yellowing skin.

IF YOU

RUN ...THEN YOUR RED-BLOOD-CELL COUNT MAY BE HIGH

Normal range: 4.5 million to 5.9 million cells per microliter

Normal change with running: About double the high end of normal

What it is: Red blood cells carry oxygen from the lungs to the rest of your body, and having too few of them can affect the amount of oxygen that reaches your tissues. This test tells you how many you have. Who’s at risk: Aerobic-endurance athletes tend to have higher counts than sedentary folk, says Dr. Waite.

Why it rises: It’s an adaptation to assist your body with the stress of endurance exercise. “Runners’ bodies respond to training by creating more red blood cells to

CYCLE ...THEN YOUR PSA LEVELS MAY BE HIGH

Normal range: Under 4 nanoNormal change with cycling: Up to 10 percent higher

DO LOTS OF CARDIO ...THEN YOUR TOTAL CHOLESTEROL MAY BE HIGH

Normal range: Under 200 mg/dL Normal change with cardio:

IF YOU

grams per milliliter

What to do: Tell your doctor if you’ve been lifting heavy (weights where three reps is challenging). If your numbers are worrisome, take a hiatus for a week or two and retest.

When to worry: A non-HDL reading above 130 mg/dL can put you at risk for heart disease, especially if you have high blood pressure or a family history.

Levels 200 or above, depending on HDL

What it is: Total cholesterol is the sum of “bad” low-density (LDL) and very low-density (VLDL) lipoprotein and “good” high-density (HDL) lipoprotein. High LDL and VLDL cholesterol levels can cause arterial-plaque buildup, raising heart-disease and stroke risk. Who’s at risk: Athletes, especially cyclists or runners who eat a healthful diet. Their HDL levels can reach 70 mg/dL or more—much greater than the healthy minimum of 40 mg/dL. And you want high HDL, since it helps the liver clear LDL and VLDL. Why it rises: Exercise may increase production of an enzyme called lecithin-cholesterol acyltransferase, which promotes HDL formation. What to do: If your total cholesterol is high, ask your doctor for your non-HDL reading, says Dr. Nadolsky. That’s total cholesterol minus HDL, so it’s only the bad stuff. Optimal is less than 130 mg/dL.

What they are: Prostatespecific antigen (PSA) is a protein produced by prostate-gland cells. Infections, enlargement, or cancer can elevate its levels. Who’s at risk: Long-distance cyclists may see a temporary spike in PSA. When Australian researchers tested levels in men 50 and older before and after riding at least 34 miles, they found their PSA was about 10 percent higher afterward. Why they rise: Thank that hard saddle. “If you have something irritating the prostate, either with pressure from an uncomfortable bike seat or with infection, blood vessels expand, allowing more PSA to leak into your blood,” explains Jamin Brahmbhatt, M.D., a urologist with Orlando Health. What to do: For an accurate reading, refrain from anything that can irritate the prostate—whether a long bike ride or (sorry) ejaculation—for two days beforehand, Dr. Brahmbhatt recommends. When to worry: When analyzing your PSA levels, your doctor should be looking for trends rather than one slightly elevated reading, Dr. Brahmbhatt notes. PSA levels that gradually increase over time could indicate cancer, especially if you experience trouble urinating, decreased flow, or pelvic discomfort. MEN’S HEALTH

/ October 2018

Body@

SO FRESH RIGHT NOW

Cauliflower, Unleashed!

ACHIEVE VEGETABLE MASTERY

Sick of cauliflower rice yet? (Well, you will be.) Try these actually tasty meals instead. BY JOY MANNING Z I P -TO P BAG

GRILL

Cauliflower Alfredo with Shrimp and Peas

Cauliflower-Stem Poke Bowl

Cauliflower Steaks with “65” Sauce

1. In a pot of boiling salted water, place 4 cups cauliflower florets and 2 peeled garlic cloves. Lower the heat to medium-low and cook until tender, about 10 minutes.

1. In a bowl, whisk 2 Tbsp lowsodium soy sauce, 1 Tbsp water, 2 tsp rice vinegar, 1 tsp Sriracha, 1 tsp sesame oil, 1 tsp honey, and 1 thinly sliced scallion. Set aside.

1. In a bowl, mix 2 Tbsp ketchup, 1 Tbsp vinegar, 1 Tbsp soy sauce, 1 tsp hot sauce, 1 tsp curry powder, ¼ tsp garlic powder, ½ tsp cumin, and ½ tsp turmeric.

2. Transfer the florets and garlic to a blender. Add ¼ cup of the cooking liquid, 1 Tbsp butter, and 2 Tbsp grated Parmesan. Blend and season with salt and pepper.

2. Cut the stems from 2 large cauliflower heads into ½-inch cubes. In a pot of boiling salted water, cook the cubes until just tender, about 2 minutes. Drain and transfer to the bag with the sauce. Refrigerate for 1 hour or overnight.

2. Starting from the center of 1 large cauliflower, slice the head into four 1-inch slabs. Preheat an oiled grill or grill pan to mediumhigh. Brush the “steaks” on all sides with oil. Season well with salt.

3. Return the cauliflower water to boil and cook 12 oz penne. Drain, reserving 1 cup of the liquid. Return pasta to the pot and add 12 cooked shrimp and ½ cup peas. Add sauce; stir, adding the liquid 1 Tbsp at a time until the mixture is creamy. Serve topped with minced parsley. TIME: 25 MINUTES 34

F E E DS 4

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

3. To serve, divide 2 cups cooked sushi rice among 4 bowls. Top with the cauliflower, cubed avocado, carrots, radish slices, crushed macadamia nuts, torn nori, and sesame seeds. TIME: 15 MINUTES

F E E DS 4

3. Grill the cauliflower, covered, till tender, 5 to 8 minutes per side. Brush with the sauce and grill, uncovered, until blackened in spots, 2 to 3 more minutes per side. Serve with rice mixed with chickpeas, plus lime wedges. Top with cilantro. TIME: 15 MINUTES

Cruciferous vegetables such as cauliflower contain glucosinolates, which may prevent a variety of cancers.

Pick it For the freshest florets, look for cauliflower heads that appear tightly bundled and feel heavy for their size.

Store it Glucosinolates also make cauliflower stink after you chop it. Your defense: a tightly lidded glass storage container.

F E E DS 4 PHOTOGRAPH BY JEFFREY WESTBROOK

Food styling: Jamie Kimm, prop styling: Robyn Glasser/Vargas Represents, Kaylen Yul Lee/Noun Project (blender icon), Juan Pablo Bravo/Noun Project (bag icon)

Savor it BLENDER

44 WA K E U P, WOR K OU T 48 HELP YOU R BA R BER HELP YOU 51 TECH OU T YOU R WA R DROBE 60 LI V E (A LMOST) FOR EV ER

GRILL: The 824 Hibachinator Hibachi Grill, kotaigrill.com

Life

Build a Stronger ’Gate Because your fellow fans deserve better than charred dogs. EDITED BY PAUL KITA

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JEFFREY WESTBROOK

ENOUGH WITH buckets of greasy delivery wings. Stop

with the neon-orange “cheese” tub and the tasteless bag o’ chips. And the next person to bring a plastic platter of grocery-store vegetables and dip is forever benched. This tailgate season, elevate your pregame (or at-home) spread with the help of great chefs who also happen to be football fanatics. Secure your parking spot. Pop open the card tables. Dig in. MEN’S HEALTH

/ October 2018

Life @

STRAPPED FOR TIME? MAKE THESE.

FEED THE MASSES

“BIG TEX” FRITO PIE This recipe, adapted from devoted Cowboys fan and San Antonio chef Jason Dady, bumps up the protein with brisket. Dady serves his in a 48-inch paella pan, but a 20-inch skillet works. You’ll also want a Crock-Pot to transport the brisket. Assemble it live and watch everyone do the wave. W H AT YO U ’ L L N E E D 6 LB WHOLE SMOKED B R I S K E T, C H O P P E D 3 2 OZ BA R B EC U E SAU C E 4 BAG S ( 1 0 ¼ OZ E AC H ) F R I TO S 3 LB SHREDDED C H E D DA R C H E E S E 3 L B C H E R RY TO M ATO E S, H A LV E D 1 L B JA L A P E Ñ O S, DICED 2 BUNCHES S CA L L I O N S, CHOPPED 1 LARGE RED ONION, S M A L L- D I C E D 3 C I L A N T R O B U N C H E S, R I N S E D, C H O P P E D 3 2 OZ S O U R C R E A M

1. Combine the brisket with half of the barbecue sauce and season with salt and pepper, if needed. Set aside. 2. To serve, pour in the Fritos and then top with the brisket, cheese, tomatoes, jalapeños, scallions, red onion, cilantro, sour cream, and remaining barbecue sauce. Scoop the Frito pie into a cup and eat with a spoon. Feeds 30 to 40

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

ABOUT THAT BRISKET . . . You can hit up a barbecue joint and buy the whole precooked brisket, or you can smoke it yourself. The best method: In a bowl, mix 4 tsp kosher salt, 1 tsp brown sugar, 1 tsp paprika, 1 tsp ground cumin, 1 tsp granulated garlic, and 1 tsp ground black pepper. Rub the brisket all over with this mixture and refrigerate until ready to cook. Preheat your smoker to 300°F. Set the brisket on the grate, fat side up. Maintain that temperature, adjusting vents or adding fuel, until the brisket reaches 160°F, 3 to 4 hours. Wrap in foil to transport or rest 15 minutes, then serve.

APP: Greek FetaCheese Dip In a serving bowl, mix 12 oz feta cheese, 1 cup Greek yogurt, 8 oz softened cream cheese, ¼ cup olive oil, and the juice and zest of 1 lemon. Season with salt and crushed red-pepper flakes. Stir in 2 Tbsp chopped fresh dill. Finish with ½ cup chopped cucumber, ½ cup halved cherry tomatoes, and extra dill and olive oil. Serve with pita chips. —From Delish: Eat Like Every Day’s The Weekend, out October 16

Food styling: Jamie Kimm, prop styling: Robyn Glasser/Vargas Represents

DESSERT: Figs with Ricotta and Wildflower Honey Take 12 large, fresh figs (they’re in season now and should be available at most well-stocked grocery stores), slice each one into quarters, and arrange them on a serving plate. Add 1 or 2 spoonfuls of whole-milk ricotta cheese and a generous drizzle of wildflower honey. —From The Runner’s World Vegetarian Cookbook, out October 9

INTRODUCING NEW EMERGEN-C® PROBIOTICS+

POWERING YOUR WELLNESS STARTS WITH YOUR GUT + Purposeful probiotics to help boost your microbiome + Vitamin C to support your natural immune defenses EMERGE AND SEE ©2018 Alacer. Emergen-C® Probiotics+ is a dietary supplement. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Life @ SATISFY THE DIEHARDS

BEEF AND RICOTTA MEATBALL SUBS If you’re feeding a few, there’s no need to go wild. Just make the best version of a meal they already love, like these meatballs, adapted from a recipe by Linton Hopkins, Falcons fan and chef of Restaurant Eugene in Atlanta. Bring plenty of napkins. 1. In a large bowl, mix

W H AT YO U ’ L L N E E D 1

LB GROUND GRASSF E D B E E F ( 9 0/ 1 0 )

¾ C U P R I C OT TA CHEESE, DRAINED 2

E G G YO L K S

5 TBSP FINE WHITEBREAD CRUMBS 1

TBSP EXTRA-VIRGIN OLIVE OIL

½ T B S P KO S H E R S A LT ½ TBSP FRESH G R O U N D B L AC K PEPPER

S M A L L GA R L I C C LO V E , M I N C E D

½ TSP FRESH OREGANO, M I N C E D, P LU S M O R E F O R GA R N I S H 3 2 OZ M A R I N A R A SAUCE 4 S I X- I N C H H OAG I E ROLLS, SLICED ¾ THROUGH LENGTHWISE, P R E F E R A B LY TOA ST E D ½ C U P G R AT E D PA R M E S A N

by hand everything except for the sauce, rolls, and Parmesan. Refrigerate for 1 hour. 2. Roll 16 meatballs, placing them on a lightly oiled baking sheet. Refrigerate for 20 minutes. 3. Preheat your oven to 450°F. Bake the meatballs till golden, 7 to 10 minutes. 4. Transfer the meatballs to a large

pot. Coat with the sauce, place over medium heat, cover with a lid, and cook till heated, about 10 minutes. (You can chill the meatballs now; reheat in a Crock-Pot later.) 5. To make a sandwich, put 4 meatballs into a roll and finish with sauce, Parmesan, and fresh oregano. Feeds 4

THE BEST BEERS FOR TAILGATING These low-booze brews team up well with hearty food. —STEPHEN BEAUMONT, author of Will Travel for Beer, out now

Firestone Walker Easy Jack IPA This 4.5-percentalcohol IPA is not just a deceptively complex ale, but it’s also ideal for when spicy foods are on the tailgating menu. The hoppiness and carbonation work together to mellow the heat while leaving all the flavor.

Czechvar Known in the Czech Republic as Budweiser Budvar (a nod to its hometown of Budweis), this crisp yet flavorful 5-percent-alcohol golden lager is a natural partner for encased meats of all varieties, from brats to kielbasa to fully loaded hot dogs.

Lost Coast Downtown Brown Brown ales are sorely underappreciated, and this nutty and slightly chocolaty 5-percent-alcohol brew makes a case for learning to love them, particularly with a chargrilled burger or longsimmered stew.

Allagash White There is no better first beer of the day (or dawn before a big game) than a well-balanced, even-keeled wheat beer. This version is a gently spicy, lightbodied, refreshing Maine-brewed take on a classic Belgian style. Different. Delicious. 40

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

Neither do we.

Most cottage cheese brands have more than 10 ingredients. Daisy has 3 – cultured skim milk, cream and salt. Plus the protein and calcium you want. Nothing you don’t.

You don’t expect your cottage cheese to have loads of ingredients.

Life @

KICK BACK ON GAME DAY

GRILLED CHICKEN-TENDERAND -TOMATO SKEWER WITH PITA AND HARISSA HUMMUS Maybe you love lugging your grill to a tailgate. If so, grill the skewers pregame. If not, these wraps taste great cold (so you can relax instead of fretting over prep). This recipe comes from Michael Brannock, executive chef of PDQ Restaurants. 1. In a food

W H AT YO U ’ L L N E E D 4 C A N S ( 1 5 TO 1 6 OZ ) C H I C K P E A S , DRAINED

¼ C U P V E G E TA B L E OIL 1

T S P G R A N U L AT E D GA R L I C

TSP SMOKED PA P R I K A

TBSP FRESH O R E GA N O, D I L L , O R PA R S L E Y, MINCED

¼ CUP HARISSA ½ C U P TA H I N I ½ CUP OLIVE OIL JUICE OF 2 LEMONS 4 GA R L I C C LO V E S 2

TSP CUMIN

LB CHICKEN TENDERS, CUT I N TO B I T E - S I Z E D PIECES

PINTS CHERRY TO M ATO E S , I D E A L LY M I X E D C O LO R S

F O R GA R N I S H : 2 TBSP OLIVE OIL, LEMON WEDGES, ¼ C U P L I G H T LY TOA ST E D P I N E NUTS, 1 CUP C R U M B L E D F E TA 2 0 W H O L E W H E AT P I TA S , G R I L L E D

processor, puree the chickpeas, harissa, tahini, ½ cup olive oil, lemon juice, garlic cloves, and 1 tsp of the cumin. Transfer to a serving bowl. Season to taste with salt. 2. Preheat a grill to medium-high. In a bowl, mix the chicken, tomatoes, vegetable oil, granulated garlic, paprika, the rest of the cumin, and 2 big pinches each of salt and pepper.

On 20 wooden skewers, alternate chicken pieces and tomatoes. 3. Grill the skewers until the chicken’s internal temperature reaches 165°F, 4 to 5 minutes per side. Arrange the skewers on a platter around the hummus. Drizzle 2 Tbsp olive oil over the skewers. Top with the herbs, lemon, pine nuts, and feta. Serve with pitas so fans can build sandwiches. Feeds 20

6:00a.m.

Multiplayer Mode Why video-game-company CEO Strauss Zelnick never lifts alone. BY EBENEZER SAMUEL

he wants to do this strength circuit. Heck, he’s not even sure he can, even after the burpee quota was dropped from 20 to 15. But this morning, the 61year-old CEO of video-game giant Take-Two Interactive has no choice. He’s the one who organized this workout, convincing three men in their 30s to roll out of bed before dawn to join him at Manhat-

tan’s Harvard Club gym. So no, he can’t bail on this series of bench presses, kettlebell stepups on a box nearly waisthigh, and all those burpees. “If I went to the gym by myself, I might have gotten there and thought, Yeah, I’ll do something else,” he says, chest still heaving. “The fact that we’re here together— that’s why I’ll inish.” It’s Zelnick’s ultimate secret for never blowing a

THE BREAK OF BRAWN One of Zelnick’s favorite workouts: this Tabata series that you can do with two 10-pound dumbbells, a chinup bar, and an adjustable bench. Give it a try.

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

DIRECTIONS: Start things off with a quick ab circuit. Do 50 hollow rocks, 30 lying leg raises, and 20 hip bridges. Then do each of the following exercises in order. Perform each one for 4 minutes, doing reps for 20 seconds, then resting for 10.

workout: Never go it alone. The man who revitalized the company behind the Grand Theft Auto and NBA 2K franchises has built a sexagenarian body that can pass for a decade younger by gutting out workouts like this six mornings a week—and always doing it with company. He writes about that philosophy in his new book, Becoming Ageless: The Four Secrets to Looking and Feeling Younger Than

1 Goblet squat: Stand with feet shoulderwidth apart, holding a dumbbell at your chest. Push your butt back and bend your knees, lowering your torso as far as you can. Stand up.

2 Alternating shoulder press: Hold dumbbells at your

Even at age 61, Zelnick has few aches and pains. “Get a lot of exercise and your body simply doesn’t age the same as others.”

Ever, and this very moment it’s on display. “Gym work by its nature is relatively boring,” he says. “Being with someone makes it less boring.” Zelnick’s too busy for boring. By 8:30 every morning, he’s all over Manhattan,

shoulders. Press the right dumbbell overhead, lower it back to your shoulder, then press the left overhead.

3 Pullup: Hang from a bar with an overhand grip, then pull your chest to the bar. Skip the 20-10 pattern here and just do 4 sets of 8.

4 Incline bench press: Lie on a bench set to a 30 degree incline, holding dumbbells at your shoulders. Press them upward, then return to the start.

5 Dumbbell row: Hold a dumbbell in your right hand, hinge forward at your hips, and place your left

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALLIE HOLLOWAY

Location: Equinox

STRAUSS ZELNICK isn’t sure

rapid-iring emails on the subway between meetings. Need him? He prefers breakfast bench-pressing to the business lunches he’s attended for decades, irst as CEO of music powerhouse BMG Entertainment and now as head of Zelnick Media Capital, which he founded 17 years ago. Workouts rejuvenate Zelnick’s body—and serve a business purpose. He once went cycling with a potential business partner, then decided he’d never work with the man. “I just knew something because of the demeanor, the behavior, the engagement,” he says. “When you’re sweating, all barriers drop quickly.” When Zelnick’s in New York, he usually works out with #TheProgram, a citybased group of itnessfocused friends he started seven years ago. When he hits the road, he insists on staying in a hotel near an Equinox (he’s a member there) or in a hotel with a top-notch gym (typical hotel gyms don’t measure up to his standards). He doesn’t train alone on the road, either; he’ll call friends in any city he visits to line up workouts. That’s actually the plan on this day. After a meeting, he’s of to San Francisco. His irst order of business? A cardio session. “I do this because I enjoy it and I have people to do it with,” he says. And there’s no better way to survive 15 burpees.

SHOOTING THE S# 1T WITH . . .

STRAUSS ZELNICK Favorite gym music?

Classic rock. Doesn’t matter the artist. Because who doesn’t like classic rock? Favorite exercise?

Pullups. Strict pullups. They’re really, really good for you. They’re hard, but if you practice them, everyone can do them. Food you can’t resist?

A layer cake. I love cake. I love sweets. A perfect diet would exclude reined carbs, sugar, and alcohol. I don’t have the perfect diet. Best part of training?

Zelnick’s least favorite exercise: the squat. But that doesn’t mean he skips leg day. “When done right,” he says, “the squat is a great total-body move.”

When I wake up in the morning, I might have something on my mind. You train with a bunch of people smiling, and that stuf seems to fade away. Most useful thought near the end of a workout?

The shower is going to feel really good. hand on a bench. Let the dumbbell hang naturally. Slowly row it toward your hip, pause, then return to the start. Switch sides every interval.

6 Single-arm farmer’s walk: Hold a dumbbell at your right side. Tighten your core so your torso doesn’t tip

toward the dumbbell. Walk back and forth for 20 seconds; switch sides every interval.

7 Lateral/front-raise superset: Start by holding dumbbells at your sides. Keeping just a slight bend in your elbows, raise the dumbbells in front of you. Return to the start.

Raise the dumbbells out to your sides.

8 Biceps curl: Hold dumbbells at your sides. Perform a biceps curl with your right arm, then do a curl with your left arm. 9 Bench dip: Place your hands on a bench set up behind you,

about shoulder-width apart; extend your legs forward and bend at the waist. This is the start. Bend at the elbows, lowering your torso until it’s near the ground; pause, then return to the start.

10 More core: End with the same ab circuit from the beginning.

Secret to fighting fatigue?

Be gentle with yourself. Very occasionally, I’ll have a morning where I’m overtrained, and I’ll say, “You know what? I’m going back to bed.”

MEN’S HEALTH

/ October 2018

Life @

Naomi Piercey answers your questions about sex and relationships that Google can’t.

journey together, right? She doesn’t want you to stop living your life, but you also need to acknowledge that your life is about to change in a big way. Not getting smashed shows her that.

I WAS RAISED WITH OUTSIDE-ONLY PETS. SHE LETS HER DOG SLEEP IN THE BED. IT GROSSES ME OUT. ARE WE DOOMED? —CHRISTOPHER, Shaker Heights, OH

What can I do to get my wife to work out more without her thinking I’m saying anything about her weight? —STEPHEN, Des Plaines, IL

Offer up the classic option: group activities! Things like kayaking, biking, and boot-camp classes were practically made for couples. Tell her you want to be more active and that you think it’d be a good way to spend time together. Then give her some options. If running’s not her thing, there’s no way she’ll pound the pavement with you long-term. I JUST STARTED DATING A GUY SIX YEARS YOUNGER THAN ME. I’VE OBVIOUSLY GOT A LITTLE MORE LIFE EXPERIENCE, BUT I DON’T WANT TO INTERFERE WITH HIS OWN GROWTH. WHAT SHOULD I DO? —RAY, New York, NY

Six years between two people could feel like a blip or an eternity. I bet you’re aligned on a 46

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

bunch of stuf, which is what drew you to each other in the irst place, but every now and then you have diferent perspectives on how you want to spend your time. The fact that you’re concerned about his future probably means you want to be in it. Plus, there’s plenty a younger mate can

teach you, especially about living in the moment. Stay supportive, chime in with advice when it feels right, and stay open to experiencing new things.

I’M 29 AND ALREADY GETTING SOME GRAY HAIRS. AM I OKAY GOING SALT-AND-PEPPER? —DREW, Fort Myers, FL

Don’t sweat it. And don’t dye it! Gray hair is exceptionally sexy when it’s worn conidently. Keep it groomed and opt for a youthful haircut. (Your barber can help with this—see page 48.) Then let it speak for itself. Drawing attention to your grays by constantly talking about them is the only thing that will make you seem old.

HOW DRUNK AM I ALLOWED TO GET AROUND MY PREGNANT WIFE, WHO NORMALLY LOVES DRINKING WITH ME? —CARTER, Portland, ME

A few drinks, ine. But drunk? Maybe once. If that. Come on, you’re supposed to be on this

IT’S A LONG STORY, BUT I NEED TO REPLACE MY GIRLFRIEND’S VIBRATOR. WHERE DO I EVEN START? —MAX, Asheville, NC

You’re going to leave me hanging like that? What’s the story? Anyway, let’s clarify what you’re looking for: a vibrator or a dildo. Not all vibrators are dildos. Dildos are sex toys that are used for penetration—size matters. Vibrators are any sex toys that vibrate. External-use toys are usually less intimidating for irst-time users. They’re made to be used on the clitoris. But you sound like you’re on to level-two, internal dildos. Opt for something waterproof and with strong vibrations. And skew smaller. You want to be able to use this with her during intercourse, right? It needs to be about palm-sized. My favorite? The Jimmyjane Form 2.

JOEL ARBAJE (Piercey), Westend61/Getty Images (couple)

ASK HER ANYTHING

Not necessarily, but it’s going to take some discussion. Let her know how letting dirty, sleeping dogs lie in your own bed makes you feel. Don’t just complain that it’s unsanitary. And she has to make compromises for you, like inding another spot inside the house where she can do all the pup cuddling she wants. Most women I know would rather trade a dog for a man in bed (even if they’re only slightly less hairy). State your case and give her some time to make the swap.

Men’sHealth magazine’s top personal trainer delivers 100 shred-worthy, high-intensity workouts and a training plan to help you pack serious muscle and build mind-bending physical fitness.

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Life @

Don’t Get Your Hair Cut Before Reading This Let a barber talk you through your next visit to the shop. BY MATT GOULET (the only editor at Men’s Health who went to barber school... we’re pretty sure)

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

SAY YOU’RE new to town. Or your regular

guy has retired. Or you’re traveling and in desperate need of a cut. Or you’re sufering from the kind of malaise that only a straight razor to the back of your neck and the hum of clippers can ix. Whatever the reason, you’re in the market for a new barber. A scary prospect, I know. Finding a place, let alone a guy, that understands exactly what you want and can deliver it is an endeavor fraught with miscommunication and difering expectations. As a barber, I’m right there with you. It can be just as nerve-racking for us when a new client sits in our chair. We’ve

never cut this guy before; we don’t know what he likes, or what he envisions, or the weird things that his hair does when it’s clipped a millimeter of an inch too short. To be a better customer—so we can do a better job, so you can leave with the best haircut—you only need to communicate a few simple things. Walk in ready to talk about your hair, and talk about it efectively. For barbers, an overly fussy client is better than an uncertain one, for a simple reason: decisiveness. So please talk to your barber when he asks, “What are we doing for you today?” I understand how it can feel weird describing yourself and your hair and how, aesthetically, you’d like that all to turn out. Most of us get a little uneasy thinking, let alone speaking, about the nature of our looks and our hopes and dreams for them. Recognize that barbers are like fingerprints. Or snowflakes. Or penguin mating calls. The point is: We’re unique. You can walk into a spot and, because it seems cool online, think you’re going to come out looking like Clooney. But even in that shop, there might be one barber who’s a relative novice, just getting started in the business, while another is a long-serving stylist who cut his teeth in the salon world and may own it with a pair of shears but isn’t necessarily as trustworthy with the clippers. Or you get a guy who came up in the old-school shops and chops your lettuce like you’ve just been drafted, or he’s a wizard with the clippers but might start sweating when your hair is longer than four inches. And there is always a barber who can do it all but never developed the people skills and so comes of as disafected or uninterested. Really, show up with a photo. If you’ve got a long John Kerry face and pull up a pic of Gatsby-era Leo DiCaprio, we’re going to be spending 15 minutes politely dancing around the fact that your head ILLUSTRATION BY BRUCE EMMETT

and face and hair can’t do the things you want them to. A fruitful source of reference photos is a Google search of pro soccer players. You saw the World Cup. There are a ton of those guys with all kinds of haircuts. You can ind one who’s got a head shape and hair type similar to yours. But the smartest move is to take a selie when you feel like your own hair

Take a selfie when you feel like your hair is looking its best. We can get you back to that.

is looking its best. We can get you back to that moment. Communicate your cowlicks. If you’ve got a giant whorl hiding under a bunch of heavy hair and we cut it too short, no one is going to be happy. Warn us, and understand there’s only so much we can do. Like the grain in wood, your hair tends to grow and fall in a natural direction. As much as you may want to swoop things to the left, if your hair insists on going right, embrace it. Come see us more often. Depending on the length of your haircut, you can usually make it three weeks (for shorter styles) to six weeks (longer styles) before you need to visit me again. The general rule (and a sales tactic on the barber’s part) says that as soon as you’re not feeling as good as when you left the shop after your last cut, you’re due.

HOW TO SPEAK BARBERESE Because a Caesar cut in Topeka can vary an inch or two in length from a Caesar cut in the Bronx. The right terms that work in any shop: GETTING FADED

STOCK UP LIKE A BARBER If you see any of these products at the shop, grab a chair.

Verb Sea Spray

Magic Move Soft Pomade

Salt spray gives your locks a beach-day texture by lifting and separating strands. $16, verb products.com

Throw it in dry-to-dryish hair for hold you can run your hands through. $19, amazon.com

Hanz De Fuko Quicksand

American Crew Fiber Cream

Dry shampoo meets pomade. It leaves hair matte and pliable. $20, hanzdefuko.com

For longer hair, a cream smooths down strays and holds flow in place. $18, shop.american crew.com

High, mid, or low fade: This refers to how high above the ear the shortest part of the fade will extend before graduating in length. The higher the fade, the more severe the transition. Skin fade: The sides of your head start at shaved (the lowest setting on your barber’s clippers), with the length gradually increasing as you go up. If you want to start with more length, ask for a guard (see below) and for him to fade up from there. ON GUARDS

The lower the number of the guard, the shorter the hair. One: One-eighth of an inch of hair is left on your head—which is down to just that sandpaper feeling. Three: Three-eighths of an inch of hair is left on your head. Usually what the barber will use if you ask for “short, but not too short.” GENUINE CONNECTIONS

Connected (or blended): The length on the sides blends smoothly into the top where your head begins to round off. Disconnected: The sides are shaved or faded without any blending into the length up top, creating a drastic overhang of longer hair. If you like to sweep hair to the side or back and have a little more length to play with near the front, ask for just a slight disconnection.

Maapilim All Purpose Oil Run two drops through towel-dried hair, blow-dry, and avoid any frizz. $24, maapilim.com

Andis Slimline Pro Trimmer Use it to line up sideburns and clean up around your ears between cuts. $69, amazon.com

PROTECT YOUR NECK

Tapered, natural, or faded: All interchangeable ways of saying you want the hair to gradually get shorter down the nape of your neck. Preferred for shorter cuts. Square: Good for longer cuts. The length at your nape is squared off and stays only as short as the rest of the hair on the sides. Rounded: Like a square neck but the corners of the neck line are lopped off for a more traditional, preppy look.

YS Park Comb

Kent Brush

Handy for putting in a part and flexible enough to use as a guard for trimming sideburns. $12, shearworld.com

For swept-back or pompadour styles, use the brush to lift your hair up and back while blow-drying. $17, kentbrushes.com

MEN’S HEALTH

/ October 2018

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Life @

STYLE THAT MOVES (WITH) YOU Welcome to the evolution of athleisure: ath-everything. And we mean everything. About five years ago, athleisure swept through our wardrobe, promising us gym clothes designed so well that we could go to the bar in them. What we got was a barrage of hairy thighs and tights-encased bulges in our public spaces. Thankfully, we’ve arrived at a smarter integration, with the best of everything athleisure has to offer—the stretch, the ease of movement, the technical fabrics that keep us cool and dry—incorporated into the types of clothes (e.g., suits like this one) we’d wear anywhere. You never know when you might have to spring into action. 1. Rayon-and-nylon jacket ($198) and trousers ($148) by Michael Kors; michaelkors.com. 2. Performance shirt ($70) by Express; express .com. 3. Leather sneakers ($495) by Z Zegna; zegna.com. 4. Black Bay GMT watch ($3,900) by Tudor; tudorwatch.com.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ERIK TANNER

MEN’S HEALTH

/ October 2018

Life @ THE ELEMENTS OF ATH-EVERYTHING

THE BLAZER Next-gen herringbone, packable and partially lined for breathability. Cotton-and-polyamide blazer ($595) by Boss; hugoboss.com.

A jacket with water resistance need not look like you’re climbing Everest. Go with a slim cut in navy.

POST UP YOUR WORKDAY Some of today’s most performancedriven items look like they’re straight from a London haberdasher—which makes it easy to wear them to work. Seek out labels that offer stretch materials or understated construction details 52

with comfort in mind, like pants featuring a gusseted crotch that allows for ease of movement. One of the ultraperformance materials that brands are using is allnatural merino wool. Take Z Zegna’s TechMerino dress shirt. It’s designed to

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

be worn and washed like your workout clothes. And let the traditionally technical layers stay technical. With its any-weather, any-moment bona fides, a down vest in sleek black over a dress shirt can look as polished as an overcoat.

1. Nylon down vest ($200) by Tommy Hilfiger; usa.tommy .com. 2. TechMerino shirt ($375) by Z Zegna; zegna .com. 3. Silk knit tie ($25) by the Tie Bar; thetiebar.com. 4. Wool-and-elastane trousers ($285) by Theory; theory.com. 5. Leather shoes ($425) by Allen Edmonds; allenedmonds.com. 6. Watch ($195) by Emporio Armani; armani.com.

THE PANTS They resemble your work chinos but let you do backflips— or at least ride a bike comfortably. Polyester Commuter trousers ($128) by Rhone; rhone.com.

Styling: Ted Staford, tailoring: Antonio Marquez, grooming: Lisa-Raquel/See Management

Stretch polyester jacket ($148) by Nautica; nautica.com.

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Life @ A CASUAL LEAN Weekend wear doesn’t mean 48 hours of basketball shorts. Instead, find a balance—combining the best of athletic and traditional clothes—that’ll carry you through every part of your time off. Take the classic crewneck sweatshirt. It’s gone from the gym to the yard to the bar to the office and back a hundred times. It’s the original piece of athleticwear to cross over. Elevate it by bringing your dress pants down a casual notch, like pinstriped trousers that are loosely cut and made with stretch. Add a drawstring closure and it’s as if you’re wearing the best-looking sweatpants you can buy a girl a drink in. Finish off the look with sneakers that balance their inherent sportiness with a neutral tone in suede. 1. Textured crewneck T-shirt ($55) by Banana Republic; bananarepublic.com. 2. Stretch wool trousers ($395) by Eleventy; 212-931-0662. 3. Suede sneakers ($65) by Skechers Side Street; skechers.com. 4. Watch by TAG Heuer; tagheuer.com.

THE SHOE SPECTRUM So what about your feet? You’ve got options. Temper your sportiest sneakers with athleticinspired dress pants (left), or let the two worlds merge right on your foot with a classic silhouette powered by a sneaker-inspired sole (right). 1. Air Zoom Vomero 13 sneakers ($180) by Nike; nike.com. 2. Trousers ($98) by Banana Republic; bananarepublic.com. 3. District messenger bag by Louis Vuitton; louisvuitton.com.

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

The Suit-Minded Sneaker

Desert Boots with Athletic Sole

($198) by Michael Kors; michaelkors.com.

($159) by Greats; greats.com.

Wingtips with Bounce

Moccasins That Get a Grip

($120) by Florsheim; florsheim.com.

($525) by Tod’s; tods.com.

Life @ My Favorite Injuries WITH BEAR GRYLLS

1. COLD SHOULDER

5. KARATE NOSE

In Antarctica in 2008, I was being pulled by kites on skis across the ice, and a massive gust picked me up and threw me through the air. I landed on and broke my shoulder. Because of where we were, I had a long few days with a dwindling supply of paracetamol in a tent. The shoulder’s still a bit niggly, but it’s okay— people live with worse.

I broke my nose just once. It was in a karate fight for my black-belt examination when I was about 16. I won the fight, though my nose has been wonky and veering to the left ever since. 2

2. PACK BACK For fun, I went on a routine jump in Zimbabwe while I was on leave. We were about 14,000 feet in the air. The canopy of my chute didn’t open properly, and I started coming down. Fast. Before I knew it: boom. My back landed right on the reserve chute, which is tightly packed like a bar across the middle of my back. Then everything went a little black. Later, I remember arriving at a hospital where a doctor stuck this giant needle straight into my back. I tried to stand up. Eventually, I learned I’d broken three vertebrae. I got worse before I got better—things looked grim. So I focused my recovery on a goal: Everest. Eighteen months later, I summited.

Courtesy of BGV

3. PIZZA CHEST People always ask if the unglamorous scar on my chest was from wrestling a crocodile or something crazy. Nope. I got it five years ago when I was taking a hot pizza out of the oven in a hurry while wearing swimming trunks and branded myself right across the nipple.

3 4

6. CAMERA THIGH We were filming Man vs. Wild in the Canadian Rockies when a camera and whole metal rig went free-falling down a mountain where I’d just come to a stop at the bottom. It all missed my head by inches and smashed into my left leg, which blew up like the size of two footballs on each side of it and had a massive hematoma that earned a helicopter extraction. If that camera had hit my head, it would have killed me outright. Out of all my accidents, that one was a really close call.

7. SCORPION SHIN 7

—As told to Joshua St. Clair

4. EVEREST LUNGS Right after I got back from Everest, I went sailing with some buddies. We were doing a lot of free diving, where you hold your breath and dive down deep into the water. We had really pushed it. I got back to the UK and started coughing up blood. Nobody knew what it was. Then the

I got a really good scorpion bite on my shin in the Sahara when I was with the French foreign legion in 2004. It’s since developed a bit of grisly scar tissue, like somebody’s put a broad bean under the skin of my shin. My kids love feeling that one.

doctor goes, “Have you been to extremes of high and low altitudes recently?” I tell him, “I have been to the summit of Everest and then did a 100-foot underwater free dive.” “Well, that might explain it.” I spent a bad Christmas Day in the hospital for that.

Bear Grylls, a former member of British special forces, is the star of Running Wild on NBC and the author of the new outdoor survival manual How to Stay Alive (William Morrow Paperbacks).

MEN’S HEALTH

/ October 2018

Life @ COOL DAD

Does Your Smartphone Make You a Dumb Dad? All my fears about sending texts, tweeting like a madman, and refreshing my news feed are calmed by one person: my son. BY GARY SHTEYNGART

I HATE clichés more than any-

thing, but my kid is the best thing that has ever happened to me. J. has softened my approach to the world (even as the world falls apart around us); he has rekindled my interest in the ways and means of the universe; and he has allowed me, for the irst time in my life, to 58

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

live outside the busy monkey brain that thumps away inside my skull, at least whenever he cradles his downy head against my chest. He’s four, but he loves hexadecimals (whatever those are), tectonic plates, and the early work of Marvin Hamlisch. In some ways, I want to become more like him.

+ Gary Shteyngart is the author of several novels; Lake Success is his most recent. Bug him on Twitter @Shteyngart.

I’m catching up on my National Geographic and my Wikipedia just so I can have a conversation on his level, and he’s helping me understand the origins of thunderstorms and the fractal wonders of the Fibonacci series. When I’m not around, he sets up his stufed animals in a circle, takes out his whiteboard, and says, “Animals, let’s do some math problems.” But I am his daddy, and that means that he inevitably wants to be like me. And what does Daddy do? Professionally, I’m a book writer, but more honestly, I’m an iPhone user who on occasion, to pay the mortgage, will pop out a novel or two. The phone has taken over and partly destroyed my life. I’m on every level of social media, pounding out invective and publicizing my books. As a dystopian writer, I’m keeping up with the news on a 30-second basis, addicted to the despair around me. As a watch collector, my sad middle-aged hobby, I’m constantly suring watch sites (yes, that’s a thing) and iguring out new pieces to stalk for my collection. Texting? You bet. The usual texts to keep up with my spouse and friends and plumber, and the constant stream of work texts to agents, editors, and impatient livery drivers. J. has picked up on the fact that Daddy lives on the phone, and he’s started swiping my phone and my wife’s, and, because he was born post-2010, he uses it as naturally as I used an abacus when I was growing up in the Soviet Union in the early 1970s. I’m not worried about him inding the wrong content, at least not yet. He’s mostly into videos on prime numbers and the aurora australis. But he is iguring out that the future of his world will be lived as much in the digital realm as in the real one. Which is to say, my four-year-old has discovered texting. “GOOD NEWS,” he writes to his beloved babysitter. “THE THUNDERSTORM STOPPED NINE HOURS AND 20 MINUTES AGO.” “CAN YOU GO TO ILLUSTRATION BY DAN PAGE

WAGAMAMA WITH ME?” “I HAVE 995 DOLLARS AND 30 CENTS.” “ABSOLUTELY,” his babysitter texts back. “THAT’S A LOT OF MONEY, J.” “THANKS,” he texts her back. “4:30.” I’m glad that my four-yearold is worried enough about his babysitter to make sure she stays out of the rain. I’m also glad he can invite her to an early noodle dinner (4:30) and communicate that he’s got enough cash on hand for when the check comes. (I honestly don’t know how he got that much money. Has he been investing on the side?) But is this right for a fouryear-old? Am I denying him the opportunity to be a child? Should I be taking away his phone? More to the point, am I a bad role model? Children were always in a hurry to grow up, but life was never this fast-paced and data-driven. When I was my son’s age, my father told me that there was a tree that grew baguettes. This idea obsessed me for probably a good full year. He and I once passed a tree that looked like it had a bicycle tire stuck between its branches, and my father looked at me as if to say, “See? All kinds of stuf grows on trees.” It was then that I became a true believer. These days, my son would just type “Do baguettes grow on trees?” into my phone and three seconds

later tell me, “Daddy, that is not correct” in the same tone that he adopts with his stufed animals when they get a problem wrong in “math class.” I understand that human beings evolve, and that the barriers between humans and technology will continue to collapse. But I don’t want my son to go to the other side just yet, no matter how sophisticated it may seem. Perhaps it is time to tell my son the truth. Daddy looks at his phone so much not because it makes him happy but because every swipe and tap of his screen delivers a tiny burst of dopamine that makes him swipe and tap even more in an endless cycle designed to deliver ad revenue to a few large corporations in northern California. Instead of relieving his fear and anxiety, the phone adds to it. Maybe J. would understand all this. He knows when Daddy is scared. When confronted with the 443-foot-tall London Eye (I am both a claustrophobe and an acrophobe), he told me, “Don’t worry, Daddy; I’ll hold your hand.” Parenthood in these troubled times is not for the fainthearted, and sometimes I forget that my son needs me more than I need him. It’s time to let go of the anxiety and dopamine craving and shut my phone down. The real world is waiting for us, and so is the world of the imagination, which is the best world of all. I know of a baguette tree in Central Park that’s ripe for the picking.

SMARTPHONE PARENTING By the Numbers

PERCENTAGE OF KIDS WHO SAID THEY FEEL THEY ARE UNIMPORTANT WHEN THEIR PARENTS ARE DISTRACTED BY A PHONE

1 IN 3 NUMBER OF PARENTS WHO REPORTED READING TEXTS WHILE DRIVING WITH THEIR KID

54 PERCENTAGE OF CHILDREN AGES 8 TO 13 WHO BELIEVED THAT THEIR PARENTS CHECK THEIR PHONE TOO FREQUENTLY Sources: AVG Technologies/Research Now; The Journal of Pediatrics

FATHERHOOD FIX

Why You Do It

Why You Shouldn’t

How to Cut Back

STOP YOUR DISTRACTED DADDING

“The common perception is that babies are like vegetables,” says Roberta Golinkoff, Ph.D., author of Becoming Brilliant. It’s easy to think that they won’t notice you or care that you’re on your phone, she says, and parents of kids of all ages often see their smartphone as a “break” that they deserve. Plus, people often lose track of time on their phone, assuming they’ll just check it for a minute but then ten pass, she adds. This makes you a more absent father than you think.

“Children, even babies, are looking for collaboration and communication,” says Golinkoff. “When you use your smartphone around your child, you are putting up a wall. You’re taking away the possibility of shared talk and emotion.” What’s the big deal? One study Golinkoff conducted found that when parents took a phone call while trying to teach their child a word, the child never ended up learning it in the allotted time. In short: Your phone hampers parenting.

“It’s as simple as putting the phone away,” Golinkoff says. “There’s no big magic trick.” And there’s no middle ground. When you’re interacting with your child, place the phone in a designated bowl or drawer. Putting it out of reach isn’t good enough. “If you can see the phone, you will likely give in to temptation,” she says. You can still take a phone break after, say, 30 minutes of focused play, but make sure child time and phone time are separate.

Parents who used their phone around their kids reported feeling less of a connection than parents who didn’t, found a 2018 study by U.S. and Canadian researchers.

MEN’S HEALTH

/ October 2018

Life @ Live Longer and Prosperer Heed the latest science on aging and you’ll add years to your life! (Just don’t do 3 and 4 at the same time.)

INTERMITTENT FASTING

ARUGULA

STUBBORNNESS

SEX

2. Eating dietary

3. A study of Italians

4. Research shows

1. Cramming all of your allotted daily calories into a shorter period of time may help slow the cells’ aging process, promoting a longer life span. Just make sure those calories don’t come from fries. —Cell Metabolism

nitrates, found in leafy greens and beets, has been linked to a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease. Try fresh arugula on pizza. It has more nitrates than any other veggie. —British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology

ages 90 to 101 found the following commonalities: optimism; stubbornness; a domineering streak; and a bond with God, family, and land. You wanna argue about that? —International Psychogeriatrics

that sexual activity may decrease heart-disease risk by imitating the effects of mild to moderate exercise. True, there’s an increased risk of heart attack, but only for those less physically active. —Circulation

SWIPING 11. A life of endless 11

5. People who had lost five or more teeth by age 65 were more likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and osteoporosis. Brush, floss, rinse, repeat. —Periodontology 2000

DOGS 6. Families (ages 40 to 80) with a dog were 30 percent less likely to die within a 12-year period than their canine-free peers. Good boy! —Scientific Reports 60

RUNNING WITH THE PACK

7. Taking part in group

ACCEPTANCE

A LC O H O L

exercise—whether it’s rec-league hoops or swimming—helps maintain social connectedness into your later years and may contribute to a longer, healthier life. —Scientific Reports

8. As you pass those major milestones, having a positive self-perception of aging can up life expectancy by seven and a half years. Look on the brighter side. —The Gerontologist

9. A study found an association between having two glasses of wine daily and an 18 percent lower risk of premature death. But don’t cross the line from benefit to binge. —UC Irvine

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

STAYING SILENT 10. Ditch the male stereotype. Experiencing even low-level anxiety and depression correlates with higher mortality rates. It’s time to talk, gentlemen. —BMJ

dating may take a toll on your health. People with high cholesterol were 16 percent more likely to be alive at the end of a 13-year study if they were married rather than single. —European Heart Journal

COMMUTING 12. Long hours on buses, on trains, and in cars may shorten life spans. Cycling to work, even part of the way, can lower the risk of cardiovascular disease. Has exercise ever done us wrong? —BMJ

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Sleep deprivation has been called an epidemic by experts, who link it to chronic conditions. (It’s enough to keep you up at night.) Enter Big Sleep: a booming industry churning out hundreds of products to help us not be miserable each morning. We tested every new one we could. Welcome to the sleepiest awards show ever, featuring the beds, trackers, napping centers, and high-tech earplugs that will help you get more Z’s and stop lying awake at night asking . . . Y?!

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MEN’S HEALTH

/ October 2018

Mind@ The Essentials for the Best Night’s Sleep, and a Better Morning

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$68, TOMMYJOHN.COM

$110, UNDERARMOUR.COM

$3,499, SLEEPNUMBER.COM

STARTING AT $99, BROOKLINEN.COM

$65, LLBEAN.COM

Go minimal and go comfortable. These Tommy John Second Skin shorts give you serious underwear innovation (extra-soft tri-blend fabric, contour crotch for movement, and pockets) worked into a pair of drawstring shorts built for rest.

Powered by Celliant technology (which makes it an FDA medical device), Under Armour’s Recovery sleepwear uses a bioceramic pattern to bounce infrared energy back to you. That improves blood flow and boosts oxygen, readying you for your next workout.

The Sleep Number 360 i8 Smart Bed tracks your slumber and sends data back to an app, then adjusts the bed’s air chambers around your body. It also has a temperature-balancing layer that soaks up extra heat, a welcome feature for guys who run hot.

Brooklinen uses long-staple cotton fibers for its sheets—which reduces itchiness and pilling—and less-dense yarns. What you get is a lighter, crisper, and more comfortable bedspread at a 270 thread count than lesser-quality fibers at a higher count.

—Matt Goulet

—Jordyn Taylor

—Sean Evans

—M. G.

Proof positive that something doesn’t have to look techy to do the job, L. L. Bean’s classic mid-century clock (the first iteration was introduced in 1952) uses a brightening LED light to rustle you awake and has a USB outlet—in case you really need the phone beside you. —M. G.

IS NAKED SLEEP THE BEST SLEEP? The science behind going nude at nighttime. BY MELISSA MATTHEWS

. . . WHILE WEARING THIS SHIRT . ..

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

THERE ARE the speculative beneits of sleeping in the buf: increased comfort, quick access if any extracurriculars take place. But actual scientiic proof that nixing pajamas will impact the quality of sleep is lacking, according to Matthew Walker, author of Why We Sleep and a professor of neuroscience at UC Berkeley. While researchers have delved into how body temperature and sleeping outdoors afects sleep quality, the science of dozing naked remains a mystery. Walker says we can glean some information from hunter-gatherer tribes in Africa who are more exposed

to temperature changes. One study found less than 5 percent of people in these groups faced insomnia at least once a year, compared with other research saying up to 30 percent of people in industrialized places are chronic insomniacs. The same tribe study found sleep cycles of hunter-gatherers were linked to temperature. They fall asleep when temps start to dip and wake when it’s coldest. We sleep better when the external temperature is between 60° and 67°F. Walker says covering up may make it harder for our bodies to release heat. Losing a layer, or all of them, could help.

Illustrations: Nishant Choksi

. . . ABOUT THOSE NOISEMASKING SLEEPBUDS Better to tell you what these are not: They are not headphones. And they’re not noise-canceling. Instead, Bose has created a pair of light Bluetoothconnected buds, built to fit snugly and comfortably into your ear (even with your head on your side) like earplugs. They stream only ten “sleep tracks”— think the hum of an airplane cabin or a babbling brook—which can play for 16 hours on a single charge, covering up any disturbances during the night and tucking you in a sonic cocoon of sleep.

BEST SHORTS TO PASS OUT IN . . .

THE SLEEP APP CATCH-22 SMELL YOURSELF TO SLEEP An ally in getting shut-eye may actually work through your nose. Essential oils could help you sleep as they soothe the nervous and limbic systems via smell receptors. A diffuser can help get them there.

Sure, we could use the Calm app and its Bob Ross Sleep Stories to fall asleep. But that’d mean having our phone in bed with us, and one of the reasons we don’t get enough sleep is tech use before bed. Men’s Health Advisory Panel sleep expert W. Christopher Winter, M.D., advises skipping the app and keeping the phone out altogether. “Phones should stay in the kitchen or somewhere else.” Instead he recommends a wearable. “If someone wants to track their sleep, use a device that you can wear on your wrist or set on your bedside table that won’t chirp at 2:00 A.M. alerting you of a Bed Bath & Beyond coupon in your inbox.”

WEARABLES FOR EVERY KIND OF SLEEPER Technology for the bedroom we can fully support.

FOR THE GYM HOUND

FOR THE DETAIL-ORIENTED

WHOOP STRAP

GARMIN VÍVOACTIVE 3 MUSIC

$180

$299

—LOUIS BARAGONA

WHOOP.COM

GARMIN.COM

The Diffuser

Using data collected from continuously wearing the Whoop strap, the companion app offers Sleep, Strain, and Recovery scores daily and a breakdown every week. THE TAKEAWAY: Whoop uses measures like Strain (cardiovascular load) and yesterday’s sleep to inform nightly sleep requirements. I rarely get even 70 percent of my daily sleep needs. It’s a stark reminder that I’m letting myself down in the gym by staying up too late at home. —Brett Williams

Clocking how many hours of shut-eye you caught in a night was usually the most a smartwatch could deliver with its sleep-tracking technology. But quantifying hours asleep doesn’t mean much if they’re not quality. THE UPGRADE: The latest update to Garmin’s tracking technology (which you can find on the Vívoactive 3 Music) now monitors REM, light, and deep-sleep cycles so you’re presented with a more accurate reading of the rest you’re getting. —M. G.

FOR THE UNTRAINED INSOMNIAC

FOR THE CONFIDENT, AND EARLY ADOPTERS

THIM SMART RING

PHILIPS SMARTSLEEP IMPROVEMENT SYSTEM

Vitruvi Stone Diffuser The oils mingle with water, which is misted out over the course of a three-hour cycle. $119, vitruvi.com The Oils

Lavender The scent may improve sleep quality.

Chamomile Mixed with other oils, it’s been linked to better sleep for certain ICU patients. $199

$399

Lemon For when you haven’t quite slept off a hangover, the citrus smell is an anti-nausea aid.

Mint In the morning, mildly stimulating mint oil can help you wake up faster.

THIM.IO

PHILIPS.COM/SMARTSLEEP-NEWS

Slip the Thim tracker around the tip of your index finger when going to bed. As soon as you doze off, it buzzes you awake. Why? Because it wants to retrain you how to fall asleep the right way. THE BONA FIDES: Like putting the science and techniques of a sleep clinic around your finger, Thim’s system of “sleep trials” that wake you intermittently over the first hour of sleep, and as you begin to wake up in the morning, are the same reconditioning therapies that have been used to treat insomnia patients for more than ten years. —M. G.

The Philips SmartSleep headband (launching later this fall) isn’t so much a sleep tracker as a sleep optimizer. Wear it as you lie down for the night and the band senses when you enter certain stages of sleep, piping in tones that won’t wake you up but will promote slow-wave activity so you can get more restful sleep. WHAT YOU WON’T GET: Help falling asleep. The headband is meant for 18- to 50-year-olds who have no trouble dozing off but just can’t find the time to get more than seven hours of rest. —M. G. MEN’S HEALTH

/ October 2018

Φορ πατιεντσ ωιτη µοδερατε το σεϖερε πλαθυε πσοριασισ

Εµβραχε τηε χηανχε οφ 100% χλεαρ σκιν ωιτη Ταλτζ Υπ το 90% οφ πατιεντσ σαω α σιγνιφιχαντ ιµπροϖεµεντ οφ τηειρ πσοριασισ πλαθυεσ σκιν Σοµε εϖεν αχηιεϖεδ 100% χλεαρ σκιν∗

Ταλτζ ισ α πρεσχριπτιον µεδιχινε υσεδ το τρεατ αδυλτσ ωιτη αχτιϖε πσοριατιχ αρτηριτισ. Ταλτζ ισ αλσο α τρεατµεντ φορ αδυλτσ ωιτη µοδερατε το σεϖερε πλαθυε πσοριασισ ωηο µαψ βενε⇒τ φροµ τακινγ ινϕεχτιονσ ορ πιλλσ (σψστεµιχ τηεραπψ) ορ πηοτοτηεραπψ (τρεατµεντ υσινγ υλτραϖιολετ ορ Υς λιγητ). Προδυχτ Σαφετψ Ινφορµατιον Τηισ συµµαρψ προϖιδεσ βασιχ ινφορµατιον αβουτ Ταλτζ ανδ ισ νοτ χοµπρεηενσιϖε. Ρεαδ τηε ινφορµατιον τηατ χοµεσ ωιτη ψουρ πρεσχριπτιον εαχη τιµε ψουρ πρεσχριπτιον ισ ⇒λλεδ. Τηισ ινφορµατιον δοεσ νοτ τακε τηε πλαχε οφ ταλκινγ ωιτη ψουρ δοχτορ. Βε συρε το ταλκ το ψουρ δοχτορ ορ ηεαλτηχαρε προϖιδερ αβουτ Ταλτζ ανδ ηοω το τακε ιτ. Ωηατ ισ τηε µοστ ιµπορταντ ινφορµατιον Ι σηουλδ κνοω αβουτ ΤΑΛΤΖ? ΤΑΛΤΖ ισ α µεδιχινε τηατ αφφεχτσ ψουρ ιµµυνε σψστεµ ανδ µαψ λοωερ τηε αβιλιτψ οφ ψουρ ιµµυνε σψστεµ το ⇒γητ ινφεχτιονσ. ΤΑΛΤΖ µαψ ινχρεασε ψουρ ρισκ οφ ινφεχτιονσ ωηιχη χαν σοµετιµεσ βεχοµε σεριουσ. Ψουρ ηεαλτηχαρε προϖιδερ σηουλδ χηεχκ ψου φορ τυβερχυλοσισ (ΤΒ) βεφορε ψου βεγιν τρεατµεντ ωιτη ΤΑΛΤΖ ανδ µαψ τρεατ ψου φορ ΤΒ ιφ ψου ηαϖε α ηιστορψ οφ ΤΒ ορ ηαϖε ΤΒ. Ψουρ ηεαλτηχαρε προϖιδερ σηουλδ ωατχη ψου χλοσελψ φορ σιγνσ ανδ σψµπτοµσ οφ ΤΒ δυρινγ ανδ αφτερ τρεατµεντ ωιτη ΤΑΛΤΖ. Ωηο σηουλδ νοτ υσε ΤΑΛΤΖ? Δο νοτ υσε ΤΑΛΤΖ ιφ ψου ηαϖε ηαδ α σεϖερε αλλεργιχ ρεαχτιον το ιξεκιζυµαβ ορ ανψ οφ τηε οτηερ ινγρεδιεντσ ιν ΤΑΛΤΖ. Σεε τηε Μεδιχατιον Γυιδε φορ α χοµπλετε λιστ οφ ινγρεδιεντσ ιν Ταλτζ. Βεφορε σταρτινγ ΤΑΛΤΖ, τελλ ψουρ ΗΧΠ ιφ ψου: αρε βεινγ τρεατεδ φορ αν ινφεχτιον ηαϖε αν ινφεχτιον τηατ δοεσ νοτ γο αωαψ ορ τηατ κεεπσ χοµινγ βαχκ ηαϖε ΤΒ ορ ηαϖε βεεν ιν χλοσε χονταχτ ωιτη σοµεονε ωιτη ΤΒ τηινκ ψου ηαϖε αν ινφεχτιον ορ ηαϖε σψµπτοµσ οφ αν ινφεχτιον συχη ασ: − φεϖερ, σωεατσ, ορ χηιλλσ − µυσχλε αχηεσ − χουγη − σηορτνεσσ οφ βρεατη − βλοοδ ιν ψουρ πηλεγµ (µυχυσ) − ωειγητ λοσσ − ωαρµ, ρεδ, ορ παινφυλ σκιν ορ σορεσ ον ψουρ βοδψ − διαρρηεα ορ στοµαχη παιν − βυρνινγ ωηεν ψου υρινατε ορ υρινατε µορε οφτεν τηαν υσυαλ ηαϖε Χροην&σ δισεασε ορ υλχερατιϖε χολιτισ ηαϖε ρεχεντλψ ορ αρε σχηεδυλεδ το ρεχειϖε αν ιµµυνιζατιον (ϖαχχινε). Πεοπλε ωηο τακε ΤΑΛΤΖ σηουλδ νοτ ρεχειϖε λιϖε ϖαχχινεσ. Πριορ το σταρτινγ ΤΑΛΤΖ, χονσιδερ χοµπλετιον οφ αλλ αγε αππροπριατε ιµµυνιζατιονσ αχχορδινγ το χυρρεντ ιµµυνιζατιον γυιδελινεσ αρε πρεγναντ ορ πλαν το βεχοµε πρεγναντ. Ιτ ισ νοτ κνοων ιφ ΤΑΛΤΖ χαν ηαρµ ψουρ υνβορν βαβψ αρε βρεαστφεεδινγ ορ πλαν το βρεαστφεεδ. Ιτ ισ νοτ κνοων ιφ ΤΑΛΤΖ πασσεσ ιντο ψουρ βρεαστ µιλκ Αφτερ σταρτινγ ΤΑΛΤΖ, χαλλ ψουρ ΗΧΠ ριγητ αωαψ ιφ ψου ηαϖε ανψ οφ τηε σψµπτοµσ οφ ινφεχτιον λιστεδ αβοϖε. Δο νοτ υσε ΤΑΛΤΖ ιφ ψου ηαϖε ανψ σψµπτοµσ οφ ινφεχτιον υνλεσσ ψου αρε ινστρυχτεδ το βψ ψουρ ΗΧΠ. Τελλ ψουρ ΗΧΠ αβουτ αλλ τηε µεδιχινεσ ψου τακε, ινχλυδινγ πρεσχριπτιον ανδ οϖερ−τηε−χουντερ µεδιχινεσ, ϖιταµινσ, ανδ ηερβαλ συππλεµεντσ. Ωηατ αρε τηε ποσσιβλε σιδε εφφεχτσ οφ ΤΑΛΤΖ? ΤΑΛΤΖ µαψ χαυσε σεριουσ σιδε εφφεχτσ, ινχλυδινγ: Σεριουσ αλλεργιχ ρεαχτιονσ. Ιφ ψου ηαϖε α σεϖερε αλλεργιχ ρεαχτιον, δο νοτ γιϖε ανοτηερ ινϕεχτιον οφ ΤΑΛΤΖ. Γετ εµεργενχψ µεδιχαλ ηελπ ριγητ αωαψ ιφ ψου γετ ανψ οφ τηε φολλοωινγ σψµπτοµσ οφ α σεριουσ αλλεργιχ ρεαχτιον: − φεελ φαιντ − σωελλινγ οφ ψουρ φαχε, εψελιδσ, λιπσ, µουτη, τονγυε, ορ τηροατ − τρουβλε βρεατηινγ ορ τηροατ τιγητνεσσ − χηεστ τιγητνεσσ − σκιν ραση Χροην×σ δισεασε ορ υλχερατιϖε χολιτισ (Ιν⇓αµµατορψ βοωελ δισεασε) χαν ηαππεν ωιτη ΤΑΛΤΖ υσε, ινχλυδινγ ωορσενινγ οφ σψµπτοµσ. Τελλ ψουρ ΗΧΠ ιφ ψου ηαϖε νεω ορ ωορσενινγ σψµπτοµσ οφ ινφλαµµατορψ βοωελ δισεασε δυρινγ τρεατµεντ ωιτη ΤΑΛΤΖ, ινχλυδινγ: στοµαχη παιν, διαρρηεα (ωιτη ορ ωιτηουτ βλοοδ), ωειγητ λοσσ.

∗4 ουττ οφφ 10 10 αχη αχχηιε χηιεϖ ιεϖεδ εδδ 100 0 % χλεα λεεα εαρ σκιν εαρ

Ασκ ψουρ δοχτορ αβουτ Ταλτζ τοδαψ Λεαρν ηοω ψου χαν τρψ Ταλτζ φορ ασ λιττλε ασ ∃5 α μοντη ατ ταλτζ.χοµ

Τηε µοστ χοµµον σιδε εφφεχτσ οφ ΤΑΛΤΖ ινχλυδε: ινϕεχτιον σιτε ρεαχτιονσ, υππερ ρεσπιρατορψ ινφεχτιονσ, ναυσεα, ανδ φυνγαλ ινφεχτιον. Τηεσε αρε νοτ αλλ οφ τηε ποσσιβλε σιδε εφφεχτσ οφ ΤΑΛΤΖ. Τελλ ψουρ ΗΧΠ αβουτ ανψ σιδε εφφεχτ τηατ βοτηερσ ψου ορ τηατ δοεσ νοτ γο αωαψ. Χαλλ ψουρ δοχτορ φορ µεδιχαλ αδϖιχε αβουτ σιδε εφφεχτσ. Ψου αρε ενχουραγεδ το ρεπορτ νεγατιϖε σιδε εφφεχτσ οφ πρεσχριπτιον δρυγσ το τηε ΦΔΑ. ςισιτ ωωω.φδα.γοϖ/µεδωατχη ορ χαλλ 1−800−ΦΔΑ−1088. Φορ µορε ινφορµατιον, ινχλυδινγ Πρεσχριβινγ Ινφορµατιον, Μεδιχατιον Γυιδε, ανδ Ινστρυχτιονσ φορ Υσε, χαλλ 1−800−545−5979 ορ γο το τηε φολλοωινγ ωεβσιτε: ωωω.ΤΑΛΤΖ.χοµ. ΤΑΛΤΖ→ (ιξεκιζυµαβ) ινϕεχτιον ισ α ρεγιστερεδ τραδεµαρκ οφ Ελι Λιλλψ ανδ Χοµπανψ ανδ ισ αϖαιλαβλε βψ πρεσχριπτιον ονλψ.

Οφφερ γοοδ φορ υπ το 36 μοντησ. ∃5 Μοντηλψ οφφερ συβϕεχτ το α μοντηλψ χαπ ανδ α σεπαρατε μαξιμυμ αννυαλ βενε⇒τ οφ ∃16,000. Χαρδ μυστ ⇒ρστ βε υσεδ βψ 12/31/2018. Τηισ οφφερ ισ ινϖαλιδ φορ πατιεντσ ωιτηουτ χοµµερχιαλ ινσυρανχε χοϖεραγε ορ τηοσε ωηοσε πρεσχριπτιον χλαιµσ αρε ελιγιβλε το βε ρειµβυρσεδ, ιν ωηολε ορ ιν παρτ, βψ ανψ γοϖερνµενταλ προγραµ συχη ασ Μεδιχαρε, Μεδιχαιδ, ορ ΤΡΙΧΑΡΕ. Οφφερ ϖοιδ ωηερε προηιβιτεδ βψ λαω. ςισιτ ταλτζ.χομ φορ φυλλ τερμσ ανδ χονδιτιον ο σ.

Μαρκετεδ βψ: Λιλλψ ΥΣΑ, ΛΛΧ Ινδιαναπολισ, ΙΝ 46285, ΥΣΑ Χοπψριγητ ♥2017, Ελι Λιλλψ ανδ Χοµπανψ. Αλλ ριγητσ ρεσερϖεδ. ΙΞ ΧΟΝ ΒΣ−Π 01ΔΕΧ2017 ΠΠ−ΙΞ−ΥΣ−1342 05/2018 ♥ΛΙΛΛΨ ΥΣΑ, ΛΛΧ, 2018. ΑΛΛ ΡΙΓΗΤΣ ΡΕΣΕΡςΕΔ.

Mind@ S

L E E

A R D

BEST PLACE TO SNEAK A NAP ONE SLEEPLESS PERSON’S FORAY INTO THE LUXURY POWER NAP. BY EJ DICKSON

AS THE MOTHER of an 18-month-old child and an all-around anx-

ious person, I can’t remember the last time I had a good night’s sleep. If I’m not being kicked in the groin at 3:00 A.M. by a lailing toddler foot, I’m usually checking my email or, let’s be honest, catching up on an extremely dark Australian crime series on Amazon Prime. When I heard about Casper’s Dreamery, a one-stop sleep shop in downtown Manhattan that’s meant to encourage customers to adopt healthier sleep habits, I wasn’t excited by the prospect of getting 45 minutes of shut-eye so much as I took it as a personal challenge. But Casper, being a mattress company after all, takes the pursuit of sleep extremely seriously. Paying $25 gets you access to a tricked-out

FOR WHEN YOU WANT TO TAKE A NAP AND UPSET PEOPLE AT THE SAME TIME The Ostrich Pillow Original ($99, ostrichpillow.com) is sleep mask, neck pillow, and earplugs all in one. Pull it over your head for the benefit of not seeing yourself in it.

sleep “nook” for a power nap. The idea is for workers to use the location as a chance to rest and recharge on their lunch break. (Though considering that only about 60 percent of employees feel encouraged to take a regular lunch break, the idea that employers would look kindly on them taking an extra 45 minutes to sleep indicates that Casper has a pretty optimistic view of the American workplace.) When I arrived at the Dreamery, I was handed a sleep mask, a pair of pajamas from Sleepy Jones, a toothbrush, and a small pouch of facial products and was directed to change. That’s when I panicked. Was there a pocket in the PJs for my phone? But I was there to sleep, so while running through the worst-case scenarios—what if someone calls? What if someone emails? What if Kanye says something bananas on Twitter?—I put my phone in one of the Dreamery’s lockers and proceeded to the nap-time area totally untethered. A kindly attendant named Hayley (the perfect name for a sleep attendant) whispered the rules to me: no loud noises, no talking, and she would wake me up in 45 minutes. I was led to my nook, a small, futuristic edifice that looks like George Jetson designed a cabana for Wayfair. There were (very soft) pillows piled atop a (very comfy) mattress. As I burrowed under the comforter, I immediately felt a sensation that I had not experienced in well over a year: restfulness. There was no baby’s toe kicking in my back, no blue screen winking at me. I could inally close my eyes, spread my limbs, and drift into the embrace of sleep. That didn’t end up happening. I started obsessing over a work project and what I would give my son for dinner and coordinating weekend plans until I had descended into a black hole of anxious to-dos so deep that I had Hayley end my nap ten minutes early. But in those 35 minutes, I got to chill out the best way I know how: by letting my mind race. THERE’S MORE!

Our Sleep Awards—more winners, more reviews, more products, and more expert advice, plus how to stop snoring—continue over at MensHealth.com/Sleep.

MEN’S HEALTH

/ October 2018

Mind@

#METOO, ONE YEAR What We’ve Learned (and What We Haven’t) It’s been only 12 months since the #MeToo movement became a national . . . make that global phenomenon. We teamed up with Women’s Health to uncover its impact on the conduct and attitudes of American women and men.

Methodology: This Men’s Health and Women’s Health/SurveyMonkey online poll was conducted from June 29 to July 1, 2018, among 3,372 adults (1,636 men and 1,736 women) in the United States. The modeled error estimate for the full sample is 2.5 percentage points. Respondents for this survey were selected from the more than 2 million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform each day. Data have been weighted for age, race, sex, education, and geography using the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to reflect the demographic composition of the United States ages 18 and older.

We mostly agree that this reckoning has been a good thing. The majority of men and women surveyed agreed that the #MeToo movement, in general, has been positive for both men and women. 2% Good for men, bad for women 47% Good for men, good for women 30% Bad for men, bad for women 14% Bad for men, good for women 7% No answer Those who viewed it as good for both genders were more likely than others to have spoken up about harassment they’ve seen (14%) or become advocates for survivors (14%).

Except for Republicans. In terms of political demographics, people who identify as Republican or Republican-leaning are less likely to see #MeToo as good for both genders (29%) than Independents or Democrats.

48% of Republicans think it’s bad for both.

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

BUT

63%

AND

50%

of Democrats of Independents think it’s good for both.

Alexander Pohl/NurPhoto/Getty Images, Gabriel Olsen/WireImage/Getty Images, Associated Press

Since the allegations of Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misconduct in Hollywood broke open the #MeToo movement, empowered victims have stepped forward and perpetrators have been stripped of their power and taken to task. Throughout the media storm, we men have been asked to reconcile our own conduct while serving as allies. All the while, we’ve been navigating a new dynamic between men and women in the workplace, the dating world, and our long-term relationships. With high-proile stories continuing to emerge, how much have we really changed? Are we living differently? How are the women in our lives thinking and acting differently? Men’s Health partnered with Women’s Health and SurveyMonkey to ask more than 3,000 American men and women what they think of the #MeToo movement now and how it’s afected their lives. Turns out a lot of us have some catching up to do.

LATER While we’re mostly in support of the #MeToo movement, most people aren’t changing their view of what constitutes harassment or assault, or their perception of consent.

69% No change in opinion of what behaviors are considered to be sexual assault or harassment. Of those surveyed, 27% said yes, the movement has changed their opinion of what behaviors constitute sexual harassment or assault. Just 4% had no answer.

72% No change in view of the point at which consent is required for physical intimacy. Of those surveyed, 23% said yes, their view of the point at which consent is required for physical intimacy has changed in the wake of #MeToo. And 4% had no answer.

Not a lot of guys are changing their behavior. In which of the following ways have you changed your behavior as a result of the #MeToo movement?

43%

DID NOT CHANGE AT ALL. MEANWHILE

32% OF MEN ARE MORE CAREFUL IN WHAT THEY SAY OR DO AS A RESULT OF THE #METOO MOVEMENT. While 43% of men haven’t changed their behavior, 26% reported being worried about having their actions misinterpreted because of #MeToo.

ADVICE FROM OUR FRIENDS

Women’s Health editors on how to support women in the wake of #MeToo. MH editors asked us so many important questions for this story. Like: Is it creepy to offer to buy a woman a drink at a bar now? (Not at all, but if she declines, don’t push it, bud.) If women have always been offended, why are they only speaking up now? (We have been speaking up, but it took a bunch of moguls to get called out as molesters for everyone to listen.) And, finally, how can men be supportive? We’re so glad you asked. The truth is, men are much more likely to listen to other men when it comes to this stuff. Most of it is common sense. If a coworker does something out of line, report him. If a friend says something crude or sexist in mixed company, give the women a chance to tell him he’s wrong, and if they do, back them up. If they choose not to engage, you have the green light to say, “Not cool, dude.” It’s all on you to stop demeaning “locker-room talk.” (Can we eliminate this concept altogether?) You might catch some grief, but those little interactions are influential. Even better? Ask the women in your life, “How can I help?” Pay attention and be open to making changes. If you want to offer support on a public level, ask HR to host a meeting on sexual harassment or help out at a volunteer program for assault victims. In these situations, just show up and listen.

Mind@

74%

Would ask the accused for their side of the story.

21% said they’d support the accused if they had established trust and cut them off if they hadn’t. Just 4% said they’d cut off ties.

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, have you reevaluated any past romantic encounters?

When men and women think about past romantic encounters, they see them diferently. How do you view those past encounters now?

Yes

Men

78% 17%

Women

69%

26%

Despite the shift in the national conversation, and our general acknowledgment that the #MeToo movement is a good thing, we’re still not reflecting much on our own experiences or our role in it.

Men Women

Mostly Appropriate

Mostly Inappropriate

75% 39%

7% 37%

A quarter of women who reevaluated past romantic encounters felt regretful after considering appropriateness. A quarter of men who did the same felt relieved.

African-American men are stepping up. They are more likely than white men to become advocates for assault survivors as a result of the #MeToo movement (15% compared with 6% of white men). They are also more likely to have explicit discussions about consent (21% compared with 14% of white men) and reevaluate their past romantic encounters (26% compared with 16% of white men). And they are more likely to view the #MeToo movement as good for both men and women (47% compared with 40% of white men).

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

HOW TO START A CONVERSATION WE’RE N OT HAVIN G One of the most important things individual men can do in light of #MeToo is talk with other men. “There are less macho conversations that guys need to have with their guy friends,” says Avi Klein, L.C.S.W., a psychotherapist in New York City who sees male patients working through their own conduct in the wake of #MeToo. What often keeps guys from reconciling past sexual encounters they’re uncomfortable with is a sense of shame, the feeling that they are alone in their actions and experiences, says Klein. If you’re trying to work through some of the ways you’ve acted in the past, start a conversation with a friend by saying, “There’s something on my mind. I’d really like to talk about it with you.” “You’re giving that person permission to talk about things that are hard for them too with you,” Klein says. When it comes to speaking up, he says we tend to write off a lot of bad behavior with “He’s still a good guy.” If you want to address a friend’s treatment of women, ask to talk, but tell him you’re worried about how it’s going to affect your relationship. “Say, ‘I want to check in with you. Is it okay to give you some honest feedback?’ ” advises Klein. If it’s coming from a place of care and for his own benefit, he’s going to be much more receptive.

Alexander Pohl/NurPhoto/Getty Images, Mpi43/MediaPunch/MediaPunch/IPx/Associated Press, Noriko Hayashi/Bloomberg/Getty Images

We all say we’d react pretty much the same way if someone we were close to was accused of or reprimanded for harassment.

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Mind@

“This. Feels. Amazing. Just. Need. To. Check. My. Phone.” How your smartphone can help you get better at sex. BY LUX ALPTRAUM

WITH 2 2 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds

having used a dating app to land a partner, according to Pew Research Center, why not let an app help navigate sex with said partner? As smooth as you may be at swiping and chatting, you can still get lost in the bedroom. Your phone, as it does every other aspect of your life, knows this—or rather it will, with a slew of new digital services built to hone your sexual performance. FOR WHEN YOU’RE A DATA HOUND

The App: Lovely (ourlovely.com) This one requires a tracking accessory, and it’s not a smartwatch. When paired with the vibrating Lovely ring for your, uh, anatomy ($169), the app tracks and analyzes your body movements during sex. Using that information, it suggests new positions and activities. Into missionary? The app recommends the Launch Pad, in which your partner lifts her legs and puts her feet against your chest, so she controls the action. Preview Lesson! Beyond cold metrics, the Lovely blog touts planned sex. It can still be intimate and arousing—just imagine the thrill of receiving that calendar invite. FOR WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW IT ALL

The App: Juicebox (juiceboxit.com) A common complaint that Seattle sex and relationship coach Charlie Glickman, Ph.D., hears from male clients is they feel 72

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

pressure to act like porn stars in bed. “For a lot of guys, the scariest three words they could say are ‘I don’t know,’ ” he explains. Enter Juicebox, an app that lets you, for free, privately browse user questions and seek advice from screened experts. For $24 a week, you get unlimited access to interactive sex-ed guides, plus one-on-one chats with certiied sex educators. Preview Lesson! In the app, Juicebox coach Stella Harris suggests upping your oral game by using your hands to stimulate other areas of your partner’s body while you’re at it, like her hips, thighs, or breasts. FOR KICKING OFF CONVERSATION

The App: Gottman Card Decks (via the App Store) One sex tip you’ll likely hear from any relationship expert? Get good at communication. But becoming better at talking about sex takes efort, just like actual sex. Swipe through the “cards” from the relationship pros at the Gottman Institute for prompts to help you both put relationship needs into words and discover questions you didn’t even know you wanted to ask. Preview Lesson! The app’s Salsa decks suggest ways to get the two of you in the mood, like “Have a naked bill-paying night.” So that would be two naked bill-paying nights in a week?!

BEYOND THE EGGPLANT EMOJI New sexting rules from Chris Donaghue, Ph.D., L.C.S.W., author of Sex Outside the Lines. 1. TALK IRL FIRST Think about what would turn on your partner, not just what’s hot for you. Ask what sort of texts they find appealing, be it a sexy story or a description of what you plan to do with them. Afterward, ask what your partner liked. (Recapping the fun you just had can be the most thrilling part.) 2. TELL, DON’T SHOW Dick pics shouldn’t always be the go-to. Instead, describe how much your partner is turning you on, or snap shots that leave room for imagination. Make it all more exciting by tailoring each text to a different sense: the taste of their skin, the sound of their moans. 3. BE AUTHENTIC If you’re performative or humorous, your sexts will come across as hokey and forced. Text things you actually find sexy, rather than stuff you’ve seen in porn. If it doesn’t match the sex you already enjoy together, the text is going to seem extremely weird. ILLUSTRATION BY MATT CHASE

Mind@ More and more men are killing themselves. Men who seem happy. Men who don’t. Men who never show their feelings at all. If you believe a friend is at risk, here’s how to speak up. BY CASSIE SHORTSLEEVE

We Need to Talk UNDERSTANDING WHY anyone kills himself is always

Ask the Tough Questions

Be blunt. If your buddy isn’t bouncing back from a layoff or a breakup or is posting concerning messages, ask how he’s doing. If he says he’s feeling awful, say—and this is tough—“That must be really stressful. How are you handling it? Are you really down? Are you thinking about killing yourself?” Asking if he’s thinking about suicide doesn’t increase his risk of killing himself, says Raymond P. Tucker, Ph.D., assistant professor of clinical psychology at Louisiana State University. It can actually help him feel supported and connected. “Even if they aren’t thinking about suicide or lie about having those thoughts, they know you’re willing to listen, and they’re more likely to come back to you later.”

IF HE SAYS YES . . .

Support: Ask what’s going on and why he thinks he feels the way he does. Don’t project judgment. “Sometimes the reason why someone could say they’re suicidal can seem minuscule to you—but it is the biggest thing in the world to them,” says Tucker. Help: Suggest calling the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (800-273-8255) together. “Crisis-line workers are expertly trained. They’re used to talking to suicidal people, and they’re good at it,” says Jobes. Or help him make an appointment with his doctor or find a mental-health professional. If he needs immediate help, offer to drive him to the emergency room. Follow up: Text or call a couple times a day and see how he’s doing. Communicate just how awful it would be to lose him. “The conversation does not always need to be about suicide, but certainly let them know that you’re there to help,” says Tucker. Teach him to control his response: Tell your friend that just like an ex he fell for, suicidal thoughts can still show up at the door from time to time, says suicide researcher Ursula Whiteside, Ph.D. The trick is how he responds. “Go out for a drink with that ex and you might end up in bed,” she says. “Don’t respond to the ex— instead, cook dinner or do a workout—and you’ll change your relationship to the thoughts. It’s not the thoughts themselves that are dangerous; it’s how you respond.”

complex, but even mental-health experts were puzzled when the CDC released its latest suicide data in June: Eighty-four percent of men who die by suicide have no known mental-health conditions. “People in general—and men in particular—try to hide having a mental-health problem,” says David A. Jobes, Ph.D., director of the Catholic University of America’s Suicide Prevention Lab. That’s part of the problem. The suicide rate for men is about three and a half times that of women—probably because men are less likely to seek help or talk to one another when they’re in trouble, and because they’re more likely to own a gun than women and more likely to use one in a suicide attempt. (About 49 percent of suicide deaths in America are the result of using a irearm, and suicide risk is higher in homes where guns are not stored safely.) “We need prevention strategies that focus not just on helping you not want to die by suicide but on whether or not you can die,” says Michael Anestis, Ph.D., associate professor of clinical psychology at the University of Southern Mississippi. “Locking a gun in a safe doesn’t make you less suicidal—but it makes you less likely to die.” And while an individual’s suicide can seem surprising, there are usually signs. “In my experience, upon honest relection, most of us would recognize in hindsight that our friend #HOWIGOTHELP who died by suicide was not doing MensHealth.com recently launched well—that something was off,” says an initiative to help men talk about Jobes. We need to do a better job their mental-health problems of looking out for each other. Use (menshealth.com/mental-health). Here, three guys share their stories. this guide (like, right now) if you’re worried about a friend. 74

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

@LJOHNSON511 “I was listening to John Moe and Ana Marie Cox talk about depression on the podcast The Hilarious World of Depression and realized my regular thoughts of suicide weren’t normal. I got shit-faced and called my brother and bawled for two hours. Scheduled with a therapist the next day.”

Bauer Syndication/Trunk Archive (men)

HELP ON THE WAY Currently antidepressants, lithium, and an antipsychotic called clozapine can be prescribed to depressed and suicidal people. But they take time to work. That’s why researchers are testing fasteracting drugs. One, the party drug ketamine, reduces suicidal thoughts in depressed patients in just a day (but with side effects). A new drug called Rapastinel is now undergoing phase 3 clinical trials. Similar to ketamine, it acts on the neurotransmitter receptors in the brain responsible for learning, memory, and synaptic plasticity, but with minimal ketamine-like side effects, explains Stanford University professor Carolyn Rodriguez, M.D., Ph.D., who studies the drug. “Rapastinel has the potential to open a new avenue for rapid treatments.”

Spot the Danger Signs

While depression is a big risk factor for suicide, it’s not the only one, says Igor Galynker, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Galynker Suicide Research Laboratory at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine. People who experience all of the below can be 15 times more likely to attempt suicide in the near future than those who don’t, he says.

Feeling trapped or hopeless Losing control of thoughts (like he’s locked into a negative loop of thinking that he can’t escape)

SUGGEST THESE DIY OPTIONS TEC-TEC: This gamelike version of a psychological technique called evaluative conditioning tasks the user with pairing certain words and images together. Find it on the Apple App Store or Amazon. VIRTUAL HOPE BOX:

Extreme anxiety or rapid mood swings Insomnia or agitation Social withdrawal (avoiding social outings he’d normally take part in)

Funded by the Military Suicide Research Consortium, it uses coping strategies such as relaxation, distraction, and positive thinking. Find it on the Apple App Store or Google Play. NOWMATTERSNOW.ORG:

Ursula Whiteside’s tool-packed site

Help Him Reboot

@GAVINJENKINS80 “I was raised to bottle it up and not talk about stuff. In grad school I was angry and drinking hard and had a strained relationship with family. One day my friend Nicole put a list of five therapists’ phone numbers in my hand and said, ‘I’m not going to leave you alone until you are talking to someone.’ Sometimes you need a friend to get tough on you. Had she handed me the note like, ‘Can you please . . .’ I might not have done it. But she was like, ‘If you don’t do this, I’m going to come after you.’ ”

includes survivor stories and a YouTube channel that teaches skills to help people get through hard moments. MAN THERAPY: This award-winning campaign cuts through the BS and stigma of depression, divorce, anxiety, and suicide in a humorous but helpful way. mantherapy.com FACEBOOK: The site recently enabled a feature that allows people to connect with counselors on the Crisis Text Line and the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline through Messenger.

Has your friend been bailing on your pickup-hockey-league games or canceling your weekly poker night? When someone is depressed, they can lose motivation to do the things that make them happy, says Anestis. Behavior therapy says: Do ’em anyway—if your friend changes his behavior, his emotions will follow.

@COMBATCAVSCOUT “After an incredibly rough deployment to Afghanistan, one of my soldiers got out of the Army and was having a hard time adjusting to civilian life. Meanwhile, I was struggling with that deployment too. Talking on the phone, I suggested he seek therapy through Veterans Affairs. My wife—a social worker herself—asked me how I could tell him to do something that I wasn’t willing to do myself. She was right, obviously. I got help, and it probably saved my marriage and my career.”

MEN’S HEALTH

/ October 2018

You Got This!

Choking under stress can derail a game, a date, a workout, even a career. But preventing it involves the same thing that got you into this pressurefilled situation: prep. BY RON GERACI

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

BLOWING THE job-interview answer you

had down cold. Missing that eight-inch putt to lose the charity tournament. Letting her leave with those words still in your throat. A choke can alter your life and change how you see yourself in small or pivotal ways. Sian Beilock, Ph.D., president of Barnard College, remembers her biggest choke. She was a gifted soccer player with Olympic aspirations until one game when she was goalkeeping for California State. “I was playing well until I realized the national coach was standing behind me, and then I had one

of the worst games of my life,” she recalls. “I was so frustrated, I never recovered. It took me out of soccer at the highest level.” The experience also nudged her to become one of the leading researchers of the phenomenon at the University of Chicago and inspired her to write How the Body Knows the Mind. Since researchers first began looking at choking in the 1980s, the most commonly accepted culprit has been “thinking too much”—coping with anxiety by obsessing over body movement in an attempt to be flawless. It’s termed “explicit monitoring,” and cognitive and neuroscience have since proved that this tendency does indeed interfere with the brain processes that f luidly glide you through well-learned tasks. “If you’re shuffling down the stairs and I ask you to think about what’s happening with your knee, there’s a good chance you’ll fall on your face,” says Beilock. In recent years, however, more researchers have begun pointing to another cognitive quirk as a more frequent cause of choking—namely, anxiety and fear of failure, which distract your mind and take critical brain resources (especially working memory) away from the task at hand. It’s thinking too little, in a sense. Broadly speaking, both explicitmonitoring chokers and distraction chokers suffer similar brain breakdowns. Simplified somewhat, thinking too much and thinking too little both strangle your brain’s ability to tap ingrained motor-control skills. In effect, you revert to a bumbling rookie. Though noting the differences in these two choking mechanisms may seem like splitting neural hairs, they matter when it comes to potential fixes. Most common anti-choking strategies are designed to intentionally sidetrack explicit-monitor chokers, such as humming or focusing on a neutral object. But these tips can actually be harmful to distraction chokers and make it even harder for them to perform under stress. Although different people have different choking vulnerabilities and various triggers, the following strategies tend to work for both types of chokers in adrenaline-soaked moments:

Jamie Chung/Trunk Archive

Mind@

Mind@ News Feed /// MIND

Audition with an audience. “Practice under the conditions you’re going to perform in,” says Beilock. This usually means having an audience of people who will be honest and whose opinion you value. This could mean asking a neutral coworker or your attorney brother-in-law to critique your practice pitch. If that’s difficult to re-create, try videoing yourself. “Chokers hate to be watched,” says

Denise Hill, Ph.D., a sport and exercise psychologist at Swansea University in Wales. Rehearsing in front of an audience can help inoculate against that fear. The same goes for time pressure. Set a buzzer when practicing any timed task or exam. Rehearse variation. Monotonously doing drills like sinking free throws invites choking. “In most sports, performance conditions are always changing,” says Gray. “The key is to add variability into practice.” This means scrimmaging, changing angles and pace, performing tasks at different levels of fatigue, asking your test audience to react differently to your pitch, etc. “At the driving range, I’ll pretend I’m playing 9 or 18 holes,” says Paul Sullivan, author of Clutch: Excel Under Pressure. “I’m not just hitting the same shot again and again.” Develop a preroutine. Whether it’s bouncing the ball three times at the foul line, adjusting your feet in a certain way over a putt, or doing power poses in the mirror, come up with a preroutine. Pair it with trigger words that keep you calm and focused on a task or a positive sensation. (“Loose hands” . . . “Make these three clear points,” and so on.) Feeling out of control is a key contributor to choking, says Hill. Trigger words in practice and games help maintain this sense of calm.

Make a fist. Use your left hand and hold it for 30 seconds. Or squeeze a ball. This activates the right brain hemisphere, which directs visual-spatial processing and, in turn, supresses the left hemisphere, which governs verbal and analytic processing. German researchers found it prevented choking in soccer players and tae kwon do experts in an experimental setting. Have “quiet eye.” Focus intensely on the target, or the absolute center of the audience. “Skilled performers keep their eyes still right before they start 78

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

LET IT GO Making a habit of going to bed angry can ruin not only your next day but also the foreseeable future. People whose negative emotional responses to stress carry over to the following day are more likely to report health problems and physical limitations ten years later compared with peers who are able to “let it go,” reveals new research from UC Irvine and Penn State. Before you go to bed, write down any negative feelings you have and try to settle lingering beefs.

PERCENTAGE REDUCTION IN PERCEIVED STRESS AFTER DOING 30-MINUTE GROUP WORKOUTS ONCE A WEEK FOR THREE MONTHS. TRAINING SOLO DID NOT YIELD THE SAME BENEFITS. SOURCE: The Journal of the American

Osteopathic Association

moving,” says Gray. “For example, good golfers look at the ball longer, and good free-throw shooters look at the rim longer. We call this quiet eye because you’re quieting everything down and focusing on one thing.” Hum a song (but only if you’re an explicitmonitor choker). If the fateful act would be insultingly easy—say, sinking a ten-inch putt or knocking in a hanging billiard shot— if only your manhood weren’t riding on it, try humming a song you like as you bead in. Secondary-task distraction is a popular antianxiety strategy in sports and is worth a try if you know you’re an explicit monitor and your mind starts overfocusing on body control during quiet eye. Most sports chokers are likely in the distraction camp, so their minds are screaming about the horrors of failure, not their pinkie angle. If you’re not certain that you’re an explicit monitor, lasering in on the hole is probably a wiser strategy than humming “Back in Black.”

Austin Lord/Stocksy (microphone), PeopleImages/Getty Images (couple)

Forget about being clutch. “The idea of clutch performance is a myth,” says performance psychologist Rob Gray, Ph.D., program chair of human systems engineering at Arizona State University. Many guys think they can consciously “get serious” in a stressful situation or marshal their strengths to perform better than usual. It’s false. You can’t raise your game under pressure; the best you can reliably do is deliver your typical performance. If you haven’t rehearsed your pitch until it flows, or practiced a layup enough to make it 19 out of 20 times, expect to be mediocre or worse when it counts. “Great athletes do the same thing under pressure that they do in other situations, not something radically different,” he adds.

AVOIDING OFFICE TEMPTATIONS How To Resist The Things You Know Are Bad

t’s 10:30am on Monday and the temptations are everywhere. How do I stop myself? I have several sweet, sexy, bad things showing-up at my desk. I could give into the temptation at any second. Lunches usually mean me just staring and wanting to devour just about anything I see. Carbs are my worst enemy. Earlier this month, we setup an oice weight-loss challenge. The problem has been is that there is temptation everywhere. There was Tom’s 40th Birthday cake or someone’s going away party. Another email pings my inbox, this time it’s an update – there’s leftover donuts in the break room. How do I resist? I am constantly starving. One small bite won’t hurt, right? Three weeks into our ‘challenge’, and only one of us lost weight, Sam, who was down 13 lbs, dropping 2 inches of his waist. I had to know how Sam was doing it when I spent more time at the gym every day? It didn’t seem fair. Was it just genetics or did he know something I didn’t? What he told me caught me by surprise, “My brother couldn’t lose weight no matter what he tried. Then he read about a natural Fat Burner called INVIGOR8. He instantly noticed more energy, cravings disappear, and better mood levels.” I was skeptical because I hadn’t heard of the brand but I did some research and I was impressed with the overwhelmingly positive reviews. In fact, 1000’s of customers raved about the company’s line of weight

loss shakes before they launched this highperforming fat burner supplement. All of their products are made with natural ingredients and free from artificial, harmful stimulants, additives, preservatives, GMOs, artificial colors and all the other junk we avoid putting in our bodies. The science behind INVIGOR8 Fat Burner is equally compelling. In a 12-week study from Purdue University, researchers showed that overweight women who consumed the active ingredient in Invigor8 Fat Burner daily lost about 55% more weight than women who did not take the supplement.1 In another 12-week randomized, doubleblind study of 30 overweight individuals, the group taking the active ingredient in Invigor8 Fat Burner lost 11.9 lbs compared to the placebo group.2 Wanting to know more, I reached out to a few of the people who were talking about Invigor8 Fat Burner online. By the next morning two people got back to me. Nick from Los Angles, said, “Sometimes you are skeptical about fat burners but I had to throw my doubts out the window after I tried Invigor8 Fat Burner. I have seen results and I’m very happy with my weight-loss progress.” Gabe from New York, wrote “I have been dropping weight while keeping my energy levels high. It really put a stop to my cravings for junk food and has allowed me to keep my diet clean.”

So after years of feeling drained, sluggish and stuck in a weight loss plateau, I was ready to try something new. I instantly noticed more energy, decreased appetite, and fewer cravings, which helped me avoid all of the oice temptations. It took two weeks before I really started to notice changes to my body. My clothes started feeling looser, my mood changed and my workouts became easier. The scale was showing me that I was losing weight and breaking through that weight loss plateau, without any extra efort, complicated meal plans or without changing my normal workouts. Invigor8 Fat Burner contains 8 naturally occurring appetite suppressants and thermogenics. There is nothing else like it on the market; believe me, I’ve looked. I can honestly say that the results I’ve experienced from INVIGOR8 Fat Burner are nothing short of amazing. With Invigor8, I will be ready for summer. A company spokesperson conﬁrmed a special ofer for Men’s Health readers: if you order this month, you’ll receive $10 of your ﬁrst order by using promo code “Burn10” at checkout. If you’re in a rush to burn fat, lose weight, and increase energy levels you can order INVIGOR8 Fat Burner today at www.Invigor8Diet.com or by calling 1-800-958-3392. 1 2

Mattes et al. Physiology & Behavior 2000 Oct 1-15;71(1-2):87-94. Thom E. Journal of International Medical Research 2007 NovDec;35(6):900-8.

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P.92 GET TO KNOW THE TEAM! MEN’S HEALTH

/ October 2018

FOUR PLAYERS. FOUR APPROACHES TO TRAINING. SO MANY LESSONS FOR YOU. J . â&#x20AC;&#x2030; J . WAT T, 2 9 TEAM:

Houston Texans POSITION:

Defensive line

RUSSELL WILSON, 29

G O -TO E X E R C I S E :

Planks D A I LY E G G

TEAM:

CONSUMPTION:

Seattle Seahawks

More than yours

POSITION:

Quarterback G O -TO E X E R C I S E :

Pregame countdowns STUDENT OF:

Jeter, Jordan

BUT FIRST, A FEW WORDS ON THE STATE OF THE GAME . . .

ANTONIO BROWN, 30 DEVONTA FREEMAN, 26 TEAM:

Atlanta Falcons POSITION:

Running back G O -TO E X E R C I S E :

Duck walks R E A L LY, R E A L LY L O V E S :

Massages

PHOTOGRAPHS BY

TURE LILLEGRAVEN

TEAM:

Pittsburgh Steelers POSITION:

Receiver G O -TO E X E R C I S E :

Squats A L W AY S U P F O R :

A five-mile run

WHY YOU CAN’T LOOK AWAY THE LEAGUE IS AT A CROSSROADS, AND THE BURDEN ON THE BODIES AND MINDS OF THE PLAYERS IS GREATER THAN EVER. WE SALUTE THEM. BY AUSTIN MURPHY

ALL RIGHT, let’s see what we’ve got here. How many

Considering that these are just some of the thoughts an NFL quarterback must process before the ball is snapped on each play, it doesn’t seem like too much efort for us to perform a far simpler mental contortion. As a new NFL season gets under way, let us bear in mind that it is possible to enjoy—indeed, to love— this game, America’s real national pastime, even if we object to many of the greedy old plutocrats who run it. It is possible to celebrate the athletes even as we worry about the toll the game is taking on them. When I quit football after my sophomore season in college, my father wept. But I was done with the game. Or so I thought. My irst gig in the real world was covering prep football for the Bucks County Courier Times, outside Philly. Just when I thought I was out, football pulled me back in. It never did let go. During 33 years at Sports Illustrated, I covered football at every level, from the Oakland Raiders to the Raiders of Glades Central High, on the edge of the Everglades in Florida. Their crosstown rivals are the Pahokee Blue Devils, in whose locker room I stood nine years ago in the moments before their annual clash, the Muck Bowl. A coach named Rick Lammons delivered a sulfurous pep talk that ended thusly: “These people asked for a 84

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

goddamn war! So guess what, fellas, we’re gonna give ’em a goddamn war!” Then, after the roar in the room had died down: “Okay, now let’s say a prayer.” We love this game because it is semistructured mayhem, sanctioned by the authorities and, apparently, the Almighty. Much has come to light over the past 20 years about the dangers presented by football. What has remained constant is my respect for the gladiators—the vast majority of them, at any rate: their talent, of course, but also their jaw-dropping level of commitment, their discipline and willingness to put their bodies on the line for our entertainment. And yes, we are entertained. Notwithstanding doomsday reports to the contrary, the NFL is lat-out cleaning up right now. For as much as football has become a political and cultural third rail, it is still the most popular sport. It’s still the most popular programming on television. NFL games accounted for 37 of last year’s top 50 broadcasts—74 percent of the most watched programs on TV. Sunday Night Football was the most watched show in prime time in 2017, beating the top scripted series (CBS’s The Big Bang Theory). Throw in Monday Night and Thursday Night Football and the House of Gronk earned more eyeballs than the House of Stark.

Ronald Martinez/Getty Images (Vikings vs. Saints), Jim Davis/The Boston Globe/Getty Images (man holding Brady sign), Grant Halverson/Getty Images (man on stretcher)

guys are on the line? Odd or even front? Is this a pressure look—is that Will ’backer coming on a blitz? How many DBs are on the field? Is this dime, nickel, or base package? Single-high safety or two-deep? Are the cornerbacks up in press-man or playing off? Do I need to audible out of this play?

Associated Press (Kaepernick and Reid), Christian Petersen/Getty Images (Cowboys linking arms), Andrew Weber/USA TODAY Sports (Cowboys vs. Packers)

The league’s 32 teams divvied up more than $8 billion in 2017 via its revenue-sharing program, an increase of 0.9 percent from the previous year. As Tommy Lee Jones says of the evil pharmaceutical giant in The Fugitive, “That company’s a monster.” Like any legit monster, the NFL has wreaked considerable collateral damage. When a doctor asked him late in his life if he’d ever been in a car crash, Steelers Hall of Fame center Mike Webster famously replied, “Oh, probably about 25,000 times or so.” The players know the risks. Devonta Freeman (page 92), running back and vest-pocket Hercules for the Falcons, has sufered multiple concussions, and he’s described them as “part of football.” But players also know the upside. Right now, Antonio Brown (page 86) is too focused on working his way back into the MVP conversation. The Steelers AllPro wideout was arguably the league’s best player through 14 weeks last season before injuring his calf. For the third time, the MVP was won by—yawn—Tom Brady. Houston Texans sackmeister J. J. Watt (page 90) has been preoccupied with attacking his rehab after sufering two consecutive seasonending injuries. This package also includes an account of the big brain in one of the league’s smaller quarterbacks, Seattle’s Russell Wilson (page 88).

I’ve met too many proud NFL veterans who now struggle to put together sentences, so it’s great to see the league cracking down on helmet-to-helmet contact and essentially swathing its quarterbacks in Bubble Wrap. None of that changes the fact that this sport, as currently contested, will always be more MMA than ballet. No instructional video can make NFL football something other than what it is: a brutal, high-speed, forward-colliding game played by some of the fastest, biggest men on the planet. It is always going to be dangerous. Yet today’s players—and team doctors, coaches, and trainers—are armed with far more knowledge than their predecessors. They know what they’re getting into, are more familiar with the risks, and are better equipped to manage them. Football isn’t safe. But as a coach recently told me, “It’s as safe as it’s ever been.” To give an example, starting in December 2011, the league put independent “concussion spotters”—athletic trainers without ties to either team—in place at every game to watch for potential injuries. Yes, today’s players are making more bank than ever, but the game ofers something more, whether it’s the feeling of “laying it all on the line” that Watt craves or the incentive Rashard Mendenhall (page 94) talks about: the

chance to be great, to be remembered, to be Hall of Fame. But more is required of them, too. To an extent unknown by their forebears, including but not limited to Da Bears, they must be armchair nutritionists and pharmacologists, politicians and cultural commentators prepared to ield loaded questions along the lines of “Do you agree with Colin Kaepernick?” and “Will you be joining the team when it visits the White House?” Despite the league’s ham-handed eforts to penalize anthem kneelers, players will continue to ind ways to protest. Those acts of conscience will drive some people away from the game. But as we are seeing, the number of defectors—like the accounts of the NFL’s imminent demise— has been greatly exaggerated. There’s only so much hand-wringing and moralizing you can do before curiosity kicks in and you step of your soapbox and turn on the tube to watch Wilson work the two-minute drill. As a coach admonishes Gary Harkness, the pensive running back and narrator in the Don DeLillo novel End Zone, “People don’t go to football games to see pass patterns run by theologians.” This sport has problems, but they aren’t big enough to keep us from tuning in to the NFL to escape our own problems. That would be like throwing out the Brady with the bathwater. MEN’S HEALTH

/ October 2018

HOW DOES PITTSBURGH STEELERS ALL-PRO ANTONIO BROWN TOP LAST SEASON? BY WORKING EVEN HARDER IN THE GYM. FOLLOW HIS LEAD . . . IF YOU DARE. BY EBENEZER SAMUEL

IT’S NOT

easy trying to pack on the muscle you want. It means working out when you barely have the time, avoiding injuries, and maintaining focus and intensity when you’d rather take it easy. Antonio Brown’s secret for doing it: Never relax. It’s how he went from sixth-round draft pick to six-time Pro Bowler, and he doesn’t slow down in the of-season. “You don’t build yourself up and come into the season and drop of,” he says. No, you train hard all year round. Follow Brown’s advice and you’ll ind a way, too. MASTER THE BASICS

Brown focused his of-season training on three key body parts: “my glutes, my shoulders, and my core.” Each plays a key role in helping the body generate speed. Brown does 3- to 5-rep sets of bench presses once a week, and he squats all the time—although not the way you

A R E YO U N F L F I T ?

might think. “For the most part, I squatted lighter weight, a lot of reps, did a lot of endurance training,” he says. “Aim for 20 reps a set.” That will improve your squat technique and rev your heart rate more than you’d expect. CRUSH YOUR CORE

A strong core cushions your ribs against the blows that come from defensive players. Brown knows that well, which is why he’ll do 1,000 reps of ab movements daily. But that doesn’t mean hours of situps. Brown does a variety of ab movements, like V-ups, hanging leg lifts, oblique situps, and plank shoulder-taps. “Don’t worry about what they are,” he says. “Just mix it up, get it in.” BABY YOUR SHOULDERS

Brown’s go-to shoulder routine isn’t about size or a badass military

press; it’s about joint-bulletproofing and endurance. “We call it 5-5-5’s,” he says. Grab a pair of light dumbbells, stand up, and then do 5 reps of lateral raises, raising the weights straight out to your sides. Next, bend at the waist and do 5 reps of “Y” raises, keeping your elbows straight and raising the weights in front of you, thumbs pointing up. Finish with 5 “T” raises, staying bent over and raising the weights out to your sides. “Do 3 to 4 sets,” Brown says. “Just go nonstop.” STRETCH YOUR LEGS

Bad news: To move all over the ield like AB, you’ve got to just run. (Worse news: You’ll also have to run to pass our NFL conditioning test below.) The best receiver in football won’t shrug of a 5-mile run every few days. “I’ll go running for distance consistently,” he says. “That stuf keeps me healthy.”

See how you score on this fitness test created by EXOS, a training facility that preps NFL players for the season. Do each of the 5 tests below, in order, tracking your performance. (Don’t worry if you can’t do all the tests on the same day. Just do 1 every day for 5 straight days.)

1. B E N C H P R E S S

2. ISO CHINUP HOLD

3. I S O O B L I Q U E H O L D

4. B ROA D J U M P

5. S H U T T L E RU N

WHY? Players need

WHY? Strong back mus-

WHY? Your core protects

WHY? You’ll challenge

WHY? A typical NFL

explosive strength and power to push opponents around—and away from them. DO IT: Bench 125 percent of your body weight. (If you’re 180 pounds, try to bench 225 pounds.) Without letting your butt come off the bench, do as many reps as you can.

cles cushion the body against tackles. DO IT: Grasp a pullup bar with an underhand grip. Pull your chin above the bar; hold for as long as possible. Lineman wannabes, do this test with body weight. Aspiring receivers, don a 30-pound weight vest.

your spine. DO IT: Lie on your left side on a bench, legs straight, hips hanging off it, hands across your chest. (Have someone hold your legs.) Lift your torso until it’s parallel to the ground. Hold for time. Rest, switch sides, then repeat.

your lower body to be explosive, a key trait for running backs. DO IT: Stand a few inches behind a line. Leap forward as far as you can. Land on both feet. (If you take a step forward or fall over, the jump doesn’t count.) Measure from the line to your heels.

receiver runs 1.1 miles every game. DO IT: Set a clock for 12 minutes. Dash 50 yards; sprint back. Rest for the remainder of the minute; begin another sprint when the next minute starts. Do 12 rounds; track how many you finish in less than 17 seconds.

0 reps: 1 PT 1–2 reps: 2 PTS 3–4 reps: 3 PTS 5+ reps: 4 PTS

0–5 secs: 1 PT 6–15 secs: 2 PTS 16–29 secs: 3 PTS 30+ secs: 4 PTS

0–10 secs each side: 1 PT 11–29 secs each side: 2 PTS 30–39 secs each side: 3 PTS 40+ secs each side: 4 PTS

0–5 feet: 1 PT 6–8 feet: 2 PTS 9–10 feet: 3 PTS 11+ feet: 4 PTS

0–4 rounds: 1 PT 5–8 rounds: 2 PTS 9–11 rounds: 3 PTS 12 rounds: 4 PTS

YOUR SCORE: 5: Everyone has to start somewhere. 6–13: Just missed the cut! 14–19: 53-man roster, here you come. 20: Antonio Brown who? 86

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

PETE SUCHESKI (illustrations). Opposite page and following spread: Grooming by Tasha Brown for Exclusive Artists using Baxter of CA, prop styling by Faethgruppe, clothing by Nike, hair styling by Mark Jacob Baysinger for On the Mark (Wilson), Mirage C/Getty Images (plate).

WHAT BROWN CAN DO FOR YOU

Keep improving. Brown wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t always a star. Coming out of Central Michigan in 2010, he ran a 4.56-second 40-yard dash, part of the reason he lasted until the sixth round of the NFL draft. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not slow anymore: He says he can now run a 4.35.

Do what it takes. Wilson wakes up early every morning and stays up as late as he needs to. “I want to be able to get as much as I can out of each day—every day.”

GET RED-ZONED IN DEFENSES, PLAYS, AUDIBLES—QBS RECALL THESE THINGS EVERY SUNDAY AFTERNOON. MENTAL MASTERY IS KEY. LET SEATTLE SEAHAWKS STAR RUSSELL WILSON TEACH YOU HIS SECRETS. AS TOLD TO JOSHUA ST. CLAIR

LEARN INTENSELY

“I love drawing things out; I love watching ilm. But there’s nothing like the intensity and the feeling of actually playing the game—and practicing that way as well. It’s high-intensity concentration, simulated crowd noise, and I have to remember certain things or recite certain things or visualize certain things.”

PLAY TO YOUR STRENGTHS

“Sometimes the play dictates itself. I don’t think you want to overthink it. You just go with your best plays and stuf that you do really well. Simple wins: You just have to be able to do the simple things right.”

CALL AN AUDIBLE

D I E T: T H R E E P L AT E S, T H R E E G OA L S As the Cincinnati Bengals’ dietitian, Erin Kratzer has the tough task of getting 53 men to eat wisely enough to perform at the highest level. “Smart portioning of the right foods improves not only athletic performance but overall health,” she says. “We don’t need a trendy diet or something crazy on the Internet.” Same goes for you. TO LOS E B O DY FAT THE PLAYER: Cordy Glenn, OT (6′6″, 350 pounds) THE PLATE:

¼ good-quality carbohydrates (brown rice, wheat pasta, sweet potatoes)

“You recognize the matchup—that’s where all the ilm study comes in. We have adjustments within the play. And then you talk to the line, you talk to the receivers, you talk to everybody, telling them whatever the term is. When you get to it, everybody knows what they’re doing.”

½ fruits and vegetables (such as steamed broccoli with shaved almonds, sautéed zucchini and squash, green beans, asparagus)

THE RATIONALE: Fiber plus lean protein helps fill you up and slows digestion, which helps prevent you from eating less-healthful foods when it’s not mealtime, says Kratzer.

LEARN FROM OTHERS

“I think about how in our schools today, if someone goes to the guidance counselor, people think that person is weird. I want to change that thought. How can we learn from other people? How can we learn from the experience of failure? I’ve been working with a mental-conditioning coach, Trevor Moawad, for years.”

SHARPEN YOUR MIND

“Before a game, I do this with Trevor: me reciting ‘1,’ ‘2,’ ‘3.’ It sounds crazy, but it gets my mind sharp and clear. For example, [Moawad] will say ‘1,’ I’ll say ‘2.’ He’ll say ‘3,’ I go back to ‘1.’ He says ‘2,’ I say ‘3.’ With loud music. Then we’ll change it up with a clap, then we’ll change it up with a noise, so ‘1’ may be ‘1’ but ‘2’ may be a clap and ‘3’ may be a certain noise. And we cycle through that for several minutes straight. It’s a small tactic, but when you’re playing the game, you’re able to stay focused in the moment.”

¼ lean protein (grilled chicken, cod, haddock, trout, salmon, mahi mahi)

TO M A I N TA I N W E I G H T THE PLAYER: Shawn Williams, safety (6′0″, 209 pounds) THE PLATE: ⅓ lean protein, plus healthy fats

⅓ fruits and vegetables

⅓ good-quality carbohydrates

THE RATIONALE: “The more active a player is on the field, the more carbohydrates they need to fuel that activity,” Kratzer says. Exercising hard quickly depletes carb stores.

TO GA I N M U S C L E THE PLAYER: Dre Kirkpatrick, CB (6′2″, 190 pounds)

SET GOALS

“Don’t become bored with consistency. All I ever want to do is be super-consistent. I want to be the most consistent player on the ield. And that’s how you prepare, that’s how you watch ilm, that’s how you study, that’s how you live your life in what you do.”

BOUNCE BACK FROM AN INTERCEPTION

“Adversity is temporary. You need to snap into the moment and not panic, not worry about outside forces. Your self-talk has to be great: I’ve been here before. I’m here. You have to believe and have great conidence.”

THE PLATE: ¼ fruits and vegetables, plus a protein shake (frozen fruit, whey protein powder, ground flaxseed, avocado, spinach)

¼ lean protein

½ good-quality carbohydrates (sweet-potato coins, baked potato, quinoa, farro)

THE RATIONALE: “Dre eats before and after workouts, with a focus on carbs to build and replenish fuel,” she says. The goal is to stay full and avoid unhealthful foods. MEN’S HEALTH

/ October 2018

COME BACK STRONGER INJURIES SHORTENED J. J. WATT’S PREVIOUS TWO SEASONS, BUT THE ALL-PRO DEFENSIVE END’S RESOLVE IS TOUGHER THAN EVER. HERE’S HOW HE GOT BACK IN SHAPE MENTALLY AND PHYSICALLY.

THANKS TO

a herniated disc, the Houston Texans’ J. J. Watt played in only three games in 2016. Then he fractured his left tibial plateau, the shinbone, in the ifth week of the season last year. Watt, a three-time defensive player of the year, enters his eighth season a stronger, tougher, more vulnerable, and more loved man. Despite being immobile for two months during his most recent stint in rehab, Watt helped raise $37 million for people afected by Hurricane Harvey. “Being able to focus on something else, to help others, even though I was in a tough situation, deinitely helped me channel my energy,” he says. After six months of intense rehab and a grueling of-season regimen, Watt says he’s as strong as ever. He’s even leaned out a little, now carrying a chiseled 290 pounds on his six-foot-ive frame. “I’m excited. People ask, ‘Are you going to play the whole year?’ ” he says. “All I care about is having a good practice tomorrow. That’s it. I’ve learned that the best way to attack things is one day at a time. When you start thinking too far ahead or behind, that’s when you hit trouble.” Here are the strategies that helped him come back strong. HIT YOUR CORE DAILY

LUNGE FOR GREATNESS

Even before his back injury, Watt prioritized his core. Now he emphasizes it even more. His 20-minute program changes daily but involves lots of variations of planks (single-leg, single-arm, with a 45-pound plate on his back, with his feet elevated six inches) and dead bugs (arms only, legs only, with bands, with dumbbells). To target his lower abs, Watt does body saws: Start in a high plank with your feet on a towel or wearing socks on a smooth loor, then slide your feet forward so your hips are in pike position. Slide back to horizontal.

During rehab, Watt performed a range of single-leg exercises and drills. “It builds balanced strength and agility,” he says. He still does “tons of lunge variations,” lunging forward, backward, and laterally, often with a 125-pound dumbbell in each hand, sometimes held by his sides and sometimes held at his shoulders. He also does lots of single-leg Romanian deadlifts and Bulgarian split squats (with his foot elevated) to forge leg strength. He does one heavy leg day (for strength) and one volume leg day (for endurance).

“It was devastating,” says Watt about his broken leg. “I worked so hard to come back from the back surgery the year before. My irst thought was about all the work I put in, and all the work I was going to have to put in to get back yet again. It’s months and months and months.” Although the physical pain was challenging, Watt says the mental aspect of rehab is even harder. “It’s constant. You have good days and bad days, and it’s easy to wallow and pity yourself. It’s not like I said, ‘I’m going to attack every day.’ I had very diicult days. I’m lucky to have incredible friends, family, and a girlfriend. They pick you up on tough days.” He’s learned to take it day by day and approach rehab like climbing a mountain: Some days you progress rapidly, others you stumble and may even go backward, but you keep trying to make progress. REMEMBER THE FEELING

If anything, Watt’s injuries over the past two years deepened his love for football. “You realize how much you miss the game and what it means. Even more than the actual games, it’s the little stuf: being in the locker room with your teammates, the camaraderie, the inside jokes, the practice drills, the bus rides. It’s knowing there are guys watching your back.”

What does it take to fuel an NFL athlete? It depends on which player you ask. And there’s plenty you can learn from the pros’ high-performance eating habits.

SANE

INSANE

—CHRIS MOHR, R.D.

J. J. WAT T, H O U STO N T E X A N S

D UA N E B ROW N , S E AT T L E S E A H AW KS

T ROY H I L L , L. A. RAMS

D E R R I C K M O RGA N , T E N N E S S E E T I TA N S

LO R E N ZO A L E X A N D E R , B U F FA LO B I L LS

TO M B R A DY , N E W E N G L A N D PAT R I OTS

THE DIET: “Clean” eating (whole foods, lean proteins, and produce) THE POSITIVES: Watt’s staples are eggs (8 per day), oatmeal, chicken, and brown rice. It’s balanced and healthy. THE NEGATIVES: It requires discipline, but Watt plans two cheat meals per week (usually pizza!).

THE DIET: Gluten-free THE POSITIVES: You’re

THE DIET: 5,000 calories a day THE POSITIVES: It’s carb- and proteinheavy, with lots of comfort carbs and protein shakes. THE NEGATIVES: Eating this much is tough for a 170-pound guy like Hill. Unless you’re doing two-a-days, skip second breakfast.

THE DIET: Vegan THE POSITIVES: Fol-

THE DIET: Super-low-

carb

THE DIET: TB12 THE POSITIVES: The

lowing a vegan diet can increase your fruit and vegetable consumption. That helps up your fiber intake. THE NEGATIVES: Any diet that significantly limits foods—especially high-quality sources of protein— can be a challenge.

THE POSITIVES: Lowcarb diets are usually full of protein and healthy fats. Alexander also cut alcohol completely out of his diet. THE NEGATIVES: Carbs provide fiber and many vitamins and minerals you can’t get from other foods.

diet is vegetablecentric, focuses on snacks such as fruit, and includes a variety of proteins. Also, avocado ice cream! THE NEGATIVES: It’s extremely regimented, and it helps if you have a full-time chef. Also, avocado ice cream?

more likely to look closely at food labels and notice bad stuff like added sugars and trans fats. THE NEGATIVES: Gluten-free doesn’t equal “healthy.” A host of junky foods are gluten-free! A gluten-free cookie is still a cookie.

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

AP/Shutterstock (Brown head shot), C Flanigan/WireImage/Getty Images (Watt head shot), AP/Shutterstock (Morgan and Hill head shots), Don Juan Moore/Getty Images (Brady head shot). Opposite: Grooming by Victoria Callaway for Zenobia, clothing by Reebok. Next spread: Grooming by Tasha Brown for Exclusive Artists using Baxter of CA, prop styling by Faethgruppe.

RESET EVERY DAY

BY BEN COURT

T H E N F L N U T R I T I O N S P ECT RU M

LEARN ABOUT YOUR BODY

Watt tracked everything he ate for about a year, and that helped him get in tune with his body. Now he says he doesn’t need to count calories. Instead, he eats when he’s hungry, focusing only on portion size. He weighs himself daily to ensure he stays on track. It helps that he sticks to the same healthful foods almost every day (see below).

J.â&#x20AC;&#x2030;J. knows squats. But heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s traded back squats for belt squats. To do this spine-friendly squat variation, set up 2 benches a few feet apart. Stand on them, hang a weight from a belt between your legs, and squat.

Duck tale. Freemanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s go-to resistance-band drill: the duck walk. With a band around your ankles, bend your knees as far as possible. Staying low, walk. Take 20 steps forward and 20 backward; youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be firing up your glutes. Clothing and Fusion Flexweave sneakers by Reebok; reebok.com.

RUN, RECOVER, REPEAT NO PLAYER TAKES MORE PUNISHMENT THAN A BALL CARRIER. NO PLAYER CARES MORE ABOUT RECOVERY. CHECK OUT ATLANTA FALCONS RUNNING BACK DEVONTA FREEMAN’S WEEKLY JOURNEY BACK TO GAME READINESS. BY EBENEZER SAMUEL FIRST, A MASSAGE...

Freeman begins his recovery process with a massage on Monday morning. The goal: to keep his hips loose, as they’re key to his explosive change-of-direction ability. Forty-ive muscle groups attach to your pelvis. Just one tight muscle can throw of your pelvic alignment, subtly changing the way you walk—or in Freeman’s case, wrecking his running stride. “It pulls my whole body the wrong way,” he says. A massage realigns his body, and it can do the same for you, too, as long as you don’t expect to relax. “My masseuse and I work together,” he says. “Lots of talking.” No masseuse on hand? Foam roll directly after your workout and the next day.

G E T A L EG U P Feeling tired legs after a tough day . . . anywhere? Regain your strength with these drills from Freeman.

THEN A DIP (ACTUALLY, M A K E T H A T T W O ) ...

Freeman jumps into a hot tub for ive minutes, improving blood low (which nourishes his fatigued muscles), then immediately jumps into a cold tub (around 50 degrees) for a few minutes to dull any remaining pain. He alternates between both tubs for 20 minutes. Called a “contrast bath,” the technique is used by many players to help relieve inlammation. Try it after your next backyard game.

A N D A N O T H E R M A S S A G E ...

After Monday-afternoon team meetings, Freeman heads home and busts out his TheraGun, a power-tool-like implement with a lightly pulsating head. The sensation helps relax tight muscles, much like a massage. (This might be Freeman’s second or third round with the TheraGun—he carries it around all day, sometimes using it in meetings.) He’ll typically target his hamstrings, running the tool along the backs of his legs for a few minutes.

1. T H I G H T I M E S Freeman focuses on relaxing his hamstrings, but he’ll use the TheraGun to loosen his quads, too. Don’t have one? Grab a foam roller, lie facedown, and place it on your thigh. Roll back and forth from thigh to knee, lingering on any tight spots you feel.

T H E N B R A I N W O R K . ..

On Tuesday, when players have the day of from practice, Freeman reboots his mind. He’s had several concussions throughout his career, and like many players, he realizes those incidents may have long-term efects. For the past two years, he’s visited a NeuroTracker facility to undergo what’s essentially a “workout” for the brain. Once there, he enters a dark room and looks at a large screen displaying several moving neon balls. His job: track two of them for a few seconds, then identify their locations. “The higher your score, the faster the balls move,” Freeman says. Game on.

FINALLY, SOME RESISTANCE (JUST A LITTLE)

Before hitting the ield on Wednesday, Freeman warms up with a series of resistance-band drills (see right). None of the drills will leave him feeling sore, he says, but that’s by design. “We’re just trying to get all the muscles to ire,” he says. On Thursday and Friday, it’s game planning, practice drills, and walk-throughs. And all of that has Freeman ready for his Sunday pounding.

2 . H O M E ST R E TC H Freeman loosens his hamstrings in a bevy of ways, including this go-anywhere stretch: Lie down. Loop a towel around your foot. Grab it with both hands. Straighten your leg, pulling it close to your torso. Stretch as far as is comfortable. MEN’S HEALTH

/ October 2018

AFTER LOSING HIS IDENTITY TO THE GAME, FORMER NFL RUNNING BACK RASHARD MENDENHALL LOST HIS SENSE OF PURPOSE IN RETIREMENT. NOW THIS HOLLYWOOD BALLER IS LIVING HIS MOST AUTHENTIC LIFE AND SHOOTING FOR THE MOON. BY NEAL BLEDSOE

I WAS TOLD I would meet Rashard Mendenhall at his

dojo, but when I show up at the given address, I find myself outside his home, a four-bedroom Spanish-style hacienda in Northridge, California, some 20 freewayed miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. It’s definitely not Hollywood. The only truly TMZ-worthy event to have ever happened here occurred in 1980, when Richard Pryor doused himself with 151-proof rum and set himself on fire after three mad days of freebasing cocaine. Mendenhall’s house is on the same compound, but in the garage where Pryor kept a fleet of fancy cars, Mendenhall has built himself a sanctuary that he calls Karate City.

Logan Fahey (Mendenhall)

OVERCOMING THE WARRIOR WOES

Palms and bougainvillea envelop the grounds, and the fragrance of fruit trees lingers in the air. His dojo is just beyond a bamboo gate, through which you can see a worn yellow tetherball hanging from a slack line on a metal pole. Inside, the walls are lined with large succulents, scented candles, and a kaleidoscopic array of crystals. A large scroll with “Crescent Moon Dojo” written in Japanese script is framed on the far wall. Two woodblock paintings of pastoral Japan are framed on either side. A Dragon Ball Z action igure keeps watch from the soap grooves of an old work sink. The entire place is decorated in the bric-a-brac of Zen. Mendenhall still looks the part of an NFL running back, but there’s a tenderness to him that belies his former life. He cuts the imposing igure of a superhero yet acts more like an alter ego. He has a gentle, rolling laugh, and his eyes glimmer with a childlike curiosity. He’s wearing a crimson tunic and black harem pants, with a clear crystal the size of a thumb dangling from his neck. A mala bracelet encircles his left wrist, inches from a crooked pinkie inger that, as far as I can tell, is his only visible scar from football. He makes his way to a cross-legged meditation seat that helps bend his knees and his hulking frame into place. Then he begins to explain how

he discovered Crescent Moon, a ritual he invented that is equal parts therapy, meditation, and philosophy. It came to him about two years ago as he stood on his Santa Monica rooftop and stared out across the Paciic, whirling a pair of nunchaku and grappling with an overwhelming desire to change his life. He had retired from football but still wore the massive bulk of an NFL body—a body that now weighed him down like an anchor in a bottomless sea. The clarity of the gridiron was gone, and he found himself alone, paralyzed by a future as vast and unknowable as the open ocean before him. By all rights, Mendenhall should’ve been happy. He had already lived the dreams of most men. By 20, he was the Big Ten Ofensive Player of the Year, led the Fighting Illini to the Rose Bowl, and was chosen by the Pittsburgh Steelers in the irst round of the NFL draft. By 21, he was a Super Bowl champion. By 23, he was one of the best running backs in the league and playing for his second Super Bowl ring. By 26, he had walked away from football in his prime and, almost immediately, leaped into a new career as a writer for the HBO show Ballers, starring Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson. But there he was, under 30, asking questions of the universe up on his roof. “All right, nature, sky, God, whatever, show me the way.” As he moved around, he breathed deeply. The negative energy coiled inside his body, screaming for release. He could feel his old injuries: his fractured shoulder, his torn ACL. He could feel his frustrations with the world: the arguments on social media, the identities thrust upon him. He put the nunchaku down, and lights began to appear against the evening sky—lights that only Mendenhall could see. Frequencies, he calls them, energy lines. He struck the irst with his dominant right hand. Another light appeared. He struck that one with his weaker left hand. Another light appeared, right hand, and then another, left hand. He started to think of his right hand as the full moon and his left hand as the new moon. The right was what he knew: ight, ego, achievement. The left was what he hadn’t yet mastered: feelings, intuition, all that he wanted to become. Right, left, right, left. He kept going as the pattern waxed and waned. “I’m not a terribly sensitive person,”

With nearly $14 million in career earnings, Mendenhall could have retired to a life of leisure, but he grinds away daily in his writing studio for hours on end.

Mendenhall had written upon retiring from the NFL. Yet there he was, being ripped apart by feelings he could no longer stif-arm or outrun. He had parachuted from one dream job to another with little more than a shrug. From the outside, it all looked so easy. But he was a man made of gunpowder in a world that wouldn’t let him explode. He was 30 pounds heavier than his 210-pound playing weight. He’d become listless and despondent. He wouldn’t leave his house for days at a time, often not feeling any desire to move or do anything at all. He calls it his Warrior Woes, but those of us who have never rushed for 1,273 yards in a season, or heard the

“CREATE A LIFE WORTH WALKING IN. ONE THAT’S IN YOUR PASSION, YOUR PERSON, YOUR VOICE, YOUR BEING. WHATEVER HAPPENS AND COMES FROM THAT WILL BE WORTHWHILE AND BE FULFILLING.”

roar of a crowd while dancing in the end zone, might call it depression. “When you hear the word, you think of sadness,” Mendenhall, now 31, says. “Depression, after playing football, was feeling like you don’t have a ight, you don’t have a cause. Who you are, what your purpose is . . . everything can feel like nothing.”

A WARRIOR AND A POET, Mendenhall is something of a contradiction—a duality that might be understood in an Eastern culture, but not here. In America, you are either an athlete or an artist, not both. In America, you don’t walk away from fame or leave untold millions on the table. In America, you’re not supposed to be depressed while living out your dreams. But Mendenhall has never it perfectly into one of America’s constructs, certainly not as a black man. He was a quiet kid who grew up in the suburbs just north of Chicago as Michael Jordan’s Bulls reigned over the NBA. But he never wanted to be like Mike. “I’d be on the basketball court trying to throw a football through the hoop, and they’d be like, ‘Get that out of here!’ ” he says with a laugh. He carried that Wilson football everywhere: to church, to school, underneath his gown during his middle-school graduation. “Football was my comfort zone,” he says. But his mother, Sibyl, « C O N T I N U E D O N P. 11 8 MEN’S HEALTH

/ October 2018

This is a Mocking Bird sandwich at Hawking Bird, a fried chicken (and tofu!) joint in Oakland. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dressed with some cabbage slaw and charred chili jam, and, oh yes, it will shift your entire perspective on tofu.

October 2018 / MENâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S HEALTH

Tofuâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s always been good for you. But can it be . . . good? TODD KLIMAN went on a journey (in the Bay Area, but still!) to find out.

Tofu Quest!

PH OTO G R APH S BY ALE X FARNUM

“It’s chalky. It’s tasteless. What’s the point?” Minh Tsai says confidentially, getting up close, almost whispering. “I don’t blame you for not loving it.” Which is just about the last thing that I am expecting to hear as I’m standing on the humming f loor of Hodo, Tsai’s bustling tofu-production facility in Oakland’s warehouse district. Tsai leads me, in white jacket, hairnet, and scrubs, on a tour. I see the high-grade soybeans he uses

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

(harvested exclusively from the American Midwest). I witness a process almost like cheese making that he has ingeniously adapted into a hybrid operation, part mechanical and part hands-on. He tells me that Hodo ships approximately 50,000 pounds of tofu products each day.

Along the way, Tsai doles out samples, pinching off pieces from the production line—tofu both irm and soft, tofu transformed into nuggets, tofu fashioned into chewy strips. At one point, popping a taste of warm, fresh-from-the-vat tofu into my mouth, he offers up some tasting notes. Nutty, he says. Complex. For sure, the nuttiest, most complex irm tofu I’ve ever had. But do I dare tell him that I don’t love it? It tastes more like a substitute for something, I say. Tsai nods, undaunted, and takes me to the room where he makes yuba, the thin layer that forms atop the soy milk as it cooks, sort of like the skin that develops on a pudding. “I call yuba the gateway drug for tofu,” Tsai says, using a small knife to cut into one of the rectangular pans of yuba that have been set up in rows, not unlike the developing pans in a photographer’s darkroom. The process creates a tofu product that’s denser in protein (21 grams in 3 ounces versus irm tofu’s 14). Tsai holds out to me what looks like a wad of chewed, dun-colored gum. The skin, almost half-

way between solid and liquid, collapses into his palm. Go ahead, he says, ofering me a taste. The implication is not lost on me: I am going to have you eating out of the palm of my hand. And so he does. The yuba is not like any tofu I’ve ever eaten: luscious, creamy, more like a bundle of warm, freshly made mozzarella. Tsai, smiling but dead-eyed, and sounding more like a futuristic tech titan than the maker of an ancient soy product, says solemnly: “So you have seen now what is possible.” I’M NOT A TOFU HATER. Hate implies

disdain or animosity. I’m indiferent to the stuf. Tofu just is—neither good nor bad, neither memorable nor ofensive. I don’t doubt this is a position born of ignorance, but I would argue that that ignorance is born of a lack of tradition, of context. America has never been what you would call a tofu-making country even though Asian cultures have been producing it for more than a thousand years. Its history in the U. S. begins properly in the 1970s, says Tara McHugh, Ph.D., a food technologist and researcher at the USDA. This Left: Hawking Bird chef James was around the time Syhabout (left) when eco-consciousand tofu king Minh ness was ascendant, Tsai go deep on a Mocking Bird when plant-ba sed sandwich. Right: eating went from the Sheets of yuba hang margins to the mainat Hodo. Top: Tofu nuggets in process. stream. It was not deli-

ciousness that accounted for its relatively rapid adoption in the U.S. It was politics. Tofu was not meat. It did not come from factory farms. If you were looking to take a personal stand against agribusiness, if you wanted to abstain from the ills of carnivores, tofu was a convenient vehicle, a kind of culinary conscientious objection. In this ideological context, it was almost unseemly to suggest that, well, tofu didn’t taste all that great. Flavor? How about the lavor of the resistance? Since the ’70s, tofu making has become more widespread, so it is no surprise that the quality has become better and better. And it’s turning up in fast-food burgers and milkshakes and even becoming, of all things, a processed foodstuf—Tofutti, a mass-market brand that makes dairy-free “ice cream.” Not even the Internet-fueled rumor that the phytoestrogens in tofu would lead to a condition called gynecomastia (that’s man boobs to you and me) has slowed its reemergence. “It’s time to take back tofu,” Tsai tells me over lunch the day after I met him at

Wait, Isn’t Soy Bad for You? Nope. It’s actually pretty healthful for you, according to the latest science. Here are three benefits of the soybean.

It’s a good source of protein. A half block of firm tofu contains 28 grams of protein. By comparison, ½ cup of chopped roasted chicken breast has 22 grams. Among active people, those with higher intakes of protein, regardless of whether it was animal or plant based, had a 35 percent lower risk of functional physical decline as they aged than those who ate the least protein—so found a 2018 study by Boston University researchers.

It may fight diabetes. People who consumed more isoflavones, found in tofu and soy milk, had an 11 percent lower risk of type 2 diabetes than those who didn’t eat much, according to a 2017 study by Harvard researchers. One reason: Isoflavones may improve glucose tolerance and blood lipids, markers of diabetes.

It could protect your prostate. Men whose diet included soy foods had a 29 percent reduced risk of developing prostate cancer, according to a 2018 meta-analysis in Nutrients. Again, thank isoflavones, such as genistein and daidzein, which the scientists think may disrupt the development of prostate cancer. But what about low sperm count and man boobs? Back in the 2000s, a few small studies and rodent research suggested that the phytoestrogens in soy products could disrupt hormones. Several news outlets (including this one—our bad) may have overblown those findings. “Such a link has never been substantiated in human studies,” says Qi Sun, M.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard University. “I don’t think this is a concern at all.” MEN’S HEALTH

/ October 2018

AMATRICIANA “PASTA” WITH YUBA Recipe by Stuart Brioza, chef/co-owner of State Bird Provisions in San Francisco 3 T B S P U N S A LT E D BUTTER 2 OUNCES GUANCIALE O R PA N C E T TA , D I C E D ¼ TSP CRUSHED REDPEPPER FLAKES 1 M E D I U M GA R L I C C LOV E , T H I N LY SLICED

the factory. Take it back? “Take it back from the hippies and the politics,” he says. In other words, if you regard tofu only as a lackluster substitute for meat, if it is synonymous in your imagination with co-ops and communes, if you assume it to be solely the province of Asian cuisines, then Tsai’s asking you—yes, you—to open your mind so that he can then blow it. “Let’s just make it delicious,” he says. “It is delicious.” Tsai, a former investment banker and management consultant who started 100 October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

his tofu business with little more than a method and a story, began selling his handmade product at farmers markets in the Bay Area 15 years ago. He reined his method, he tells me, by tasting every brand he could get his hands on. It didn’t take him long to realize what was missing: lavors. “I wanted to make a tofu that has lavors. To achieve lavors, I needed higher protein and fat in the soybeans.” That meant developing a process whereby he could produce a much thicker soy

8 OZ Y U B A , S H E E T S U N F O L D E D, S L I C E D I N TO 6 - BY- 1 - I N C H S T R I P S , R I N S E D, D R A I N E D, A N D PAT T E D D R Y 1 L B H E I R LO O M TO M ATO E S , H A LV E D A N D G R AT E D, S K I N S DISCARDED 3 OZ P E C O R I N O, F I N E LY G R AT E D, PLUS MORE FOR GA R N I S H I N G 12 LARGE BASIL L E AV E S 10 CHERRY TO M ATO E S , P R E F E R A B LY A VA R I E T Y O F C O LO R S A N D S H A P E S , H A LV E D 1 TBSP OLIVE OIL

1. In a large pan over medium heat, add 1 Tbsp butter and the guanciale. Cook until the guanciale begins to brown, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the red-pepper flakes and garlic. Cook until aromatic, 1 to 2 minutes. 2. Add the yuba and 1 Tbsp butter; saute until the yuba starts to brown, about 3 minutes. Add the grated tomato and last 1 Tbsp butter. Saute until saucy, about 1 minute. 3. Add the pecorino, lift the pan off the heat, stir in the basil and cherry tomatoes, season with salt and pepper, drizzle with olive oil, garnish with pecorino, and serve. Feeds 3 Per serving: 501 calories, 32g protein, 20g carbs (6g fiber), 33g fat

If you regard tofu only as a lackluster substitute for meat, it’s time to open your mind so that Tsai can then blow it.

ent without which tofu does not exist. The change came in advance of a market push in which Tsai brought his line of packaged tofu products—among them yuba sesame noodles, tofu nuggets, and the same irm tofu blocks that, yes, Chipotle currently crumbles up into its vegan sofritas—to Whole Foods. But how much of “new tofu” was hype? I decided to let my taste buds decide.

Tofu: A Buyer’s Guide We tasted what’s out there. Here are the best brands.

IN THE DAYS AFTER touring the Hodo

milk. A thicker soy milk means a higher-protein tofu, which results in a richer, creamier lavor and a texture with more chew. Today, the Hodo factory churns out 16 products, with 20 expected by next year. This past February, in San Francisco, Tsai convened an event called Tofu Evolved. Yes, a tofu symposium—only in San Francisco—where he spoke eloquently and passionately about tofu as a potential force in a food future that will be greener and cleaner. Then, several months later, he changed the name of his company from Hodo Soy to Hodo—thereby removing from the brand any reference to the one ingredi-

Yuba stands in for pappardelle at State Bird Provisions (left), proving tofu isn’t only an Asian thing. It even plays well with Italian cured meats, like the guanciale (below) that’s core to State Bird’s recipe.

plant with Tsai, I do something I have never done—something I have never wanted to do: I gorge myself on tofu. Now, I have gone on barbecue benders and burger benders, and I have spent weeks chasing the best pizza, kebabs, and chocolate-chip cookies. But I’ve never eaten tofu morning, noon, and night. Tofu fast food and tofu ine dining. I feel like I’m shooting some foodie buddy movie, with Tsai shotgun. As eager as I am to see if, inally, I can be made to like tofu, Tsai is eager too. Because if I do like it, then that means that maybe the vision he is banking on is not some dream, it is real. Over the past few years, Tsai has cultivated relationships with some of San Francisco’s best and most ambitious chefs, and he has arranged, with my approval, a series of demo meals with his most ardent adopters to prove to me not just that a wide variety of applications is possible but also that tofu is not what I think it is. The chefs, for their part, are happy to play along. When I meet with Stuart Brioza, executive chef of State Bird Provisions and the Progress, a modern-American restaurant in San Francisco, it’s a late-afternoon lunch between shifts. With his staf in the throes of dinner prep, the chef slips mischievously into the kitchen to show of his yuba game, taking the same thin, chewy sheets I’d sampled at the factory and accessorizing them with smoked black cod, spring peas, and a black-butter ponzu. Two bites in and I forget entirely that I’m eating tofu. I’m still trying to process just what it is I’m eating, because there is no mistaking it for a substitute, when this highly decorated executive chef who once lived and cooked in Italy makes a startling pronouncement. Not only is his version of amatriciana, made with thin strips cut from Hodo’s tofu sheets, just as good as an amatriciana made with, say, pappardelle. Not only is it a convincing substitute that surprises your palate, he says. No, Brioza says, his version of amatriciana made with yuba is, in fact, better. MEN’S HEALTH

Hodo It makes the traditional tofu and yuba San Fran chefs love, plus it sells premarinated and cooked tofu burgers and nuggets. New to this? Try the Thai curry nuggets. Available through: Whole Foods, hodofoods.com

Nasoya This company’s packaged tofu is organic. It ranges from silken tofu (good in shakes) to firm (good in anything, really) to “super firm” (good diced into salads). Available through: Target, most grocery stores

Tofurky Scoff not. It makes more than faux Thanksgiving turkey. Like its Italian sausage, which tastes great hot off the grill. Seriously, trust us. Available through: Target, Whole Foods / October 2018 101

I wrinkle my brow. “Seriously—much bet ter,” Brioza insists. Because of the chew of the yuba and the texture; the way the Roman-inspired sauce, a rich, zesty mix of tomatoes, onions, and guanciale (salt-cured pork), clings to it. He has a point. Later that night, still buzzing from my eye- and palate-opening encounter with Brioza, I have dinner at Mister Jiu’s, a modern Chinese restaurant in the redlantern-strewn heart of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Given the restaurant’s MO, I’m expecting more traditional preparations of tofu from chef and owner Brandon Jew. And there are a number of them, but then, in the middle of the meal, chef Jew picks up Brioza’s pasta theme and explores it with the same passion. If I didn’t know any better, I would assume the dish Jew sends to my table is a pasta, speciically maltagliati, the EmiliaRomagna classic of torn and irregular rags of noodle, here topped, lustily, with morels, duck egg, and garlic scapes. Another night, I visit Nightbird, a cozy tasting-menu haunt in the Hayes Valley neighborhood. The chef, Kim Alter, is in league with Brioza and Jew, both in trying to open up their already adventuresome customers to the idea that yuba is not necessarily Asian and in turning to pasta as the preferred point of entry.

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ASPARAGUS AND TOFU “GRIBICHE” Recipe by Kim Alter, chef/owner of Nightbird in San Francisco 1 ( 1 6 OZ ) B LO C K F I R M TO F U, D I C E D S M A L L 1 S M A L L S H A L LOT, DICED SMALL ¼ CUP CHIVES, CHOPPED

Traditionally, gribiche is a rich sauce built from hard-boiled eggs. Nightbird’s spin (below) uses firm tofu, and lightens up a simple salad. It’s a brunch that won’t bog you down.

¼ CUP FRESH PA R S L E Y, C H O P P E D ZEST AND JUICE FROM 2 LEMONS 1 TSP FISH SAUCE 1 S M A L L GA R L I C C LOV E , M I N C E D 1 THAI CHILE OR ½ J A L A P E Ñ O, S E E D E D 1 B U N C H A S PA R AG U S , TRIMMED 1 TSP OLIVE OIL 2 CUPS ARUGULA 4 FRIED EGGS

1. In a large bowl, mix the tofu, shallots, chives, parsley, zest and juice from 1 lemon, fish sauce, garlic, and chile. Marinate in the fridge for at least 2 hours or as long as 2 days. 2. Preheat your oven to 350°F. On a large baking sheet, toss the asparagus with 1 tsp olive oil and a big pinch of sea salt. Roast the asparagus until it’s tender enough to

pierce with a fork, about 3 to 5 minutes. 3. To serve, divide the asparagus among 4 plates. Top with equal portions of the tofu mixture. Garnish with the arugula, a drizzle of olive oil, and a fried egg. Feeds 4 Per serving: 197 calories, 18g protein, 7g carbs (2g fiber), 11g fat

JEFFREY WESTBROOK, food styling: Jamie Kimm, prop styling: Royn Glasser/Vargas Represents (tacos)

One of her favorite ways to make the connection visceral and immediate is to fry those same strips of yuba until golden, achieving a chewy-crunchy texture reminiscent of both pasta and snack chips, then dousing them with a variation on a Caesar dressing, made with miso, Parmesan, egg yolks, garlic, and Dijon. East meets West seamlessly, and thrillingly. The chefs, it’s clear, adore yuba; I adore yuba. It’s hard not to. But yuba is only one part of the tofu universe. Determined to prove to me that block tofu, the more traditional form you’re used to seeing in supermarkets, can also be a stand-alone product, Tsai takes me to James Syhabout’s Hawking Bird, in Oakland, a determinedly unslick fast-casual, fried-chicken-centric restaurant that looks out onto Telegraph Avenue. Tsai stages a test of two sandwiches on the menu. One is a chicken sandwich, the other a slab of irm Hodo tofu that’s been fried to resemble a chicken sandwich. “Well?” Tsai asks after I’ve downed several bites of each. I’m surprised to hear myself say that I prefer the tofu to the chicken. Somehow the actual chicken gets in the way of the delicious fried exterior, while the tofu, being cleaner, does not. Seeing me polish it of, Tsai is exultant. To him, love of the sandwich is yet more proof of what he has been talking about for days, that tofu is not a substitute but the thing itself, that it need not be in an Asian dish to be tasty, that it can go high and low. True enough, and yet what does it say, I wonder, that I only really like the tofu when I think I’m eating something else? I’ll take it, Tsai says. He smiles. “Baby steps.” AF TE R MY TO FU C R AWL , I’m determined to apply the lessons I’ve learned at home. I make a decent dish with irm tofu, sesame oil, chopped cucumber and celery, rice-wine vinegar, and Sriracha. Thinking back to chefs Jew and Brioza, I heat up leftover marinara, tear in some yuba, toss everything, grate on some fresh Parmesan, add a few dollops of ricotta, drizzle on some olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. It’s good—and, for a second, I even entertain thoughts of making it for friends. Would I lie to them about what it is, or would I tell them, but only after letting them think it’s something else? The latter, deinitely the latter. Baby steps.

TODD KLIMAN is a James Beard Award–winning food writer and author of The Wild Vine.

Still skeptical about this whole tofu thing? Try the scrambled “eggs” above. They cook up quick, contain a payload of protein, and carry a pleasant, nutty taste that goes great with fresh brewed cofee.

BREAKFAST TACOS Recipe by Tara Lazar, chef of F10 Creative in Palm Springs, California 1 TSP OLIVE OIL 1 M E D I U M S H A L LOT, MINCED 1 ( 1 4 OZ ) B LO C K F I R M TO F U, R I N S E D, D R A I N E D, PAT T E D D R Y, A N D C R U M B L E D I N TO SMALL PIECES ½ TSP TURMERIC ¼ CUP UNSWEETENED ALMOND MILK 6 SMALL CORN TO R T I L L A S , WA R M E D ½ AVO C A D O, S L I C E D 1 S C A L L I O N , T H I N LY SLICED 3 R A D I S H E S , T H I N LY SLICED H OT S A U C E

1. In a large pan over medium-high heat, add the olive oil and shallots. Cook, stirring, until the shallots are translucent, about 1 minute. Add the tofu and cook, stirring now and then, until the tofu begins to brown, about 3 minutes. Add the turmeric and ¼ tsp sea salt and stir until well incorporated. Add the almond milk and cook, stirring occasionally, until creamy, about 2 minutes. Season to taste with

additional salt, if needed. 2. Divide the tofu among the tortillas and top with the avocado, scallion, radishes, and hot sauce. Serve immediately. Feeds 2 Per serving: 458 calories, 25g protein, 53g carbs (9g fiber), 19g fat

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HOT ZONES & FLU HOTELS Last yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lu season was brutal, partly because lu shots worked only one out of every three times. Now, with researchers racing to develop new vaccines, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve gotta ask: Why are lu shots so lousy? And should you even bother getting one? By Jeanne Lenzer Illustration by Kelsey Dake

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Most hotels charge you to stay, but Hotel Inluenza will not be like most hotels. Guests at this newly renovated, soon-to-open facility in St. Louis will check in for about ten days, at no charge, and stay in one of 24 private rooms, each equipped with desks, Wi-Fi, and a lat-screen TV. There will be a lounge, food, and even exercise facilities. And not only will all this hospitality be completely free, but the carefully chosen group of guests will actually get paid to stay there: Each will receive a check for about $3,000. All they’ll have to do is volunteer to get sick. Or maybe not. Researchers from St. Louis University, one of nine federally funded Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Units racing to ind a universal lu vaccine, will most likely greet guests at what is technically called the Extended Stay Research Unit by administering a lu shot. Then they’ll give the lucky guinea pigs a new experimental lu vaccine, give the unlucky ones a placebo, and then stick lu virus up their nostrils. Over the next ten days, the guests will be monitored for all manner of flu-like symptoms, every runny nose or sleepless night a measure of the vaccine’s efectiveness. Some of them will likely feel ine at checkout. Some will probably feel like hell. The researchers are there to figure out who gets sick and why, says Daniel Hoft, M.D., Ph.D., director of the university’s Division of Infectious Diseases, Allergy and Immunology. Dr. Hoft is one of the architects of the Hotel Inluenza research, and the facility will enable his team to do human challenge studies with a smaller number of volunteers and at less cost than traditional vaccine experiments. “In a traditional lu study, we vaccinate people and see if their immune systems respond by creating antibodies that ight lu,” wrote Dr. Hoft on the university’s website. “In a human challenge study, we vaccinate people, then deliberately challenge their bod106 October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

ies by exposing them to lu to see if they get sick.” Researchers plan to enroll volunteers in a study by the end of the year. The reason for the research at Hotel Inluenza is as intriguing as its name. For years, normally staid researchers have engaged in a venomous battle over how well flu shots actually work, if at all. In 2008, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that the vaccine was anywhere from 22 to 100 percent efective (depending on the age group receiving it), and skeptics said that couldn’t possibly be true. Now, a decade after scientists irst demonstrated serious laws in measures of vaccine efectiveness, the CDC acknowledges that vaccine protection isn’t all it’s been cracked up to be. Which, of course, most of us already know: Last season was among the worst flu seasons in memory, with lu shots working only one-third of the time and approximately 31 million people sufering through the aches and pains and sweat and chills of inluenza. The exact number of people who died from flu last season isn’t yet known, but since 2010 the number has ranged from 12,000 to 56,000 annually. The precise igures are uncertain, because states are required to report lu deaths only among children and because anyone who dies from complications of lu or a lu-like illness could be counted as a lu death. What is certain is that the toll on individuals is huge: sick days and canceled plans and endless days of feeling lousy. And the broader economic implications are staggering: Medical expenses and lost wages from lu cost the United States $11.2 billion each year. Yet despite billions of dollars in public and private research and development, and dramatic increases in the rate of lu vaccination over the last 40 years, the number of lu deaths hasn’t

Inn-Fluenza: It cost St. Louis University $350,000 to convert 24 hotel rooms into a quarantined medical facility called the Extended Stay Research Unit. The first guests are expected within a year.

declined nearly as much as might be expected. Why are lu shots so inefective? And should we even bother getting one?

Ryan Michalesko/Post-Dispatch/Polaris

THE SHOT THAT MISSES Let’s start with the irst question. A small part of why lu shots aren’t very efective is because experts have to formulate a new vaccine each year based on an educated guess. Every February, before the current lu season is over, public health oicials and researchers around the world look at historical and contemporary epidemiological data to make their best prediction of which strains of lu will dominate in the coming season. Then, while the rest of us are spending our summer going to the beach, manufacturers race to produce the next batch of shots in time for early fall, when the CDC begins issuing warnings about lu season and urging Americans to get their shots. Flu shots are ofered at doctors’ oices, hospitals, airports, pharmacies, schools, polling places, shopping malls, and big-box stores like Walmart. About half of all Americans get one, and the remaining 50 percent have their reasons for skipping. Some believe, mistakenly, that the vaccine causes lu. Others just don’t like needles. In some years, public health researchers and vaccine makers get it right. Numerous studies over the years have claimed that the correct vaccine can be remarkably efective at reducing the risk of catching the lu and dying of it. But sometimes, like last year, they get it wrong: They produce a shot for three or four strains of lu only to be outwitted by a virus that has morphed to be slightly different and can evade the vaccine. There’s even a word that researchers use to describe the phenomenon: drift. And the hard part of this calculation is that researchers can’t predict drift. The second question—whether we should even bother getting a shot—is the trickier one. Despite the fact that roughly half the population now gets vaccinated each year, lu seasons come and go with about the same number of cases and the same number of deaths as when virtually no one was vaccinated. In the past, public health oicials assumed that this had to be the result of their failure to convince even more people to get a lu shot. Very few of those in public health were willing to raise the possibility that maybe the vaccine was the problem. In 2005, Lisa Jackson, M.D., M.P.H., a physician and senior investigator with the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health

Research Institute in Seattle, began raising questions about a claim that the vaccine cut seasonal lu deaths among the elderly in half. (Her research has implications for younger people too, even though they’re less at risk.) She and several colleagues conducted a study of more than 72,000 people ages 65 and older and discovered that the sickest were less likely than healthier seniors to get the vaccine. They then examined the baseline rate of death for vaccinated and unvaccinated groups and found that the unvaccinated elderly were 60 percent more likely to die outside of lu season. This suggested there was a phenomenon at work known as the “healthy-user effect,” in which cause and effect are confused when healthy people, who are less likely to die anyway, receive vaccines or drugs and their better outcomes are mistakenly ascribed to medical intervention rather than to their baseline better overall health. In other words, the frail elderly, often bedridden and near death, were unlikely to go to a doctor’s oice for a lu shot, while healthy elders did get the shot. It wasn’t the vaccine that made the diference; it was the patient. Around the same time, Lone Simonsen, Ph.D., then a researcher with the National Institutes of Health, led a group of investigators who looked at death rates from lu over time. They found that despite a signiicant increase in the number of elderly people being vaccinated (rising from 15 percent before 1980 to 65 percent in 2001), there was no corresponding decrease in the death rate among that group. Nor did they ind an increase in deaths in years when the vaccine was known to be not well matched with circulating lu viruses. Until very recently, Jackson, Simonsen, and other critics of the flu vaccine’s effectiveness expressed their opinions at the risk of ridicule and attacks from other public health experts and researchers. Jackson was told she was putting her career in jeopardy when she began her study. When she tried to publish her results, her papers were initially turned down by top journals, whose editors said the results were simply not credible.

THE ILLUSION OF BENEFIT Overestimates of flu vaccines’ effectiveness are understandable, says Michael Osterholm, Ph.D., M.P.H., an infectiousdisease expert and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy in Minneapolis. In the past, lu research has

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Researchers are working in tandem with BiondVax, GSK, and a handful of other pharmaceutical and biotech companies in the race to develop a universal flu vaccine—one that would target “conserved,” or stable, parts of the virus’s DNA, potentially providing protection against all lu strains, even as they drift, and lasting for years. Such a vaccine would trigger the immune system to be prepared to defend against any version of lu virus—and even protect against the kind of pandemic that could be a global disaster of unimaginable proportions. Such a vaccine is a holy grail for public health. It’s also a moon shot. Other viruses have eluded all eforts to produce an efective vaccine, including HIV and the common cold. Ironically, the huge inancial incentives to create such a vaccine may complicate things further. The flu-vaccine market is expected to reach nearly $3 billion by 2024. The market for a universal vaccine promises to be substantial. With billions of dollars at stake, drug and biotech companies have shown in the past a certain willingness to cut corners and exaggerate results. Even the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not been particularly efective at curbing the hype and the distortion of science associated with many drugs having even less inancial potential.

A NEW (OLD)THREAT While lu is no picnic for anybody who gets a bad case of it, seasonal inluenza outbreaks are not what worry public health oicials the most. During his more than three decades as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, M.D., has overseen the national research efort for some of the worst epidemics of the last century. He was there as AIDS was heating up and when West Nile broke out, and he has supervised the vaccine effort to combat Ebola. But when asked what keeps him awake at night, Dr. Fauci answers quickly: “Pandemic inluenza.” The World Health Organization (WHO) deines “pandemic” as any international outbreak afecting a large number of people. The deadliest pandemic in recorded history was the 1918 “Spanish lu,” which killed an estimated 50 million to 100 million people around the world. That’s more than the number felled by plague in 14thcentury Europe or during battle in World War II. Despite a century of study since the 1918 pandemic, mysteries

William West/AFP/Getty Images (vaccine production), Rick Friedman/Corbis via Getty Images (flu shots sign), George Frey/Getty Images (flu vaccine lines)

been littered with errors, not to mention a good deal of marketing by both manufacturers and public health oicials hoping to sell people on the only defense available. And part of what misled everybody was the lack of an accurate test for lu. There’s also the slow-to-die myth that lu shots actually cause the lu. Flu-like symptoms may be the result of a diferent virus, and the list of bugs that can make you feel like you have the lu is a long one. So when people got sick after receiving a lu shot, most oicials assumed that one of those other viruses was to blame. That is, until 2007, when polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, a far more accurate test for detecting inluenza infection, became more widely used. Researchers discovered they had seriously underestimated the rate at which people actually came down with flu after being vaccinated. It wasn’t that the vaccine caused lu; it’s just that it was lousy at preventing it. The CDC now acknowledges that since 2004, lu vaccine eicacy has ranged from 10 to 60 percent. That’s not great, and not comparable to the protection of many other vaccines, like smallpox and polio, which are between 91 and 100 percent efective. Still, even with efficacy of just 40 percent, such as during the 2016–17 flu season, the vaccination “prevented an estimated 5.29 million illnesses, 2.64 million medical visits, and 84,700 hospitalizations associated with inluenza,” says the CDC. It’s also worth noting that young children, pregnant women, and the elderly are especially at risk and may beneit more from the vaccine. There’s even evidence that a new, high-dose lu vaccine decreases the rate of pneumonia among the elderly from 7.4 events to 4.4 events for every 1,000 individuals vaccinated. Despite its spotty efectiveness, lu-vaccine uptake continues to rise, and GSK, which manufactures a vaccine for anyone six months old and up, sold 40 million doses in the U.S. for the 2017–18 lu season. Last year’s sales jumped by 12 percent, pulling in $677 million for the pharmaceutical giant. And though some companies stopped producing lu vaccine due to low proit margins (much more can be made on drugs and medical devices), in recent years a massive influx of money from private and government entities has changed things. GSK won’t reveal its proit margin on lu vaccines but told Men’s Health that it’s “just below the proit margins of Rx [prescription drugs] and with a built-in advantage of no patent clifs.” Patents can last more than 20 years, and since vaccines have to be reformulated every year, there are no generic products to undermine a manufacturer’s proits.

Get Well Sooner! How MH advisors lower their risk of catching the flu and how they treat it.

I get the flu shot because my hospital mandates it. I often fly to give lectures, and during flu season I wipe surfaces with disinfectant wipes and wash my hands often. At the first flu symptoms, I take Tamiflu.”

The flu shot is not perfect, but I get it to reduce the risk to my patients and family. It’s important to not push through flu. Slow down, get sleep. We know sleep improves your immune system. And stay hydrated.”

Sleep, exercise, and eating healthy strengthen your immune system. The flu shot isn’t perfect, but it can make a diference. Regarding exercise, my rule: Symptoms from the neck up and I do, symptoms from the neck down (in the chest), I don’t.”

—John A. Elefteriades, M.D., director, Aortic Institute at Yale University

—Jeremiah Alt, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of rhinology, University of Utah

—Jordan Metzl, M.D., sportsmedicine physician at Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City

remain. Investigators argue about whether the enormous number of deaths was the result of an unusually powerful strain of lu virus or something else that was happening at the same time. Peter Doshi, Ph.D., now an assistant professor at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, was a graduate student at MIT when he became intrigued by the assumption that novel lu viruses, the cause of pandemics, were intrinsically more deadly. In order to examine the question, he studied historical records of lu deaths, all the way back to 1905, and created a graph of deaths over time. The image is startling. “What you can see clearly is that deaths began to dramatically decline long before inluenza vaccines were introduced and widely used,” he says.“Inluenza is simply not the threat today that it was many decades ago.” Doshi predicted in a 2008 paper in the American Journal of Public Health that if trends continued, the next pandemic would not be catastrophic. He was to be proved correct the very next year, a pandemic year for H1N1 “swine lu,” which turned out to be, he says, “the world’s most mild pandemic ever.” Another point of disagreement for flu researchers is how outbreaks of the 1918 lu occurred among individuals or groups that were apparently unconnected. To ind the answer, Tom Jeferson, a researcher with Cochrane Collaboration, dove into real-time reports published in the British Medical Journal during the pandemic. Jefferson’s search led him to his “mushroom theory.” He thinks something more than the virus’s virulence—how inherently deadly a particular strain of virus is and how readily it spreads— was at play in 1918, and that something was the underlying health

Despite vast eforts by the World Health Organization and various flu-vaccine makers, the efficacy of the vaccine has not improved in 15 years . Since 2004, it has averaged just over 40 percent.

of large populations around the world. During the last months of World War I, people across the globe were sufering. In Europe, a sizable percentage were living in bombed-out cities, hungry, dirty, and crowded together in unsanitary conditions. Troops coming home to the U.S. were exhausted and crammed into trains. Like mushroom spores that sprout only when conditions are right, a nasty strain of lu virus found fertile ground in a weakened populace. Jeferson’s argument is that the death rates of recent pandemics haven’t come close mostly because of advances in public sanitation, reductions in crowding, and better nutrition and wellness. However, many other experts don’t buy Jeferson’s mushroom theory. Osterholm, for one, says viral virulence played a central role in the massive death rate seen during the 1918 pandemic. He believes another 1918-type pandemic is in the world’s future, and this one could be even more deadly. For one thing, the world’s population is bigger. But the other reason may surprise you. Osterholm thinks a superpandemic is more likely now because of poultry. Large-scale industrial farms are a breeding ground for new lu strains. Birds, conined in cages stacked on top of one another, drop waste on birds below, passing lu viruses from bird to bird that combine and mutate in what Osterholm calls a “genetic roulette wheel” that’s spinning faster and faster. Factory farming, in which pigs and birds are crowded into enclosed spaces, replicates some of the conditions of 1918, speeding the transmission of viruses from animal to animal and to the hundreds of millions of humans who work with or live in close proximity to farm animals. This, says Osterholm, increases by orders of magnitude the possibility that new, and potentially more lethal, viral mutations will emerge. It’s a stark reminder of why the quest for a universal vaccine and the research at Hotel Inluenza is so critical. Dr. Hoft and his colleagues at St. Louis University may eventually make breakthroughs in the search for protection against all flu strains— including pandemic inluenza. For now, the rest of us are stuck with a technology that works, at best, only half the time. But ultimately, says Osterholm, “some protection is better than none.” Despite the billions spent on research and the divergent views about lu, one thing researchers all agree on is a low-tech strategy. During lu season, wash your hands for 20 seconds with soap and water multiple times per day, especially after you touch something handled by others. The lu virus can survive on surfaces like doorknobs for up to 48 hours. It is a iercely resilient foe. JEANNE LENZER is an award-winning medical investigative journalist and the author of The Danger Within Us. MEN’S HEALTH

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How much do we care about a political candidate’s health? HEN REPUBLICAN congressional

candidate Dan Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL who sports an eye patch, completed a five-day, 100-mile run through his district, which includes a sizable chunk of Houston, in February, he live-streamed it on Facebook. The run was intended to raise money for Hurricane Harvey relief. But that wasn’t the sole reason. Crenshaw, in his early 30s, was attempting to drum up publicity for his campaign, too. The actual physical effort helped: Regarded as an underdog, he vanquished his opponents in Texas’s spring primary. Across the aisle, Beto O’Rourke, the

Maybe because Americans have become more health-conscious, for one, and many candidates want to meet their potential constituents wherever they can— be it in the gym or on the track. (Men’s Health, it’s worth noting, may also have played a small part here when in 2011 we featured the now-disgraced congressman Aaron Schock, and his six-pack, on our cover.)

Not that every candidate needs as, say, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, the 48-year-old Republi-

110 October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

less popular for it. Barack Obama played basketball but struggled to kick his smoking habit. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee lost more than 100 pounds and wrote a book about it. Chris Christie, not exactly an avatar of health or physicality as governor of New Jersey, nevertheless had energy, and when he got weight-loss surgery in 2013, he was cheered. A bariatric procedure or a trophy case full of marathon medals doesn’t guarantee a successful campaign, however. “Just because you’re physically active or fit doesn’t mean voters will accept you,” says Joseph “Tex” Dozier, a partner at the political consulting firm JTD Strategies, which is based in Austin, Texas. “What matters is that your fitness or diet regimen

Tim Clary/AFP/Getty Images (Clinton and Gore), Hector Mata/AFP/Getty Images (Kerry), Tony Dejak/AP Photo (Tim Ryan), Gregg Segal/Gallery Stock (Paul Ryan), John Glaser/Cal Sport Media/Newscom (O’Rourke), Martin Schoeller (Schock cover)

BY MATTHEW KASSEL

weight as an image issue. Taft embarked on a public weight-loss program that presented him as a man who cared about his health, according to Deborah Levine, Ph.D., a medical historian at Providence College in Rhode Island. “I think of him as the first celebrity weight-loss patient,” she says. Plenty of presidents after Taft disguised their health issues. Franklin D. Roosevelt, a paraplegic, was rarely photographed in his wheelchair. John F. Kennedy hid his chronic back pain along with his Addison’s disease. Today, there’s more transparency and accountability around health and fitness—candidates release health reports to prove they’re in good shape, or at least sufficiently fit, and put any misgivings to rest. Still, there’s something of a double standard in the way politicians are expected to make a go of being healthy while packing away cholesterol-heavy meals at local diners on the campaign trail. When Jeb Bush was running for president in the 2016 election, he was trying to maintain a paleo diet that had him turning down local food at every stop. The “diet comes first” moves made him appear standoffish, alienating him from regular Americans. The same thing can happen when it comes to the kind of exercise candidates engage in, according to Phil Singer, founder of Marathon Strategies, a communications and research

photographed windsurfing and criticized for being an elitist, out of touch with the common American experience. Not all sports are created equal in the American eye, though that may be changing. A decade ago, a candidate touting his devotion to yoga might have been seen as out of touch too, but now candidates on both sides of the aisle do it—even if it isn’t as popular as it is, say, in the NFL—including Texas railroad commissioner Ryan Sitton, an avowed fitness freak, and Ohio congressman Tim Ryan, who says he plans to

though one fueled by KFC and TV instead of, you know, actual physical training. There are candidates who do get attention for their physique or their perceived “manliness”

On the whole, they don’t need

MATTHEW KASSEL has written for The New York Times Magazine and The Wall Street Journal.

That’s one reason President Donald Trump was able to appeal to voters as a purported billionaire. When he ran for office, he was a 70-year-old fastfood glutton who didn’t—and still doesn’t—work out, but the energy he brought to his campaign was an extraordinary feat as he crisscrossed the nation attending one campaign rally after another like a pro athlete, MEN’S HEALTH

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IN A TIME DEFINED BY FAKE NEWS AND SELF-STYLED EXPERTS, SUCCESS IS NO LONGER ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW—IT’S ABOUT WHAT PEOPLE THINK YOU KNOW. NOW, WE’RE NO FANS OF FALSEHOOD, BUT WE DO RECOGNIZE THAT A LITTLE PERSUASIVE SKILL CAN TAKE YOU FAR. SO THIS IS OUR GUIDE TO BLUFFING, BS-ING, AND WINGING YOUR WAY TO THE OUTCOME YOU WANT.

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P H OTO

GR APH

BY TH E VO

ORHES

THE

ART O F T H E BLUFF

HOW DID a celebrity billionaire with no previous political experience persuade a nation to elect him leader? Or the makers of idget spinners convince the public that a toy could combat ADHD? Or countless Instagram inluencers become proitable “lifestyle authorities”? The simplest answer: They all know how to bluff. It’s a skill that, seemingly, many of us would like. According to a recent report, 89 percent of employers have caught candidates editing the truth on their job applications, up from 74 percent ive years ago, while

more than two-thirds of adults admit to bending the facts on social media and dating sites. In short, a lot of us are making stuff up a lot of the time—and if you’re not, the guy sitting next to you probably is. But there is an upside to this torrent of nonsense: It means that self-assurance and quick thinking carry more cachet than ever before. So if you’re going to play their game, make sure you’re doing it better than anyone. To that end, we consulted a team of (legitimate) experts to help you present your best self in any situation. —Tom Ward

PA R T

DRESS L I K E YO U

PA R T

SURVIVE A CONFERENCE-ROOM

AMBUSH

Caught unprepared for your next “ideas meeting”? You needn’t resort to surreptitiously Googling under the table. Take control of the proceedings and you can fake your way through them. THE INSIDER: OLLIE O L L E R T O N IS A FOR MER SP ECI A LFORCES SOLDIER A ND T HE FOUNDER OF BR E A K-P OIN T, A UK-BA SED MIND-B ODY P E A KP E R FOR M A N C E T R A INING ORGA NI Z AT ION.

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Dominate the field

Engage on your terms

Initiate interrogation

It’s vital that you open the meeting, not them: This is your chance to set the agenda. As an icebreaker, bring up a recent controversial news story. While debate ensues, it’ll buy you more time to think.

Within the first five minutes, suggest a date for a follow-up meeting to finalize any decisions. This reframes today’s talk as more “exploratory” and reduces the odds that you’ll have to make any real commitments.

Finally, always invite an irrelevant staff member so you can ask questions on their behalf. (“Could you run through Project X, just so Mike’s clued in?”) You’ll soon be fully briefed, without giving the game away.

“Step out of a meeting occasionally for an ‘important phone call,’” says Sarah Cooper, author of 100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings. “Everyone will see you as busy and in demand.”

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

ALTER YOUR SUIT A proper it denotes good quality. The bottom of your suit jacket should be even with your knuckles (cup your hands to check); your pants should kiss the top of your shoe tongues for a clean break; your shirtsleeves should end just above the wrist, with suit sleeves half an inch higher. A trimmer, slimmer it works on men of every size.

BRUSH UP Shoes with broken laces and worn soles instantly devalue your look. Both can— and should—be kept up. It will save you money in the long run and have you consistently looking a step ahead of everyone else.

LIFT THE BUTTONS Plastic buttons are a marker of a cheap suit. Get smart and change yours out for horn buttons. And get to know your sleeve buttons. If they’re functional, put them to good, stylish use: Open a couple and lip the cufs for the right occasions. Having working buttons is a luxe advantage that comes with less expensive suits these days too, so acquaint yourself with them and how they can improve your look.

WEAR LESS Too many layers and messages can appear messy if not done right. Keep things simple and focused. Similar color tones together is a great formula for looking upscale and stylish. Don’t overaccessorize: Two is often better than three. A well-chosen watch makes a powerful statement. Pair that with a slim belt and you’re golden.

Shutterstock

2/3

OF MEETINGS LACK A PREPLANNED AGENDA, MAKING PREPARATION, FRANKLY, A WASTE OF YOUR TIME.

MEAN IT

THE INSIDER: TED S TA F F O R D IS MEN’S HEALTH’S FA SHION DIR EC TOR .

PART

THE INSIDER: M I C H A E L U L L O A IS A N ONLINE P ERSON A L T R A INER (@MIC H A ELUL LOA P T ).

1. Hands flat Place your hands 8 inches from the wall. Much closer and you’ll struggle to balance; farther away and you won’t be able to complete a proper rep.

2. Broaden out Keep your hands slightly wider than shoulder width. A wide base will shorten your range of motion, making things easier.

3. Kick it up As your heels touch the wall, squeeze your abs, glutes, and thighs to stabilize, and maintain a slight bend in your fingers to distribute your weight evenly.

4. Lower down Slowly lower your body until your head is just above the floor, then exhale hard as you push back up. Suppress a smug smile.

SHOWBOATING MADE EASY Use these tips to master the wall handstand pushup, a move that looks pro but is (shhh . . .) deceptively simple.

1/3

YOUR

O F A M E R I CA N A D U LTS GET LESS THAN T H E R EC O M M E N D E D 7 H O U RS O F S L E E P.

PART

7 HOURS 10 MINUTES IN

Looking rested and refreshed makes you seem smarter, but you don’t need to bother with the early night. Use these tricks instead. Cleanse You don’t want to overwash your face or scrub too hard. Redness can be an issue. Use Fresh’s Soy Face Cleanser. It’s efective but not harsh. $15 , fresh.com

THE INSIDER: N I C K B AT E M A N IS A N AC TOR A ND MODEL (@NICK _ _ BAT E M A N).

Shave After shaving, use Bulgari Man Wood Essence Aftershave Balm. It will soothe irritated skin, and its built-in fragrance will leave you smelling good. $46, macys.com

Moisturize Begin with a moisturizer from GlamGlow: Volcasmic Matte Glow. It keeps your skin hydrated, rather than simply being absorbed, and will help brighten your face if you’ve been up all night or working all day. $49, glamglow.com

Primp Good hair can help take the focus away from pufy eyes. Try Kevin Murphy Hair Resort Beach Texturizer to ight bedhead and keep hair in its rightful place. $29, amazon.com

Phillip Haines

Energize Cofee can lead to a crash. I like drinking green tea to give me that muchneeded boost.

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THE

ART O F T H E BLUFF PART

62%

O F GY M M E M B E RS N E V E R ACT UA L LY G O, AC C O R D I N G TO T H E B R A I N R E S E A RC H I N ST I T U T E .

6 CHARM SCHOOL THE INSIDER: LY N N S C O T T IS A N E X EC U T I V E L E A DE R SHIP A ND T E A M C OAC H.

OUTPLAY

ANY GYM “GURU”

Unsolicited fitness advice is nearly impossible to avoid. But drop one of these lines next time you’re confronted by a self-appointed coach and he’ll know you’re no fool.

1 THE INSIDER: J O N AT H A N J A C O B S IS A ST R ENGT H A ND C ONDI T IONING C OAC H A ND T HE OW NER OF E V ERY DAY AT HL E T E P E R FOR M A N C E .

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“I’m mostly focusing on my Olympic lifts right now.” In hipster terms, Olympic lifts are a step above your regular deadlifts and squats. If he’s undeterred, mention how being strong in the push-press has helped with your jerk.

2 “Have you ever tried going keto?” The ultra-highfat ketogenic diet tends to be divisive among those in the know. There’s a risk that he may run with this question for at least five minutes.

“I had to really work on my false grip before nailing my muscle-ups.”

“I actually think steadystate is making a comeback.”

This is a good snapback should anyone ask what your weak points are. Muscle-ups are hard. Referencing the false grip suggests you’re not all talk (even if you are).

As a general rule, this is an excellent shutdown anytime someone tries to baffle you with an acronym (AMRAP, EMOM . . .) that’s just a fancy term for high-intensity training.

“Introduce people as if they should already know each other,” says Cooper. “It’ll make them feel like they’ve missed many great opportunities by not meeting sooner, and they will thank you profusely.”

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

If you remember nothing else, remember this: Charismatic people make others feel good about themselves. So the more you think charisma is about impressing the room with your wit and anecdotes, the less likely you are to achieve this aim (and the more likely you are to be perceived as a self-centered tool). Our attention spans are short, so you need to make the right impression quickly. And you can do this by moving slowly. Don’t rush as you enter the room. Take your time to find a spot to settle in and you’ll appear totally in control. The more nervous you are, the more effort you should put into helping others feel at ease. Approach the person who’s standing alone and have a good opening question lined up; they’ll be delighted that someone has made it easier for them, and others will notice their delight and want to speak to you, too.

Phillip Haines

PA R T

You may not be the most important person at the party, but there’s no harm in letting the guests assume otherwise. Here’s why the key to charisma is knowing that it isn’t all about you.

PART

THE DATE-NIGHT CHEAT SHEET Forget trying to pass off Seamless orders as your handiwork. Follow this recipe to display convincing culinary flair, even with the most rudimentary of skill sets. Pan-fried salmon with pine-nut salsa

THE INSIDER: Y O TA M O T T O L E N G H I IS A C HEF A ND T HE AU T HOR OF OTTOLENGHI SIMPLE (OU T OC TOBER 16), FROM W HICH T HIS R EC IP E IS A DA P T E D.

2. Coat the salmon with

W H AT YO U ’ L L N E E D

1 Tbsp of the oil, ¼ tsp of salt, and a grind of pepper. Set this aside, too.

⅓ CUP RAISINS 2

TBSP + 1 TSP LEMON JUICE

SALMON FILLETS, SKIN ON AND PIN BONES REMOVED

3½ TBSP OLIVE OIL 2

M E D I U M C E L E R Y STA L K S , D I C E D, L E AV E S R E S E R V E D

T B S P P I N E N U T S , R O U G H LY CHOPPED

T B S P C A P E R S , P LU S 1 T B S P OF THEIR BRINE

2½ TBSP LARGE GREEN O L I V E S , P I T T E D, D I C E D 1

GOOD PINCH SAFFRON THREADS, MIXED WITH 1 T B S P H OT WAT E R

½ C U P PA R S L E Y, R O U G H LY CHOPPED 1

T S P L E M O N Z E ST

1. In a small bowl, cover raisins with 2 Tbsp of lemon juice and 2 to 3 Tbsp of boiling water and set aside to soak while you prep everything else.

YOUR PHYSIQUE

Jonathan Lovekin

IRL Impending vacation? Bluff your way to a better beach body with our 24-hour plan.

4. Wipe the pan clean, return it to medium-high heat, and add the remaining oil. When the oil is hot, add the salmon, skin side down, and fry until the skin is crisp, about 3 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium, flip the fillets, and cook until done, 2 to 4 minutes. To serve, put a fillet on each plate and spoon over the salsa. Feeds 2

THE INSIDER: L U K E G R A H A M E IS A P ERSON A L T R A INER AT ROA R FI T NES S IN LONDON.

PHOTOSHOP PA R T

3. In a large pan over high heat, add 1 ½ Tbsp of oil. Add the celery and pine nuts and cook, stirring frequently, until the nuts begin to brown (watch closely so they don’t burn), 4 to 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat, stir in the capers, brine, and olives, the saffron and its water, and a pinch of salt. Drain the raisins and add parsley, lemon zest, and 1 tsp lemon juice. Transfer to a bowl and set aside.

T-MINUS

24 HRS

23 HRS

20 HRS

10 HRS

2 HRS

Cut out all carbs now. It takes your body about 16 hours to run down its glycogen stores, leaving you looking temporarily leaner.

To really drain your body’s carb stores, forget the heavy lifts and perform a highrep, low-rest workout. There’s no time to hang around now.

Pop a 500 mg magnesium capsule 30 minutes before bed to help you sleep. A restful night will reduce inlammation, for a tighter physique.

Skip the sides and just eat eggs and steak for breakfast. You don’t want to risk ibrous foods bloating you out.

For a inal pump, work on your arms, back, and shoulders. Use high reps (13 to 15) again to drive blood into the muscle. Now pack your trimmest white T-shirt and go.

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« N FL S T RO N G, FRO M P. 9 5

constantly pushed him beyond it. She was (and still is) a youth minister who put a premium on her children’s education, keeping Rashard from practice if his grades fell below a B. His weeks were packed with schoolwork, the arts, and athletics. Every Sunday, he and his siblings went to church and the Shule Ya Watoto, which means School for Children in Swahili. That’s where they learned about African history, the Middle Passage, and the civil-rights movement. “Growing up and being a black boy in America, if your only understanding of yourself and your people is just back to slavery, or looking at the world now,” Mendenhall says, “if it’s just entertainers and rappers, if that’s the only thing you know and see, then that’s the only thing you believe you can be.” Sibyl taught her children to believe they could achieve anything. Her message was “You are destined for greatness. The only one who can stop you is you.” Under her guidance, Rashard explored art, science, math, history, writing, church, football, golf, track, soccer, basketball, and even the clarinet, which he played from the fourth grade through high school. (“The clarinet was groovy,” the band geek in him says with a smile.) When Sibyl’s low salary forced her to move, she kept Rashard and his brother in the good schools of Skokie, Illinois, by sending them to live with their youth-football (and then high school) coach, a Hungarian man from Chicago named Joe Galambos. “When I was becoming a standout in high school and everyone would tell me how great I was, Coach Joe constantly challenged me and showed me where I could be better,” Mendenhall says. “That search for improvement never left.” Football allowed Mendenhall to be literally seen, but he used the page to fully express himself. He began writing in high school, irst songs and then short stories in college. In just his second year at Illinois, he wrote a song called “A Battle with Myself.” Arms crossed as I walk through the crowd Screams from inside and outside get loud Which once was applause Now turns into growls So now I look to the clouds Instead of down from the bows Beings in the arena are reaching Seeking a part 118

October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

Things that once seemed clear Now gleam dark At this instance I sense fear This time in my own heart All walls and barriers are now falling apart. . . As a hyped irst-rounder in the 2008 draft, Mendenhall felt the heavy expectations of the NFL machine. “That ball went very quickly from peace to weight,” he says. At the NFL combine, Mendenhall says, one team expressed concern over how much he read. Once, he told a PR lack that his favorite book was The Autobiography of Malcolm X and was latly “asked” to choose something else. When he coughed up two fumbles in a preseason game, veteran wideout Hines Ward put a $100 bounty on his ball. Knock it out of his hands, anytime, anywhere, and a crisp C-note would be yours. Then Mendenhall saw how coldly impermanent the game was. “I got drafted and people are telling me, ‘Oh, you’re way better than Willie Parker and you do this and that.’ And I was like, ‘This dude is a two-time Pro Bowler and they’ve already replaced him. . . . They rip that identity away from you, when you’re told to chase it your whole life.” Three games into his rookie season, Mendenhall did replace Parker. His irst start came against Pittsburgh’s bitter rival, the Baltimore Ravens, on Monday Night Football. When he took the ball up the middle at the start of the third quarter, linebacker Ray Lewis “welcomed” him to the NFL by shattering his left scapula. “You’re done!” the Ravens’ jubilant captain screamed as Mendenhall quietly trotted toward the sideline. His season was over, and he sought refuge where he could, taking hip-hop dance classes taught by Sandy Romah, a friend and a former Steelers TV reporter. “I met him when he was 20. On his 21st birthday, I bought him chocolate-chip cookies and milk to celebrate because he didn’t drink alcohol,” Romah, now Mendenhall’s wife, says. “Everyone was shocked to see the Steelers’ irst-round pick in the lobby of the dance studio. But he told me he was serious about wanting to try another form of rehab. He was in two hip-hop classes, advanced teen and adult. He had a bit of stage fright, so I would stay after class and work with him until he got comfortable performing in front of people.” Over the ensuing seasons, even as he delivered the greatness that Pittsburgh

demanded, Mendenhall found himself most at peace away from the ield. “The Steelers are just everything to that town,” he says. “You can’t get away from it, even in the of-season, and not be Rashard Mendenhall, number 34, running back. When I was in the league, my comfort zone became my rooftop, where I’d write and read books.” In the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XLV, Green Bay led the Steelers 21–17, but Pittsburgh was pushing into Packers territory and threatening to take the lead. With momentum on their side, Steelers fans whipped thousands of Terrible Towels around like golden tornadoes in the Texas night. Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger took the snap and turned to hand of the ball. But as soon as Mendenhall touched it, linebacker Clay Matthews and nose tackle Ryan Pickett sandwiched him, popping the ball loose. Green Bay recovered the fumble and cruised to victory. Mendenhall, who rushed for a game-high 63 yards and a touchdown, was forever branded with the mistake. “It’s funny, because that’s what lasts,” he says. “To go to the Super Bowl, to have the game that I was having up to that last play—the only thing that’s remembered is that fumble.” More than winning, our idea of greatness demands singularity, the ability to be one thing fully. On and of the ield, the promise of Rashard Mendenhall was quickly diminishing. He fashioned himself as a conversationalist and a professional athlete, but he caused more controversy than anything else just a few months after the Super Bowl by tweeting support when Adrian Peterson equated the NFL with slavery. “Slaves were respected for their physical prowess,” Mendenhall explains now. “However, they weren’t respected as human beings. They weren’t respected as men. After spending six years in the NFL, and looking at the way it is now, I wouldn’t say my views have changed much.” His stance didn’t mesh with that of Pittsburgh’s blue-collar fans, and the “conversation” descended into chaos. Things got even worse when he questioned the rationale of celebrating Osama bin Laden’s death, or any death. It didn’t help that he also questioned the events of 9/11, saying, “We’ll never know what really happened. I just have a hard time believing a plane could take a skyscraper down demolition-style.” This time, he was out of step with fans, advertisers, and the team owners.

Steelers president Art Rooney II weighed in, saying, “It is hard to explain or even comprehend what he meant with his recent Twitter comments.” After that, Mendenhall lost his endorsement deal with Champion. He sued the company for breaking the contract, settling out of court when he proved that its parent company, Hanes, had no problem with Charlie Sheen spouting of his own 9/11 commentary. Clearly, there was a double standard. “For a lot of the black athletes, are you given that same space, even if you’re not causing trouble, to be true to who you are?” Mendenhall asks. “No matter what your experience is, or your community’s, or your family’s—there’s a weight and a burden to carry someone else’s beliefs over your own. The trade-of, they tell you, is that you’ll be great, you’ll be Hall of Fame, you’ll be remembered. But at the same time, anything outside of the box, anything outside of this playof chase, there’s not as much space for life in that.” While recovering from a torn ACL in his inal season in Pittsburgh, in 2012, Mendenhall discovered a space to express himself through The Huffington Post. His irst piece was titled “Having an Open Mind.” His second was “My Comfort Zone,” in which he said, “Football is no longer my safe place.” His next article, “Simplicity,” found him on a new team in Arizona. “If you are holding on to something that you no longer need to hold on to, I encourage you to let go,” he wrote. “It may be that very thing that is keeping you from what you really want deep down inside.” Less than a year later, he was out of the game. He’d battled turf toe all season, and his reps had been cut in half by a promising rookie. The same thing that had happened to Willie Parker had now happened to him. In “Why I Retired at 26,” he wrote: “I plan to live in a way that I never have before, and that is freely, able to fully be me, without the expectation of representing any league, club, shield or city.” That article caught the eye of the producers of a new HBO show that hoped to capture the authenticity of players’ lives, especially in retirement. Mendenhall was brought onto the set of Ballers on a three-week contract, initially to advise just as a doctor would be consulted about medical jargon on Grey’s Anatomy. One of the irst things they had him take a look at was a strip-club scene in which two black players talked about a dancer’s breasts. “That doesn’t feel

natural,” he told the all-white writers’ room. “They’d be talking about her butt.” At the end of his three weeks, he was brought on full-time. Gifted but green, Mendenhall faced a steep learning curve. When the show’s creator, Stephen Levinson, asked him to do an outline, he had no clue how. When he turned in his best efort, Levinson tore into him, calling it crap while almost balling up the outline to throw at him. “The most at home I’d ever felt since football,” Mendenhall says. “After my meeting with Lev, I learned everything I needed to know in one shot.” Levinson gave him another key piece of advice: He needed to learn how to jog instead of sprint; to be an artist required vulnerability. “As an athlete, as a warrior, and even as a black man, being vulnerable is one of the hardest things you can do. Being black in this country, it’s hard to allow yourself to feel and be vulnerable. . . . Society doesn’t leave much room for the expression of your personal truths if they difer much from the way we all would like to see things. As a black man in America, you scrap vulnerability early, learning that you must do anything to bring some form of respect to yourself, which means value to your life.”

CRESCENT MOON

has enabled Mendenhall to be vulnerable, to bridge the gap between his two lives, to overcome his depression and view himself as an Ascended Warrior. “That energy still needs to go somewhere,” he says. “That’s what Karate City is. It’s the ultimate creative space.” His sanctuary and his time are sacred. He goes there and shuts out the world every day for hours on end to write. This year, he’s added a producer credit on Ballers, and he’s appearing on the show as a ictional version of himself—a Crescent Moon therapist. Earlier this year, he married Romah in Bermuda. The night they chose was the tenth anniversary of the day the Steelers drafted him, a night that also happened to coincide with a full moon. Together they own a nascent production company called Nappy Rose. Their irst project is The Hustler, a documentary about Mendenhall’s former Steelers teammate Baron Batch. He’s an artist who, Mendenhall says, “hustled his way from a dirt patch, trading drawings for food, to the NFL, single-handedly

creating a renaissance with his art in Pittsburgh.” As I sit next to Mendenhall and listen to his life story, Karate City is quiet and peaceful. Birdsong and beams of light spill in through the doorway. I ask him what advice he would give to kids— to other guys, even—who worshiped his football exploits but never knew that he played the clarinet. He ponders the question for a few moments. “Be true to who you are,” he says inally. “Create a life worth walking in. One that’s in your passion, your person, your voice, your being. Whatever happens and comes from that will be worthwhile and be fulilling.” He then invites me outside to watch him practice Energy Ball, an evolution of Crescent Moon using that worn yellow tetherball hanging outside. He roots his gladiator frame to the ground, then sends the ball careering around the pole with a quick extension of his ist and a sharp exhale to punctuate the movement. He stalks around the ball, striking again and again. Right, left—the old and the new— right, left, over and over. It’s not lost on me that we are in the heart of Richard Pryor’s former compound, a place that has been reinvented by someone new, someone younger. Hollywood is a diferent game, but it can be just as unforgiving and fleeting as the NFL. I wonder how long Mendenhall can remain this light, this balanced, this unburdened. As he moves around the pole with the power and grace of a professional athlete, I ask him what keeps the weight of the world away. “It’s knowing that I have something that can’t be measured in yards, or in touchdowns,” he says without missing a beat. “It’s just my continuous course. It’s just the phases of the moon.” Men’s Health (ISSN 1054-4836) Vol. 33, No. 8 is published 10 times per year, monthly except combined issues in January/ February and July/August and when future combined issues are published that count as two issues as indicated on the issue’s cover, by Hearst Magazines, Inc., at 300 W. 57th St., New York, NY 10019, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hearst Communications, Inc. Steven R. Swartz, President & Chief Executive Officer; William R. Hearst III, Chairman; Frank A. Bennack, Jr., Executive Vice Chairman; Catherine A. Bostron, Secretary. Hearst Magazines Division: David Carey, Chairman; Troy Young, President; John A. Rohan Jr., Senior Vice President, Finance. Copyright 2018 by Hearst Magazines, Inc. All rights reserved. Men’s Health is a registered trademark of Hearst Magazines, Inc. Postmaster: Send all UAA to CFS. (See DMM 507.1.5.2); NON-POSTAL AND MILITARY FACILITIES: Send address changes to Men’s Health Customer Care, P.O. Box 3064, Harlan, IA 51593-0128. IN CANADA: Postage paid at Gateway, Mississauga, Ontario; Canada Post International Publication Mail (Canadian Distribution) Sales Agreement No. 40012499. Postmaster (Canada): Send returns and address changes to Men’s Health magazine, P.O. Box 927, Stn Main, Markham ON L3P 9Z9 (GST# R122988611). Mailing Lists: From time to time we make our subscriber list available to companies that sell goods and services by mail that we believe would interest our readers. If you would rather not receive such mailings by postal mail, please send your current mailing label or exact copy to: Men’s Health, Mail Preference Center, P.O. Box 3064, Harlan, IA, 515930128. Customer Service: Call 1-800-666-2303 or write to Men’s Health Customer Service, P.O. Box 3064, Harlan, IA 51593-0128.

MEN’S HEALTH

/ October 2018 119

THE (Above) AVERAGE GUY

Risk

32%

39% of men get a flu shot. Maybe the rest are convinced it doesn’t work. (Let us show you the light; see page 104.)

OF SPORTS-RELATED IN-PATIENT STAYS ARE CAUSED BY BIKING ACCIDENTS AMONG MEN AGED 18 TO 44.

13%

1 in 4 THE RISKIEST SPORT: BICYCLE RIDING It accounted for more emergency-room visits and hospital stays for men aged 44 and under than any other sport, including football. (See above right.)

EMAILS OR TEXTS

binge drinks are downed by men.

WHILE DRIVING

61%

OF MEN WITH HIGH NET WORTH SAY TAKING RISKS IS A REASON FOR THEIR WEALTH. (ANOTHER 38% CREDIT PURE LUCK.)

If you’re young and adventurous, try adding high-risk investments to your portfolio. There’s room for mistakes. Level it off as you get older.

STRESS INCREASES MEN’S WILLINGNESS TO TAKE RISKS.

So does the prospect of landing a mate. A 2013 study in the Journal of Risk Research found that men showed an increased propensity to take on the inherent risks of reckless driving,

120 October 2018 / MEN’S HEALTH

of adult men smoke. Still.

BEFORE YOU EVEN TURN THE ENGINE ON, PUT YOUR PHONE ON A “DO NOT DISTURB” SETTING TO PREVENT ANY DANGEROUS DISTRACTIONS.

WILL READ

4 out of 5

18%

men say it’s been more than a year since they last had contact with a doctor or health professional.

10% OF MEN

About 1 in 4 men have bet on a pro sports event in the past five years.

of young or middle-aged men don’t have health insurance.

gambling, and unprotected sex when a romantic element was involved. Women in the same study, on the other hand, showed no increased desire to take on risks.

TOP 3 EXCUSES MEN MAKE FOR AVOIDING SCHEDULING ANNUAL CHECKUPS WITH THEIR PRIMARY-CARE PHYSICIAN: 1

They’re afraid of finding out something might be wrong with them.

They’re uncomfortable with certain body exams.

They’re too busy.

iStock/Getty Images Plus (bike), Giorgio Fochesato/Getty Images (man driving), Brian A. Jackson/Getty Images (cigarette butt), Lauren Nicole/Getty Images (money)

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