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AUSTRALIAN

MENSHE ALT H.COM.AU

JOY RIDER

Vance Joy’s Secrets To Success

FOCUS POCUS

The Subtle Art of Lasering In

JEFF GOLDBLUM

The

2022

TECH AWARDS P112

The Internet’s Dad Will See You Now

HEAVILY MEDITATED Can Your Brain Tame Chronic Pain?

26

SUPEREST SUPERFOODS

[Featuring the World’s Best Burger]

P122

MH Hits the Slopes with Snowboard Champion Scotty James

Scotty James 3 x World Champion Snowboarder

CONTENTS

62 GREAT SCOTT! 4

MEN’S HE ALTH

Snowboarding champion SCOTTY JAMES may come across as good natured and easygoing, but on the slopes he’s cold-blooded.

Discover how this nice guy finishes first.

COVER GUY:

SCOTTY JAMES

PHOTOGRAPHED BY:

TECH AWARDS

72

50 BEST & WORST FOODS FOR MEN

It’s our annual breakdown of nutritional saints and sinners. Find out which foods you should be tucking into and those you should swerve.

112 THE 2022 MH TECH AWARDS

Discover the latest gear, gadgets and gizmos that can help upgrade your life. From whizzbang smartwatches to dazzling kitchen kit, you’ll find something to elevate your home or office.

LEO FRANCIS

INSIDE THIS ISSUE T A C T IC S

p16 Joy Rider How Vance Joy, aka James Keogh, became a big-name star.

p98 Jeff Goldblum Hollywood’s favourite eccentric reveals his secrets to living well.

MIND

p12 Go With The Flow The fabled ‘flow’ state can boost creativity and athletic performance.

Learn how to enter a higher realm.

p36 Tame Chronic Pain How a new approach to pain management can help alleviate agony.

N U T RI T I ON

p40 Seafood Stew Whip up this ocean’s bounty to reel in your macros.

p78 World’s Best Burger Discover a plant-based burger made in the kitchen, not the lab.

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92

What does masculinity mean to you in 2022?

We asked eight men from very different backgrounds to give their thoughts on the joys and struggles of modern manhood.

Advances in tech were supposed to make our lives easier. Instead our attention is splintering, robbing us of the ability to focus. Acclaimed author Johann Hari reveals how to fight back.

THE MAKING OF A MAN

FATAL DISTRACTION

F I T N ES S

p32 Play Your Cardios Right Running takes on rowing in a battle of the endurance heavyweights.

p122 Move Makeover Sloppy form negating your gains? Here’s how to ace your favourite gym exercises.

JULY 2022

5

EDITOR’S LETTER

Testing Positive

MORE OFTEN THAN NOT, strong themes emerge when we’re creating an issue of Men’s Health. Leitmotifs pertaining to health, training and society materialise during the planning process, weaving their way subtly through the pieces that make up a specific edition.

Always, larger themes are thoroughly thought through and planned for, such as our annual Strength and Earth issues.

Sometimes, however, certain thematic threads emerge organically from a notable characteristic of the cover man or an unavoidable global crisis.

As you read this month’s issue, which is jam-packed with advice on our staples of muscle-building, mental health and self-improvement, I’m sure you’ll notice one pervasive theme: positivity.

The positive vibes start on the very first page with our cover man, Scotty James (p62). Having competed at the highest levels of snowboarding for more than a decade, James remains unjaded – in fact, he’s more passionate than ever about his sport and career. This abundance of hope and optimism – which he’s directing towards winning an elusive Olympic gold when the Winter Games roll around once more in 2026 – has recently overflowed into his personal life in the form of an engagement.

menshealth.com.au

Men's Health Australia

@MensHealthAU

@menshealthaustralia

Beyond James, this issue offers a whole lot of Joy. Exultant in both name and deed, Vance Joy (p16) shares his secrets to life and happiness from his current home base of Spain. And while living on the Mediterranean may seem like a path to happiness in itself, the Riptide crooner has a few extra tips up his sleeve for chasing the life you want – nay, deserve. And, of course, no discourse on happiness would be complete without a word or a hundred from Jeff Goldblum (p98), who delights in the ridiculous as he shares his own secrets to living well.

SCOTT HENDERSON

Despite these shining examples of optimism, perhaps these pieces should come with fine print. After all, we live in a world where even ‘testing positive’ can be unequivocally negative when it comes to our health.

Yes, dear reader, even positivity can be toxic.

Digital Content Writer

‘Toxic positivity’ is a term that has become more and more common in recent years – a pseudo-psychological phrase that’s teetering on the brink of taking on a life of its own. No one who uses it is suggesting positivity is inherently bad. Rather, they’re saying that a forced and exclusive focus on positive emotions, mindsets and interpretations – at the expense of feeling any other way – is neither healthy nor sustainable.

Editor

BEN JHOTY

Deputy Editor DANIEL WILLIAMS

Associate Editor JASON LEE

Creative Director ALISON COTTON

Contributing Editor NIKOLINA ILIC

Digital Editor

JESSICA CAMPBELL

HANNAH CHAPMAN

Contributing Designer

IAN BROOKS

Chief Executive Officer LLOYD O’HARTE

Executive Director RACHEL SULLIVAN

National Commercial Director rachel@paragonmedia.com.au CHRIS MATTHEWS

Partnerships & Integration Manager JORDAN LOZINA

Of course, big bad social media has a lot to answer for when it comes to adding a layer of pressure to our lives. But there are countermeasures available to restore your focus (p92) and find your happy place.

You could start by reverse-engineering the problem and recognising what makes you happiest. Is it a playlist, a book, working out? Perhaps you’re in a state so dire that even identifying a positive is proving challenging, in which case I’d encourage you to take one further step back, identify your triggers, and avoid them.

This issue will hopefully ignite in you sparks of positivity and provide some impetus to uncover a happier and healthier version of you. Perhaps the best advice on this subject lies in the words of a recently departed member of the Men’s Health family. ‘Coach’, as he was known to those close to him, would always remind his network that the secret to happiness was to give it, not sit around expecting to recieve it. “Don’t forget to stretch, hydrate and be the reason someone else smiles,” he would say following each training session. Even in the darkness that accompanied his passing, I’ve found this advice to be a reliable serotonin booster, for both myself and those around me.

Partnerships & Integration Manager NATALIE WARD

Commercial Consultant EMILY WHITE

Content Activations Coordinator LEE MCLACHLAN

Creative Services JULIE HUGHES

Subscription Manager subscribe@paragonmedia.com.au PARAGON DCN PTY LTD

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President, Hearst Magazines Int. KIM ST. CLAIR BODDEN

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Global Editorial Brands Director INTERNATIONAL EDITIONS

Australia, China, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, S. Africa, Spain, UK, US Published and Distributed by Paragon DCN Pty Ltd by Permission of Hearst Magazines, Inc., New York, New York, United States of America. Printed and retail distribution by Ovato Limited. Published 12 times a year. All rights reserved.

Title and trademark Men’s Health © Hearst Magazines International. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written permission. Men’s Health is a registered trademark and the unauthorised use of this trademark is strictly prohibited. issn 13293079. © 2021 Paragon DCN.

Scott Henderson

scott@menshealth.com.au 6

MEN’S HE ALTH

Men’s Health acknowledges the Cammeraygal people, Traditional Custodians of the land on which this publication is produced, and pay our respects to their Elders past and present. We extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.

ASK MH

Q

THE BIG QUESTION

Stick a fork in the food fads and tune into what your body really needs.

We’d forgive you your scepticism, NP. But, technically, it’s the opposite.

Laura Thomas, nutritionist and director of the London Centre for Intuitive Eating, describes it as “an anti-diet approach to eating”, rebuilding an uncomplicated relationship with food by tuning in to your body’s wants and needs. That might sound suspiciously simple – and in a way, it is – but if you’ve been bouncing from keto to paleo, carb cycling to kilojoulecounting, 5:2 fasting to 16:8, it’s likely you’ve lost the ability to properly recognise and respond to hunger – or to identify what you actually want to eat at any given time.

There are 10 principles of intuitive eating, built around ideas such as binning the concept of cheat foods and avoiding excessive hunger. Worried all this sounds like a recipe for weight gain?

Well, weight management is somewhat beside the point. Though some Instagram personalities might claim to sculpt their six-packs by eating intuitively, this is not a system suited to those prioritising fat loss. However,

Thomas says, “Depriving yourself [of the foods you like] is more likely to lead to eating in a way that feels out of control, with binge-restrict patterns and food preoccupation.”

Giving yourself unconditional permission to choose foods you enjoy – not just those that meet your predetermined macro- and micro-targets – can help break these patterns. As she puts it, “If we know we can always eat pizza, we create more space to ask ourselves if that’s what we really want to eat right now.”

Learning to select your meals intuitively doesn’t mean swerving vegetables in favour of processed junk either; believe it or not, your body and taste buds will sometimes crave the very stuff your go-to diet plan endorses. “But remember: trust is a two-way street,” Thomas says. “It takes time to believe your body can be trusted to call the shots. But we also need to prove to our bodies that we will always feed them satisfying foods, in amounts that give us enough energy.”

I keep seeing the phrase ‘intuitive eating’ on social media. Is this just another fad? – NP

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u t i o n To l o S t n e Anci oblem r P n r e A Mo d l

wfu of those a sessions e n o t o g torm Q. I’ve ide brains t through it w y n a p com n I ge p. How ca tact? u g in m o c in putation with my re ed my n regrett e ft o e v e. a A. I h my silenc r e v e N . h speec 339 BC te Xenocra

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TEXT A PT How late is too late to fit in a workout? – CS Monday 3:45pm

It’s 8pm and I haven’t managed to squeeze in a session yet.

Should I just sack it off?

It’s never too late! A recent study by Concordia University found that the ideal time for a HIIT workout is two hours before bed. Smash out a few sets before lights out and you could actually improve your sleep.

So, if I usually turn in at 10.30pm, a quick session now could actually be a good thing?

Exactly. Another study by the Australian Catholic University found evening workouts not only improve metabolic health but might also reduce blood glucose and cholesterol levels, too.

I’m not sure I have the energy for a full 45 minutes, though.

No problem. Even 10 minutes of HIIT can help. A good weekly goal is 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity and two strength sessions. Hit that target and it doesn’t matter how you divide it up.

Gotcha. What about refuelling post-workout?

In future, aim for a carb-rich dinner at 6ish, then neck a protein shake post-sesh. Your body will repair itself while you sleep. It’s good like that.

Rachel Lines is a PT at rachellinesfitness.com

Ask the MH girls the questions you can’t ask anyone else. They’re three women who speak their mind, so don’t expect sugar-coated answers

ASK THE GIRLS IN THE OFFICE

I’m in my twenties, very sexually inexperienced, and feeling anxious about it. Is my lack of experience unattractive? – JC Nik: Well, let me start: absolutely not unattractive.

Jess: Agreed. Nothing wrong with inexperience.

However, your hang-ups around it could be . . . off-putting.

Nik: I think if the guy were in his thirties, that would make me a little worried.

But twenties? Still so young! Don’t stress.

Becky: No problems here with a sexual neophyte.

Jess: I think the main thing could be having a conversation with your new love interest with the aim of alleviating any anxiety you’re feeling.

Becky: That might be difficult, I realise. You’d probably rather come across as smooth rather than nervy. But keeping anxious feelings to yourself is a sure way to grow them and make this a bigger issue than it needs to be.

Nik: Yep, I’d share what you’re feeling. Who knows?

Your partner could be having the same thoughts – or at least can remember

a time when she did.

Jess: Let’s face it. COVID has changed dating. Made it less carefree. Whether you’re expressing fears around infectiousness or performance anxiety, it’s all fair and reasonable.

Nik: This is true.

Becky: I probably sound like a broken record, but it comes down to communication. And look, some people might actually prefer a lack of experience. It’s kinda sweet. Everybody goes at their own pace. Just try to relax and be honest with her.

Jess: Also, let’s be real here: having slept with a lot of people doesn’t make you good in bed.

Nik: I remember being told by my guy that it was his first time, and I found it super attractive that he was open about it, especially because it was my first time, too.

Jess: Honesty

heightens intimacy – that’s how I see it. When it comes down to it, being a good lover is about being receptive to your partner’s wants and needs. You don’t need years of experience to be that.

So, you’re no veteran in matters of the flesh.

That doesn’t mean you won’t get hers tingling.

Got a query? DM us via Instagram @menshealthau JULY 2022

9

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07 22

YOUR MONTHLY DOWNLOAD OF THE LATEST LIFE ENHANCING RESEARCH

THINK SHARPER AND FEEL CALMER IN 10 MINS FLAT

Push the reset button on your flagging brain.

WORDS: YO ZUSHI; PHOTOGRAPHY: SCRATCHINPOST.CO.UK AND PHILIP HAYNES

Lost your mojo at work? Here’s the simplest way to recharge your focus during your lunch hour or screen break – minimal effort required TO BECOME A worldclass triathlete, Lesley Paterson found herself pushing her limits “beyond what most thought were healthy”. Missed birthdays, early mornings, holidays ruined by searching for a pool to train in – her account of what it takes to reach the top will inspire some, but deter others.

And with many of us finding our motivation in all aspects of our life sapped by working from home, such commitment seems out of reach. Might as well give up trying?

If that thought has crossed your mind, remember that exercise – and the benefits it confers – isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. Even a small amount of it could be just what you need to fire you up once more – and that’s in both your work and life.

Researchers at the University of Tsukuba, Japan, found that a 10-minute jog can increase blood flow to regions

JOGGING A SLOG? Then grab a set of heavy-ish dumbbells and do this 12-minute workout instead

Start a running clock and complete one set every minute, on the minute (EMOM).

Perform your three sets of 10 cleans first, building up to the rows.

Rest for the remainder of each minute

DUMBBELL CLEAN (10 reps)

FRONT SQUAT (10 reps)

of your bilateral prefrontal cortex associated with cognitive function and positivity – boosting not only your mental processing power but also the way you feel. Even moderate running makes enormous demands on your brain, forcing it to coordinate complex processes involved in balance, movement and propulsion.

To test whether this had measurable spin-off benefits to the mind, the scientists assessed the ability of 26 participants to inhibit cognitive interference before and after a run at half their maximal aerobic capacity. The study, which involved identifying colours while ignoring verbal distractions, confirmed that even a quick plod around the block results in significantly enhanced problemsolving skills as well as heightened “pleasure levels”.

So, try fitting a brief jog into your working routine. It’ll brush away the cobwebs and restore your vim just in time for your big presentation. Consider the aerobic benefits an added bonus.

PUSH PRESS (10 reps)

RENEGADE ROW (8 reps each side)

JULY 2022

11

07 2 2

THE FEED

GO WITH THE FLOW TO BEAT BURNOUT

From office workers to jazz musicians, everyone wants to get into the ‘flow’ – the fabled state of optimal focus. But it’s good for more than just creativity FOR AMERICAN BANDLEADER Art Blakey, jazz offered a kind of secular baptism. Performing it, he said, could “wash away the dust of everyday life”. Gamers, chess masters and athletes have long reported similar feelings of liberation while immersed in their own activities; when psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi began to investigate flow in the mid-1970s, he formalised the study of a phenomenon familiar to anyone who has ever pursued a goal for its own sake – and lost themselves in that pursuit.

To be in the flow is to enter a zone of heightened focus. As with many forms of meditation, it causes the ego to fall away. Psychologists describe it as when “optimal experience” occurs, and its documented benefits are myriad: a University of Bath study linked

flow states to enhanced athletic performance, while others have found that it can improve emotional regulation and increase feelings of engagement.

But accessing it is easier said than done. That’s why researchers at the University of California recently conducted a study using brain-imaging technology to pinpoint what triggers flow states.

Tracking the neurological responses of 140 people as they played video games, they found that they’re most likely to occur when activities are challenging enough to engage you fully – blocking out all distractions – but not so difficult as to trigger stress or frustration.

So, pick your pastimes accordingly, then go at them full bore – and when the flow comes, just go with it.

For more on the transcendent power of the flow state, see “Fatal Distraction” on p. 92.

JUST ROLL WITH IT

Lose yourself in the moment with one of these flow-state inducing hobbies

DRUMMING

Research by the Royal College of Music found that a 10-week drum program curbed symptoms of depression by 38 per cent and anxiety by 20 per cent.

WOODWORK

Just like spending time in nature, wood can help relieve stress, according to psychologists at Tampere University in Finland.

BOULDERING

Ride the waves for a happier mental state.

12

MEN’S HE ALTH

WORDS: YO ZUSHI. ILLUSTRATION: ANDREA MANZATI AT SYNERGY ART

Climbing has proven effective in treating depression, going beyond the expected benefits of physical exercise, reports BMC Psychiatry.

07 2 2

THE FEED

EXHIBIT MORAL OUTRAGE. IT’LL UP YOUR CHARM

Women can’t resist guys who get dark and disturbed about global issues.

Science shows getting on your high horse could help you a hook a partner INCENSED ABOUT THE treatment of asylum seekers?

Spitting chips over government obfuscation on climate change? Well, you’re in luck. Your unwavering moral compass could make you a hell of a catch.

That’s the finding of a new study by researchers at the University of Arkansas, who found moral outrage is an attractive behaviour, particularly for those seeking longterm relationships.

Before you tweak your Tinder profile to highlight your robust advocacy of persecuted Chechens, there’s a catch.

Rather than just grandstanding at dinner parties, to be truly attractive to the opposite sex, you need to be prepared to act on your convictions.

In the study, which involved over 870 heterosexual participants, both sexes viewed moral outrage as desirable for a long-term partner, but women were much more attracted than men. This was possibly because displays of moral indignation

were associated with trustworthiness and benevolence that could be seen as more valuable to women, the researchers say.

“Women incur a substantially larger minimal cost in reproduction (nine-month gestation, lactation) compared with men (single instance of sperm provision), which necessitates employment of stringent mate-selection criteria to offset these costs,” says study author Mitch Brown, a psychology instructor.

(That line just never seems to get old . . .)

The findings are certainly a blow for the ‘hot-air Harrys’ and ‘keyboard Kevins’ of the world who talk a good game but aren’t ready to walk the walk. The researchers found the expression of moral outrage alone did not increase attractiveness, possibly because outrage without action could heighten perceptions of undesirable traits such as neuroticism and disagreeableness. It could also expose you as being inauthentic, a trait that’s not only unattractive, but doesn’t help anyone, either.

WALKING THE WALK

These guys could never be called blowhards. They back up their passionate words with action

14

MEN’S HE ALTH

1/ BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

Whether it’s benefit concerts or donations of staggering sums to humanitarian causes, The Boss ain’t forgotten his roots.

2/ DAVID POCOCK

Quitting rugby freed him up to go harder on the issues that make his blood boil.

Ran for the Senate at the recent federal election.

3/ KEANU REEVES

The Hollywood nice guy must have taken the red pill on cancer realism: he’s donated millions to finding better treatments.

4/ BONO

Hang on, this man’s not just talking about waste management. AIDS and extreme poverty in Africa also fire him up.

DARE TO

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ODE TO JOY: JAMES KEOGH, THE HUMBLE MAN BEHIND A BIG NAME STAR.

16

MEN’S HE ALTH

ADVANTAGE STAY AHEAD OF THE GAME

JOY RIDER With the hit song, Riptide, singer-songwriter JAMES KEOGH, aka VANCE JOY, was catapulted from busking and open-mic nights to global stardom. Find out how he went from zero to guitar, sorry, ukulele hero

BY BEN JHOT Y PHOTOGR APHY BY CL AUDIA GROSCHE

A CONFESSION: without being overly familiar with the works of Vance Joy and not previously giving it too much thought, I had assumed that his stage name, an amalgam of two characters from Peter Carey’s novel, Bliss, was his real name. As such, I had a vague image in my mind’s eye of a modern troubadour, a larger-than-life character perhaps given to affectation and flamboyant dress.

What I find when James Keogh materialises on screen via a Zoom call from Barcelona, is a man without any conceits, airs or graces. Instead, I’m greeted by a friendly, humble and down-to-

earth fellow who reminds me, both in appearance and in his air of thorough decency, of golfer Adam Scott. Nursing a mug of black tea on a couch, Keogh’s curly hair is still damp from a shower and he wears the type of hiking fleece you might pull on after a run. He looks to me like the footy player or jobbing law clerk he might have been in a different life, not a folk singer or a pop star – and not one whose songs have racked up over 5 billion streams and who has toured with the likes of Taylor Swift and P!nk. You’d have to conclude that perhaps he needed that stage name.

JULY 2022

17

FROM SMALL BEGINNINGS, KEOGH’S CAREER HAS BLOSSOMED.

For Keogh, Vance Joy was an attempt to draw a line between his professional and private lives. More simply, it was a name that just rolled off the tongue a little better than Keogh. But today, the boldness of the name he’s managed to wholly inhabit reminds him of a time when he wasn’t so sure of himself. A time when neither James Keogh, nor Vance Joy, meant much to anybody.

“I think I can be quite a shy person at times,” says the 34-year-old, who’s spent chunks of the past two years living in Spain with his girlfriend. “I remember being at the call centre where I was working during uni and people would be like, ‘Oh, so you said you play music?’ And they’re like, ‘What are you called?’ I was like, ‘Vance Joy’. And they’re like, ‘What?’ And you’re like, ‘Vance Joy’.

And it’s like, that moment of someone not understanding, asking you again and then you get red in the face as you tell them.

Especially when you’re starting out, before people know your music, you’re embarrassed about it. But I think the name felt right.”

It needed to. Success in the cutthroat, highly capricious world of pop music requires levels of grit, determination and sheer bloody-mindedness we more commonly associate with professional athletes or hard scrabble entrepreneurs. “It can be unlikely even to pursue a career in music or to just keep persisting with it,” Keogh says. “I don’t know what that thing in your head you have to have is, but it’s almost like you’ve got to be blissfully 18

MEN’S HE ALTH

ignorant of all the things that could go wrong or maybe that voice in your head that says, ‘You can’t do it’, has got to be a little bit quieter.”

Keogh? On his own, as himself, he might not have had it. He may not have been able to silence those doubts. As Vance Joy, though? There would be no limits to what he could achieve.

M A S T E R OF NON E

Keogh grew up in Murrumbeena in Melbourne’s east, where he and his mates owned the streets on their BMXs and rollerblades, hitting up the local milk bar and later, a McDonalds.

“It was like you have your little neighbourhood and you know all the shortcuts,” Keogh says. “It’s like a little dominion when you’re a kid.”

Keogh’s world would expand rapidly after he transferred from his local primary school to St Kevin’s College, a

prestigious all-boys private school that competes in Victoria’s Associated Public Schools (APS) system in sports like Aussie Rules, cricket and rowing.

Keogh would become school captain, a position he had secretly coveted since he was in Year 7, perhaps hinting at his vaulting, if largely hidden ambition.

“I was always fascinated by the school captain and the position, because every Monday he would speak at assembly where he’d tell a story and make it entertaining,” he recalls. “And when you’re a Year 7 kid looking up at him, you’re like, wow, this guy is a grown-up man. In that little world they’re the star. So, I was always aspiring to that. Even if it was a secret, I was thinking that was pretty cool.”

As well as an aspirational streak, Keogh’s ascension to the position also revealed his all-round abilities. He was

TACTI C S

recruited to the Coburg Tigers in the VFL, which at the time was Richmond FC’s reserves team. “I remember getting a call one day when I was in first-year uni and [coach] Andy Collins goes, ‘How do you feel about playing in the AFL?’ He planted the seed of that, and I was like, ‘Wow’. I didn’t have any idea what I was going to do. I was just studying and I wasn’t the most engaged student. Football was the thing I was most disciplined about. It gave me a bit of identity.”

Keogh took his first preseason with the Tigers seriously, getting in killer shape to contribute to a reserves team that won the premiership. The next year he started in the reserves before being elevated to the ones for the second half of the season, where he again played well. He describes himself as a dour defender who never wanted to draw too much attention to himself.

“I remember I wore white boots to training one day and the captain was like, ‘Doesn’t feel right. It’s just not right for you’. And I was like, ‘Yeah, I know’.” As a footy player, it would appear Keogh had a bass player’s temperament.

In his third year he became complacent, he says, often finding himself dreading the weekends, not because he didn’t enjoy it but because of the cocktail of nerves and adrenaline that would rise throughout the week, reaching a crescendo on Saturday mornings.

It’s similar, he says, to the nerves he still feels before a gig. “If I had a gig tonight and someone came in right now and said it was off, I’d be relieved,” he says. “But then it’s like, what do I do with all this energy?”

His footy career would peter out. He knew he didn’t quite have it, didn’t want it badly enough, couldn’t turn down his inner voices. Not in footy, anyway. But if he was fading in one field, he was about to soar in another. the jock who was also friendly with the nerds and the musos. “I think there’s a sense that it has to be a guy that does a bit of everything,” he says. “Maybe you don’t have to be the best at sport, you don’t have to be the smartest guy, but you kind of have to be doing okay in every area.”

It would be footy at which Keogh would show the most early promise.

He would make the school’s First 18, essentially granting him demi-god status within the school yard, though Keogh often found himself in awe of his own teammates. “It’s almost like the guys that were the best in those teams were heroes,” he laughs. “Even after all this time you go, ‘Geez, Antony Keely, Year 12, against Xavier, taking marks at full back’. Those people leave a big impression on you.”

Looking back, Keogh feels he was too often “in his head” to be a really consistent schoolboy player. “Maybe I’d have one or two games in the season where things clicked,” he says.

“But it was almost like if the stars aligned and it just felt good that day.

It was always a mystery to me why I played well.”

Typically, Keogh is probably downplaying his abilities. After school finished, he would play for the St Kevin’s Old Boys team before being

T OP OF T H E P OP S

Chances are you’ve heard Riptide. Even if you can’t immediately recall the tune or the words, the moment you hear Keogh strum the first few bars on the ukulele, you know it. It’s the kind of cosmic earworm that so thoroughly embeds itself in the collective consciousness you wonder if it has always been there. You almost forget someone had to create it out of nothing.

Encouraged by his father, Keogh had been playing guitar since he was a teenager. In the early days he didn’t put in a lot of effort, wagging lessons and essentially going through the motions. “I think my dad always knew, I guess from his own experience, that if I played guitar, I would have it for life,” Keogh says. “But when you’re 14, you don’t really take responsibility for anything. You think, ‘Oh, that will just fade away’.”

He became more enthusiastic when his dad organised lessons for him outside of school and bought him a Fender Squier Strat. He began jamming at lunchtimes with friends in the music room, murdering the latest Metallica riff or playing Green Day songs and changing the lyrics. After school finished, he and some of his more academically inclined mates, including the dux of the school, formed a band called Hypersonic. “I remember, across the board as a band, we all did really well in our English exams,” he laughs. “That didn’t necessarily make us the coolest band. I guess we sucked a little bit, but we did write a couple of good songs.”

Keogh was beginning to fall in love with the problem-solving dimension of songwriting, a feeling he’d previously experienced writing essays. “Sitting in that space of not knowing and trying to figure out if you do this with this, what happens? When you’re writing an essay for school or when you’re writing a song, it’s that same kind of jigsaw puzzle. It’s not necessarily fun, but if you find the enjoyment in that, then you might just get addicted to it.”

Keogh would study law at Monash, but while he finished his degree, the law certainly wasn’t calling him. He went through the motions of applying for summer clerkships, “just because everyone was doing it”, but he was far more excited about the handful of

JOY REVISION Keogh cycles and skates to stay in shape on the road, while prioritising stretching to combat back pain brought on by songwriting sessions on Zoom. He uses this 7-minute stretching routine to keep his body on song

1/ Cat Cow

2/ Bird Dog

3/ Tabletop crunches

4/ Low plank Knee drops

5/ Superman

6/ Push-up

7/ Beetle Hold each stretch for 30 seconds each, rest one minute then repeat.

JULY 2022

19

IS IT BETTER TO TRY MORE? OR BE A BIT MORE ZEN? I’M STILL MYSTIFIED AS TO HOW IT ALL WORKS

RAPID FIRE Favourite exercise?

Skateboarding or push-ups.

Least favourite?

Lunges.

Cheat meal?

Homemade mac and cheese.

Last book you read?

Walking With Ghosts

by Gabriel Byrne.

Karaoke song?

Right Down the Line, Gerry Rafferty.

Heroes?

Bruce Springsteen and Paul Kelly. These guys have had long careers and stayed true to their art the whole way.

Motto?

Just keep chipping away.

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TACTI C S

songs he’d written and begun to perform at open-mic nights.

Among them was Riptide, a song he’d first started writing while at uni in 2008 and thought, “this is nothing”, before returning to it a few years later.

Looking back now, Keogh feels the song’s subsequent success lends its protracted creative process something of a mythical quality, like it was always meant to be. “Everything probably takes on a bit more significance because you link it all back with hindsight,” he says. “I remember being excited about it. It was the satisfaction you get from just cracking the code of a song. Just by putting the right word in the right place, without really thinking about it too hard, the song is created in front of you and you’re like, ‘Oh, how did I do that?’ It’s rare when that happens, but when it does, that’s the best thing.”

Keogh was working at the call centre and doing a bit of gardening work on the side and decided to use his earnings to pay for a day in the studio to record the song in 2012. He then put it on SoundCloud, like so many budding young songwriters do, many of them lucky to get more than a handful of listens. What happened next is the stuff of folklore. Hell, it’s basically a fairy tale.

“I put it on SoundCloud before having any experience in the music industry and knowing anyone or having a manager and it had like, a thousand listens after a week,” he recalls. My friend was like, ‘Dude, this is crazy’. I think you can gauge a song and the way it’s received pretty quickly, just from the people around you.” Later it would be uploaded on SoundCloud by record label Liberation and had 40,000 listens in a day. It would go on to claim the No.1 spot in the 2013 Hottest 100 and become the second-longest charting song in the US Billboard Hot 100 at 43 weeks. To date it has racked up over a billion streams, while being used by companies to push everything from insurance to automobiles.

Keogh’s career was put on a steep trajectory. Not surprisingly the sudden success left him reeling. “It’s hard to prepare for it,” he says. “Even if something like that happened again, it’d still be wild. But I think I’d probably enjoy it a bit more now, because I would have more context about how unlikely and rare it is to do.”

Indeed, the success of the song would create something of a rod for Keogh’s back. “I definitely felt pressure,” he says. “My first meeting at Atlantic Records, I went there to

play a couple of songs for the top dog, Craig Kallman. And I remember he was like, ‘If we had a few more Riptides that would great too’. And I was like, how am I going to write one of those? I don’t even know how I did it. I’ll try.”

His goal, which continues to this day with the release of his third album, In Our Own Sweet Time, became to surround this towering hit with enough songs that can also stand on their own two feet. “They might not stand as tall and might not have the same impact as that song but that’s so out of my hands,” he says. At the same time, Keogh still has the drive to solve the puzzle again and capture that lightening in a bottle, even as he grapples with the confounding, sometimes ephemeral nature of songwriting. Like he said: it’s addictive.

“I look at other artists like Ed Sheeran or Adele, and they really can do it again and again,” he says. “I’m always trying to get better. And sometimes I think, is it better to try more? Or just to relax and be a bit more Zen about it? I’m still a little bit mystified as to how it all works.”

IN N E R H A R MON Y

After our chat to today, Keogh will head out onto the streets of Barcelona to shoot some footage to accompany the new album, capturing some of the things he likes to do to unwind: ride bikes, shoot hoops, skateboard and read books. He began writing songs for the album in 2019 and continued through COVID, linking up with regular collaborator, Dave Bassett, who lives in California, on Zoom.

“The thing about doing it online is it’s much less impact on your body,” Keogh says. “Just less travel, but maybe you miss out on that little bit of magic of being in a new place, new

KEOGH HAS COME TO ENJOY THE ADRENALINE RUSH OF PERFORMING LIVE.

sights and smells. But the songs still came. I always like writing from the perspective of hanging out with someone you care about and you’re in a timeless space where you forget about things and you’re really present in the moment. And I feel like that feeling kept showing up in most of the songs on this album.”

A film and book lover, Keogh likes to use movie dialogue to inspire lyrics, even bad movies. “You can get inspiration from any movie, it doesn’t have to be a serious movie,” he says, telling me he’s recently watched a lot of Adam Sandler films. “If you’ve got your antennas up, you end up catching these lines.”

You need to have your senses attuned in your personal life, too, he adds, though he often worries that he’s not doing enough. “You always think, are my senses prepped and ready? Am I really making the most of what’s available to me? I used to be trying to get everything down on my phone and then not let any of these voice memos slip through the cracks, because there’s probably 200 or more. I’m more relaxed about it now. I feel like the good ideas will come and promote themselves and stay in my head.”

Keogh’s diligence and commitment to his craft are revealing.

While he remains uncertain about the exact alchemy of the songwriting process, it does seem there’s some mathematics – effort x volume – as well as magic going on. In that respect, it’s perhaps telling that when I ask him for his motto in life, he offers not some words of wisdom or metaphorical flourish befitting an acclaimed lyricist, but instead falls back on the most utilitarian of aphorisms: just keep chipping away. “People would often say, ‘What are you doing?’ And I’d be like, ‘I’m just chipping away’. It was a way of deflecting, but also just keeping disciplined and controlling the things that are in front of you. It can be hard some days. Maybe you feel like you’re not doing good or you did something you’re not so proud of. Maybe a song isn’t doing as much as I wanted it to, but it’s just like, the next thing you do, whatever it is, you’ll have an opportunity to do something great. So, just keep chipping away.”

I’m not sure about you, but to me, that’s not something I can imagine a bloke called Vance Joy saying.

In Our Own Sweet Time is released on June 10.

JULY 2022

21

F I T NE SS

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN

…I DON’T WARM UP? Your coach isn’t trying to irritate you with his insistence on limbering up before launching into a full-throttle workout. Here’s why the extra effort counts 02

05

MON:

10:09

03

04

01

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BRING THE HEAT

JOINTS VENTURE

“A warm-up does exactly that,” says exercise physiologist Tom Cowan. “It increases the temperature of the working muscles, which improves high-intensity exercise performance.”

Active heating – warming muscles through movement – helps generate more force and makes better use of muscle glycogen. Passive heating – a heat pad, for example – has some impact, but won’t offer the full range of benefits.

LOOSENING UP CAN BOOST YOUR RESULTS.

05

02

TRICKS OF THE MIND

PUMP IT UP

At rest, the muscles receive 20 per cent of blood flow, with most directed to your organs. In maximal exercise, 80 per cent can go to working muscles, says Cowan. Go in cold and your body is playing catch-up as it tries to make circulatory and metabolic adjustments.

“Research suggests that active warm-ups lead to less reliance on anaerobic energy systems,” he adds. This could mean less fatigueinducing muscle acidity.

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Dynamic stretches can improve range of motion, as well as priming muscles.

Plyometric moves such as box jumps need powerful contractions, so it’s important your body gets fair warning. “Evidence suggests that dynamic stretching may boost power output,” says Cowan.

Think inchworms rather than a standing hamstring stretch – save the latter for your cool-down.

03 HAVE SOME HEART

“Going from 60 beats per minute to 120 is a big jump in workload for your heart,” says Cowan. And this is combined with an increase in blood pressure, another side effect of exercise. A steady rise in both through a graduated warm-up may make your training session a little bit longer, but it will also make it safer and better.

“Your warm-up is when you can switch off from what you were doing and turn your full attention to the workout,” says Cowan.

It generally has a positive effect on your confidence in your ability to perform.

“It’s also a chance to practise sport-specific movement patterns or skills.” Aim for 10-15 minutes of motion before the real work starts. Now, go get ’em.

WORDS: TOM COWAN, TCOWAN.CO.UK, @THOMASJCOWAN. ILLUSTRATION: PETER GRUNDY

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N UTR I TION

IT’S PALEO! IT’S VEGAN! IT’S . . . COMPLICATED This doctor-built plan claims it’ll help you maintain muscle and torch fat.

ABBY LANGER, author of t, weighs in W H AT I T IS

Pegan is a mash-up of paleo and vegan. On the diet, you can eat whenever you want and as much of anything as you want – as long as you’re filling your plate with 75 per cent plant-based foods and 25 per cent sustainably raised animal products.

(So, yeah, not really vegan.) Dr Mark Hyman developed the diet – and wrote a best-selling book about it.

T H E P ROMISE

Hyman says his pegan diet can reduce inflammation, prevent chronic disease and promote weight loss while also taking care of the planet. Because you can still eat meat, fish and eggs on pegan, you don’t have to worry about protein intake, a common concern with a vegan diet.

W H AT YOU C A N ’T H AV E

Quite a lot, actually: non-organic produce, vegetable oils, dairy (except for organic sheep or goat milk), gluten, more than a half cup of cooked grains or legumes daily, and soy, plus MSG, artificial sweeteners, additives, preservatives and dyes. Whew.

T H E GOOD

Eating more plants is always beneficial. Fruits and vegetables house disease-fighting antioxidants as well as fibre, which helps you stay full and feeds good gut bacteria. Also nice: there are no kilojoule or macronutrient (fat, protein, carbs) restrictions on the pegan diet, and – grains and legumes aside – you don’t have to measure portions, which is tedious.

T H E NO T S O GOOD

Hyman states that dairy is linked to cancer (not true), gluten causes obesity (also not true), and grains and legumes can trigger autoimmune disorders (sigh).

There is no solid scientific evidence that suggests any of the foods he excludes from this diet, in moderate amounts, can cause poor health.

Plant-heavy diets have a studied history of reducing disease and helping people maintain a healthy weight. But pegan is too restrictive, excluding foods based on overblown or outdated claims. A varied inclusionary diet remains the best way to eat well, manage weight and have a healthy relationship with good food.

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PHOTOGRAPH BY TED + CHELSEA CAVANAUGH

THE VERDICT

FATHE RHOOD

CLASS WARFARE! Back-to-school jitters are real – and your children might be the ones who conquer them for you BY

KEVIN SWAN

ILLUSTRATION BY

MADISON KETCHAM

I’VE ALWAYS BEEN proud to be the product of public school. After all, public and state schools are part of the backbone of our country. My kid would follow in my footsteps, I had decided. And by footsteps, I mean tyre tracks, because I have ALS and use a wheelchair.

If you aren’t familiar with ALS (amyotrophic lateral scelrosis, also known as motor neurone disease), it’s quite the shit sandwich. Not only did it put a dampener on my golf game, it has a life expectancy of three to five years. Fortunately, I’ve been an outlier – I’m in my tenth year living with the disease – and this past year was a doozy.

Last spring alone, amid COVID, my wife and I bought our first house. We decided to move to a new house in a new city, an hour away from any 26

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friends and family. My wife started her own business, and because of the pandemic, I had to pull the plug on the foundation I created to raise awareness about ALS – which is a pretty bad pun considering I need a ventilator to breathe.

Oh, and I also became a stay-at-home dad for a few months until we could find a preschool for my three-year-old daughter, Elliott Monroe.

Despite being completely paralysed, with the exception of the little piggy that went to market on my left foot, I tried especially hard during those months to be as active and present in Elliott’s life as possible. Instead of me making her breakfast every morning, she crawled into bed with me with some orange juice and a little box of raisins. There we’d watch an episode of

Paw Patrol on my tablet before my caregiver would start moving my legs to get the blood flowing.

Then the rest of our day we spent at parks and playgrounds. This time became increasingly special with every box of mac ’n’ cheese we shared at lunch. It was idyllic – but her going to school loomed.

Like any responsible parent in a new town, I had Googled “best preschools near me”. One result had caught my eye. The only problem was that it was a private school. And this private school represented everything I was against. Did I want to be a private-school parent? It would be a stretch on our finances.

Would our daughter be not only the poor kid among the wealthy but also the poor kid with the dad in a wheelchair?

My mind raced through decades of insecurities, ranging from not having enough money to never being quite smart enough for honours classes.

Sure, the private school offered a great education, but could I deal with picking her up in my wheelchair-accessible van among the parade of Porsches?

I was a nervous wreck. What was I thinking?

So, I emailed the private school’s admissions director and spilled my guts. Unfortunately for my ego and fortunately for our daughter’s future, the director was lovely. My wife, who grew up in the bush, was supportive. And so we scheduled a tour. I was relieved to find out that the students were, in fact, diverse in background and class. We enrolled her, despite whatever commitment I had made about where and with whom she’d go to school.

I expected inner turmoil; instead I found relief.

For all my own issues about joining a community that I had judged from the outside, it was a personal victory. Our job as parents is to put our kids in the best situation and surroundings to succeed, all the while not letting our own baggage get in the way.

As for my fears about Elliott having to deal with a dad with disabilities, she quickly squashed those. During the first week of school, she decided to ride through the preschool’s quad on my lap. The other kids were so impressed by my hot wheels that Elliott was waving like she was already on a homecoming float.

Considering that we just managed to get Elliott potty-trained in time for preschool, homecoming seems like eons from now.

And despite this annoying “fatal” disease, I will be there.

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THE POWER OF HIGHER POWER TRAINING Meet the man who is leveraging the strength of spirituality to crush tough workouts – hunger, exhaustion and busy days be damned BY

LINDSAY BERRA

PHOTOGRAPHY BY

THE LITTLEST BOOMBOX

ONE DAY LAST year, a Virginiabased trainer named Faris Khan posted a unique kind of workout video to Instagram: he wore an elaborately embroidered Muslim prayer hat and vest while completing a set of complicated plyometric Superman push-ups with claps and spins in his living room.

It was April 12, 2021, the first day of the sacred month of Ramadan. For Khan, who is better known as @BrotherFaris to more than 200,000 followers on social media, this 30-day period of devotion meant fasting from sunrise to 28

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sunset without coffee or even water. But every few days, he posted another video or story of himself doing impressive calisthenics and acrobatics to inspire his fellow Muslims to stick with their exercise programs.

“To me, the connection between faith and religion and overall health is huge,” says Khan, who sees Ramadan as a time to test himself mentally, physically and spiritually. “It makes you learn about your body and what you are capable of. If you want to cheat and go in the closet and eat food, no one will know, but God can see,

and building that discipline makes you strong.”

Khan, 29, is poised to do the same thing every year, seeing Ramadan as a time of spiritual discipline that purifies the body and brings one closer to God. (It also includes five set times for prayer each day as well as special night prayers.)

As Khan sees it, your workout can be its own kind of devotion, a challenge that not only pushes your limits and builds strength but leaves you with a sense of accomplishment that keeps other stresses and values in perspective.

Already lean and ripped, Khan dropped three kilos during Ramadan last year while seeing improvements in his body-fat percentage and overall musculature. He’s one of many pious people spreading the gospel of fitness on social media, including @Kazmanaught (iconic strongman William Kazmaier) and @FatherCapo (the jacked Catholic priest). All generally advocate for something medical experts have only recently begun to explore more deeply: one of the best ways to stay healthy or improve your fitness may be to view any physiological challenge from a religious – or at least spiritual – point of view.

Last year, several hundred people signed up for Khan’s training-while-fasted program, which included detailed workout and nutrition guides. The testimonials began rolling in

F I TN E S S

on day one, with someone raving about the “unique and challenging exercises” and a breakfast plan that “helps me keep energy throughout the day”, and continued through day 30, when one user felt “definitely stronger all around”.

Given the popularity of fasting as a life hack, Khan suspects some clients weren’t Muslim.

Either way, the idea of joining a fitness community as a way to seek personal growth or enlightenment sits perfectly within our modern obsession with the cult of wellness.

As researchers at Harvard Divinity School have reported, we live in an age when millennials especially are walking away from the often politicised climate of traditional churches. At the same time, many people are embracing CrossFit and SoulCycle as places not only to find community but to reshape their lives. Khan certainly agrees that treating your body as a vessel is important. “In the Koran, a strong believer is better than a weak one,” he says.

“That can mean strong spiritually in connection with God but also physically.”

Many religions have some hurdles for staying active. Orthodox Jewish men follow modesty rules and avoid extensive exercise on the Sabbath. The Amish see bodybuilding as vain, and going to a gym isn’t permitted. Practitioners of Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Taoism, Jainism and Hinduism all undertake fasts as a means of self-sacrifice or cleansing.

Yet many athletes seem to appreciate these challenges as a way to add even more value to their lives. Take current NBA prospect Ryan Turell, who is Orthodox Jewish and skipped playing D-I basketball to build D-III Yeshiva University into a powerhouse. Or former Boston

UNLOCK

YOUR INNER STRENGTH BY FASTING & STAYING FIT

Each Ramadan, trainer Faris Khan, fasts from dawn to dusk for 30 days – and still crushes intense workouts. Follow him on Instagram @BrotherFaris for more tips. Here are a couple to keep in mind

FUEL UP SMARTLY You’ll have to wake up early to hydrate and eat a nutritious meal, but can catnap later if you need to.

Celtics center Enes Freedom, who has said that competing during Ramadan gives him next-level focus. In the MLB, Jacob Steinmetz became the first Orthodox Jew to be drafted last July. And plenty of competitive Amish marathoners race in their long pants and suspenders.

Some forms of fasting can deprive your body of necessary nutrients and energy, so it’s often an obstacle for people who are serious about their faith and fitness. But Khan is deliberate in how he begins and ends his fast and how he exercises in order to maximise his energy and gains. To avoid dehydration, he drinks three litres of water overnight, and he concentrates on hitting his daily protein goals by eating large but balanced pre-dawn and post-sundown meals.

He takes catnaps throughout the day to catch up on sleep and focuses on shorter bodyweight workouts instead of longer sessions comprising set after set of weightlifting.

Each day, he’ll spend 30-45 minutes with a specific focus: lower body, upper body, core, speed, agility or mobility. These workouts are all done without equipment and include calisthenic skills like planches, handstands and push-up variations, which he practises outside at his local parks. “They are mostly lower rep, but you put out max effort,” he says, “or as much effort as you can give at the moment without going to complete failure, because that will exhaust you if you are training fasted.” He usually works out one hour before dinner so he can be ready to feed his muscles.

Richard Bloomer, the dean of the College of Health Sciences at the University of Memphis, says that if people are mentally prepared and develop an appropriate plan of action, they should be able to complete a successful fast while still maintaining their usual activity levels, including strenuous resistance and cardiovascular exercise.

The idea that faith may boost resilience has gained traction in some academic circles, too. About a decade ago, researchers at Duke University compared more than 3000 studies from around the world and concluded that people who consider themselves religious or spiritual typically have better mental health and have shown the ability to overcome physical health issues more quickly than those who don’t. Other studies show that a spiritual mindset may help you cope with work stress and burnout or slow the progression of some diseases.

Khan’s workout plans unite people who – religious or not – are willing to go through something hard together. One obvious payoff?

“I feel fresher and stronger, with an increase in strength-to-weight ratio that translates directly to weightlifting,” he says. But that’s WAIT TO WORK OUT not the biggest benefit. “So many You can avoid crashing by exercising people in this world are praying about an hour before you power back for a small fraction of the blessings up with your nightly meal, Khan says. we have. We have to remember to be thankful.”

JULY 2022

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THE NUTRITION SNOB’S GUIDE TO

SALAD GREENS A leafy lunch shouldn’t be an emblem of self-denial, but rather a stimulating element of any satisfying, nourishing meal plan. Savour these green giants

1

T UR N OV E R A N E W L E A F

Contrary to popular belief, the cooler months – not summer – represent peak salad season: leaves grow better when it’s cooler, says Neil Campbell, head chef at Fitzrovia’s Rovi. The best salads are simple, but quality ingredients are paramount. Buy from small producers, who often “pick crops that morning”.

Here are Campbell’s go-tos…

A Pea Shoots

“A great crop,” says Campbell. Keen gardener? Grow a pea plant and trim the tops for a continuous supply of salad, even before the pods are ready.

They’re a strong source of vitamin C, too.

B Baby Kale

“Tender and palatable” Red Russian is Campbell’s go-to. Kale is a top source of vitamin K – excellent for heart and bone health – and sulforaphane, which supports detoxification. Some useful pub trivia for you there.

C Rainbow Chard

Chard is in season year-round, and you can spot this variety by its colourful stalk. It’s a true vitamin powerhouse, in particular when it comes to dishing out vitamin A for robust immunity and eye health.

D Spinach

We’ll spare you the Popeye jokes, but this leaf – at its best between April and July – supports muscle function. As well as helpful minerals, its ecdysterone is linked to increased strength.

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2

T H E SP IN DOC T OR

Limp greens won’t inspire you to explore your culinary creativity. So, the first step to a crisper salad is storing your leaves.

Campbell advises sitting them in cold water for five minutes, then drying in a salad spinner. Don’t be overzealous. ‘“A bit of moisture is good,” he says.

Store your greens in a zip-lock bag. Few gizmos are needed, but a mandoline can make quick work of slicing, from carrot ribbons and rounds of onion to thin apple slices.

N U T R IT I O N

3

P R E SE N TAT ION P OIN T S Now to put your theory into practice. It’s not just the quality of your fresh ingredients that counts, and a well-stocked pantry goes far: Campbell favours Belazu for oils (“I prefer a light olive oil, something floral and not too bitter”) and vinegars (“they stock about 10 different types, from sweet to musky and appley ones”).

These four recipes from Campbell and the team at Rovi are bursting with flavourful nutrient-rich ingredients to brighten your workday lunches and weekend barbecues alike.

DRESS UP

A good dressing does more than enhance the enjoyment of your greens – it adds bonus nutritional benefits, too

A

B

Elderflower-Lime lderflower Lime Pea Shoot & Burrata SERVES 1-2

• 150ml elderflower cordial • 5 limes, juiced • 1 tbsp chardonnay vinegar • 50g fresh peas • 50g sugar snaps • Handful of almonds • 1 burrata • 10g pea shoots • Basil and mint • Aleppo chilli flakes

METHOD Whisk the cordial, lime juice and vinegar along with a pinch of salt and 5½ tbsp olive oil for a dressing.

Blanch the peas and sugar snaps (boil for 1-2 mins, then refresh in ice water). Toast the almonds at 180°C for 5 mins, cool and slice. Cut open the burrata and season. Combine the peas with the shoots, add some torn basil and mint, and lightly mix with a glug of the dressing.

Yu uzu-App Apple pp p Kale & Radish h SERVES 1-2

• 1 tsp yuzu kosho • 1 tbsp apple vinegar • 1 tbsp olive oil • Salt and sugar • 160g baby kale • 6 radishes with tops • ¼ cox apple • 1 ½ tbsp creme fraiche • Nigella seeds and pickled chillies

METHOD Combine the kosho, vinegar and oil with a pinch each of salt and sugar (sub in lemon, lime and grapefruit zest if you don’t have kosho). Massage into the kale and leave to tenderise for 20 mins. Slice the radishes, reserving the tops. Core and dice the apples. Toss the ingredients with the creme fraiche. Campbell likes this with roast chicken.

WORDS: SCARLETT WRENCH. PHOTOGRAPHY: JAMIE LAU. ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY: LOUISA PARRY.

Healthy Fats Low-fat dressings might keep the kilojoule count down, but there’s a trade-off: oils such as olive and avo help you absorb illness-fighting carotenoids.

C Vinegar When added to carb-based meals, even a small amount of vinegar can curb blood-sugar spikes, keeping your energy levels steady for longer.

Braised Chard with Garlic, Tomato & Lemon SERVES 1-2

• 150g Swiss or rainbow chard

• 3 garlic cloves, sliced

• 3 tbsp olive oil • 2 ripe tomatoes,

Citrus Juice The vitamin C in your squeeze of lemon improves the body’s absorption of non-haem iron: the kind found in grains, legumes and your leafy greens.

D

chopped

• Salt and pepper • ½ lemon, juice and zest

METHOD “I don’t believe a salad always has to include raw leaves,” says Campbell. Separate the chard stems and leaves, thinly slice the stems and tear the leaves. Fry the garlic in oil until golden, then add the tomatoes and stems. Lightly season and cook for 10 mins, then add the leaves. Keep on the heat for another 10 mins. Finish it off with lemon juice and serve at room temperature as a side dish – or transform it into a pasta salad.

Freekeh with Spinach, Orange & Walnuts SERVES 1-2

• 100g freekeh • 1 orange, juice and zest • 1 tbsp currants • 60g large-leaf spinach • 30g parsley • 2 tbsp walnuts • 1 tbsp olive oil • Salt and pepper

METHOD Boil the freekeh in salted water for 15-20 mins; strain and cool.

Bring the juice and zest to a boil in a pan, then remove from the heat and add the currants. Soak for 20 mins. Pick the chunky stalks off the spinach and parsley; wash in ice water. Then put through a spinner, if you have one. Toast the walnuts for 5 mins in the oven, then roughly chop. Mix everything together adding oil, salt and pepper.

JULY 2022

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PLAY YOUR CARDIOS RIGHT to treadmill classes, but does an ergo workout deliver bigger benefits than running?

RUNNING

VS

6:31:00

The min/mile pace 40-year-old runner Aleksandr Sorokin sustained for 100 miles to set a world record

2:21:08

Canadian Ben de Wit holds the world record for rowing a marathon. That’s a steady 1:40.3/500m FEEL THE BURN

Runners battle against gravity, burning up more energy. On average, pounding the tread or bitumen torches 210 more kJs per hour than a sesh on the ergo.

As well as working your quads, hammies and glutes, running is great for your heart.

Studies indicate that even five to 10 minutes a day can reduce your risk of heart disease.

ROWING

5-10

TARGET TRAINING

Super-efficient rowers have produced some of the highest VO2 max readings recorded – 6.25 litres/min among top athletes, versus around 4.5-5.0 for elite marathon runners.

85%

Rowing targets your upper and lower body, activating nine muscle groups and 85 per cent of the body’s musculature. But 50 per cent of the power in a stroke comes from your legs.

BODY GOALS

Immunity boost

Stronger bones

Brainpower gains

Running’s high-impact action loads the body with two-and-a-half times your body weight per step, meaning longer recovery times. Don’t forget to do your warm-up.

Faster fat burn

250%

NORDIC TRACK EXP 7i adjust your speed

Strong core & back

TOTAL IMPACT

LEAN MACHINES

More glute power

THE HYDROW

$2495, shop.hydrow.com Virtual coaching and a stroke-feel that mimics the water.

Rowing and running are both highly effective cardio workouts. If you want to burn kilojoules faster, run. If you want a lower-impact full-body blitz, row.

MEN’S HE ALTH

Quicker recovery

Lower-back woes account for roughly half of rowing injuries, but low-impact sessions are ideal for beginners who want to build cardio capacity and rehab injuries.

THE MH VERDICT: IT’S A DRAW

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Healthier joints

AL ERT

ASK

AUSTRALIA

N

GROW, TRANSFORM & REINVENT YOURSELF

with lessons from the

Ask Men’s Health Podcast IN THIS BRAND NEW PODCAST, THE MEN’S HEALTH TEAM CHATS TO INDUSTRY EXPERTS AND EXTRAORDINARY THOUGHT LEADERS ABOUT THE ISSUES THAT MATTER MOST TO MEN. FROM FITNESS AND NUTRITION TO MENTAL HEALTH, WE LEAVE NO QUESTION UNANSWERED.

Download Ask MH on your favourite streaming app or visit menshealth.com.au

F I TN E S S

MOVE INTO REVERSE Hone your form and build strength you can use with the eccentric muscle-up – a key step on your journey to gymnastics mastery

THE

BEST

EXERCISE YOU’RE NOT DOING

START HERE

1FROM THE TOP

PHOTOGRAPHY: PHILIP HAYNES

Jump up on the bar.

Hold yourself above it and extend your arms.

Keep your core braced and legs out straight beneath you.

GRAVITY IS A fickle friend. It helps you build strength, but it can humble you, too – especially when you’re challenging yourself with a move as tough as the muscle-up.

The ‘eccentric’ version is the simplest way to turn gravity into an ally. Here, the focus is on the lowering phase of the movement, so you overload your triceps, shoulders and core to add size and develop strength for the real shebang: a favourite show-off move for the recreational gymnast, rivalled only by the handstand push-up.

“The eccentric part of the muscle-up is underutilised,” says fitness trainer Andrew Tracey. “You’re stronger through the lowering portion of a movement, so by jumping over the bar and slowly controlling yourself down, you’re building strength . . . and drilling the movement pattern.”

Aim to perform each rep over five seconds to truly test your muscles. Just remember to hold on tight – this is falling with style.

2 DROP ITDOWN

Slowly lower into a dip with good control. Keep your elbows close to your sides, so you can target the muscles you want to work.

3 GET A LEG UP

Lean back and slowly lift your legs parallel to the ground. Keep your palms facing down.

This false grip will increase the pressure on your forearms.

4 FINISH STRONG

Straighten out your arms to lower your body into a dead hang, with your legs in an L-sit position.

Feeling the strain?

FINISH

What You’ll Gain

GYMNASTIC STRENGTH

UPPER-BODY GROWTH

SHOWBOATING SKILLS

JULY 2022

35

CAN YOUR BRAIN TAME CHRONIC PAIN? A new way to use your mind to process pain might finally get you some relief. We delved in to see if it’s weird, or about to change your life BY

JOE LINDSEY

I’VE KNOWN Tara DiRocco for less than five minutes, but already I’m telling her all the intimate details: a dull, persistent ache in my right arm sets in within moments of sitting down at my desk to work.

This pain, which I’ve had for years, brings emotional stress, too. I’m a writer; if I can’t type, I can’t work. I had assumed my pain was due to a repetitive-use injury from long years of long days at my computer. But a new way of treating chronic pain, called pain reprocessing therapy (PRT), suggests that the story I tell myself might not be true. What’s more, DiRocco says, believing that I’m broken may be what’s broken.

DiRocco is a physical therapist by profession, but she’s also my coach at Lin, a new telehealth start-up focused on treating chronic pain through tools like PRT. We’re ‘meeting’ for our first session via video call. I’m relatively lucky: my pain is only bothersome, not debilitating. But chronic pain affects roughly one in five adults, according to the CDC. For a third of those people, the pain is bad enough to interfere with their work, hobbies and even social life. Many do not find relief in medical treatment. Can an app really help all that?

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PAIN CAN BE A FIERY MANIFESTATION OF OLD HURTS.

OL D PA IN, NE W T HINKING

Western medicine has historically approached all pain, acute or chronic, the same way: focus treatment at the site, rest and sometimes take opioid painkillers. But the science behind PRT argues that pain, and our perception of it, is more varied. Biologically, “the point of pain is to be a predictive signal,” says Tor Wager, a professor of neuroscience and the director of Dartmouth College’s Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab. It can warn of potential damage before it occurs.

That signal works well for acute pain, when a specific event like rolling an ankle triggers pain sensors at the site (called nociceptors) to send a warning message to the brain. The pain says, “Stay off

M I N D

THE GOAL IS TO TEACH MY BRAIN THAT THERE IS NO REAL DANGER FROM THE PAIN; IT’S A FALSE ALARM before you make this worse”. But sometimes pain persists long after damage heals. Neuroscientists like Wager think that kind of pain – called neuroplastic or chronic primary pain – results from a pain-processing system that has grown hypersensitised from an injury or a chronic pain condition like arthritis. It’s like a fire alarm that won’t turn off even after the smoke clears, which “can enhance your immediate pain experience,” Wager says.

If that’s the case, rest and painkillers may only make things worse. “A lot of what’s happening with chronic pain is learned avoidance,” says Wager, so skipping an activity you associate with pain can paradoxically strengthen the link between the two, the way my arm hurts the moment I start typing. Reach for opioids and they can actually make some people more sensitive to pain, a phenomenon called opioid-induced hyperalgesia.

That’s where PRT, a nonpharmacological approach that is only a few years old, comes in.

The treatment, guided by a coach or therapist, is multidisciplinary, with psychological tools similar to those of cognitive behavioural therapy as well as meditation and mindfulness practices like somatic tracking (exploring the pain with curiosity and without judgment) to reexamine what’s really happening when you feel pain. PRT isn’t about alleviating inflammation and other causes of pain but about changing how we perceive and act on the sensation. In PRT, you learn to break the pain-fear cycle. (Briefly: pain triggers fear, which puts the brain on high alert for more pain.) The idea is to retrain the brain to understand which pain signals are actual threats of tissue damage and which aren’t.

That all sounds like wishful thinking, right? But a small new randomised trial

on PRT and chronic back pain, published in JAMA Psychiatry, suggests the brain really may be a force against pain. Led by Yoni K. Ashar, a former student of Wager’s, and PRT developer Alan Gordon, researchers had one group do eight sessions of PRT – using techniques like those the Lin app teaches you – for an hour twice a week. Another kept on with standard treatments; the third group got an “open placebo” injection. (People who got it knew it was saline. These work similar to placebos, but without the deception.) A year later, they found that 51 per cent of the PRT group was entirely or nearly pain free, almost twice the rate of the placebo group and about four times that of the people who didn’t change their pain care. Neuroimaging also showed reduced pain-related brain activity with PRT versus the other groups.

This suggests there is some biological change going on in how your brain is wired to respond (or not) to these signals. (Ashar is now an advisor to Lin, but the study predates the company.

Gordon and Wager aren’t involved in the app.)

The results are encouraging, but Ashar acknowledges the study’s limitations: it’s not clear whether the therapy works on a wider range of people or on different types of pain, or what role therapist expertise might play. Telehealth apps like Lin make PRT more accessible and affordable than seeing a pain reprocessing therapist in person.

M A KING IT SE L F OB S OL E T E

DiRocco is warm and empathetic in our initial session, listening intently and offering judgment-free observation and encouragement. After we log off, she sends me my first care kit: a series of mindfulness exercises in which I act like an outside observer to my pain. When it wells up, I stop typing, close my eyes and

simply focus on the sensation and the emotions around it. I don’t try to will myself not to feel pain, and certainly I don’t tell myself that it’s imaginary. (“All pain is real” is a fundamental tenet of PRT.) I’m just noting what’s going on, including whether and how the pain changes as I observe it and the emotions around it. The goal of these short, focused sessions is to teach my brain that there is no damage, no real danger from the pain, that it is instead, in the fire analogy, a false alarm.

The number of sessions that can help is different for everyone, though the treatment isn’t intended to go on forever.

Pain reprocessing therapy, says Lin cofounder Abigail Hirsch, is self-driven detective work. “Even within a month or two with us, people will have the core skills they need to keep going,” she says.

And it’s not the only non-medical treatment for chronic pain. Stanford University associate professor of anesthesiology Beth Darnall, for instance, has a class that has also been shown to be effective in a randomised trial. And mindfulness is a powerful technique on its own (and free!), says Fadel Zeidan, an associate professor of anesthesiology at the University of California San Diego who studies what happens in the brain during meditation.

Not that anyone has to choose just one approach to chronic pain. “As a patient, I’d build a regimen of all these therapies,” he says of tools like mindfulness meditation and PRT, and then see what works best. “You can certainly tailor the therapies and be your own conductor.”

Whether I eventually become entirely or mostly pain free, that’s not the immediate goal, DiRocco tells me.

“It’s for you to be typing and your brain accepts that this is a safe activity; it doesn’t need to protect you,” she says.

It’s early days for my own PRT experiment, but I’m already feeling hopeful. Through somatic tracking, I’ve found that I feel pain almost exclusively when I’m at my desk, which is a clue that my environment may be helping trigger it.

As I’m writing this story, I notice discomfort. I stop for a minute, sit with it, and then start typing again. Neither the pain, nor the anxiety around it, is enough to ruin my focus or force me to step away. I keep writing.

JULY 2022

37

HOT SHOTS FOR

TRIE AND D TES C T

ED OF M A CF E E HINE S

YOUR DAILY GRIND Serving up pro-quality coffee at home is less hassle than you think. Pore over our guide to the machines that press the right buttons

1

THE BEST IN BREW

How our team of testers assessed each machine

1/ HOW IT WORKS

We tried espressos and (where possible) cappuccinos from every machine.

2/ EASE OF USE

We looked at the controls, steam wand and water tank, ensuring they were intuitive and easy to clean.

3/ DESIGN

Features and settings were scored according to their placement, labelling and functionality.

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1 SPACE-SAVER 82/100

2 THE MILK MAN 84/100

HOW IT WORKS EASE OF USE DESIGN

HOW IT WORKS EASE OF USE DESIGN

Punching up Much like an espresso, this machine is small but mighty. Not only does it have a milk frother, but the attachment is dishwasher-safe and helpfully compact. The 14 pods it comes with are tasty as well.

Get creative Keen to practise your latte art? Milk this machine’s settings for all they’re worth. With eight texture levels for frothing and 11 temperature options, you can match any coffee shop’s menu. It looks pro, too.

EXPERT VERDICT This machine delivers quality coffee without taking over your entire kitchen. Its espressos were consistent and you can modify some settings, but for stronger milky coffees, you’ll need to brew a separate shot.

EXPERT VERDICT With the best milk texture in testing, this high-end machine is a smart buy if you’re after more than just a decent espresso. The milk settings can be a little slow, but the result is worth the wait.

De’Longhi Lattissima One Nespresso Coffee Machine, ($399, harveynorman.com.au)

Nespresso Creatista Plus Coffee Machine BNE800, ($849, harveynorman.com.au) WORDS: HANNAH MENDELSOHN. TESTING: LUKE RIGG. PHOTOGRAPHY: LUCKY IF SHARP

WITH AN ESTIMATED two in five businesses now moving towards hybrid-style working, the home office is here to stay. Which makes investing in your set-up worthwhile. Already swapped the sofa for an ergonomic chair? Invested in a desk lamp that doesn’t make your eyes sting? Then how about another vital workday tool: the humble cup of coffee.

You already know caffeine is nature’s own performance enhancer. A study of Navy Seals found that the optimal dose for mental sharpness and better mood was 200mg (a triple-shot americano). But there’s a middle ground between bland granules and building yourself a full-blown espresso bar.

Pod machines produce single-serve coffee with minimal faff, clean-up and margin for error. Plus, many models come with steamers to help recreate your usual order at home. The Men’s Health Lab team knocked back an eye-opening number of shots to find the machines that live up to the buzz. Make ours a double.

2

GE A R

5

4

3

MH

WINNER

3 MASTER BARISTA 88/100 Opal One Capsule Machine, ($199, venezianocoffee.com.au) HOW IT WORKS EASE OF USE DESIGN

Full flavour Designed with specialty coffee pods in mind, this good-value machine is one for aficionados. You can change the brewing temperature to suit the coffee pods you’re using, and its spout adjusts to accommodate your go-to mug.

EXPERT VERDICT Quick to brew, this machine turned out delicious espresso with solid consistency, bringing out the unique flavours in each pod. It’s simple to use and the sleek, compact design will look good on your kitchen worktop.

4 CROWD-PLEASER 79/100 Lavazza A Modo Mio Smeg Coffee Machine, ($349, designappliances.com.au) HOW IT WORKS EASE OF USE DESIGN

Full of beans With its retro look, this Smeg machine is one to leave on display. It brews in roughly 30 seconds, has dishwasher-proof components and an empty water tank alert.

The accompanying eco pods are a nice touch, too.

EXPERT VERDICT Designed for

Lavazza eco caps, this machine will suit if you enjoy a dark, bitter roast. It proved easy to use, making espressos of consistent quality, while its long, slim design will make it a stand-out piece in your kitchen.

5 A QUICKER HIT 82/100 Nespresso Creatista Pro ($999, binglee.com.au) HOW IT WORKS EASE OF USE DESIGN

Express delivery In a rush to get your fix? This sleek machine has a threesecond heat-up time, and delivers two coffees in under a minute. It also boasts a menu of eight programmed drinks with customisable volumes, milk and temperature settings.

EXPERT VERDICT Although pricey,

this pod coffee machine offers control, so you can make your cup just the way you like it. It takes a while to figure out, but your time – and money – will be well invested.

JULY 2022

39

N UTRITI ON

FEAST UPON AN ALLTHE-SEAFOOD STEW Dig out your chilli pot and fill it with a stew swimming with chunks of fish and shellfish.

Served with a rib-sticking side dish, this Italian stew (called cioppino) will deliver 30 grams of muscle-building protein and 10 grams of stomach-filling fibre BY

40

DOUGLASS WILLIAMS AND PAUL KITA

MEN’S HE ALTH

PHOTOGRAPHY BY

PAOLA + MURRAY

30g

THE PROTEIN

Chicken breast isn’t the only lean protein. Seafood is a smart low-kilojoule, high-protein option, too. In this recipe, just a 170-gram serving of any of the fish or shellfish contains at least 23 grams of protein and, at most, 1220 kilojoules. Plus, they have way more flavour than chicken breast

10g

THE FIBRE

Either of these sides, combined with the stew, will net you the 10 grams of fibre you need to stay full until your next 30/10 meal

BUY IT You can get the whitefish and scallops fresh or frozen, but always purchase clams and mussels fresh and in their shells. It’s a matter not only of flavour (fresh shellfish is alive when you buy it) but of texture as well: frozen shellfish can cook up too chewy.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

SERVES 8

4 medium tomatoes, cored and halved ½ cup olive oil 5 garlic cloves, sliced 10 peperoncini, chopped 2 medium onions, quartered 2 medium carrots, cut into 2.5cm-long pieces ½ cup vegetable oil 30 grams tomato paste 1 (750 ml) bottle white wine 1 head of celery, cut into 2.5cm-long pieces ½ kg whitefish (haddock, pollack or cod), cut into 2.5cm-long pieces ½ kg sea scallops, quartered 1 kg littleneck clams, scrubbed 1 kg mussels, scrubbed and debearded 1 Torn herbs, such as parsley or chives, and grilled sourdough bread, for serving

Nutrition per serving (with 1 slice of bread): 3500 kilojoules, 52g protein, 64g carbs (5g fibre), 34g fat *Consuming raw or undercooked meats, poultry, seafood, shellfish or eggs may increase your risk of foodborne illness.

30g 10g

METHOD 1 Preheat the broiler to high. Place the tomatoes, cut side up, on a foil-lined baking sheet. Season with salt and pepper. Transfer to the oven and broil till moderately charred, about 5 minutes. Remove and set aside.

2

In a large pan, add the olive oil, garlic and peperoncini.

Turn the heat to medium high and cook till the garlic is aromatic, 1-2 minutes. Add the tomatoes and some pepper and stir. Turn the heat to medium low and cook until the mixture begins to stick to the pan, about 35 minutes. Transfer the mixture to a blender and pulse till smooth. Set aside.

3

In a large pot over medium-high heat, cook the onions and carrots, stirring occasionally, until charred, about 2 minutes. Add the oil and sauté until the onions turn translucent, about 2 minutes. Add the tomato paste, stir well, and cook until aromatic, about 2 minutes. Add the white wine, bring it to a boil, and then reduce the wine by half, about 10-15 minutes. Add water and the celery, and cook until reduced by half, about 35-40 minutes.

Strain and reserve the broth. Season to taste.

4

Add the tomato puree to the broth, bring to a boil, add the seafood, and cook until the clams open, 5-10 minutes. Top with the herbs and serve with the bread.

Why is 30/10?

It’s the protein-to-fibre ratio you need to build muscle and stay full.

MensHealth.com/30-10 has more.

Garlicky Charred Escarole

In a large cast-iron pan over medium high, add 2 heads of escarole (torn into large pieces). Cook till charred in spots, 2-3 minutes. Season the greens and push to the side of the pan. Add 2 Tbsp vegetable oil and 1 large garlic clove (chopped) and cook till golden, about 1 minute. Add 1 cup white wine and cook till evaporated, about 8 minutes. Add 1 cup chicken stock and cook until nearly evaporated, about 5 minutes. Serve with ¼ cup grated Parm. Feeds 4 Nutrition per serving: 820kJ, 7g protein, 13g carbs (8g fibre), 10g fat

Roasted Carrots with Yoghurt Sauce

Preheat the oven to 190°C. In a large oven-safe pan over medium high, add 1 Tbsp each vegetable oil and butter. Add 450g medium-sized carrots (peeled) and 1 tsp kosher salt. Sauté till lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Put the pan in the oven and roast until tender, 6-8 minutes. Mix 1 cup plain Greek yoghurt with the zest and juice from 1 lemon. In a food processor, pulse ½ cup pitted dates, ½ cup unsalted pistachios (shelled), ¼ cup dill and ¼ cup mint. Blend, slowly adding ¼ cup olive oil.

Season to taste. Smear the yoghurt sauce on a big plate, add the carrots, spoon on the nut-date mix, and squeeze ½ lemon over all. Feeds 4 Nutrition per serving: 1920kJ, 9g protein, 35g carbs (7g fibre), 33g fat

JULY 2022

41

ASIAN FUSION Combining power, roominess and technological innovation, the CX-60 is Mazda’s bold incursion into territory long under European control BY

STEPHEN CORBY

YOU’D HAVE TO be almost as old as Joe Biden looks to remember it, but there was a time when people thought Japanese cars were a bit ropey. Then we all fell in love with them, bought so many that it may have helped kill our own car industry, and then, a few generations back, Korean cars came along to take their place in the “cheap but unpleasant” market position.

Today, of course, a Hyundai is a mighty fine choice and the Chinese have reached the point where the Koreans were, and so the motoring wheel turns.

What’s interesting is where this puts the Japanese today and, in the case of the very best brands, like Mazda (a marque Australians love with unusual fervour; we buy more of them, per capita, than any other country on Earth), they’re trying to push their way into the premium positions long occupied entirely by the German automobile giants.

This has never been more clear than at the reveal of Mazda’s new, unapologetically European crossover SUV, the CX-60, which is not only what the company calls its “most important car in more than a decade” but the most powerful vehicle it has ever put on the road.

While its styling – perhaps most reminiscent of a non-German Euro powerhouse, Jaguar – is clearly a step up into another market, the CX-60 explores new territory under the bonnet as well, with its first ever hybrid power train.

The Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) combines a 2.5-litre, four-cylinder direct-injection petrol engine with a 100kW electric motor and a 17.8kWh lithium-ion battery (which you can plug in at home, giving you more than 60km of silent-running, emission-free motoring off each charge) to make

42

MEN’S HE ALTH

a whopping 241kW and 500Nm of torque.

It feels as fast as those figures suggest, too, particularly in Sport mode, which combines the maximum outputs of the motor and the engine for properly moving performance. Despite its considerable size, which makes it luxuriously spacious inside, it can hit 100km/h in 5.8 seconds, and it overtakes on the freeway with ease.

While the PHEV version initially launched to the world recently in Portugal is all-wheel drive, other versions of the CX-60 will come as rear-wheel-drive only, and will feature straight-six-cylinder petrol and diesel engines.

After decades of making front-wheel-drive passenger cars, Mazda’s shift to a rear-drive platform, with big, longitudinally mounted engines under that impressive bonnet, suggests an acceptance that, if you want a driver’s car, the Euros might have been right all along. And if you can’t beat them (or in this case you want to beat them even more on the sales charts), join them.

There’s plenty of impressive tech on board as well, including a Driver Personalisation System that sets up your seat, mirrors and head-up display in the correct position the first time you get in, and then uses face-recognition software to make sure everything is how you like it, every time you drive. It’s a world first, and it’s brilliant.

If Mazda can deliver its new, premium offering at a competitive price, it’s going to be just about unstoppable and rumour has it that it will hit the Australian market later this year with sticker of just $55,000.

You can bet there’ll be more expensive versions as well, but we all know by now that good Japanese cars cost a little more.

M H

GA R AGE

THE CX-60’S DRIVER PERSONALISATION SYSTEM SETS UP EVERYTHING THE FIRST TIME YOU GET IN.

“Despite its considerable size, it can hit 100km/h in 5.8sec” JULY 2022

43

ONE IMPOSSIBLE CHALLENGE. TWO WEEKS TO TRAIN. GO

BY

DAVID MORTON

GETTING HY ON FITNESS HYROX IS THE WORLD’S BIGGEST INDOOR FITNESS COMPETITION, PITTING ATHLETES AGAINST EACH OTHER IN A BATTLE OF BURPEES, SLED DRAGS, WALL BALLS AND EVERY MOVE YOU LOVE TO HATE – WITH A DASH OF RUNNING THROWN IN, TOO. MH’S DAVID MORTON

I HAVE DONE some silly things to fly the Men’s Health flag in the near decade and a half that I’ve worked for the brand. I’ve completed an Olympic-distance triathlon with very little training, suffered thickly numb extremities in a 4.5°C Scottish loch and fought (and lost) a professional MMA fight.

All of which is why, when asked by another athlete in the start pen, 30 seconds before I began my first Hyrox race, if I was at all as nervous as he was, my answer was, “What’s the point? We’re going to do it anyway.”

In retrospect, I perhaps should’ve been a touch jittery. Conceived in Germany, developed on mainland Europe and reaching maturity at extreme scale in the US, Hyrox is the biggest indoor fitness event in the world.

The concept is deceptively simple. The competition starts with a 1km run, followed by a functional workout. You repeat this eight times, with a different workout after each 1km lap. In order, they are: 1km on the SkiErg, a 50m sled push, a 50m sled pull, 80m of burpee broad-jumps, a 1km row, a 200m kettlebell farmer’s carry, 100m of sandbag lunges, then 100 wall balls.

The distances and order of the movements are always the same. From New York to Hanover, Los Angeles to Maastricht, every race is consistent, which allows regular competitors to better themselves and the elite athletes to rank on a global leader board.

There are no Olympic lifts or muscle-ups, meaning skill acquisition is no barrier to entry.

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MEN’S HE ALTH

PHOTOGRAPHY: CHRIS SMITH-LANGRIDGE @ROAMCAPTURE

SIGNED UP FOR THE TOUGHEST 90 MINUTES OF HIS LIFE

It is functional fitness in the very purest sense.

After signing up for January’s Manchester event, I knew I wasn’t going to worry the top athletes in the world. But I did want to arrive prepared and had Hyrox master trainer Jade Skillen as my guide to the realities of conditioning specifically for the sport. A former semi-pro footballer whose career was prematurely ended by serious illness while studying biomechanics in the US, Skillen switched to competing in Spartan races and was the UK champion in 2018. After segueing into Hyrox with similar success as an athlete, she began sharing her learning through training before COVID hit. As the brand prepared its move into the UK, she became the one and only in-house coach.

Skillen’s program tasks me with a lot of running, as well as performing the various functional components in a pre-exhausted state. “A lot of people look at the 1km distance and think that, because they can run a fast 5K or 10K, they’ll be fine,” she says. “But each workout element kills their pace and they end up walking. Oh, and the sled. People are very shocked about how the sled feels.”

The sled weights in my division are 125kg for the push and 75kg for the pull. During training, it definitely shocks me.

I meet Skillen the evening before the event at the Manchester Central Convention Complex. Formerly the city’s major train terminus, the cavernous space is already primed with all the equipment, Puma hoardings, spectator zones and a small vendor village. All that’s missing is the other 2499 registered competitors. MCs for the event, fitness coaches Faisal Abdalla and Gustavo Vaz Tostes, are each busy going through their soundchecks.

Skillen and I run through a few movements in the warm-up area, so she can provide me with some last-minute cues. We establish my pacing on the ski and the row, which feel comfortable enough. I push the sled with more weight than necessary to make 125kg feel easy the next day. It all seems great.

I mentally, secretly, set myself the goal of completing the race in a time of 1:20 while on my way back to my hotel and then climb into bed. I sleep terribly.

JULY 2022

45

TIME TO ROX

With my heat starting at 1.10pm, I have plenty of time to watch a lot of very fit people running, repping and generally fitnessing extremely quickly. I resolve to start slowly and pick up speed in the second half. Aiming for negative splits (the technical name for this race strategy) feels professional and right. And I want to be professional about it.

Just seconds after my words of encouragement to my nervy fellow competitor, we shoot from the starting pen into the 2.5 laps around the outside of the hall that is the first 1km. I run slowly, holding a 5:15 pace. Or at least I think I do. When I reach the first station in the middle of the running track, which is a 1000m jaunt on the SkiErg, I am blowing like one of the steam trains that once puffed in and out of this same building.

There’s a timing chip around my ankle and a giant scoreboard halfway around the course that tells me what stage I’m currently on; what lap of which run and, when I’m about to complete the 1km loop, which of the eight workouts I’m doing next. Fail to complete the full distance before each workout and you’re penalised, with five minutes added to your time per error. Complete the workouts in the wrong order and you get the same penalty. I am concerned now, already worryingly exhausted, about getting a penalty. I stare at my feet and hope for the best.

The sled push, all things considered, goes well. The lanes on the carpet here seem notably stickier; that, or I’m more weakened by the first 15 minutes than expected. It’s likely a bit of both. But I have no issue getting it moving and march halfway down each 12.5m length before breaking for a few seconds and then going again. I overtake quite a few competitors who push for entire lengths but then rest longer.

It feels as if the plan is working.

Then I start running. Or, rather, I totter out on to the track on wobbly legs that refuse to do what they are told. I plod on, staring intently at the white line that divides the ‘fast’ lane from the ‘slow’ lane, which seems to help. I am aware that having my head down is not the most motivational of postures but persist all the same.

The sled pull, mercifully, is more a case of taking the strain 46

MEN’S HE ALTH

with your arms and walking it back a few metres before regripping than it is a backwards run. Which makes the next actual run slightly easier. But the burpee broadjumps loom large in my mind. Of all the moves I practised, that 80m of burpees and forward leaps had my heart pumping fastest.

It’s even worse than in practice. I knock out the first 20m of the 80m snaking track at a measured pace, moving to the middle to pass a slower athlete either side. Over the barrier, a man returning in the other direction is gasping every time his chest hits the floor and groaning as he stands up. Oddly, the rhythm of this distracts my mind enough to keep moving. But it feels endless.

By now, my running pace has slowed right down, though out of necessity rather than a strategic choice. The farmer’s walk with two 24kg kettlebells is another welcome break for my posterior chain, being a test of grip and core stability, both of which seem to hold out okay. During the 1km row, I feel my quads start to twang the first chords of cramp, but I hold my pace. Just about.

By this point, I’m a sleeping passenger on the runs, sat atop increasingly distant legs. The car crash that is the sandbag lunges jolts me awake. With the 20kg bag on my shoulders, I and my lanterne rouge

Fighting a cruelly ‘sticky’ surface in the sled push.

Performance tips from the master, Jade.

Five more and I let the ball drop and stagger across the line triumphant, albeit with the slump of a happily defeated man. Once across, I collapse on to my hands and knees in what is evolutionarily the pose of deference and submission.

I do not care. Moments later I’m up and receiving high fives from friends and strangers. After another little lie-down to eat some sweets and begin a battle against dehydration, I feel . . . okay. I know the DOMS is en route but won’t arrive for 48 hours, so for the moment I revel in being done and walk around barefoot to try to cool down my feet.

My Hyrox finishing time is 1:35.

Not far off my 1:20 goal, yet at the same time an age away. My Apple Watch reports that I burned 6903 kJ The long lunge: agonising steps all in. My Whoop strain score for the towards the end. day is a new record of 20.7 out of a possible – but supposedly near impossible to hit – 21. Most amusingly, my Whoop app tells me that I spent 57 minutes at 90-100 per cent of my max heart rate, which, it informs me, is 57 more minutes than I “normally spend in this heart rate zone while exercising”. I finish comrades snake back and forth, 339th out of all men on the day, 94th in my each tap of the back knee on the 35-39 age group. floor a screaming temptation to Metrics aside, Hyrox is a feel-good event. kneel for a bit.

Considering there are waves of 20 But on we go. The final competitors setting off from 8am until nearly movement before crossing the 8pm, it’s as smooth and seamless an finish line, 100 wall balls, is known experience as you could hope for in for breaking competitors when a competition of this scale. The judges and they are tantalisingly close to the stewards don’t hover over you, but nor do end. As I start my eighth and last they allow any shortcuts in terms of run, the beacon of positivity that movement standards. is MC Faisal Abdalla loudly Parts of it were hard for me. Very hard. But announces to the hall that they are waiting for me and have a wall-ball there was always a light at the end of the tunnel, even on the burpee broad-jumps and target reserved right at the front. sandbag lunges. You resolve to do your best The 2.5 laps go very, very slowly. in each struggle.

Then you put it behind you and look ahead HY TIMES to the next challenge as a chance to do Stood there at the death, my better. Which is a laudable way to race and, in T-shirt discarded after the fact, live your life. burpees, squatting and throwing I didn’t realise any of this during the event. the ball to hit the target rep after There was no endorphin-wracked epiphany. rep, Hyrox comes alive for me.

I just stared at my white line and plodded on.

With the two MCs imploring me to For that reason, I will be in that starting pen go for another set of 10 across the again. I will not be nervous. But I will hold my speakers, the spectators at the head up. barrier a few metres away seem suddenly sharp and full of colour and noise. I go for the last 20 reps For global event schedules go to hyrox.com unbroken and almost get there.

THE WALL BALLS ARE KNOWN FOR BREAKING PEOPLE WHEN THEY’RE CLOSE TO THE END

MH

Leading Man

Tired of playing the supporting role in your own life? With a wardrobe upgrade, you’ll be the main character, whatever the scene CRE ATIVE DIRECTOR: ALI

COT TON PHOTOGR APHY: LIAM CHANDLER STOKES GROOMING: KRIST YAN LOW

ST YLING: CHARLOT TE MODEL: CULLEN

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ADDISON LOCATION: GOLDEN AGE CINEMA

Jacket ($449) and pants ($199)

by Country Road; sweater ($65.95) by Zara; shoes ($1330) and watch ($2795) by Gucci; hat ($129.95) by Brixton @ Strand Hatters.

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STY LE

In The Details Thanks to stars like Timothée Chalamet and Jason Momoa, the boundaries of suiting are limited only by your imagination. Branch out with accessories and make the look your own.

Blazer ($699) and trousers ($499) by Tommy Hilfiger; polo shirt ($755) by Mr P @ Mr Porter; bandana ($19.95) by Zara; hat ($129.95) by Brixton @ StrandHatters.

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STYL E

Jacket ($6535), pants ($1685), shirt ($920) and shoes ($1330)

by Gucci.

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Play It Cool

Suiting isn’t always climate appropriate in Australia, but draw inspiration from LA’s finest to make shorts red-carpet regulars . . . or, at the very least, boardroom staples.

Above: Jacket ($699), shirt ($149.95), trousers ($399), scarf ($149.95) and pocket square ($69.95) by MJ Bale; shoes ($1495) by Christian Louboutin.

Right: Blazer (from $4200), sweater (from $4500), shorts (from $1560); shoes (from $1480) and socks (from $90) by Prada.

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STYL E

Burn Bright

An early 2000s study suggested that white Tees were the article of clothing most likely to draw the attention of the fairer sex. Well, that was before we discovered signature colour palettes.

Go bold and make a statement.

Jacket ($1100) by Ralph Lauren; pants ($1400) by Valentino @ The Outnet; shirt ($175) by Doubl e Rainbow; shoes ($199)

by Van Heusen; watch –Big Bang Unico Yellow Magic – ($39,500) by Hublot.

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Blazer ($249), trousers ($89.95) and belt ($59.95) by Van Heusen; shirt ($75.95) and bandana ($19.95) by Zara.

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STYL E

Material Man If clothes really do maketh the man, then ensure they’re made for enjoyment. Suede can add extra flair to an otherwise overdone look.

Jacket ($1100), shirt ($910), trousers ($750), shoes ($880) and tie ($310) by Emporio Armani.

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Find out how a quality dive watch could help you sink to new depths to achieve the ultimate high BY

LUKE BENEDICTUS

THIS YEAR, marine researchers in Perth landed the deepest fish ever caught off Australia. Using a simple yabby trap attached to a $100,000 piece of scientific-monitoring kit, they succeeded in catching two snailfish that live some 6177 metres below the waves on the ocean’s pitch-black floor. Once the fish were reeled in, the researchers’ examination had to be swift. Unable to acclimatise to the temperature change on the surface, after 20 minutes the fish began to melt.

The gloopy demise of those snailfish offers a stern reminder of just what an alien environment the ocean’s depths can be. And it’s not very hospitable to mechanical watches, either. Should the merest suggestion of moisture permeate a watch, it’s likely to mean its time is up. As a result, a quality dive watch will harness a host of protective features to keep the water out. A screw-in case-back and crown will help it to become more watertight, while a thicker case can protect against those random knocks that can loosen the individual components and compromise the watch’s security. For any solid diver that’s water-resistant to 200m plus, these are the basic tools of the trade.

But that’s just for starters. A watch designed for deep diving will utilise other pressure-defying features like a domed crystal or a steel ring for reinforcing the case. Professional saturation divers, who do construction and demolition work at depths of 300m and lower, must also contend with another challenge. At those levels, helium particles can seep into the watch and, as the diver surfaces, the gas will expand, causing the crystal to break. To circumnavigate this problem, many serious diving watches therefore include heliumrelease valves.

The Omega Ultra Deep takes

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another approach. The new watch uses a high-quality form of specially coated sapphire crystal that is 5mm thick and whose domed shape makes it extra resistant to pressure. This innovation was necessary, too, because the Ultra Deep is water-resistant to an incredible 6000m. It’s based on a uniquely designed piece that Omega made for the millionaire adventurer Victor Vescovo who, in 2019, completed the world’s deepest dive in a submersible when he plummeted to a depth of 10,925m at the bottom of the Marianna Trench. Released earlier this year, the Ultra Deep translates some of that tech into a civilian version of Vescovo’s watch.

Are you ever going to put the Ultra Deep’s 6000m capabilities to the test?

Unless you’re a snailfish, the answer is probably no. After all, the current record for the deepest ever scuba dive currently stands at 332m. Yet hardcore diving watches continue to hold a magnetic appeal for many. If your watch can handle serious depth, it’s proof that it’s tough enough to laugh off pretty much anything you can throw at it on land or sea. In addition, a rugged diver also brings with it an in-built spirit of adventure. Given the sanitised nature of modern life, that’s something worth tapping into, even if the biggest challenge your own watch will face is surviving the washing up.

WATCH ES

Tudor Pelagos FXD ($5300)

MIDO Ocean Star 600 Chronometer ($2675)

SEIKO Prospex SLA041J1 $6950

Rado Captain Cook High-Tech Ceramic ($5275)

Tissot Seastar 2000 Professional Powermatic 80 ($1675)

6000m water-resistant

1000m water-resistant

TAG Heuer Aquaracer Professional 1000 Superdiver $9650

Glashutte SEA Q Panorama Date ($17,250)

600m water-resistant

Doxa SUB 600T Aquamarine $2395

300m water-resistant

200m water-resistant

HOW LOW CAN YOU GO?

Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean Ultra Deep $17,175

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G R OO M I N G

Get Your Hair Back in Shape RECEDING HAIR IS A CONCERN FOR MANY MEN. THE KEY TO STYLING IT OUT, SAYS BARBER GURAY KESMAN, IS TO MAKE SURE YOUR FACE FITS BY

GROOM SERVIC BALD E TRUTH S

GUR AY KESMAN

TRIANGULAR FACE

DIAMOND FACE

Profile: Narrow forehead, cheekbones you could cut yourself on and a tapered chin = rock star potential.

Profile: If your jawline is

more prominent than your cheekbones, and you boast a relatively broad forehead with a more pointed chin, you’re in the right place.

As typified by: Hey girl, it’s Ryan Gosling.

As typified by: Cillian Murphy

– who, incidentally, fronted a rock band before becoming a heart-throb actor.

Do ask your barber to…

Do ask your barber to…

keep plenty of length and volume on top and as much texture as possible. Consider a swept-back quiff or a side part to reveal the forehead.

But avoid… going for too much softness on top – this can look flat. High fades risk narrowing the forehead, too.

Brush away your hairline worries.

soften your angular features with a textured scissor cut.

But avoid… aggressive cuts and short sides. (Yes, we know that this was Cillian’s Peaky Blinders look. Say no more?)

OBLONG FACE SQUARE FACE

cheekbones, a full forehead and a tapered jaw can give the face a moon-like effect.

The trick is to pick a style that undoes this sense of volume.

points: broad forehead, strong cheekbones and an angular jaw. You have presence.

Profile: Wide, circular

As typified by: Leonardo DiCaprio. Could be worse, TBF. Do ask your barber to… aim for height and volume, while going tight on the back and sides. Opt for hard-textured cuts to lend more structure to your facial appearance.

But avoid… styling it flat on top. You’ll want to steer clear of fringes, too. Both will serve only to increase the perception of facial fullness.

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Profile: Your face is wide at all

As typified by: None other

than Superman, Henry Cavill.

Do ask your barber to…

administer a tight back and sides. Feel free to go with any length on top, but perhaps consider layering to help accent your features. In general, enjoy nature’s gift and go with what you’ve got.

But avoid… a precisiondefined hairline if you’re receding. This will undermine the strength of your profile.

OVAL FACE

Profile: Broad forehead,

softer, less notable cheekbones and a generous, round jawline.

As typified by: The never

knowingly un-handsome George Clooney.

Do ask your barber to…

style your hair how you like, as long as it creates volume and angles on top. You want to balance the roundness of your face, not squash it.

But avoid… fringes. These make an oval face rounder.

Short, stubbly beards are fine but beware fuller growth. Think George Clooney on the pies with chips.

As typified by: Ben Affleck.

J-Lo evidently has a thing for right angles.

Do ask your barber to…

apply even cuts and styles that work well with gravity. Insist on a scissor cut, too – shorn sides extend the face.

But avoid… too much height on top and too little length on the back and sides. You want to soften, not accentuate.

THE EXPERT

Guray Kesman was voted Best British Barber of the Year 2019. kesmangrooming.com

PHOTOGRAPHY: JOBE LAWRENSON

ROUND FACE

Profile: A tall, rectangular visage with rounded corners will inevitably meet the question: why the long face?

MH S U B S C RI PT I O N OF F E R

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$

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Eyes on the prize: James doesn’t let the weight of expectation dominate his mind.

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MH C OVE R G UY

Great Scott Following one of his most successful seasons to date, Australia’s most decorated snowboarder, Scotty James, is riding a

Olympics under his belt, he can’t help but feel he’s just getting started. In fact, he’s one athlete who couldn’t be more grateful to rapidly downhill BY

SCOT T HENDERSON LEO FR A NCIS

PHOTOGR APHY BY

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YOU COULD BE FORGIVEN IF, UPON LOOKING AT THE LIFE AND CAREER OF AUSSIE SNOWBOARDER SCOTTY JAMES, YOU CAME TO THE VIEW THAT IT ALL LOOKS RATHER EASY. THAT HE’S THE RARE BLOKE WHO CAN GET AWAY WITH DOING THINGS BY HALVES, BECAUSE, WELL, HE’S TWICE AS GOOD AS THE NEXT GUY. From a child prodigy to the most successful Australian snowboarder of all time, 27-year-old James’ ascent to half-pipe dominance has a storybook, boy-wonder quality about it. The past six months alone have seen James cement his place in the snowboarding pantheon, with a fourth gold medal at the X Games and a silver medal at the Winter Olympics in Beijing. Proposing to musician and Formula 1 heiress, Chloe Stroll, was the icing on a very delectable cake. Throw in some lucrative endorsements with the likes of Red Bull and Optus, and James’ life could hardly look any better.

When I first met James back in October, chatting from his pre-season base in London, perhaps only the man himself could comprehend the possibilities that lay ahead of him. There, in the affluent suburb of Chelsea, James was a world away from his half-pipe refuge, but amid the hubbub of a Men’s Health cover shoot, he appeared laid-back and in control. If he was feeling nervous about any of his upcoming engagements, both professional and personal, he didn’t let it show. James was candid and forthcoming about his goals for the upcoming season in Europe, North America and Asia, leaning forward

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in excitement as he outlined his preparation and high expectations for the northern winter.

As time progressed, so did his story. In November came his engagement to Stroll, announced via Instagram with a classically casual caption: “Hey, we’re getting married … everyone, this is my fiancé”.

Following this personal triumph, James competed at the X Games in Aspen, winning his fourth gold medal in the SuperPipe event. The following month saw him in Beijing for his fourth Olympics.

I caught up with him again on home soil on a Tuesday morning in April, following a weekend at the Melbourne Grand Prix. He was grateful to be home, to reconnect with family and, perhaps most tellingly, for the chance to let his body recuperate.

As I debriefed with the humble, and perhaps slightly hungover motorsports fan on his recent achievements, I couldn’t help wonder aloud how a boy from Warrandyte, in Melbourne’s northeast, grows up to become one of the world’s greatest snowboarders. “I’m still asking myself the same question,” an incredulous James laughs. But any mystery surrounding his decade-long dominance on the mountain dissolves within a handful of questions. It’s clear that despite his sunny

MH C OVE R G UY

James is sitting pretty after successful X Games and Olympic campaigns.

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“Within the walls of the half-pipe, I take on a different personality.

I’m cutthroat. I want to win” disposition, a steely determination and serious work ethic underpin his every move.

That’s notable, for there was a period not so long ago when such resolute dedication could make you something of a pariah on the snowboarding pro tour. A culture of partying and a lionising of natural ability have long been associated with board sports – snowboarding, surfing and skating – a stereotype the likes of Shaun White, Kelly Slater and Tony Hawk have done much to dismantle. Gone are the days of wayward vagrants dabbling in competition to make ends meet. The professional snowboarder is here to stay.

Following in the footsteps of White, who turned the sport on its head in the naughties, James has spent more than half his life further legitimising adventure sports. Yet despite the progress made at a global level, a climate that isn’t exactly conducive to winter pursuits means many Australians are largely ignorant of the sport that’s made James a household name. That makes it easy to underestimate the extent of his achievements. Throw in his pin-up looks, easy-going demeanour and the effortlessness with which he traverses the half-pipe, and you can find yourself returning to that word: easy.

As James tells Men’s Health, you don’t know the half of it.

HIGH HOPES

“Honestly, I can’t remember my first time on a snowboard. I was very young, like three years old. I do remember, though, the first time I did a toe-side turn, which if you understand snowboarding, you’ll know that the moment you do your first toe-side turn is quite a milestone in your snowboarding career. I was with my dad at a local resort in Australia. I was obviously eager.

My vision has always been to become one of the best at my craft and it’s very surreal sometimes to look at where I am now from that first toe-side turn. Not just in my sport, but where I am personally and the journey snowboarding’s taken me on, the success that’s come with it, the people I’ve met and the experiences I’ve been able to enjoy. Honestly, I still pinch myself.

I don’t forget Warrandyte. I love Warrandyte. It will always be there. I look forward to getting back there at some point, but at the moment I’m enjoying my journey. It’s taken a lot of hard work, a lot of dedication to live my dream. Having said that, from about 13 years old, I’ve been away from home. There was a lot of sacrifice at that young age.

I wouldn’t change much right now. I’m happy and I’m 66

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healthy and everything’s great. I feel really good as an athlete, but also as a person. The only thing I would change is being able to see my family and friends. And that’s probably been one of the biggest things, if I was being selfish . . . wishing I had a little bit more time. But also, it’s important to have perspective, because so many people have lost a lot more than just not being able to see their family and friends.

I started snowboarding because I loved it and I still love it. I’d go and do it with my family. I’d do it with my friends. I would go out on my own, just because I loved doing it. And I think that’s pretty much why all snowboarders compete. Skateboarding and surfing would be much the same; they’re sports where you get to feel this sense of joy. I think it’s important to stay in touch with that.

And while I love snowboarding, I am fearful on a daily basis. I’m fearful when I’m not on the snow, even when I’m just thinking about snowboarding. Everything scares me. As much as I’m talented, I also have to respect the sport. It’s very dangerous and there’s next to no margin for error. The walls are 22 feet [6.7m] high, it’s 200 metres long, it’s sheet ice. If you come off, it’s not a nice feeling.

I went skydiving once and when I was going up in the plane I turned to the instructor and asked, ‘Are you still scared?’ And he goes, ‘Yeah. And if I wasn’t scared, I would stop skydiving’. Because when you’re scared, as long as you can channel it in a positive direction and use it, you’re very rarely going to make mistakes. You’re just so switched on all the time. You are aware of everything.

That’s where confidence and ego come in. You have to have an ego.

You have to have this oozing self-confidence, because if you don’t then it’s hard to believe in what you’re trying to achieve.

Within the walls of the half-pipe, I take on a different personality. People say it’s your alter ego, and while I don’t have a name for my alter ego, I’m much more cutthroat. I park the Aussie bloke that I am, because I want to win. I’m there to achieve something and you have to put yourself in that mindset where you want to compete against people. It’s quite cool.

I travel with my brother full time, so if my head got too big, he would check me. I’m very fortunate. I have a super-close relationship with my family and that’s been really important. My mum and dad have instilled in all of us that regardless of what happens in life – whether it’s good or bad, success or fame – you don’t lose touch with who you are and where you’ve come from.

That’s been a huge reason why I’ve been able to channel that success positively. I haven’t let it define me. That attitude has helped me stay grounded and kept me focused on what I’m trying to achieve in snowboarding and in life.

And you know what? I admire that. I always want to keep a level head about things.”

MH C OVE R G UY

After a decade on the snow, James is unlikely to freeze under pressure.

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“There was an elephant in the room going into Beijing. The Olympics is the only event that I’ve yet to win.

I will accomplish that one day”

MOUNTING PRESSURE

elephant in the room. The Olympics is the only event I’ve yet to win. It’s not necessarily a pressure I feel from other people; it’s more from me.

I’d love to achieve that and if I continue to work hard I will accomplish that one day.

Having said that, I can definitely appreciate winning silver in Beijing for what it is. I have a lot of respect for a result like that. It’s pretty exciting and very special. If someone had said to me 10 years ago that I’d be a seven-time X-Games medallist with four golds, two Olympic medals, a three-time world champion, I would’ve told them that there’s absolutely no chance. But I surrounded myself with incredible people and a great team.

I like a bit of adversity, which I feel like I’ve dealt with throughout my career, simply by being an Australian in winter sports. So, I’m very proud of every result and getting another Olympic medal is definitely really special.

I’m proud. It could have been a little bit bittersweet, but I’m pretty conscious of being aware of the bigger picture.”

“In terms of a standout career high, it’s hard to look past being a flag-bearer [in PyeongChang]. As an athlete, going to the Olympic Games is the pinnacle. To walk your team members, a nation, into an Olympics is an incredible feeling. And at that point in time I was only 23.

You have to fit the mould of being a flag-bearer. For me it didn’t come through anything other than hard work, dedication and making sure that I was presenting myself in the best way possible by being a hard-working Aussie and being honest. And obviously having a bit of a laugh here and there as well.

Someone said to me at the time, ‘Oh, because you’re the flag-bearer, now you have to medal, otherwise it’s a huge letdown’.

I was like, ‘Thanks – I was already feeling the pressure, you just added to it’.

That pressure doesn’t change. With experience, you know what to expect. It’s mostly external pressure and the hype that surrounds the Olympic Games. I guess in Beijing, it being my fourth one, I understood how to emotionally control all those things.

“When I’m on my rocking chair one day and reflecting on my career, one of When you go to your first Olympics, it’s overwhelming. You the things highest on my list of reflections would be, did I influence someone go from not much media attention at all to a lot and that can to pick up a snowboard or pursue snowboarding as a career? And now, what be really overwhelming for anyone. I’ve been able to learn to am I doing to make that possible? manage all of it a lot better. When you go your first time, you I would love to see Australian snowboarding prosper. I’m trying to think of get all this attention and you feel good about yourself and that ways that I can help the younger generation and make it easier for them. They can make you emotionally skyrocket. can learn from my mistakes. Small things, like working on trying to get a There are so many different things that come into play half-pipe built in Australia one day. We’ve never had a training facility or an in an Olympic Games versus another competition. But in terms Olympic-sized half-pipe here. of what I wanted to achieve when I was on the half-pipe, I also always want to feel that I’m using my platform positively in terms of I didn’t feel any more pressure than in the X Games the minimising global warming. It’s been an important issue since I first started week before. I always have the same expectation of myself, snowboarding. Snowboarders have always been extremely in touch with the which is pretty high. I’ve already prepared myself, just through environment. We train on glaciers, so we need to make sure we’re respecting the competing for the past decade. I’ve always put a lot of areas we’re going into and being mindful of the products we’re taking on the pressure on myself to perform. So, in that way, I’m used to it. mountain, because it all has an impact. A lot of our competitions and our world I was feeling great heading into Beijing this year – tours have put rules in place now, like certain brands we can’t use for wax [on the physically strong, mentally healthy and just really excited. It board]. So, everyone’s becoming extremely aware of the environment. was a big season overall for me, with our usual world tour, And it’s scary. We’ve been going to the same glacier now for the past five years as well as the X Games. The only difference was the and you can see it slowly disappearing. I think every year the glacier is another 50

THIN ICE

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MH C OVE R G UY

The best is still to come as James hits his physical and mental peak.

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“I know exactly what I want to do, how I’m going to do it and what it will take. I’m ready to rock and roll” metres shorter than the year before, just because snow is slowly, slowly, slowly melting down. And even when we’re there, they have crevasse cracks through the half-pipe. From when we arrive to the end, you can see how the snow has moved, up to half a foot, on the glacier.”

NO SLOWING DOWN

“The key to my longevity lies in getting up, getting the work done and consistently grinding away. But I think it’s also being able to have a good balance and I’m starting to understand that. You can have that obsessive mentality about work, but at some point you end up hitting a dead-end, especially in a sport that continues to evolve, making it more and more dangerous every year.

In terms of training, we’re always on. I always complete an extensive strength and conditioning block every August and September. I’m training throughout the year, but we kind of ramp it up just before I get back on snow. Then we move onto the slopes, so last year I was training in Switzerland in October, Austria in November and then back in Switzerland for December.

We try not to put too much emphasis on the Olympics. I know it’s only every four years, but we kind of just attack an Olympic year like any other year. So, we finish X Games, head off to Switzerland and we just do some training for a week and we work as we

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would any other year on things we feel need attention. And then we go into the Games and we have a pretty good strategy in mind to target our goals.

I spend most of our Australian winter in summer camp in the US because that’s where the half-pipes are and I’ve got to follow those.

They get enough snow throughout the winter to maintain snow into the summer and they’re quite high, so we’re able to ride all year long.

I’m 27, so I’m still pretty young. I’ll definitely take on Italy in 2026.

Every single day I wake up and I ask ‘What am I doing to live my dream for as long as possible?’ And that comes down to training. It comes down to what I’m eating. It comes down to all these factors, because I want to be competing at the highest level for as long as possible, but also be able to enjoy it. I don’t think it’s a big shout for me to compete for the next six, seven, eight years. It depends on how much I keep my love for the sport.

The second I got back from China, Chloe was there to celebrate and congratulate me, but also to say, ‘Hey, let’s get into the wedding planning’, so while I’ll be training, we’re going to be doing a little bit of that this year – or I should say a lot of it – and then we’re planning to get married next year.

I’ve already written out my five-year plan. I know exactly what I want to do, how I’m going to do it and what it will take to execute that vision physically and mentally. I’ve always been committed to this journey and I’m ready to rock and roll.”

MH C OVE R G UY

With Beijing in his rear-view mirror, James has his sights on gold in 2026.

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50 Se Supercret food?

Swiss cheese s urpris was th i closel ng food mo e yl st better inked with c o g nitive health i scient n a recent ific stu dy.

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Healthy?

Fallac’t always

od isn ent Raw fo r. The nutri st e io super arotene is b g is c e v a t n e e b ed wh th absorb d, along wi e k coo f fats.

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Foods For Men If your appetite for nutritional knowledge is as greedy as that for uncompromising eats, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve consulted the experts and trawled through the journals to compile this list of the foodstuffs that deserve to be vindicated and vilified in 2022. ‘Add to basket’ BY

TROY DA COS TA PHOTOGR APHY BY MICH A EL HEDGE

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3 4

Scorching your eggs can reduce their nutrient content.

These Japanese ‘hot spring eggs’ are cooked low and slow, resulting in a custardy texture – and preserving their amino acids, vitamin D and carotenoids. Boil a litre of water, turn off the heat, add 200ml cold water, 2 eggs and cover for 12 minute es.

It’s a great source of vitamin K, “which is associated with strong bones”, says nutritionist Kirsten Brooks, thereby reducing your risk of a training-related mishap.

Moderating your carb or kilojoule intake? Sub it in for your usual rice or spuds, suggests Brooks.

" It seems 2020 wasn’t all bad news: a study from Iowa State University correlated cheese intake with protection against cognitive decline – “a pleasant surprise”,, the scientists said. The Swiss variety is rrich in p protein and usefu a ul p probiotics s.

# $ Oranges may be the

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As well as a solution to our over-reliance over reliance on animal protein, crickets have legs as a superfood.

They’re a source of muscle-building nutrients such as magnesium, calcium, zinc, copper and iron, and contain prebiotic chitin, which promotes a healthy gut.

v C OG, but they’re not the vit optimum source. A single kiwi o hits 140 per cent of your RDI h – on which most men fall sshort. “Consuming two before b bed may improve sleep quality,” says Brooks. Sweet q dreams d eams are made of these.

O for handline-caught Opt mackerel if you want your oily m ffish planet-friendly and sustainable. It’s incredible sustaina grilled on the barbecue with g oil, salt and lemon o on and one of tthe best sources of vital ital EPA and DHA fats, plus vit D for a ttestosterone production. True m man food.

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That ticks off two health issues forr men over 40. As a snack, the ey’re so-so.

But comb bine with rocke et, feta and balsamic and . . . bellissimo o.

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east Asian fruit has been cropping up on restaurant menus and will land on shelves soon in the form of mustards, dressings and pickles. “The flavonoids hesperidin and naringin, found in its skin and flesh, may reduce excess blood clotting, which is linked with a higher risk of heart disease and stroke, stroke ” says Brooks Brooks.

) There’s a reason we all feel better after a good biriyani. Studies have shown that saffron contains compounds associated with better etter mental health.

“It may improve mo ood by increasing the actio on of the neurotransmitte er serotonin, and by s rreducing the impac ct of chronic stress o on the brain,” o suggests Brooks. s

* Give your next stew a meaty upgrade.

“Oxtail is a source of calcium, essential to keep p bones strong, while its selenium is an antioxidant,” says Adnan Chowdhury, a lecture er in Bioscience at the University of East London.

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Athletes use it to support muscle elasticity, he says.

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post-gym carb repertoire. Chowdhury points to o plantain’s impressive vitamin C content, while also flagging a German study in which muscle e soreness and d recovery rates fell when footballers fue elled up on the fruit. Grill on a barbecue or peel and roast in the ovven.

A underrated nutritional An powerhouse, artichokes p “contain folate, vitamins K and C and are a great source of fibre”, says Ma andikate. Their cynarin conten nt helps break down fats. Buyy tinned and add to meat and pasta.

“Not just ‘king’ for theiir size, but also for their nutritional benefits,” sayys Linford. “These dynamoss of fungi contain beta-glucan ns, known for their immunemodulating properties, perties, help ping ping to protect you from disease.. They might benefit heart health, too.” oo ”

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“Since the he 1980s, the concern regarding whole milk has been its fat content, b butt in a 2012 meta-analysis, scientists failed to find any convincing observational research sea linking dairy fat to heart disease or obesity,” esity,” says Chowdhury. It’s also a cheap post-workout drink. “Research shows its 3:1 ratio o of carbohydrate to protein is effect ctive for recovery.” .”

This Thai-salad staple is too good to save for your monthly takeaway. “Its antioxidants may reduce the risk of heart disease and diabetes,” says Brooks, “while its lycopene ly is associated with impro roved skin health.” It also conta ains papain, a proteindigestiting enzyme, which makes it the ideal accompa paniment for your stir-ffried beef.

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“A rich source of omega-3 fatty acids, anchovies are a associated with hea art and brain health and con ntain helpful minerals, too oo,” says Linford. Not keen een o on n sticking them in salads?

Buy as a paste and add to sauces for a salty kick.

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In need d of a pick-meup? A Greek study s of younger men linked fla avonoids of the he kind found in n cocoa a to a 32 per cent redu du uct ction in erectile dysfunct function.. Pair with espre esso – which has sim milarr powers – to amp pliffy the effectss.

W When it comes tto the allium fa family, onion and garlic hog allll the glory. They shouldn’t: leeks contain the same heart-healthy, anti-inflammatory compounds, pou says nutritionist Kazuwa wa Mandikate. “Plus, Plus, they’re ey’re a grea at addition dit to soups.” sou

Admittedly y, their USP is thatt they look cool in photos, but these amethyst-llike tubers have nutritional merits, too: “Anthocyanins cause the purple pigment,” says Mandikate. “These antioxidants support neurological health.”

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A Spanish study found a bottle a night of low-alcohol beer reduced d anxiety and improved sle eep.

It’s thought that hops raise levels of tthe ‘calming g’ brain chemic br cal GAB ABA.

% * “It’s comparable to beef in many ways,” Chowdhury says, dishing up B12, iron and zinc. “Ostrich might help to boost blood oxygen delivery and muscle mass in athletes,” he suggests. It’s lean, too – just 1g of saturated fat per 100g.

“Fermented veg – also referred to as fizzy veg – are superfoods for gut health,” says Linford. But if you’re hungry for more options than sauerkraut and kimchi, try this eastern European p alternative.

What’s more, “aubergine [eggplant] is rich in fibre, fibre as we ell as antioxid dants th hat help lim mit oxidatiive stresss,” Linford d adds.

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Where creamy dairy and sugars are removed, they must be replaced. Many times, that sub-in is sucralose, which a recent University of Southern California study linked to an increase in appetite – worth noting if diet-friendly snacks leave you reaching for junk minutes later.

“Although it has a lower glycaemic index [a measure of how quickly a food affects blood glucose] than table sugar, it still contains a lot of fructose,” says Brooks. Too much can overwhelm the liver. “In the long-term, this raises the risk of fatty liver disease.” In other words, don’t give yourself carte blanche with this golden syrup.

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/ 0 " - Though it’s popular on Instagram, Chowdhury likens Insta the paleo eo baking ba trend to “a three-wheeled car ar in a drag race”: it doesn’t matter how ow good the engine is. With zero gluten and dairy, but plenty of coconut sugar, they’re nothing but expensive cakes.

Your stone-age ancestors did without the recipe, anyway.

2 1 2 The now commonly spotted chocolate-coated biscuit alternative appears, at first glance, to be the healthy option. But gram-for-gram, they contain the same number of kilojoules as a chocolate digestive (and don’t taste as good dunked in a cuppa). Plus, they’re not very satiating, says Brooks.

The latest in imitation processed meats that th most vegans never asked d for. As Brooks puts it: “It ma ay be quite high in protein, but many varieties can b be high in sugar, too, which ca an cause blood-sugar imbalan nces and lead to cravings”. Fill up on stir-fried, seasone ed tofu instead. instead

There’s nothing wrong with employing ploying a little nutritional back-up – but you can get too much of a good thing. With gummies now available to boost everything from immunity to focus to sleep, make sure you know what you’re chewing. “They can also contain a lot of sugar and artificial colourings,” says Brooks. Once you’ve popped, make sure you stop.

4 3 " & The downfall of many a well-intentioned light lunch: “Lots of supermarket varieties are full of sugars, saturated fats, salt, additives and preservatives,” says Linford. In which case, you y may as well have a side of chips with your greens. “All you really need is olive oil, lemon juice and balsamic,” she says.

! &" 5 AKA ‘miracle noodles’ (is that a red flag I see?), these are fat-free, gluten-free and all but kilojoule-free. “Some things really are too good to be believed,” says Linford. “Made from a fibre called glucomanna an, they can cause bloating, flatulence and diarrhoea.” What was wrong with ramen, anyway?

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% * This tropical fruit grown has become a regular on the meat-substitute aisle.

When cooked with barbecue seasoning, it mimics the taste and texture of pulled pork – but at just 1.5g of protein per 375 kJ, it’s all carbs and no muscle.

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“I get it. It’s a quick,

‘Natural’ is a relative term; many plant-based bars are packed with syrups, coconut sugar and concentrated fruit juice. Check the ratio of protein to sugar, suggests Chowdhury. If there are considerably more grams of the latter, what you’re eating is an energy bar – useful in its own right, but not much of a protein top-up.

Ever felt bloated after a big bowl of cereal? “Shopbought granola can be hard to digest for some,” Mandikate says – not to mention the sugar content.

“Traditionally, grains such as oats were soaked or fermented before cooking to increase nutrient bioavvailability and d digesstibility. Try overn night oats with nuts, grainss and fruit, instead.”

According to Chowdhury, “up to 26 per cent of the vitamins, minerals and essential amino acids in chicken are lost during tinning”. Water-soluble nutrients – notably vitamins B and C – are first to be drained,, while many soups are high in n salt to compensate for a lackk of flavour. Stock it as a back-up – just don’t lean on it for your micro targets targets.

low-carb breakfast altlternative that gives you an ene ergy boost,” says Linford.. “But omitting breakfast means missing an opportu unity to stock up on nutrien nts.” Plus, scrambled eggs beat butter for essential vitam mins – and mins satisfaction.

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Th his is often pushed as a plant-b based source of omega--3. It’s a rich source of alpha-liinolenic acid (ALA) – but th his is considerably less useful to your heart and brain than th he DHA and EPA found in fish h. Get your fix from an algae e-based supp instead and you’ll do swimmingly.

With more caffeine than coffee, this seed is often used in energy drinks as a ‘natural’ energy source. But sip sensibly: there’s limited evidence of its efficacy as a weight-loss aid or athleticenhancer compared with dependable joe joe. Too much can cause anxiety, insomnia and palpitations.

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7 8 4 6 From gummy bears to truffles to lattes, CBDinfused foods are in high demand. But the not-sodope bit? Almost all studies demonstrating their anxiety- or stress-relieving potential look at doses of 300mg or more. Nothing close to the tiny dash in your green-hued snacks. g

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See also: breakfast bars, biscuits and bakes. “You’re setting yourself up for a morning sugar crassh, fatigue and cravings for more sweets,” says Linford. Instead, tryy filling a muffin tray with beaten egg, finely chopped veg, Gruyyère and pepper for an alternative, equally portable, breakfast fastt.

! " A bag off baton ons might suffice as s a portable snack, but crun nc nching on raw carrots is an n iinfferior way to score nutri trients.. Cooking helps to o break down the veg’s thick ck c cell walls, making it far eas easier to absorb beta-carrote otene, a nutrient linked d to better vision, skiin health and immu unity.

Not only is intensive fish farming bad for marine life, farmed salmon is more likely to contain chemicals such as PCBs and dioxins, says Mandikate. kate. Go organic or Aquaculture e Stewardship p Councilcertified.

* )* * + Multiple studies have found that chocolate contains handy flavanols, which benefit your heart, art, brain and skin.

However, that doesn’t extend to the pale stu stufff.

“White chocolatte doesn’t actuallyy contain any cacao solids,” says Mandikate..

( ( ' Purported to do everything from help manage diabetes to treat asthma symptoms, like most leafy greens, it’s a source of vitamins and minerals, but ut that’s about it.

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Is Thi On The Not all plant burgers are created equal.

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is The

Best Burger Planet?

Faced with a choice between intensively farmed beef and highly processed vegan imitations, the idea of a truly virtuous burger can seem fanciful. But now a fast-growing start-up claims to have produced an organic alternative with its origins in the kitchen rather than the laboratory – and with supersized flavour, too. So how does it stack up?

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TOBY WISEM A N PHOTOGR APHY BY JACK LE WIS WILLIA MS

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Rankin uses fermented veg (right) to create his plant-based burgers.

f you’re a vegan, or a flexitarian, or perhaps, like me, just prefer to swerve bacon rolls now and then, my local supermarket has a place for you.

It’s located, somewhat counter-intuitively, a little way past the many fruits and vegetables on offer in most shops these days. Evidently, the abundant cavolo nero, Jerusalem artichokes, choi sum and Romanesco broccoli are not the right sort of meat-free fare.

Instead, the chilled cabinets marked “Plant-Based and Vegetarian” are directly opposite the processed meats and picnic snacks – pork pies, cocktail sausages and anthropomorphised five-packs of Peperami. As it transpires, this is entirely apt. Very little in the Plant-Based and Vegetarian cabinets is fresh, nor what one might refer to as “everyday edible plant matter”. Certainly, there’s no shortage of choice – you can pick up a couple of Quorn’s Mozzarella & Pesto Escalopes; or maybe 80

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some of Wicked Kitchen’s Italian Inspired Amazeballs (really); or, of course, a tray of Beyond Meat’s Plant-Based Burgers. But there’s nothing here that actually resembles a plant, nor something you might hope to find in a vegetarian cookbook. In fact, most of it looks about as salutary as a Big Mac. It’s a sight that’s stranger to behold the more you think about it. And it’s one of the bewildering paradoxes at the heart of the meat versus plant-based debate. There’s a lot to chew on – and not much of it is very palatable.

Raising The Fakes How did we get here? There can be no doubt that the effects on our environment from global consumption habits and agricultural practice are . . . bad. As a teenager, I would play

The Smiths’ Meat Is Murder and nod darkly at Morrissey’s admonitions before tucking into Mum’s cottage pie. Things have changed – or at least, we have caught up. Morrissey was concerned with the animals; now the focus has become the planet. Agriculture is responsible for more water consumption than any other human endeavour, and of this around one-third goes on livestock.

Meanwhile, one-third of all arable land is cultivated to feed said livestock, which in turn is accountable for 14.5 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization. Beef production is thought to represent just under half of this figure.

Statistics such as these, along with influential documentaries, such as 2014’s Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret, have been instrumental in shifting consumer opinion and behaviour, albeit on a relatively micro level in global terms. But it was when they caught the attention of businessmen with rather larger ambitions that we began to see the market shift in unprecedented ways. A 2019 New Yorker profile of Pat Brown, the now 67-year-old biochemist, CEO and founder of Impossible Foods, describes

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Neil Rankin set out to create a burger with flavour that doesn’t cost the earth.

the entrepreneurial game changer in swashbuckling terms. “The use of animals in food production is by far the most destructive technology on earth” was Brown’s portentous opening gambit. “We see our mission as the last chance to save the planet from environmental catastrophe.”

He’s certainly having a crack. The Impossible Burger is, according to the California-based company’s own literature, a composite of soya and potato proteins, sunflower and coconut oils, plus methylcellulose and food starch as binders – a combo it also describes, contestably, as “packed with nutrients”. Progress has been swift. His first patty launched in restaurants in 2016 and presently counts thousands among them, including Burger King, now home of the Impossible Whopper. Brown’s impact and persistence have been undeniably impressive. Such rapid expansion has led to Impossible Foods receiving a multibilliondollar valuation, though the brand’s mission statement remains true to its founder’s word: “Eat meat. Save the planet”.

There are other players in the game, of course. LA’s Beyond Meat is on a par with – if not bigger than – Impossible Foods,

both in terms of its reach and the speed at which it has gained traction. Founded in 2009 by the businessman and environmentalist Ethan Brown, the brand’s global market value was estimated to be $9bn by late 2021. You can find its meat substitutes in McDonald’s, Byron Burger and, as said before, in supermarkets.

Like Impossible, Beyond Meat’s products are the brainchildren of scientists in white coats (the Beyond Burger contains 18 ingredients), though its backers are rather more high-profile figures – Snoop Dogg is an investor, as is Leonardo DiCaprio. The consensus among market analysts is that the popularity of these brands is greatest among millennials and Gen-Zers because they see them as a way of getting their toothsome fastfood fix in greener, healthier packages. And yet for many, in that one sentence alone, there are at least three bones of contention.

Accounting For Taste Across the Atlantic, two units on a small industrial estate in a nondescript part of north-west London represent the headquarters of Symplicity Foods, a fledgling albeit pioneering plant-based food business.

Sat at a spartan table on a mezzanine above the factory floor, Symplicity’s co-founder, Neil Rankin, is considering my question about the motive behind his transition from acclaimed chef and barbecue aficionado to producer of groundbreaking meat substitutes.

What did he initially set out to achieve?

“Well,” he says, his native Edinburgh accent firmly intact, “I just wanted it to taste fucking good.”

Like Impossible’s Pat Brown, Rankin has a background in science – he studied physics at Salford University – though this is where any similarity ends. Rankin turned his head to cooking relatively late but quickly made his name as a man who knew his way around a hunk of meat and a naked flame.

Having held senior roles at Barbecoa and Pitt Cue, he went on to launch the Smokehouse restaurant brand and Temper, with its focus on “whole-animal barbecue”. However, in 2019, he announced that he would be taking a step back from the Temper operation and spending some time developing a sustainable plant-based project. “It pisses me off that vegan has gone down the processed route,” he said at the time. “I want to be able to grow my own burger in my backyard.”

The rapid conversion from butcher to salad spinner wasn’t as unexpected as it might sound. “Temper was originally my route to sustainability – taking whole animals, breaking them down ourselves, using every last bit,” he says. “But I got a little disenchanted with the solution being meat-based. At the same time, I could see the trajectory the whole plant-based thing was heading in, and I thought, What’s going on?

I think it was when I first tried something at Honest Burgers that used a Beyond Meat patty. I was faced with people who I really respect, who have always used great, simple, ingredients, resorting to what I can only describe as being a piece of shit.

“I thought, well, there must be a way to do this better. You know, I make nice food with vegetables at home. There are chefs making amazing vegetable and vegetarian dishes. If you go to L’Enclume or Noma, then you can get incredible food that’s often pretty much vegan-based. Meanwhile, I’d been playing around with fermenting stuff since my days at Pitt Cue. We used to have this fermented mushroom dish on the menu that was as popular as any meat dish. So my thinking was that if there’s going to be an alternative, you’ve got to have a wider choice [than] just either a plate of roasted veg or a highly processed protein burger. For me, there needed to be an element of deliciousness, using ingredients you love, from producers you love, travelling the shortest possible distance from farm to table. So I started to experiment myself.”

Starting Small…

Rankin began, not in a lab, but in his modest home kitchen. He examined every vegetable and plant-based ingredient he’d ever worked with, along with spices and flavour combinations that he knew worked well. He found a particular kind JULY 2022

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of relationship between certain tomatoes, beetroots, mushrooms and onions. He dived deep into the fermentation process, playing with various misos and tamaris, going on to produce about 400 different ferments until he settled on a deep umami flavour base that he liked. This living, cultured approach, Rankin reasoned, was preferable because it increased the health benefits, promoting the growth of probiotic bacteria in the gut. It also had the ironic advantage of making vegetables taste less like, well, vegetables – in the same way that wine tastes different to grapes, with more complex, layered flavours. When it came to bringing it all together, he settled on gluten from wheat flour as a base because he knew from age-old bakery techniques that wheat binds.

Eventually he came up with a product that he thought tasted great. What’s more, he had created it in his backyard, or thereabouts.

The next step, of course, was to see what other people thought. Rankin opened a small joint on east London’s Brick Lane called Simplicity Burger to try to promote it – or, at least, “to test it out to make sure it wasn’t just bullshit”, he says. “It’s fine me doing it in my own kitchen, then getting excited at 3am and phoning up a neighbour asking them to taste it. But that’s not the real world.” The step change was significant. Rankin’s team had to produce up to 400 burgers a day; come up with salads, sauces, cheese and sides to go with them; and have their food tasted by the press and the public, as well as interested parties.

Gratifyingly, the response was positive. Shake Shack was keen. Dishoom came in. Homeslice immediately spotted the potential. “All these people turned up, tried it and were blown away,” he says. “At that point, it was the only zero-chemical vegan burger being sold in that way.”

By this time, Rankin was learning more and more about the wider process, which not only allowed his skills as a chef to prosper, but also increased his dissatisfaction with the approach taken by the likes of Impossible and Beyond Meat. “One of the problems I have with these companies is that the amount of waste is huge,” he says. “We have less waste than them, but it’s there. So what we started to do was construct things from that waste material. For instance, we were making a cheese out of tomato water.

But then we’d have leftover pulp, so we started making a ketchup out of that. There was still too much pulp, so then we mixed it with the mince to make a vegan ’nduja. And so on. Some of the burgers were really brittle because we don’t use chemicals, so with that waste we started making a Thai larb salad. We tried to use everything. In truth, it was similar to 82

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the approach I had taken with whole-animal butchery and Temper. I just realised that we could be more efficient in terms of waste and cost.” . . . And Thinking Big Simplicity Burger made its point, but the small scale meant that it wasn’t ever going to be a transformative business. For that to happen, it needed Mark Wogan, founder of Homeslice Pizza, to come on board. “We had been pushing more towards a plant-based menu for some time,” says Wogan, “because pizza is such an obvious vehicle for it. But we found that all we were really doing was cooking vegetables well. What we could never find was a cheese replacement that didn’t taste like cat sick blended with sawdust, frankly. Meanwhile, I’d been an admirer of what Neil had been doing. So we got talking, and we kept coming back to each other, and then ironically [an] opportunity came at the beginning of lockdown. Neil needed somewhere to make this stuff and I had a load of restaurants sitting empty. So that’s where the business partnership – Symplicity Foods – developed from. Our joint starting position was simply: how do you do this properly? Because there’s lots of stuff out there, and you see rows of it in the supermarket, and I don’t want to eat any of it.

But I do want to eat less meat, and I want to make actually eating meat a proper occasion.

So what do you eat in between?”

Depending on who you ask, the answer to that might be Subway’s T.L.S. sandwich (that’s Tastes. Like. Steak.), or perhaps the imaginatively named McPlant from McDonald’s. But this would rather miss the point. When Burger King first launched the Impossible Whopper in all its US restaurants, the company’s then chief marketing officer, Fernando Machado, said, “Burger King skews male and older, but Impossible brings in young people and women, and puts us in a different spectrum of quality, freshness and health”. This in turn begs the question: compared with what? Impossible’s key selling point is the way in which the burger remains pink in the middle throughout cooking and

The team at Symplicity believes in a zero-waste approach towards plant-based food.

imitates the juicy, bloody texture of meat. This is achieved through the use of a patented genetically engineered yeast called heme – it may well be ingenious, though it’s more of a stretch to call it Symplicity now fresh. As for health, well, supplies top restaurants and that again is up for debate.

Michelin-star Impossible and Beyond chefs alike. burgers have similar amounts of protein and kilojoules as regular beef patties, yet contain around five times as much sodium. Besides, when you’re serving them up with cheese, mayonnaise, chips and a bucket of soft drink, any attempt to play the health card is inevitably going to come up short.

For the record, a Symplicity patty trumps one from Beyond when judged by virtually any nutritional metric you’d care to throw at it – 293 fewer kilojoules, 5g more protein, almost 5g less saturated fat and 4g more fibre.

But it’s curious that, in trying to create such a point of difference between his products and those of the big US labs, Rankin should choose to kick off with something as ubiquitous as a burger.

“Look, I just wanted to create something that people could cook with,” he says. “And the burger is so culturally significant. There’s an argument that the best way to adopt a plant-based diet is just to start eating daals and vegetable curries. Which is fucking delicious, by the way, and I do it myself. But with something like a burger, there’s this huge cultural significance that many just aren’t prepared to discount in order to go vegetarian. So I knew this was something I had to recreate in people’s minds in order for them to feel comfortable with it.

“Plus, the vast majority of the beef that you get in burgers tastes like shit on its own.

Believe me, I’ve done the research. Go into

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"VEGETABLES MIGHT HAVE LIMITATIONS, BUT THEY SUCK UP FLAVOUR AND SPICES" any of the big burger chains in this country and take a bite out of the patty itself – just the meat. It’s grim. Fucking grim. So, for me, beating the taste of that wasn’t hard.

Vegetables might have their limitations, but they also have their advantages. They suck up flavour, they suck up spices, they’re easier to cook, and they’re inherently healthy. So I don’t have this retroactive thing of trying to make it healthy – it’s already healthy.”

The Cost Of Going Green When Pat Brown started out in the plantfood business, he didn’t mention much about improving animal welfare or the health of citizens. He merely wanted to safeguard planet Earth. The success of his succinct message, neatly marketed, has been in large part because the gist of it is broadly supported by the scientific community.

“Avoiding meat and dairy, for the large majority of people, is the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact,” said Oxford University researcher Joseph Poore, co-author of a report on the global consequences of food production. Very few

would contend with this. However, it also masks a more complex, nuanced reality.

Plainly, our environmental problems don’t begin and end with the quantity of land and water utilised by beef production. For instance, sustaining biodiversity is arguably more important. Yet mass-producing the likes of soya and pea protein, as used in Impossible and Beyond burgers, means perpetuating the use of monoculture crops, an approach to farming that’s widely understood to be hugely detrimental.

“It all comes down to good agriculture and bad agriculture,” says Rankin. “But you’ve got these guys coming up with ridiculous comments like, ‘our product uses 90 per cent less water than beef’ or whatever. I mean, how the fuck did you come up with that? How do you compare a cow in a field in England, say, with a cow in a field in Australia, which is irrigated extensively, because it’s a fucking desert? It’s not the same thing.

“And how about the 16 factories that made your burger, and the coconut oil and rice flour and pea protein that you’ve flown in from all over the world? These comparisons represent

the next level of bullshit that we’ve got to get through.”

Despite his frustration, it’s clear there’s a hunger for the Symplicity approach. Rankin and Wogan are adamant that the right route is to rely on small growers, operations they can visit and sample. Shortly after we met, Symplicity announced that it had gone ‘clean label’, a food-industry term for products made wholly without artificial ingredients.

This makes Symplicity the only brand in the market that is totally free of chemicals.

For now, they’re focusing on supplying restaurants because that means they don’t have to worry about compromising themselves with all the excess packaging that comes into play when you go into retail.

But Rankin has ambitions beyond satisfying middle-class lunchers. He’s thinking about schools and offices, even homes. Because that’s where the real habitchanging potential lies. “Chain restaurants, too!” he says. “People discount them. But they’re the most progressive restaurants in the country. They’re the ones thinking about calories right now, because they’re forced to.

They’re looking at the labels to see what’s in this stuff. Maybe PR-wise we’d be better off doing some sexy marketing campaign.

But in terms of growth, or education, this is a huge, untapped opportunity. And it’s clear it’s better for everyone.”

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The life of SEB COE has been one of many chapters – record-breaking athlete, Olympic gold medallist, Member of Parliament, sporting president – but each has been a story of determination, industry and occasionally triumph over adversity. Here, he explains to journalist and former spokesperson for Tony Blair, Alistair Campbell, how physical fitness and mental strength can beget one another

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Father Time: Coe is embraced by his father, Peter, after running a world record mile (3:48.95) in Oslo in 1979.

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who says you should never meet your heroes?

LORD SEBASTIAN COE, without doubt one of the most beautiful runners who ever graced a track, was one of mine.

I knew him only from afar in his athletics days. But once his racing career was over, he switched to politics, became an MP, then, after losing his seat to New Labour, became an adviser to Tory leader William Hague when I was doing a similar job for Tony Blair.

Acquaintanceship morphed along the way into friendship. As you shall see, he is one of a small number of people who – Paul Simon alert – calls me Al. Having worked on different sides, we were very much on the same side when his considerable talents were judged

by Blair to make him the perfect choice to lead the bid to land the Olympic and Paralympic Games for London 2012. Another huge challenge, another win in a lifetime full of them, and his success in presiding over the Games led to him being made a Companion of Honour (there aren’t many of them) to add to his knighthood and peerage.

But even with all that success behind him, he wanted more, and set about becoming president of World Athletics, his current berth, from where he has banned Russia over doping and refused to boycott China over human rights. We will cover all that and more.

Coe remains the athlete I love talking to most, about mindset, about resilience, and about the remarkable relationship with his father, Peter, who was also his coach.

The night before our interview, I watched some of his greatest races: the four Olympic triumphs, the 11 world records, and some of the defeats, too; the most famous of which was his loss to Steve Ovett in the 800m final in Moscow 1980. More than 40 years ago.

Truly, the stuff of legend. I have talked to him about those days between unexpected defeat in the 800m, followed by unexpected victory in the 1500m a few days later, many times. I find it endlessly fascinating. I hope you do, too.

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Golden Glory: Coe wins the 1500m at the Moscow Olympics, with Steve Ovett having to settle for bronze.

Men’s Health: When you were at your peak, how much of your success was down to physical strength, and how much mental?

Sebstian Coe: I don’t have a definitive answer for that, Al. In my teens and early twenties, I would have said 80 per cent physical to 20 per cent mental. Towards the end of my career, I was winning races by sheer mental fortitude, and knowing more about myself.

MH Reputation, too, maybe?

Opponents being scared of you?

SC An element of that, sure. So towards the end of my career, I would say 50-50. But at any stage

of my career, I would always have said mental strength came from supreme physical condition.

MH How hard is it to get it?

SC There’s no easy way. It’s all

about training. I would have winters of three-hour training sessions so hard I felt too tired to drive home.

I used to do weights at Hackney Weightlifting Club. I remember training so hard one night it took me half an hour to open my hands enough to grip the steering wheel. If you’ve been through that, and been unaffected by injury, you gain massive comfort from that preparation when you go into

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competition. I was always supremely confident based on being in supreme physical condition. For me, the mental strength followed from that.

per cent fit, or you’re not. Even half a per cent off can take you out of training or out of contention in a race.

MH Did you have sports

MH How big was the fear of

illness or injury?

SC You’re always nervous. I tried to be sociable, but if someone was sitting there struggling with a cold, you’d think, “That could be me in two days”.

MH Would you leave?

SC Sometimes, yes. The problem

with being at the top in competitive sport is that you’re either 100

psychologists as we know them today?

SC My dad was my head coach, a really smart guy, and smart enough to have people around him who could do the things he didn’t. He was an engineer, not an expert in physiology, so he recruited the best physiologists. So I worked with a multi-disciplinary team, and though there wasn’t a specific sports psych, they all played part of that role. They

knew when to say something, or when not to.

MH But no sports psychologist

can get everything right, no matter how well they know the athlete.

SC No, and my dad, if he were with us now, and you asked him if he had any regrets in his coaching career, he would say that on the eve of the 800m final at the Moscow Olympics, he sensed that I was not in the right space. To his grave, he would say it was the one thing that gnawed away at him. Should he have said something? Should he have tried to talk it through?

MH Was the issue mental

or physical?

SC Mental. He instinctively knew – he was my dad as well as my coach, don’t forget – that something was wrong. He had a dilemma: do I say something, then risk getting it wrong, and thereby introduce a seed of doubt into his head? Do I risk making him more agitated? He decided to say nothing, but the doubt never left him. For years, he would sit and think: could I have said something? Might we have worked it through?

MH What do you think?

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it would have been the difference between winning and losing. The truth is I ran a really bad race. It was more about my lack of experience at major championships. My dad had talked to me since I was 14 about how I needed to see everything I did as steps towards – preparations for – the Olympics. But no one appreciates the enormity until you get there. It’s almost impossible for a coach to explain that.

MH You were favourite to win

the 800m race.

SC I know. I had broken three world records in 41 days. I had gone from European bronze at the end of 1978, BBC Sports Personality of the Year 1979, and I was world record holder for 800m, 1500m and the mile. Never been done before.

People were hanging the medals round my neck before we even got there. But I was short on major championship experience. It is so different from those one-off races in Oslo, Brussels, Zurich.

MH I watched the Zurich 1500m

record race again last night. It was mind-blowing. The crowd, the noise, you out front alone for the last 500m …

SC Yeah, it was quite a night. But Moscow was so different. Back then, there was the complication of the politics, and the question of the boycott. [The US boycotted the Moscow Games in protest at the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.] The country was divided. None of us knew until April if we would even be going. We had all that, and then there was the question of how I was going to deal with Steve Ovett, the most naturally talented athlete I ever raced. He was undefeated all year, he had beaten me in the European Championships a year earlier, and it seemed unassailable.

MH People expected you to win

the 800m and him to win the 1500m. Did losing the first one help you win the second?

SC Yes, I think it did.

MH How did you cope in those

days between the two races?

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SC They were tough days. The

MH He was kicking you up

MH No wonder your Dad didn’t

morning after, I didn’t want to get out of bed. I’d had the race, the press conference – that was rough – and I was just lying there with the blankets over my head. Daley Thompson is a close mate. He comes in, doesn’t even knock, and I said something lame like, “What’s the weather like?”

And he goes and rips open the curtains and says, “It all looks a bit silver to me”.

the backside?

SC Yes. We had a laugh, I got up, and then my old man said, “Just go for a run, go and clear your head”.

So I did that. I hadn’t spotted some of the photographers in a car, I was so wrapped up in myself I just didn’t see them. The following day one of the papers had a picture of me running and the headline was “COE’S TRAIL OF SHAME” [laughs].

like the media much.

SC The next day, I’m talking to the journalists and they’re all giving me their views of what I should do in the 1500m. I was watching my old man out of the corner of my eye as I’m getting all these race strategies from journalists [laughs]. He was a mathematician and an engineer.

Everything was numbers. He always went around with an old envelope and an old propelling pencil. He

TACT ICS Pain and Gain: Coe gets a massage during training, circa 1980.

“I wince when people in sport talk about pressure and sacrifice.

I saw it as a privilege” coming back from the abyss. I could remind myself of the grind and the hard work paying off. But when I got to the warm-down track, my dad and I had the most ferocious conversation we would ever have.

He just unloaded on me because of that mistake. He said, “If you do that tomorrow you are toast. You know what you have to do. You can win this, and you are the only thing that can prevent you from doing that. I don’t care where that guy [Ovett] is, you follow him, you do not let him out of your fucking sight. If he decides halfway round to go to the khazi, you get in the fucking shitter with him. You do not let him out of your sight, do you understand?”

MH Wow. I’ve always been

was just sitting there, writing down numbers and then he says, very politely, “Okay, I need some time with my athlete”. He never said “my son” when we were in a training or racing setting. So the journos left and my dad said: “Listen, this is really simple, not complicated at all.

Given the number of mistakes you made in the 800m, over the distance you made them, and the frequency with which you made them, it is statistically impossible for

you to fuck up that badly again in the next decade”.

MH [laughs] Thanks, Dad. SC I swear to God that was the

team talk! Then, in the 1500m semi-final, I was beginning to get back into my stride, but I made a silly error. I went on the inside, got boxed in, had to work my way out the back, round the side, then back into it, and eventually I won. So despite the mistake, I felt I was

fascinated by that relationship – how you strike the right balance between father and son, coach and athlete.

SC A lot of people misunderstood it. After the 800m, I went to the press conference, and I was on a trestle table with [long-jumper] Lyn Davies and [pentathlete] Mary Peters. Mary was being very maternalistic, looking after me. She adored my dad, they were close friends. Dad walked behind me to take his place at the edge of the press conference, and as he walked past he leaned over and whispered, “You do know you ran like a cunt, don’t you?” I’m sure there are some athletes who would explode at something like that. But he was right, and I knew he was right, and only he could say it. It wasn’t just anger. That was him: an unvarnished, no-nonsense east Londoner. But then later he said to me: “I cannot absolve myself of this either. My athlete is over a second faster than anyone else on paper.

He’s the world record holder. I have to ask what I got wrong, too.” He

went into the same personal scrutiny that I did.

MH How often do you think

about that 800m race now?

SC It’s not that I think about it often.

But I draw strength from those few days between the two finals. I wince a bit when people in sport talk about pressure and sacrifice.

Pressure is working flat out to feed your family. I saw it as a privilege to be able to take part in events like that and here we are still talking about them. And I have been under pressure in all sorts of situations, like when it came to London 2012, but nothing compares with those 45 minutes sitting in a call-up room with nine other people, everyone wondering who is going to win the lottery. You learn a lot about yourself. So yeah, I draw strength from those days, even now.

MH I watched the documentary

Born To Run last night, and your mum said you were quite nervy, quite panicky, as a child.

SC She was probably right.

MH And she said you failing

your eleven-plus was a big thing.

SC Not for them, I don’t think. But for me, definitely – though, looking back, it was the best thing that happened to me. I remember kids from leafy shires who failed the eleven-plus and got shipped off to second- and third-rate private schools. Dad was an unreconstructed socialist, so that was never going to happen. I’m probably the only person you will ever interview who went to a secondary-modern, a comprehensive and a grammar school, which is where I did my A-levels. We were in Sheffield then – good schools.

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November 1989. I was running along the towpath from Richmond to Twickenham and I suddenly just stopped. And for the first time in my life, I had this realisation that I would not be able to run faster than I had run before. I competed for a bit, but I knew from that moment it was time to move on.

Paralympic] Games in 2012. It wasn’t planned like that. I was a sportsman, but by then knew the international circuit in sports politics, plus I had my own direct experience of politics. Crucially, I was never one of those tribal politicians. I was never, “Our side, right or wrong”. So I always had great support from Tony [Blair] and Tessa [Jowell.]

MH You’ve been an athlete, a

businessman, an MP, a sports politician, and you’ve had a whole series of pretty amazing careers.

But you admitted nothing can beat elite competitive sport. Have you always been chasing the feeling of winning?

SC Maybe, maybe. I have been lucky because I have always done what I wanted to. I knew I wanted to get involved in politics from my teens. I just wasn’t sure if it would be as a frontline politician.

Running For Office: Coe speaks at the Conservative party conference in Blackpool in 1989.

MH Have you ever had what

MH You don’t feel you have ever

would be defined as mental health problems?

SC I don’t know the answer to that.

Have there been moments when I have been under intense pressure?

Yes. Ups and downs? Yes. I’ve got friends, including you, Al, who have had to deal with mental health issues. One of my closest, closest friends went through a very dark period, so I am pleased mental health is now a big part of public discourse. But I am a little nervous saying the normal rhythms of life are all about mental health.

had what I would define as depression or anxiety?

SC I’ve had anxiety. I don’t think I’ve had depression. I’ve had moments when I have been withdrawn and reflective and asking searching questions. But that is not on a par with what I saw my friend go through.

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from Gordon Brown and John Prescott?

SC Tessa told me she sent [sports minister] Dick Caborn to tell John, because they were good mates.

Dick said, “Do you want the good news or the bad news? The good news is the American woman [Barbara Cassani, original leader of London bid] is going. The bad news is Tony wants to put Seb Coe in charge”. “Seb Coe! He’s a fucking Tory.”

MH Was your dad really upset

“I’ve always done what I wanted to. I knew I wanted to get involved in politics from my teens”

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MH And a grudging acceptance

MH How hard was it to know

when to give up being an athlete?

SC In a way, the decision was made for me. I can tell you exactly where and when I was. It was

that you became a Tory?

SC He was proper old Labour, my mum was an old-fashioned liberal, but they were both supportive in that they knew I was serious about it. So they were not as mad with me as the rest of Sheffield was!

MH If you had to grade your

various careers with marks out of 10 . . .

SC That is a great question, Al. Athletics is part of my life, so important to me. Then sport politics, I was involved in that pretty young. I enjoyed being an MP, but I won my seat [Falmouth and Camborne] in 1992 and I was pretty sure I would lose it in 1997. I did have the smallest swing against any Conservative candidate, but you guys were unassailable. Also, it was the right decision. The electorate knows when it is time for change.

MH That’s JP. SC But he was brilliant. And very

effective on driving through a lot of the planning changes that had to be done.

MH So, a decade on from 2012,

how do you see the legacy of the Games?

SC In large areas, very good. East London is an enduring positive story. I think in some ways the London boroughs did a better job on legacy than the government. So for London, good. Elite performance was good, there were huge successes in 2012, and that has been followed through in subsequent Games. But where we lost ground was in school sport.

Participation has been difficult. I just never understood why school sport became such a political football.

MH Because Michael Gove made

MH So then you worked for

William Hague.

SC Which was interesting – but ultimately four barren years because you lot were Mother Teresa on steroids, you were untouchable. But if you look at all the things I’ve done, everything came together with the bid for the [Olympic and

a terrible decision to cut it.

SC Yeah. I don’t want to go back into the history of it. I spent two years after the Games in the Cabinet Office, and we did get money, and we put the school sports premium in place. But we had lost ground and they knew they had fucked up badly.

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MH Why do we have such a

MH How difficult was the

problem with obesity?

SC A combination of things, though we are not too far out of sync with other developed countries. We eat more processed food than most of Europe. The most sobering stat is that, between the ages of nine and 10 to 12 and 13, the average child loses around half of physical activity. Extrapolate that and it becomes a massive drag anchor, both physically and mentally. Physically inactive means people struggling to climb up a flight of stairs, which is a huge problem. I got stuck into the issue of physical inactivity, and it’s the usual thing in government where they think: “Ah, obesity equals a problem for the NHS to solve”. No, that is where it ends.

It is about planning, it is about how you use space and it is about tax. We zero-rate food and books because we want a nation of healthy readers. But why don’t you zero-rate gym membership and exercise equipment? No one looks at this in a holistic way. The government had a discussion about this a few months ago. Some of them called me and I said we did this after 2012. We had a multi-disciplinary team across treasury, health, schools, transport, planning… but it just stopped.

There was no joining the dots.

decision to kick out Russia?

SC We were the only federation to take the decision. We stood alone and there was a lot of challenge to what we did, but we made the right decision. It had to be addressed, it could not just be swept under the carpet. They had 149 positive tests in four years. This was out of control – it was endemic, doping on an industrial scale. When we provisionally suspended the Russian Federation, the world went “You can’t do this” – well, we have, and slowly but surely we have got change, more independence in the process, a sensible dialogue with Russian sport. It has taken longer than I wanted because it is not good to have a country like Russia outside, but it is a cultural shift, and not just in Russia, because there are still coaches who think a bottle or a syringe is where you go to improve performance.

MH So how goes the current job

after a pretty rough start?

SC It’s going well. I mean, when your office is raided by 17 police officers shortly after you’ve started, you’re told your predecessor has been arrested in Paris, his son is on the run and on the red list, your legal counsel and head of doping have been arrested, and your CEO has gone backpacking in Australia . . . it’s not easy. If you remember, Al, I did ring you and your advice was that you’re just going to have to weather the storm and deal with the problems. We got through it. I took a flame thrower to the organisation.

We brought in reforms which meant that even if we were minded to do some of the things others who were here had done before, we couldn’t.

MH You’ve been vociferously

against a sporting boycott of China.

SC Absolutely, I am philosophically opposed to boycotts. I’ve been through them.

They just damage the athletes.

We cannot be oblivious to human rights, and I’m not. I have had many uncompromising conversations about venues, about construction, about labour rights and about human rights. But I don’t believe that pulling up the drawbridge bears fruit.

take the first UK Sports Council delegation to South Africa, we met [former state president] de Klerk and others, and we made a strong case. But governments should be doing the heavy lifting, not throwing it all on to sport. Sport does flick the cultural and political and social dial, but if you start picking relations in sport based on transient or even entrenched political systems, that is difficult to maintain. Plenty of countries came to London holding their noses over our Middle East policy, as you know, and some of them used that to vent their concerns. I think the diplomatic boycott [of China] risks being a meaningless gesture that doesn’t understand the impact sport can have.

his wake, and he was hugely inspirational for what he did in Berlin. Had he not been in Berlin, he would not have had that platform to be that inspiration.

MH Let’s finish with domestic

politics. What do you make of the current British government?

SC I am going to be charitable. No one would have wanted this deck of cards. It’s easy to say elements could have been done better.

MH Like turning up to meetings,

and not lying the whole time?

SC I will leave you to say that.

People accept tough decisions, but they want to know the decisions follow a pattern, and they want some continuity and there has to be trust.

MH You’ve taken a fair bit of

criticism over your stance. Are you sure you’ve got it right?

SC I saw a journalist somewhere saying it showed I didn’t understand the Black Power salutes at the 1968 Olympics. Tommie Smith and John Carlos are close friends of mine. I have a picture of the Black Power salute behind my desk at work. I was told off for that and then told I shouldn’t be talking about Jesse Owens. Okay, he didn’t stop the war, he didn’t stop the concentration camps, but you talk to people like Tommie Smith and John Carlos, and a whole generation of athletes who came in

MH And we have none of that.

SC I’ll leave you to say that, too.

Politics has been through difficult periods before, whether it’s the MPs’ expenses scandal, or you guys with what happened in the Gulf. But what worries me most at the moment is how many people are switched off from the whole thing.

I’m not sure politicians understand how ordinary folk see things. Most think PMQs [Prime Minister’s Questions] is just lots of posh people shouting at each other.

I cannot remember a time when people have been less interested in engagement. That worries me.

MH But that means there is no

limit to what the Chinese think they can do. You saw a limit when it came to South Africa, you didn’t race there during apartheid, and you must accept that the sporting boycott played a role in ending apartheid.

SC Yes, but I see Moscow and South Africa differently. I went to Moscow because even though the Americans boycotted, there was never a question of me not competing against the best. If I went to South Africa, I would have been competing against white South African athletes – not the best. I did

Mark of a Champion: Coe’s footprint is cast in bronze at the Olympic Stadium in Barcelona.

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A F S I D

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Insidiously, f largely bey orces o control hav nd your e something stolen p your ability recious: t attention to o pay stuff. Well, important y to get it bac ou need k quickly – no – and t your own s just for a the sake of ke, but for the world D A N IE L W IL LI

BY

AMS

The squeeze on your attention is a clear and present danger to your wellbeing.

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DURING A GRACELAND VISIT TO

a while back, the author JOHANN HARI had a meltdown that led him to write one of the more unforgettable books of the last decade. It’s about how we’ve become a bunch of scatterbrains – and what that could mean for the future of humanity.

Hari had taken his godson, ‘Adam’, to Memphis with the aim of snapping the boy out of his obsession with the digital world.

The 15-year-old had “dropped out of school and spent almost all his waking hours at home alternating blankly between screens,” says Hari, who’s speaking to Men’s Health at nearly 1am, London time, but sounds positively exuberant, which he attributes to being heavily caffeinated.

“He was staring either at his phone – an infinite scroll of WhatsApp and Facebook messages – or his iPad, on which he watched a blur of Youtube and porn,” Hari continues. “He struggled to stay with a topic of conversation for more than a few minutes without jerking back to a screen or veering to another topic. He was an intelligent, decent kid, but it was like nothing could gain any traction in his mind.”

Graceland was one half of a deal that Hari, who is BritishSwiss, had struck with Adam: in return for taking him to Elvis’ digs, a place his godson had once longed to visit, Adam promised that for the duration of their trip through the American south he would use his phone only once, at the end of each day. As it turned out, the lure of his device was too strong for Adam to resist. But that’s not what caused Hari’s meltdown. The trigger for that was a ludicrous scene inside Graceland’s Jungle Room (The King’s favourite room, apparently), where Hari overhead a couple marvelling at how they could view the Jungle Room on their iPads. The very room they were inside.

Hari could not stay silent.

“But, sir,” he said, “we’re here. We’re in the Jungle Room. You don’t have to see it on your screen. You can see it unmediated. Here. Look.”

The couple made a hasty, backwards retreat, eyeing Hari as you might a lunatic.

But who in that scene had lost the plot? Think carefully about your answer. It might reveal how far down the rabbit hole of digital madness you’ve plummeted.

Once he’d calmed down and done some thinking, Hari decided he would do whatever it took to find out why – as he sees it – we’ve lost the ability to focus for any sustained period on experiences and concerns belonging to the real world.

“I ended up going on a big journey all over the world,” Hari says, “from Melbourne to Moscow to Miami, and I interviewed over 200 of the leading experts on attention.”

The result is Stolen Focus (Bloomsbury), Hari’s follow-up to the seminal Lost Connections, for which he applied the same exhaustive methods to exploring the reasons why so many of us get depressed.

If you need numbers to believe that our collective attention span is dwindling, Hari offers plenty of those, sourced from studies. Two examples: the average office worker sticks to one task for three minutes; the average university student switches tasks every 65 seconds. But do you need stats to 94

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recognise that technology is changing society, or do you see it every day with your own eyes? Do you see it in your own behaviour? Hari did. Which is why he upped sticks for three months to a room in Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, to embark on a digital detox for the ages.

I should stress that Hari identifies numerous factors beyond the explosion in gadgetry and social media to account for collapsing attention spans. These include surging levels of stress, sleeplessness and ADHD, as well as poor nutrition. But my guess is that if you were to read Stolen Focus, you’d put it down convinced that addictive technology is the chief culprit.

You’d also realise that rather than being a badge of honour, multitasking is a myth. You’re not capable of doing three tasks at once and doing them well. In fact, when you think you’re multi-tasking, what you’re really doing is hopping from task to task – and doing a substandard job on all of them.

Whenever he’s lamenting the effects of social media, Hari, in me, is addressing a sympathetic fellow traveller. I made my last Instagram post on 10 February 2016. It’s a shot of me standing next to the former champion swimmer Grant Hackett. We’re both smiling and it’s harmless and even quite nice in its way, and it garnered the typical kind of upbeat comments from well-meaning ‘friends’. But when I thought about why I’d posted it, I couldn’t draw any conclusion other than that I was trying to impress people; that I was basking in the reflected glow of an Olympic gold medallist and implying that I must be worthy of respect because, look, I’m with this guy! While I didn’t resolve on the spot never to post again, so far that’s been the effect.

Of course, it’s wise to think twice before bemoaning the new. You can reach the point of believing that staring at a television is somehow nobler than staring at a smartphone.

With TV, at least others can see what you’re watching, and can join you if they like. Buried in your phone, you’re a lone wolf. But, hell, they’re both screens.

(Nostalgia alert: not so long ago, to get your mate or girlfriend on the phone, you used to have to dial the landline in their house, and as often as not one of their parents would pick up and the two of you would have a slightly awkward, roughly 60-second exchange. But it wasn’t torture. And what mobile phones have done is eliminate that type of intergenerational chitchat, which was surely a kind of societal glue.)

Anyway, back in the present, devices and apps aren’t going anywhere. Knowing this, Hari wants you to take seriously the threat addictive technology poses to your health and wellbeing – and to the world. Because if we can’t pay attention even to the things that could destroy us, this caper called life isn’t going to end well, regardless of what you’re hearing on that podcast you’re hooked into or from the influencer you swear by.

MIND

MH Let’s accept the premise

that we’re losing our ability to focus. Why should we care?

Johann Hari: Think about anything you’ve ever achieved in your life that you’re proud of, whether it’s starting a business, being a good dad, learning to play the guitar. Whatever it is, that thing that you’re proud of required a huge amount of focus and attention, and when your ability to focus and pay attention breaks down, your ability to achieve your goals breaks down.

Your ability to solve your problems breaks down.

MH When do you think this

mental fragmentation started?

JH Humans have always struggled with attention, but things have gotten significantly worse in recent years. And I could feel it happening to me. I’m 43. And I felt like, with each year that passed, certain things requiring a deep focus that are so important to me – reading books, having

proper, long conversations – were becoming more and more like running up a down escalator.

to set aside everything else and do one thing.

MH You also say that mind

MH You say one casualty for the

individual of a disintegrating attention span is the loss of the flow state. Why should that worry guys?

JH Because a flow state – when you’re doing something and you really get into it, when your sense of time and ego falls away – is the background to many of the highlights of your life, and the more flow you experience, the better you feel. Different people get into flow states doing different things. For some people it’s making bagels.

For others it’s brain surgery. It’s the deepest form of attention, but it will come only when you’re monotasking – when you choose

wandering is becoming rarer.

But is that any great loss?

JH Yes. I thought I went to Provincetown to rediscover deep focus – and my ability to do that massively came back. But what benefitted me most was not actually the return of deep focus; it was the return of mind wandering.

I started going for really long walks, with nothing to distract me because I had nothing to distract me, and I found that my mind became so much more fertile, so much more alive and awake. I started seeing the connections between things.

I’d thought of mind wandering as the opposite of focus, but it turns out that mind wandering is a really precious form of thinking in which breakthroughs and discoveries are

often made. For now, we’re in the worst of both worlds: we’re neither focusing nor mind wandering.

We’re jammed up with switching.

MH If you’re someone who

scrolls your social media feeds for hours daily, who posts often and hasn’t read a book since high school, should you regard yourself as a victim or part of the problem?

JH For any of your readers who are struggling to pay attention, I would say to them, this is not your fault. When I felt my attention getting worse, initially I blamed myself. I was like, well, what’s wrong with you? Why are you so weak?

Why aren’t you strong enough to resist this? What I realised is that your attention didn’t collapse. Your attention was stolen from you by some very big forces. Only once we understand those forces can we begin to deal with them.

MH Your digital detox in

Too much digital input is tying your brain in knots.

Provincetown didn’t seem to be a linear experience – a straight line from the pain of withdrawal to seeing the light. What, ultimately, were your main insights from that time in seclusion?

JH You’re right.

It was much more complicated than just, Oh, I’ve been set free!

I went to Provincetown because I was tired of being wired. And before I went, I had two stories in my head about why my attention had gotten worse, both of which I now realise were oversimplified. The first was, you’re weak. The second was, well, someone invented the smartphone and that’s what has screwed you over. Because they were the two stories in my head, the solution seemed clear: I’m going to use a lot of willpower and I’m going to separate myself from my phone and the internet.

I’d thought maybe my attention was getting worse with age. But it went back to being as good as it was when I was 17. I could sit and read books, including War and Peace, Volume 3, for eight hours a day, and my attention didn’t waver. I JULY 2022

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wrote 92,000 words of a novel. I was stunned by the extent to which my attention came back.

MH That’s great.

JH Yes. But the other big thing I

Cut loose from the prison of digital-world obsession.

learned is the limits of the digital detox. On my last day, from the lighthouse looking back on the whole of Provincetown, I thought, I’m never going to go back to how I was before this. Because when you get your sense of focus back as I did, you get flooded with this sense of competence, this sense of being able to think clearly again. You can see ahead. You can do things. So, why would I ever go back to how I lived before? And yet . . . I got the ferry across to Boston, which is where I’d left my phone and my laptop, and within a few months I was back [to old habits]. I never went back to quite as bad as I’d been, but I’d say I went back to 80 per cent of where I’d been. And for a while I was despairing. I thought, what’s happened here?

MH And what had happened?

What was the pull?

JH I only really understood it when I went to Moscow and interviewed a guy named James Williams, who had worked at the heart of Google, quit, and become, I’d argue, the world’s leading expert on the philosophy of attention. He said to me, “The mistake you’ve made, Johann, is akin to thinking the solution to air pollution is for you to wear a gas mask”. And he was right. I’ve got nothing against gas masks, but they’re not the solution to air pollution. And in the same way, digital detoxes can help people, they’re worth trying, but they’re not the solution to the problem of attention being corroded by the environment.

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MH The environment?

JH Yes. In Provincetown, I

realised that, yes, changing your environment can massively improve your attention. But if you’ve got to go back to your old environment, then you’re going to slide back.

So, what do we do to change the environment going forward that could strengthen our attention?

I concluded we need to tackle the causes at two levels. I think of them as defence and offence. Defence is what we do as individuals. I’ll give you a simple example. In a corner of the room that I’m in now, I have a plastic safe. You take off the lid, you put in your phone, you replace the lid, and you turn the dial, and you lock away your phone for anything from five minutes to the whole day.

When my friends come around for dinner, they’ve got to put their phones in the phone jail. And I won’t sit down to watch a film with my partner unless we both imprison our phones. That’s an individual, defensive measure.

MH Sounds good.

JH Yes. But I want to be honest

with people because I don’t think most books about attention are honest with people. I’m passionately in favour of these individual changes. They’ve made a big difference in my life. But on their own they will get you only so far because at the moment it’s like someone is pouring itching powder all over us, all day, and then leaning forward and going, “You know what, mate? You might want to learn how to meditate and then you wouldn’t scratch so much”. And you might go, “Well, fuck you! I’ll learn to meditate – that’s valuable – but you need to stop pouring itching powder on me”. So that’s why we need to go on the offensive against the forces that are doing this to us.

MH You take aim at the inbuilt

shallowness of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. If you could wave a wand and make social media disappear – disappear in the sense that it’s not only gone but never existed – would you do it?

JH No. And there’s an analogy that

would help us think about this. A bit before my time, it was normal for people to paint their homes with leaded paint. And then it was discovered that exposure to lead harms people’s brains and in particular children’s ability to focus and pay attention. What happened was that a group of ordinary people banded together and said, “Why are we allowing this? Why are we allowing the lead industry to fuck up our children’s brains?” It’s important to note what those people didn’t demand. They didn’t say let’s ban all paint. They said let’s ban the specific component in the paint that’s harming our ability to pay attention. They fought for years to get the lead out of the paint, and they succeeded. It was banned.

MH When it comes to social

media, then, what’s the ‘lead’?

JH It’s the business model. I spent a lot of time in Silicon Valley interviewing people who’d designed key aspects of the technologies we’re using all the time. And I had this fascinating moment with James Williams, who’d spoken at a tech conference to an audience that was literally people who’d designed the apps.

And he said to them, “If there’s anyone here who wants to live in the world we’re designing, please put up your hand”. And not one hand went up.

These are tech designers, right?

They love technology. The way big tech wants us to frame this debate is, are you pro tech or anti tech?

And, of course, if you hear that you think, quite rightly, I’m not going to give up my laptop or my phone, I’m not going to join the Amish, so I guess I’m pro tech. But that’s not the right question. The right question is, what tech do we want designed for what purposes and working in whose interests?

MH What’s the model as

of now?

JH When you open Facebook, TikTok or Instagram, those apps immediately begin to make money

s e v li e s o o h c ld u o h s “We where we c an think deepl y, and achiev e

out of you in two ways. The first is obvious: you see ads. The second way is much more important: everything you do on those apps is scanned and sorted by the artificial-intelligence algorithms.

They are figuring out who you are.

They are hoovering up information about you. They’re learning in immense detail what kind of person you are – what you like, what you don’t like, what turns you on, what keeps you scrolling, what makes you angry. You are the product that they sell to the real customer – the advertisers. But just as importantly, they’re learning all this info about you so they can keep you scrolling.

They’re figuring out what the weaknesses are in your attention to keep you scrolling. Every time you pick up your phone and open those apps, they make money. And the longer you scroll, the more money they make. Sean Parker, one of the biggest initial investors in Facebook, says they designed Facebook to be maximally addictive – they knew what they were doing, and they did it anyway. What I say is, you can have social media that’s not designed around this model.

MH Hmmm. At school, there

were the various groups – the jocks, the high achievers, the geeks. Well, it feels like the geeks have won the battle for world domination. They’ve largely transferred life from the physical world to the world of screens, where they were always most comfortable. So why would they change anything now ?

JH It’s interesting because those geeks have a lot to offer. They’re often great people. The tragedy is that we could have had all the technological benefit – and going forward, we certainly can – without being tied to this model of hacking our attention.

MIND

work deepl y, our goals”

MH But do they know when to

stop? Can they ever leave well enough alone?

JH I totally get the point you’re making, but I’d be careful about who we’re calling the ‘they’ because most people who work in Silicon Valley don’t want the current business model. Most of them would be much happier working in a model that was serving and aiding people’s attention. Oh, it turns out you feel good when you meet up with actual human beings and look into their eyes rather than fucking doom-scrolling? The technology to do that exists today.

My friends in Silicon Valley could design it in a week. [Ideally, big tech would decide], You know what, guys? We’ve made enough money.

Let’s stop fucking up people’s brains. And it’s important that this happens soon because we’re in a race. Many of the factors I write about that are harming our attention, many of them are going to get worse on the current trajectory. We should choose lives where we can think deeply, where we can work deeply, where we can achieve our goals. We can choose a better life. But we’ve got to fight for it.

MH What are the stakes,

do you think?

JH I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the world is having its biggest crisis of democracy since the 1930s at the same time as we’re having this enormous crisis in our ability to pay attention. If we can’t listen to each other, if we can’t think clearly, we’re not going to be able to achieve collective goals. The climate crisis can be solved. But

we will need to be able to focus, to have sane conversations with each other, and to think clearly. The solutions are not going to be achieved by an addled population who are switching tasks every three minutes and screaming at each other all the time in an algorithmpumped fury. Think about the ozone-layer crisis of the 1980s. I remember as a kid being terrified by it. There were these chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that were in hairsprays and fridges that were going into the atmosphere and destroying the layer of ozone that protects the Earth from the sun. And it was interesting what happened.

Ordinary people absorbed the science; they distinguished science from lies, bullshit and conspiracy theories, and then in a very sustained way, pressured their governments – very different governments – to ban CFCs. They succeeded, and as a result the ozone layer is almost completely healed. I don’t think anyone thinks that would happen now. A lot of people would say, “Well, how do we even know that the ozone layer exists?” We would tribalise on both sides around crazy, aggravating identities and we wouldn’t solve the problem. The factors that are destroying our individual attention are the same factors destroying our collective attention, so we need to deal with these parallel crises. It’s not that the attention crisis is the biggest problem in the world. Sure, there are bigger problems. But if we don’t deal with that, we can’t deal with anything else.

Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention by Johann Hari (Bloomsbury Publishing) is out now.

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THE SECRETS TO LIVING WELL, ACCORDING TO

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JEFF

TACT ICS

GOLDBLUM Hollywood’s favourite eccentric reveals how approaching life with humour and honesty can make you weirdly happy BY

BEN JHOT Y PHOTOGR APHY BY A RT S TREIBER FOR UNIVERSAL PICTURES AND AMBLIN ENTERTAINMENT

“ERRH, EEEREEEEH”. Jeff Goldblum is making a noise that sounds a little like a labouring early-2000s dial-up connection, as he searches for a succinct answer to what I had assumed was a straightforward question. The problem is that for Goldblum there’s no such thing. For him, any given topic or question has so many possible answers, so many sentences that might be uttered, so many memories that might be recalled, so many joyful experiences that might be revisited.

The noise he makes is possibly the first undeniable “Goldblumism” I’ve managed to elicit from him today, as I wait for one of Hollywood’s most famously enigmatic stars to reveal his favourite meal. “Oh, I love food so much and I’m not picky,” says Goldblum finally, closing his eyes as he runs a clawed hand through his unruly salt and pepper locks. "I think even as a kid, I wasn’t.

Sorry, but I like everything. Oh my gosh.

Well, I love breakfast and this morning I had some scrambled eggs and Tabasco sauce and some raw onions. And some orange juice. It was just great. But last night, oh my gosh, we went to this restaurant and I really enjoyed this Italian salad, which was like the antipasto salad, including salami and cheese with some Italian dressing. And then I had some spaghetti Bolognese. Man, that was good. It was so hot when it first hit the table. And it reminded me of my mum’s . . . she used to make this spaghetti

Bolognese in a big green bowl. I sure liked that.”

This delightfully meandering, thoroughly whimsical answer is vintage Goldblum. The 69-year-old father of two teeters on the precipice of self-caricature without ever succumbing to it. In Goldblum’s world, life is too rich, too complex to limit yourself to definitive answers. He’s made his name by embracing all aspects of his personality: strengths, flaws, foibles and, yes, eccentricities, deploying them sans a script (or an editor!). He’s made weirdness his calling card and become beloved for it. “I aspire to being honest and authentic,” he tells me on a Zoom call from his home in LA. “I’m not trying to fool anybody.”

Goldblum has brought this same search for truth to the cavalcade of oddball characters he’s portrayed on screen. After small parts in Death Wish and Invasion of The Body Snatchers in the ’70s, he broke out as a manipulative journalist in The Big Chill in 1983, before playing mad scientist Seth Brundle in The Fly, carrying a fly around in a paper bag as part of his prep. Since then, he’s pinballed between indie fare, like Igby Goes Down and blockbusters, such as Independence Day, Thor: Ragnarok and, of course, the Jurassic franchise to which he returns this June in Jurassic World Dominion.

There he plays scientist Dr Ian Malcolm,

a role he describes as pulling on “an old, rugged boot”.

That same description might fit Goldblum himself one day but not today, for he’s aging at a rather glacial pace – he’s more like a pair of classic, well-maintained cowboy boots you pick up at a flea market. Indeed, with his seasoned, rakish looks and lanky frame, he’s become something of a high-end clothes horse of late, taking to the catwalk at Milan Fashion Week earlier this year. At the same time, his made-for-memes personality and exuberant mannerisms frequently translate into online gold. Aside from acting, Goldblum's other great love is jazz piano. He practises every day and plays each Wednesday night at the Rockwell Club in LA. He became a first-time father at 63 and now has two young boys, Charlie and River, with his third wife, Emilie, a former Olympic gymnast. In the public imagination he occupies a space somewhere between Bill Murray and Nicolas Cage.

If it sounds like a singular, charmed life, it’s not one devoid of lessons. Here, one of Hollywood’s true originals reveals his secrets to living well – though, he warns with a smile, “Everybody shouldn’t aspire to being Jeff Goldblum”. Nor should you attempt, as the adage goes, to be the best version of yourself. Just be yourself, he says. Drop the act, in other words.

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ODDS & ENDS

Highlights from Goldblum’s iconic career

1978 INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS

1983 THE BIG CHILL

1986 THE FLY 1988 EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY

1989 THE TALL GUY 1993 JURASSIC PARK

1996 INDEPENDENCE DAY 2002 IGBY GOES DOWN

2018 JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM

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2017 THOR: RAGNAROK

2022 JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION

PHOTOGRAPHY: IMDB.COM

2004 THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU

“I ASPIRE TO BEING HONEST AND AUTHENTIC. I'M NOT TRYING TO FOOL ANYBODY”

TACT ICS

1

MAXIMISE YOUR MORNING

“I get up very early because our kids need to be off to school by a quarter of eight, so we’re cooking breakfast for them at 6:30. And at seven o’clock, I start going over piano with them. They both study piano and I’m the designated facilitator for their rehearsals. But before that I’ve got to get my own workout in at the gym and my own piano work done. So, there’s a lot to do. I like to get the routine things done early on. That way I can be as free as a bird for as much of the day as possible.”

2

BE GRATEFUL

“I tell you I’m lucky. I’ve had a plateful of lucky experiences in my life and I was just thinking the other day that if I was peevish in one way or another about one thing or another, it would be petty. It would legitimately come under the petty category.

I think I should be thanking my lucky stars every day, which I try to do. I am full of gratitude. But I do enjoy myself. I’ve been lucky enough to be an actor, which I was always crazy about. It’s the serious business of play and I’m a playful sort.”

3

DON’T TRY TO FOOL ANYONE, ESPECIALLY YOUR KIDS

“In the real world, there are challenges and disturbances of one kind or another. And if you have kids, you know that it’s a rollercoaster of challenges. But I do find that besides other things, including communication and firmness here and there, humour isn’t a bad thing to season into the mix. We have Charlie and River.

Charlie was writing in a book the other day and he wrote, ‘Dada is a brave and happy person’. So even though they see me in my most vulnerable moments, they have an impression that I’m happy-go-lucky.”

4

BE HONEST

“I had good acting teachers early on and I still consider myself a student in trying to get better. Part of trying to make made-up situations credible is to imbue them with a kind of authenticity. The actors I admire, they’re truth seekers. If you’re trying to be a good actor, you have to know yourself and not be a phony person. I mean, acting is full of fabrication, anyway. You’re a liar and you’re lying all over the place! So, the good acting teachers told me, ‘Hey, figure out what’s true within that’. I think I’ve gotten better at it. I think I’ve gotten better at just being open and free and trustful of who I am and then presenting that. Relationships seem to work better with that approach. So,

that’s what I aspire to. Even in a situation like this, that some might consider an opportunity for some kind of performance or a presentation of yourself that is contrived to be a certain way, my approach is, well, just tell the truth. Just be honest and be yourself.

And if that isn’t interesting enough, then there you go.”

5

DON’T LET THE HATERS GET YOU DOWN

“I have home movies of me as a baby, where my two older brothers are trying to torment me with a hairbrush. I was unflappable. I was happy and I didn’t let it get to me.”

6

FIND YOUR TRIBE

“Growing up things did get complicated for me in school and with family things. And then puberty came on and I was kind of a different kid in the group.

But then I found another group, who wanted to be actors in summer camp. And then I burst, just burst with ecstasy. And I developed this obsession with acting and this group that I now considered myself to be part of. I was still in Pittsburgh but after that I was dying to get out and go to New York and be an actor.”

7

DISCIPLINE PAYS OFF

“I took piano lessons early on and I was a bad student. I would not practise. I didn’t know the joys and the fruitfulness of discipline yet – how getting the less immediately satisfying work done can pay off later. What helped me was getting introduced to jazz pieces. I loved them so much and that’s when I sat down and was like, I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to get this, but I really need to learn this. And that sort of informed my acting. I realised a scene may not be fun right now, but I’ve got to figure out how to put in the work so that I can be free and get that moment of enjoyment and elation later. I had this assistant [on Jurassic World Dominion], Stephen Knight, and every day, whether I was shooting or not, we would go over the whole script, my whole part. And as I worked on it, I kept getting ideas here and there. And I would write them down so I didn’t forget. Most of them would be irrelevant, just part of the process of aligning myself with the material.

But sure enough, a couple of things that I suggested got put in the film. I think keeping your eye on the ball and doing everything thoroughly, results in the most free, joyful rendering of whatever it is you're doing, music, acting or anything else.”

8

GO TO BED EARLIER

9

KEEP ACTIVE

10

USE WHAT EXISTS

“I’m not too far away from the line that everybody follows where everything’s going to collapse very, very soon. But I think you can do yourself a little favour here and there if you cut out smoking, try to eat sensibly and exercise is probably a good idea. I’ll tell you, sleep is a good idea. Last night, I went to bed just 15 minutes earlier, when my body said that’s enough, you’re tired. Don’t try to keep yourself up after this, even though the clock says you’re allowed to, go to sleep right now. And I did. And I got, like, nine hours' sleep. And I tell you, I’d be a different person right now if I’d had six or seven hours. I’d not be as youthful, vigorous and bushy-tailed a character.”

I like athletics. I picked up a tennis racquet last week with the kids and I’d be doing that all the time if I could. But the thing that I’m able to do and really fit into a routine with everything else going on, is lifting weights. We have a gym set up here and when I’m on the road I find something.

I’ve done bodybuilding stuff where you split the program. One day is legs, the other day is chest. And I’ve worked hard at it. These days, I start with some treadmill and do some cardio and warm things up and then do a circuit of free weights and machines that gets every part of the body, all the muscle groups. And I do it in this way, really quite quickly, where I really enjoy it. I do that and finish up with some more cardio and stretching. I do that every day. And then, if I can get my steps, I get my steps.”

"My acting teacher, Sandy Meisner, said that. It means, find something in the moment, in the space around you. If you’re talented enough, you’ll find the perfect thing, that’s meant for you.

Use it creatively.

Likewise, everything inside of you is just what you need. Use what exists.”

Jurassic World Dominion is in cinemas June 9.

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The Making Man

Notions of gender, sex and social roles have been subject to closer scrutiny in the past few years than perhaps ever before.

So, what does ‘masculinity’ mean in 2022?

And how does it shape our sense of who we are – or who we feel we’re supposed to be? Men’s Health spoke to eight men, each with very different stories, about what modern manhood means to them BY

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JA MIE MILL A R, SCA RLE T T WRENCH, IA N TAYLOR AND TOBY WISEM A N ART WORK BY PE TER CROW THER

MIND

ROLE PLAY Our core values and identities shift over time.

Where do you find purpose?

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It’s a question we’re often asked as a magazine: what does masculinity mean to us, and to you, our readers, today? After all, it’s in our name: we are a publication for men.

For some, the very idea of gendered magazines might seem passé.

Others might argue that a binary view of gender is, in itself, a bit old-fashioned. It’s true that many of the themes this magazine explores – fitness, food, mental health, personal relationships – are universal.

And yet, it’s difficult to move through life and be wholly unaffected by ideas of what it means to be ‘a man’, whether those ideas feel empowering or limiting.

Unlike women, who by necessity have fought long and hard to challenge conventions around gender roles, men are less inclined to examine how notions of masculinity have shaped the way they see themselves, the choices they make or those that are made for them. Your own ideas about what it means to be a man might come from many places: fathers, grandfathers, teachers, coaches, action heroes, sporting champions.

For such a simple-sounding question, it demands an incredibly complex answer. In fact, it demands many different answers. This is our effort to capture some of that mutability.

The Musician

Rapper, songwriter and mental-health campaigner STEPHEN MANDERSON is better known by his stage name, Professor Green. He was raised by his grandmother and great-grandmother on a council estate and lost his father to suicide when he was 24. He and his partner have a one-year-old son, Slimane

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WHAT IS IT TO BE A MAN? As a kid, I found the whole thing really confusing. You spend your twenties trying to be all of these things – a man, an adult, a grown-up – and you think there’s a point in life when it just happens. But it’s a learning curve; a steep one, at times. Now, more than knowing what it is to be ‘a man’, I know what it is to be myself.

I think there are a lot of men who feel quite displaced at the moment, especially the older generations. Men’s place in the world is shifting, as is women’s. But women have fought so long for their position in society that men can feel a little bit behind, because we aren’t as honest about how we feel. We don’t have these big discussions with each other.

This is all a generational hangover, right? The stiff upper lip is a hangover from the war. And, yes, there will be times when you have to puff your chest out and be resilient. But when you come out the other side, you have to process

it. Otherwise your trauma becomes your identity.

There’s no single trauma that’s fucked up my life, it’s all been accumulative. My dad taking his own life was traumatic. Getting stabbed was traumatic. But no single event caused my difficulties throughout the larger part of my life.

All of my friends who’ve been in jail, who’ve been stabbed or have stabbed people, they’re all traumatised. Some of them are dealing with it. But some can’t speak about it because they’re still in an environment where it’s not safe to be vulnerable. There are a lot of people who are not given the chance to be gentle.

When men talk about emotions, there’s often no ‘s’ on the end, there’s just one emotion: anger, which is almost an adult fear.

Because you don’t know how to express anything beyond that – or are scared to in case you’re deemed, what, effeminate? I don’t understand that. The women in my family were incredibly bloody

strong. My nan worked three jobs a day.

My son turned one in March. I don’t ever want him to be afraid to tell me anything. I think a lot of people can fuck their children up by projecting on to them what they wanted to be. The only thing I want for my child is that he doesn’t experience the insecurity or the anxiety that I did.

There was a point in life when the purpose of having children would have been to correct my own upbringing. That wasn’t the reason that I had a child. Slimane was born purely out of love. He’s not a project, he’s my son.

I grew up in a house with four generations. I took on so much ancestral bullshit that I wasn’t even alive for. Things become hardwired at a young age, so your behaviour and actions are things you always have to be aware of. I had to do a lot of work on myself so that I didn’t pass [negative] traits on to my child. I think that’s every parent’s duty.

MIND

INTERNAL CONFLICTS Pressures to appear invulnerable can feel at odds with our inner experiences.

JULY 2022 105

Former Wales and British Lions rugby union captain GARETH THOMAS came out in 2009 while still playing and remains one of the few high-profile, openly gay sportsmen. Since retiring in 2011 and revealing in 2019 that he has HIV, he’s completed an Ironman to challenge perceptions I ALWAYS FOLLOWED what my older brothers did. They both played rugby, so I played rugby.

Because they were physically more mature, they were always better than me. I used to get on their nerves because I was trying to nip at their heels. My eldest brother never held back. I learned how to take a beating.

My dad is someone who doesn’t say much, but when he speaks, people listen. If my mother said, “You wait until your father gets home”, we knew we were in trouble. When he’d give us pep talks before certain sporting events when we were 12 or 13, you’d hang on every word because it wasn’t often he spoke in that way.

You become 17, 18 and you go from playing against people the same age as you to people who are bigger. So I started lifting weights. It gave me this sense of wearing a suit of armour. But the reality is it’s a mask you wear to make yourself feel invincible when you’re hiding from people who are better, more skilful.

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A NEW PATH The ideas we learn in early life don’t dictate our later choices.

The Head Chef

JACKSON BOXER is the acclaimed chef-patron behind lauded restaurants Brunswick House and Orasay.

A precocious talent, he was renowned for his highly inventive food as much as his decadent lifestyle in his early career. Now clean and sober, the father of three has a renewed perspective on life

MY INITIAL UNDERSTANDING of masculinity was created – and then rudely disrupted – when I was a young boy. At home, my mother didn’t just hold the family together, she provided for it. She was a successful artist – an incredibly confident, expressive and driven person. It was my mother who made most family decisions. My father, a writer at the time, was a strong character, but not demonstrative or prolific in the way my mother was. As a result, I didn’t grow up with any assumption of male dominance.

I was quite gentle, passive and self-involved. So when I reached secondary school, it was slightly traumatising to find that life wasn’t really like that. To find that social success depended on competitive dominance. All the things that I’d been raised to see as aspirational traits – conscientiousness, kindness, empathy – singled me out for humiliation and ridicule. I felt I had to unlearn these things, to toughen up.

The kitchen was a draw for many reasons. I loved the food, but it was also a place to win respect. I started work in restaurants with many points

PHOTOGRAPHY: CHRIS FLOYD; RANKIN; TREVOR LEIGHTON; MATT HARDY/THRUDARK; PAUL GRACE; GETTY IMAGES

The Rugby Player

Because I couldn’t be authentic, I had to become what others thought I should be. And that was someone who wasn’t afraid to use his size and strength to defend his so-called masculinity by being aggressive in his social life.

Because a masculine man – as I thought – doesn’t walk away, doesn’t decide to have a conversation instead.

I’m constantly having to call people out [for discrimination] because you get into this environment where there’s five or six men together and everyone’s trying to tell the best story, sometimes to the detriment of others. It’s easy to be the one to go along with it, to say nothing.

You need to be the one who’s going to stand up. One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned is to not be a bystander.

When my husband and I were assaulted in Cardiff, I remember these young lads were kicking and punching me and I was on the floor thinking that if I punch back, because I’m a lot bigger and stronger, all of a sudden this has flipped to me potentially seriously hurting one of them. When I had the opportunity to speak to them, I realised that, through their upbringing, they had the justification that what they were doing was okay. I thought: if these guys get arrested, that’s going to justify the hate. That made us walk away feeling like we weren’t victims, and that they would learn a positive message about the LGBT community.

I wish I could transfer who I am now to the Gareth Thomas of 20, 21, and play with this authenticity.

I know there were moments when I made the wrong decision because I was worrying about what everyone else thought, rather than doing what felt right. I would love to know what I could’ve achieved. Being authentic gives you the chance to be the best version of you.

MIND

The Dancer

THEOPHILUS O BAILEY – stage name ‘Godson’ – is a dancer who currently appears in Magic Mike Live, the Channing Tatum-derived stage show based on the film about a troupe of male strippers. He’s also danced and choreographed for FKA Twigs, Fergie and Dua Lipa, among others

“My dad was always about providing.

I apply that pressure to myself” – THEOPHILUS O BAILEY

to prove: that I could be tough, that I could be independent. In the kitchen, if you work hard, if you listen and do as you’re told, you can become very useful very quickly. The sense of reward that came from being respected for my work was enormous.

By the time I was 23, I had opened my own place. At that stage, I didn’t have a vision for the restaurant. I just had this anarchic predisposition towards figuring it out as I went along.

The nice thing about being young is that no one expects you to be an authority. Later, as we became more successful, and I had multiple kitchens to look after, we had to professionalise.

I was under a lot of pressure, while also battling a huge sense of personal inferiority and feeling out of my depth. I suppose I’d set on an idea of masculinity that centred around self-reliance, but also a suppression of these insecurities. Unfortunately, I proceeded to watch as my addictions and compulsive behaviour destroyed it all.

For much of my twenties, I was using drugs and alcohol to get over this insecurity and shyness, yet behaving in a wildly

extroverted, obnoxious way that was out of all proportionate compensation. Having since been through recovery and experienced Narcotics and Alcoholics Anonymous, I know there’s nothing that’s unique to men about that. But it’s true that men are statistically more reckless. My thirties have been a process of realisation – in order to re-evaluate my sense of self, I’ve had to deprive myself of easy hedonism.

There are many things I did when high in my twenties for which I feel deep remorse. You can’t just indulge pleasures wherever you see them.

Especially when they stem from insecurity or become suffused with ideas of power and dominance. That’s when they become poisonous. To me, that is related to an adolescent insecurity that is fundamentally unmasculine.

I don’t view masculinity on a spectrum with femininity – like two opposing ideas. I see it as being about immaturity versus maturity. An adult male isn’t the antithesis of an adult female, he’s the antithesis of an immature male.

AS PART OF MY MAGIC MIKE AUDITION, there was an interview.

They asked how I felt about women: “What do you think women want?” I said, “I think women want honesty and security”. Just straight down the middle, this is who I am and what I’m bringing to the table.

There are the traditional strippers – a fireman, a police officer, Tarzan, a cowboy. All of these men play significant roles in society and in stories when it comes to protecting, or directing a situation.

I believe these characters provide a sense of security. I think the aesthetics can sometimes be secondary to that.

In the Magic Mike stage show, we examine these stereotypes. We ask, what does she really want from a man? The modern ‘ideal’ men presented in our show are also in positions of protection or direction – but this time it’s “a CEO who pays men and women equally”, “a vet”, “a PT who knows how to get you into shape”. The dynamic shifts to what’s seen as more important in today’s world.

Being on stage in Magic Mike feels good. I’m there to provide. To fulfil whatever fantasies the audience has. I need to be in a space where I’m willing to just give.

I grew up in east London. I discovered dance when I was 14. I’d poke my nose in every now and then at lunchtime until I plucked up the courage to join the class. I went to a boys’ school, so dancing wasn’t popular. But I loved it. Boys being boys, they’d tease me. But I’m always going to do what makes me happy and not allow others to tell me what I should be doing with my life.

I used to be quite a chunky lad. Then I started focusing on what I was eating, how I was training. My dad bought me a pull-up bar when I was 16. I fell in love with fitness, as well as dance. Staying in shape comes naturally now. It’s the foundation of who I am. I train six days a week.

For me, it’s natural for men to take care of themselves. I look at my dad and brother. My dad always wore a suit.

He has a range of suits and fragrances.

My brother was pretty much the same – always fit, always in the gym.

My dad was always about providing. He came to this country from Nigeria and he wanted to make something of himself. I apply that pressure to myself. My values are to provide and protect.

I do believe that I have a feminine energy or quality, too. As a choreographer, I have to understand what makes a woman feel comfortable. That skill helps with the Magic Mike performance. You have to be able to read the audience. You have to ask, “Can I take your hand?” You need to know. My mum has always drilled it into me, how to treat a woman.

JULY 2022 107

“I was super competitive, always wanting to win.

Maybe I felt like I had something to prove” ANTHONY ‘STAZ’ STAZICKER

The Elite Soldier

Having called time on a potential football career due to injury, ANTHONY ‘STAZ’ STAZICKER joined the Royal Marines at 21. After 13 years’ service, including 10 in the elite Special Boat Service, and being awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross for his actions in Afghanistan, he co-founded special forces-inspired clothing brand ThruDark My parents split up when I was seven and I moved from Wigan to Nottingham with my mum and stepfather. I had a difficult time adjusting and not many role models. When we weren’t fighting each other, I looked up to my brother. He was that protector growing up.

Then I got heavily into football and the next in line were coaches and PE teachers. And then, losing my mum at 11, dealing with that – or not dealing with it . . . my grandparents moved down, so my brother and I moved into a bungalow with them.

My grandad never missed my football matches. He was there with me through thick and thin. And although there wasn’t so much love and affection, it was more that I knew he was there.

My mum passing away left me with a lot of questions. A lot of anger.

My grandparents were a bit old school, so we didn’t really talk about things like that. At that time, I wanted to ignore it. Sport was an outlet for me: being super competitive, always wanting to win. Maybe I felt like I had something to prove.

To run into a room and potentially lay down your life for your comrades . . . the military breeds a unique sense of togetherness and brotherhood. Because of the environment you’re in, a lot of stuff probably is tucked away, it’s not spoken about. Do you feel fear? Yeah, of course, but you’re operating, you’re acting, you’re reacting to a situation and dealing with it, doing what you’ve been trained to do.

Masculinity now is a choice, I think, that’s been afforded by the smokescreen of a temporary state of order. And that’s a good thing.

For me, I think we still need ‘sheepdogs’. So I’m going to raise my boys to never be bullies, but to always look after yourselves and, more importantly, each other and your friends. I think you should improve yourself physically and mentally.

I think it’s about being honest with your kids, with yourself, about what the world is. Understanding that life’s hard. The longer you protect your children from that truth, the harder it’s going to be for them. Strength of character is a big thing that I’m going to drive into my kids. Old-school values that I think are good: integrity, loyalty, authenticity. I don’t think we should encourage weakness. I don’t think weak men are any use to anyone. But you can show vulnerability. We’re all vulnerable. It’s important to recognise those feelings and speak about them openly.

I detest the phrase ‘toxic masculinity’. Biologically, I believe men are wired to be more aggressive than women. I don’t think it should be shamed out of boys or men if you’re aggressive – if you’re a protector. In the same respect that it shouldn’t be shamed if men or boys aren’t that way inclined. We’re all different.

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MIND

The Trans Rights Advocate

JAKE GRAF is an actor, writer, director and activist.

Raised as a girl, he began his gender transition at the age of 28.

Graf and his wife have a daughter, born in 2020 and delivered via surrogacy using his eggs and a second child on the way

ADDED VALUE Hold on to ideas that help you and question those that don’t.

I HAD NO CHOICE but to live as a woman for the first 28 years of my life, but I was miserable and I knew it wasn’t right for me. That didn’t mean I longed to be tougher, less communicative or emotional or any of those things associated with the traditional view of masculinity. All I can say is that I knew, from age two or three, that I was male.

I didn’t fit with the girls and gravitated towards the boys. I didn’t want to wear skirts. I didn’t want to be called ‘she’. I didn’t want to be called my birth name.

But I was conditioned as female.

I was raised as a girl in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher’s reprehensible Section 28, so trans and gay issues couldn’t legally be talked about in schools. It was very much: put on a pretty dress; pass round the crisps at the party; give your uncle a kiss. My wife is also trans and we talk about the ways that we were brought up.

Hannah was brought up to be outspoken, to be heard and seen.

I was brought up to be quiet and know my place.

On the flip side, I can talk about my emotions, I can talk about how I’m feeling and make

myself vulnerable, which Hannah finds much, much harder to do.

When I eventually came out and transitioned, I could walk down the street and no one would ever know that I was trans.

That is a luxury a lot of trans men have because testosterone is a powerful hormone. It’s certainly a luxury that a lot of trans women don’t have because, again, testosterone is so powerful. My wife has a deep voice, she’s broader. Trans women find themselves attacked because it challenges people’s fragile masculinity. Whereas trans men, we kind of pass through the world unseen.

When I started testosterone, people said, “You’re going to feel aggressive, you’ll feel angry”. But I’d been angry and aggressive all my life. It actually filled me with a sense of calm because I knew I was becoming who I’d always known myself to be. Two surprising effects were that the sex drive rocketed and I found it was harder to cry with testosterone coursing through my veins.

A lot of trans people, when they transition, go hypermasculine or hyper-feminine.

Trans women might wear heels and nails, go super glam. I started holding doors for women and pulling out chairs. Older women would thank me, but younger women hated the perceived sexism of it.

People often ask me what I think it means to be a man. But everything I say – being strong, being stoic, being a caregiver – women are all those things, too.

It’s not that I think the genders are blurring, because I’m very binary and I fought hard to be recognised as a binary man. But I think it’s harder to define what that is.

JULY 2022 109

CALL OF DUTY Don’t allow conflicting expectations to steer you off course.

“I guess I’m old school.

I was a tough guy. But that’s not what makes you a man” MICHAEL BISPING

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MIND

The Fashion Designer

Award-winning designer PATRICK GRANT was working in engineering when he saw Savile Row tailor Norton & Sons was for sale. He’s since revived subsidiary E. Tautz & Sons as a ready-to-wear brand, founded ethical label Community Clothing and bought clothing manufacturer Cookson & Clegg

The UFC Fighter

MICHAEL BISPING is a retired mixed martial artist who became the Ultimate Fighting Championship Middleweight Champion in 2016, beating Luke Rockhold despite only having sight in one eye. He’s also appeared in Hollywood movies and has three children with his wife Rebecca I grew up in a volatile household. Every day it was arguing, shouting and – whether it was my brothers, my dad, my mum – I got a clip every day. So, when I was confronted with situations, it didn’t seem unnatural to fix those with my fists. I was never a troublemaker, but nor would I back down from trouble. I got in a lot of scraps. And when I was younger, that feeling of imposing your will over another man in a fight, that was the best feeling in the world.

When I found martial arts, it gave me some direction because I found something I was good at. I got confidence, I gained recognition. My father put my results in the local newspaper.

Everyone knows about the benefits of martial arts for kids: it gives you discipline and teaches you about respect.

I guess I’m old school. I was a tough guy. But that’s not what makes you a man. It’s doing the right thing. Not shirking your responsibilities. Being a man of your word. Providing for your family. Addressing any shortcomings. It’s not about being a tough guy or a world champion.

I remember fighting in Glasgow against Thales Leites and my son was in my corner. And before you step into the Octagon, you have a moment with your team: a hug, a chat, a high-five. My son gave me a big hug and I almost cried my eyes out.

Next fight, he asked if he could be in my corner again and I had to tell him, “I’d love you to be, but I got too emotional last time. I can’t go into a cage to fight another man crying my eyes out.”

Fighting is obviously a very physical sport. It seems animalistic and feral, but the mind controls everything. You can’t be acting out of emotion. Whatever you do in life, if you’re angry, you’re never the best version of yourself. And I was – I was an angry man. I fought on instinct and physicality.

When I fought for the belt, I took the fight on two weeks’ notice. Incredible pressure. And when things weren’t going my way in training, I’d lose my temper. My coach said to me, “This is the pinnacle of a lifetime of hard work. How about we enjoy the process?” He was right. Why was I letting the aggression and pressure build up? As soon as I saw it from that perspective, everything changed. I had more success in training, in fights, in life, and I became world champion.

– Bisping is available on digital download (bispingdoc.com)

I CAN’T REMEMBER a time when I wasn’t into clothes. I recall as a five-year-old being really into making sure that my school uniform always looked immaculate.

Growing up, I read fashion magazines. I’ve got pictures of my room at [boarding] school and it’s all pictures from Vogue; my roommate’s wall was covered with Bon Jovi and shit like that. I didn’t even think for a second that wasn’t normal. Vogue and Elle both had men’s sections, like, once a quarter. I remember being a kid in Edinburgh, wandering around in a Panama hat with a Liberty scarf tied round it. My best friend wouldn’t walk next to me. I was big and played rugby. It was an odd combination. I’m sure I got the piss taken out of me slightly. But I simply thought, “Well, I just look better than you lot”.

When I lived in San Francisco, about 25 years ago, I remember wearing a skirt quite often – well, it was a sarong. David Beckham did it about five years later. I thought like, “Was he watching?”

I was lucky enough to grow up with my dad and he was in some ways a good role model.

He worked hard. He was my rugby coach, actually. He also took great care over his appearance. He took care of his clothes. I remember very vividly the rhythm with which he polished his shoes. He’d been a nightclub promoter and manager of a rock band that went on to become Marmalade. Later, he became an accountant.

The only grandad I knew had been a yarn designer for a firm in Galashiels [on the

Scottish Borders]. When I was growing up, he was in charge of bringing in investment to replace all the jobs lost when the textile industry collapsed.

Having spent time with him, I saw the effects of the decline of the textiles industry first-hand.

You see the unravelling of the social fabric. When I started at Norton’s, we made a conscious decision to support British textile manufacturers.

Thinking about the question of masculinity and what it means to be a man, more generally, I think about what it means to be a good human and what I want to do with my time on Earth. I’ve probably had half of it now, and I’ve been working for 25 years.

I’ve started to think very carefully about how I use the remaining 25 years of working life and what I want to achieve. What you do in life is much more important to your overall happiness than what you own. That’s why I want to build a lasting legacy.

JULY 2022 111

2022 TECH AW WORK

Crush your to-do list (office, yard, garage) with these gadgets that make any job fly by

Best

Indoor Garden Water your vegetables from your office with the WiFi-enabled Personal Rise Garden. It’s self-contained, with lights and a water tank you fill weekly, and houses eight plants. Choose from 60 seeds, everything from basic herbs to exotic vegetables. ($345; risegardens.com)

Best

Splurge Headphones Whether you need to zone out with a movie on your commute or zone in and focus at the office, the Apple AirPods Max deliver, with best-in-class adaptive noise cancelling (thanks to nine microphones and two powerful H1 chips) and warm, dynamic sound. ($899; apple.com/au)

Best

Lumbar Pillow With a grid design that aligns with your spine so your posture stays correct, the Purple Back Cushion has, ahem, your back during marathon gaming and work sessions. Think of it as a cost-effective alternative to a fancy office chair. ($169; fishpond.com.au)

Best

Air Purifier The Coway Airmega 250S is slender but covers up to 86 square metres and removes 99.99 per cent of dust particles.

Smart mode adjusts the fan speed based on air quality. ($784; desertcart.com.au)

112 MEN’S HE ALTH

E-asy Riders

ELECTRIC BIKES NOW DELIVER MORE SPEED, MORE BATTERY LIFE, AND MORE FUN

YES, THE WHEEL is being reinvented. A new breed of e-bikes lets you ride faster and farther than ever. From Brompton’s commuter-ready, six-gear, pedal-assist folding rig to Propella’s compact city explorer (with a roughly 50 km range and an 29 km/h top speed) to Rad’s fattyre beast (for blasting off-road at up to 32 km/h), there’s an e-bike for every desire.

– dale chong

WARDS

MAKE WORKING, PLAYING AND CHILLAXING – whether you’re WFH or going into an office – more fun with these cutting-edge tools, toys and gadgets

Best

Portable Gaming Unit Beat stress (and bad guys) anytime, anywhere – including your commute and boring Zooms – with the portable Nintendo Switch OLED model. The likes of Super Mario and Animal Crossing shine on the seven-inch OLED screen. ($539; nintendo.

Best

Automatic Coffee Machine

com.au)

Some imported espresso rigs look like hot-rod engines, bulked out with thingymajigs.

Skip that fuss with the Smeg Automatic Coffee Machine.

It’s a lean coffee (and espresso and ristretto and . . .) maker that takes up less space than a toaster. ($938; binglee.com.au)

Best

Drill The DeWalt Hammer Drill sure doesn’t feel cordless.

Credit the tanklike 18-volt, 6Ah battery, which will last through long jobs (and typically takes only an hour to charge).

Masonry, wood, metal – bring it on. ($339; dewalt.com.au)

Best

Desk Speaker In search of a speaker that looks as good as it sounds? See the Sony LSPX S3 Glass Sound Speaker. With this sleek Bluetooth device, which has 32 illumination settings, you’ll get clear 360° sound thanks to its organic glass tube and 46mm speaker. ($899; sony.com.au)

Best Folding E-Bike

Best Commuter E-Bike

Best Off-Road E-Bike

Brompton H6L

Propella Single-Speed Mini

RadRover 5 Electric Fat Bike

($2799; bromptonbikes.com.au)

($1039; fasterwheeler.com)

($2073; radpowerbikes.com)

JULY 2022 113

TECH AWARDS PLAY

The gear and toys to take your sweaty, fun outdoor adventures to the next level

Best

Carbon Rec Running Shoe A mutant of a running shoe, the Hoka One One Bondi X is both fast and smooth. That’s due to its midsole, which sandwiches a thin, responsive carbon-fibre plate between thick layers of cushioning. ($329.99; theathletesfoot.com.au)

Best

Portable Speaker Most portable speakers sound muffled at high volume, but not the Ultimate Ears Hyperboom.

It delivers crisp tunes with plenty of bass. Connect up to four devices and you and your squad can play DJ – all night long (all night . . .). ($599; ultimateears.com)

Best

Swim Goggles The original Form goggles showed your pace and distance right inside the lenses.

The new Form Smart Swim Goggles go deeper with the data: you can download and view a workout – endurance, power, sprint or technique. ($25 per month; au. formswim.com)

Best

Fitness Earbuds The JBL Reflect Flow Pro earbuds crush other brands for three reasons: the 30-hour battery life, the snug fit and what Jaybird calls Smart Ambient, which pipes high-quality audio into your ears but also lets you stay aware of the people and cars around you. ($269; jbl.com.au)

114 MEN’S HE ALTH

Training Partners FITNESS TRACKERS GET SWOLE WITH FEATURES

Best

Drone

THE NEW fitness trackers do way more than count steps.

They have built-in trainers, access to workouts and maps, and much more, so you’re never sweating completely solo. You also get health tools that can read your heart rate, track your sleep, and even measure your blood-oxygen level. Pick the right specialised tracker and it can help you better understand your body and achieve your goals for fitness, health and running. – brett williams

The DJI Mini 2 Drone is a small (around 200g) flying machine that can shoot 4K video, the gold standard for HD television. It can stay in the air for 30 minutes, too, letting you nab a bird’s-eye view of your kid’s sports game or your own short run. ($939; amazon.com.au)

Best Hardcore Fitness Tracker

Best

Cycling Helmet Beneath the roomy vents in the Giro Aether Spherical Helmet is new noggin-protecting tech, developed by Giro and Bell in partnership with the safety specialist MIPS. In a crash, the outer liner is designed to rotate around the inner liner so your brain gets much less of the impact. ($479; 99bikes.com.au)

Whoop 4.0

(free with subscription; whoop.com)

Best Overall Fitness Tracker

Best

Fun Camera The Polaroid Now+ snaps classic Polaroid photos, but it also hooks up to your phone via the Polaroid app, so you can take creative control with double exposures, funky filters and more. ($229.95; us.polaroid.com.au)

Apple Watch Series 7

(from $599; apple.com/au)

Best Fitness Tracker for Runners

Best

Walking Shoe With FLUIDFORM™ DIP P.U foam and a BIOM anatomical last that provides long-lasting cushioning, the Ecco Biom C will help you eat up any terrain, from concrete to trails. ($489.95; au.ecco.com)

Garmin Venu 2

($699; garmin.com)

JULY 2022 115

TECH AWARDS RECOVER

You’ve earned it! Use these devices to relax deeper, soothe tired muscles and track your health with greater accuracy

Best

Electric Toothbrush Sleek and simple, the Philips One

by Sonicare has all the power you want in an electric toothbrush but in a small package. Micro vibrations gently clean teeth better than your manual brush does. One battery lasts three months and the new rechargeable version gives you 30 days of brushing on a single charge.

(From $44; amazon.com.au)

Best

Pressure Cooker An extreme multitasker, the Breville Fast Slow Pro can slow-cook short ribs in eight hours and quick-cook homemade chicken soup in ten minutes. A Crockpot crossed with an Instant Pot, it prepares whatever you want in the time you actually have.

Makes a mean dessert, too.

Best

($449; breville.com/au)

Body-Hair Trimmer The V-shaped head on the Panasonic Body Hair Trimmer lets you trim in any nook or cranny without bending yourself into a human pretzel. Use one of the three attachments to easily choose a length setting. ($70; bestbuy.com)

116 MEN’S HE ALTH

Best

Compression Vest Pro athletes swear by compression boots for lower-body circulation. Now, with the Therabody RecoveryAir Pro Compression Vest, the company that put the massage gun on the map is bringing that sensation to your upper body. Get ready for a gentle air massage for your shoulders, back, chest and core. Ahhhhhhh. ($399; therabody.com)

Best

Projector Too tired or anxious for a Friday night at the movies? Bring the theatre to you by firing up the LG HU810PW 4K UHD Projector, which beams crisp 4K video to any wall in your house (or outside your house). The best part: the nearinstant phone connectivity, which lets you start a home movie or the latest episode of Hawkeye on the big screen in a matter of seconds. ($4145; amazon.com)

Best

Ice Cream Maker Yes, the Ninja CREAMi Ice Cream Maker churns smooth, creamy ice cream. But don’t discount its milkshakes, gelatos, sorbets and smoothie bowls.

Because you’re adding the ingredients, any flavour is possible. Even coconut milk, pistachio, olive oil chocolate chip. If that’s what you’re into.

Data Agents

SMART SCALES GET EVEN SMARTER

CALL IT an arms race: smart scales that gather data by sending an electric current through your body are adding more and more features. KoreHealth measures body fat, water percentage and muscle and bone density.

Withings adds vascular age, an indicator of heart health. And InBody uses an ultrasensitive measuring system for best-in-class accuracy. Pick the one that suits your health needs. – ben court Best Budget Smart Scale

($319; jbhifi.com.au)

KoreScale Gen2

($100; yourkorescalegen2.com)

Best Cardio Smart Scale

Best

Home Recovery Device Icing your knees is so 2021. Strap the Hyperice X onto your knee and switch between hot and cold treatments. The process, known as contrast therapy, drives blood vessels to alternately constrict and expand, improving blood flow – and leaving your knees feeling great. ($550; hyperice.com)

Withings Body Cardio ($249; jbhifi.com.au)

Best Fitness Smart Scale

Best

Surround Sound Great surround sound has never before been available in such a small package. The Sonos Beam (Gen 2) weighs 2.8 kg but has five amplifiers, four midwoofers and one centre tweeter to deliver enough sound to fill a large room. And it takes only five minutes to connect it. $699; sonos.com

InBody H20N

($970; amazon.com.au)

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A DVERTI S I N G F EATUR E

MH Essentials Your monthly guide to what’s happening and what’s new

BEST FOOT FORWARD

WIND OF CHANGE

Drawing inspiration from traditional European menswear designs, the ECCO CITYTRAY collection is a modern interpretation of a timeless formal shoe.

Crafted from premium leathers, the CITYTRAY provides a comfortable alternative to a traditional men’s dress shoe. $279.75.

The Sirocco Series luxury men’s watch is inspired by the wind of the Sahara Desert, representing the energy we bring to bear when our spirit is tested.

Featuring hardened mineral crystal that won’t scratch and a choice of either solid surgical stainless steel or black elastomer straps, the Sirocco is ready for you to write your own legend. $1399 Visit shoparcis.com

Visit au.eco.com

PAR EXCELLENCE Want to keep track of your performance on the links?

TAG Heuer has launched a new generation of its Connected watch, the TAG Heuer Calibre E4 Golf Edition, with two new models in 42mm and 45mm. Built to deliver the ultimate in elegance and sporting performance, the stylish smartwatch offers access to the brand’s evergrowing ecosystem of exclusive sports activities and wellness apps. $3850

SPRAY IS THE WAY Need help quitting the sticks? Nicorette’s new QuickMist SmartTrack is the world’s first connected craving relief spray, using near field communication technology to connect to a behavioural support app, so you can track progress against a personalised plan. Simply spray, tap and track!

Visit tagheuer.com

Visit nicorette.com.au

THE CAT IS BACK! SWITCH ON YOUR FITNESS Whether you want to focus on strength, cardio or meditation, Fitness on Optus Sport is for you. At home or on-the-go, it’s your workout, your way.

Choose from strength, HIIT, yoga, pilates and more, with leading studios and trainers. sport.optus.com.au/fitness

The Brand New PUMA Velocity Nitro 2 are made to take you the distance. More supportive, more responsive and better than ever.

For whatever goal you are chasing, Run with PUMA. $220.

Visit au.puma.com

122 SHARPEN YOUR FORM ON SIX CLASSIC MUSCLE MOVES

B E C A U S E

F I T

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T H E

128 SPEED SECRETS OF A RIPPED MAN

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FEEL THE NEED FOR SPEED

Athletes of all sports have started embracing the art of the sprint, and if you want to crush kilojoules, build strength and supercharge your workouts, you will, too

BY MILO

F. BRYANT, PHOTOGR APHY BY JE AN-Y VES LEMOIGNE

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RUN LIKE THE WIND

FAST MUSCLE! Sprinting doesn’t just build speed.

You’ll build strength and size in four key muscle groups

Max sprint efforts have been absent from your training for too long. Time to explode

WHEN WAS THE last time you really sprinted?

Running all out, arms pumping, core braced, knees driving, feet detonating off the ground with every stride? For many of us, the answer is flailing through suicides back in high school or hitting the playground in even more ancient times.

But for the men and women practically flying on treadmills at the Better Every Day gym in Orlando, the answer is now. They’re members of the Movement/ Athleticism/Power (MAP) group class, which was created by trainer Trevor Anderson and features 10-second sprint intervals that push you to run all out.

“Sprinting is my solution when people start talking about their goals,” says Anderson, the owner and founder of Better Every Day. “As long as a person is healthy enough to do a 10-second interval, sprinting can be the solution for most things.”

The things he’s talking about are likely already the reasons you hit the gym: building muscle, shredding fat, chiselling your abs and prepping your body for backyard football and playground hoops. Infusing your workouts with a dose of speed can help with each goal. For years, pro sports teams have used speed work to hone power and explosive athleticism, which is partly why Lee Taft, a veteran trainer known as “the speed guy”, has conducted sprint clinics for the Philadelphia Phillies, Oklahoma City Thunder,

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and Boston Celtics for the past two decades. But the practice only recently began trickling down to trainers who work with mere mortals.

Sprinting was largely ignored by most gymgoers for years, in part because bodybuilding preached slow, controlled reps to forge muscle and long, steady jogs to melt fat.

As working out like a pro athlete became more of a thing and CrossFit eclipsed bodybuilding, more weekend warriors tried intense and diverse training methods. Over the past five years, the spread of manually powered treadmills that allow you to track your max speed has accelerated the trend even further by gamifying sprinting. Anderson recently told a client to hit 20km/h during his sprint. The client got to 22.

Reaching these benchmarks doesn’t come easy. Sure, you may run in a group fitness class (and the trainer may even tell you to “sprint”), but you’re rarely going completely all out in those settings. Sprinting requires you to expend max effort, willing yourself forward with every ounce of power you can muster. So intense is a true sprint that it’s over in 10-15 seconds, and you need minutes to recover before you’re ready for another one.

Yes, all of this is as energy draining as it sounds, so Anderson gets why you may initially be afraid to give it a try. “When people hear the word sprinting, they think of

BIG BACK

Forget relaxed, steady arms. You’ll pump your arms hard, challenging more mid-back muscle (and core strength) than you may think.

MAX GLUTES

For a split second during every stride, your torso and back leg should form a straight line, propelling you forward. Called “hip extension”, this moment requires your glutes to kick into overdrive – and mastering it builds athleticism and bulletproofs your lower back, too.

Usain Bolt,” he says. “They think that every sprint means there’s a guy running a 10-flat 100 metres and that’s what sprinting is all about.”

Except you’re not sprinting for a world record.

But you’re supercharging your body in a way that most training (and everyday life) simply can’t. Every step during a sprint is about power and precision, and this improves your first step in, well, everything. Your body learns how to start any motion quickly, and you’re insulating yourself against injuries that come from fast starts.

Try these three super-quick sprint workouts anytime, anywhere.

GET FAST AND FURIOUS Not sure where to start with your sprint journey? Choose one of the sprint workouts here

THE 10-MINUTE BEGINNER BLITZ

THE CARDIO/ EXPLOSION HYBRID

TIMING KEY SPRINT WALK BACK 50M JOG 30S REST

THE 9-WEEK SPEED PROGRAM

CORE CONTROL

Your early strides have you powerfully driving your knees to your chest as your body leans slightly forward, a moving mountain climber of sorts. This challenges your entire core (abs, lower-back extensors, obliques and much more) to brace tightly, a constant-tension challenge for as long as you’re running.

ON SPEED DIAL WHAT DO YOU WEAR DURING A SPRINT? START WITH THESE

HAM IT UP

INTENSITY

10

INTENSITY

10

INTENSITY

Your hamstrings play multiple roles on every single stride. They drive your knees to bend, key to getting your back leg off the ground and in front of your body during each step. Your hamstrings then work again, helping you straighten your legs in line with your torso and push off the ground.

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Rhone Swift Tank An ultralight, super breathable tank top that gives your arms plenty of room to move with freedom.

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Game plan: This workout teaches acceleration. Sprint 10 metres.

Walk back to the start. Repeat as many times as possible for 10 minutes. Add 5 metres each week, working up to 100. Do this twice a week.

Game plan: Learn to run fast under fatigue. Sprint for 100 metres, then jog very slowly for 50 metres. Repeat this 7 times.

Rest 6 minutes. (Yes, really.)

Repeat the sequence. Do this twice a week.

Game plan: Sprint 20 metres, then rest 30 seconds. Do this twice a week. Repeat 10 times in weeks 1, 4 and 7; 15 times in weeks 2, 5 and 8; and 20 times in weeks 3, 6 and 9. Every 3 weeks, add 10 metres.

Lululemon Surge Tights These are better than sweats and shorts; they’ll prevent chafing while still allowing you to drive your knees. ($119; lululemon. com.au)

Goodr Circle GS Squinting against the sunlight can wreck your focus on technique.

Block the sun with Circle GS sunglasses, which are stylish enough for a night out. ($49; playgoodr. com.au)

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5

EXERCISES YOU ALREADY DO (BUT COULD DO BETTER )

With our fitness social feeds populated by ever more complicated moves, it’s good to know the old staples still work. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be improved. Here, elite trainer Andrew Tracey has tweaked five moves to help you perfect every rep

01

Working your chest, triceps and shoulders, the bench press is the yardstick of upperbody strength. It may have fallen out of favour in more functional circles, but I’d argue there’s something incredibly real world about being able to push away a heavy weight that’s pinning you down. Switch out your barbell for dumbbells for an increased range of motion, revivified muscle growth and rebalanced strength from left to right.

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01

An optimal bench press begins with your legs.

For the type of full-body tightness that is required, kick your dumbbells up to your chest before bringing your feet behind your knees, driving your heels into the ground and contracting your glutes, quads and core to create a rigid structure from ankles to shoulders.

02

The closer you have the weights, the more your triceps will bear the brunt.

Take them further apart and you’ll stretch your chest more, but begin to stress your shoulders. Hit the Goldilocks zone by starting with the inside head of each dumbbell touching the outer portion of your chest. Maintain this distance throughout.

PHOTOGRAPHY: DAVID VENNI

THE (DUMBBELL) BENCH PRESS

03

Your upper arms should be set at about 45º to your body.

Again, anything closer will bias your triceps, while going wider will stress those shoulders. Lower to the outside of your pecs over 3-4 seconds. Pause for a beat, then press up with gusto.

Throughout each rep, concentrate on driving your shoulder blades down and maintain a slight arch in your lower back. Focus on that pec stretch: that’s the real money-maker.

LEVEL UP

Forgo the bench and perform your presses lying on the ground instead.

Removing the stretch reflex will help to build raw tricep strength and bust any bench press plateaus

>>

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02

THE (RING) PULL-UP

01

Jump up and get a good grip.

The free-hanging nature of the rings will enable you to manoeuvre your palms, and therefore your shoulders, into a comfortable position before you even start pulling. For maximum impact, try taking your lats to full stretch by starting each rep with your palms facing away from each other.

As far as accessible, muscle-building movements go, the pull-up is hard to beat. Some, however, can find the rigid, locked-in range of motion uncomfortable on the shoulder joints and elbows. The gymnastics ring pull-up circumvents these issues by allowing you to find a more fluid, natural range of motion. You’ll be pulling pain-free for longer.

02 03

Reverse the movement, lowering with control back into a complete dead hang.

Keep your feet in front of your body throughout. Experiment rep to rep with different hand positions, so you can find the best path for your own mechanics, while striking a balance between joint health and a full range of motion.

Brace your core and point your feet in front of your body creating a hollow position.

Lock your shoulder blades down and back, then pull yourself towards the rings by drawing your elbows towards your pockets. Keep pulling until your chin passes above your hands, rotating your palms to face you.

LEVEL UP

At the top of each rep, hold yourself in position and raise your legs until they’re parallel to the ground. Keep your feet up and lower yourself back into a dead hang. Straighten your legs and repeat

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THE (D-BALL) SQUAT

03

The squat is unrivalled in its ability to slap mass on to your quads, hamstrings and glutes. Yet many struggle to stick the landing, especially as the weights creep up. Trade your bar for a ball and leapfrog all the technical nuances for a low-skill lift that’s as safe as it is hardcore.

01

With the ball between the midline of your feet, hinge down and roll it from side to side, working your hands underneath to grip it. With your back straight, shoulder blades back and chest up, drive through your heels to stand. Drop the ball into your lap and hug it tightly before standing: the ball should be covering your torso.

02

Take a wider than shoulderwidth stance to give yourself plenty of room. As you squat, keep tabs on the position of the ball; it will keep you upright, so you don’t lose your balance. This protects your back, building those all-important postural muscles. Lower slowly until the crease of your hip passes below your knee, feet flat.

03

Keep your shoulders pinned back and breathe into your belly, pressing your diaphragm against the ball to protect your spine.

Stand up explosively before repeating. At any time you can safely drop the ball, which is important as you begin to tire. It ensures your ego can’t write cheques your quads can’t cash.

LEVEL UP

Secure the ball on one shoulder before squatting for an off-centre load that will have your core-stabilising muscles and obliques working overtime. Switch sides each set

>>

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LEVEL UP

Alternate arms on each rep, resting the non-working arm in an isometric hold at the top of the rep while the other one performs a curl. This ramps up the time under tension to spark new growth

THE (SEATED INCLINE)

BICEPS CURL

04

All of the moves we’ve covered are gym royalty in their domains. But we also know that our hearts belong to the biceps curl. Take a seat, get comfortable and get ready to wage war on your T-shirt sleeves with the only biceps curl variation you’ll ever need.

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01

Set an incline bench to a 45º angle and lie with a light dumbbell in each hand. Allow your arms to hang straight down behind your body. Unlike standing, or even sitting upright, this position forces your shoulders into extension, fully lengthening the biceps to make use of every last degree of motion.

02

With your palms facing forwards, drive your shoulder blades into the bench and slowly curl the dumbbells upwards, ensuring that your upper arms remain perpendicular to the ground. Lying at this angle will help to nix any momentum that you might be tempted to recruit.

03

At the top of each rep, squeeze your biceps and allow your upper arms to drift forwards.

Although keeping your elbows back is often heard when cueing the curl, the biceps brachii assist in raising the shoulder, so end with your elbows pointed slightly upwards. Flex your triceps at the bottom of each rep.

05

THE (DEFICIT) DEADLIFT

The bench press may be the king of upper-body moves, while squats reign over the lower domain. But the deadlift takes the crown when it comes to full-body bang for your buck.

And good news: elevating your feet on to a box or a set of plates can supercharge its potency.

01 LEVEL UP

If locking out your deadlifts at the top is causing you to plateau, place plates under the bar to decrease the range of motion and practise the top half of the lift using heavier weights

02

With a grip wider than shoulder width, focus on pulling yourself down to the bar, until your hips are low and your chest is high.

Beginning each rep from such a low position forces your lats to work overtime, locking the barbell into a safe range of motion, and tying your upper and lower body together.

Load your barbell and position it above a set of plates. You should just have enough room to get your feet beneath the bar. The increased range of motion means you will have to squat further to reach the bar than with a conventional deadlift, increasing the role your quads play.

03

Imagine that you’re pushing the floor away with your feet as you begin to stand, keeping your hips low for as long as possible, barbell close to your body and your torso upright.

Reverse the movement exactly, maintaining a braced core. The huge amount of full-body time under tension will lead to bigger legs, a thicker back and increased mobility.

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TAKE THE FAST LANE TO RESULTS Sprinter Harry Aikines-Aryeetey knows that the quickest way to boost performance is to go flat out. Can you keep up?

BY JAMIE

MILL AR

PHOTOGR APHY BY

“I’VE BEEN BLESSED with good genetics, obviously,” says Harry AikinesAryeetey. That’s an understatement. As proven by an old family photo from a holiday to Ghana, the British 100m sprinter had pecs aged 13. He first beat his dad in a race aged just seven or eight.

Aikines-Aryeetey can do a pull-up with 80kg attached, but doesn’t even lift for his upper body. What he does do, of course, is sprint: pumping his arms, withstanding ground reaction forces up to five times his 84kg mass (on each leg) and stimulating muscle growth all over.

Which is something that most people, he says, don’t do past a certain point in their lives. They run or jog and lose the capacity to go at full throttle. “It’s a lost skill.”

Sprint training is about gradually building up your speed and pacing yourself – over the season, that is.

Aikines-Aryeetey is on the track three or four times a week. A few days before speaking to MH, he ran six

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MARK JAMES

rounds of 200m, with three minutes’ rest in between, in 27 seconds – which is way off his PB of 20.46, but he was just back from holiday and in flats rather than spikes.

In a few weeks, he’ll do 200m intervals in 25 seconds, then increase the rest by a minute or two. Eventually, on max velocity days, he’ll hit 11.3 metres per second – over 40 km/h – and rest between reps for 15-20 minutes. His acceleration days are about getting up to his top speed and trying to stay there.

Twice a week, Aikines-Aryeetey does work in the gym on some key exercises, such as power cleans, squat variations (he likes to do split squats), Romanian deadlifts and step-ups – and progressing from 8-10 reps earlier in his program to 3-5 reps, but not always going heavier.

“It’s all about the speed of the bar,” he says. In the weeks before recording his power-clean PB of

//

170kg, he had been “getting comfortable” at 130kg, whereas most people would’ve tried to squeeze out 135kg.

“Nah, just get good at lifting that one weight very well,” he advises.

What Aikines-Aryeetey also doesn’t do is run for longer than five or 10

Don’t overly focus on lifting heavier.

Get good at lifting one weight well//

minutes at the start of a session, or perform 500m sprint reps (which sound horrendous).

By his own estimate he’s comprised of “90 per cent muscle”, so he’s not built for distance. Plus, he’s asthmatic. The 33-year-old recently ran his first 5K. “I was in bits,” he says.

GET A MOVE ON

AikinesAryeetey’s sprint-training essentials

HARRY AA’S QUICKEST TIPS How to build yourself for speed – beyond actually sprinting UNILATERAL TRAINING

“Sprinting is about taking a large force single-legged and projecting yourself, control and stability.

In the gym, the first thing you want to do is single-leg training, whether that is split squats or step-ups.”

BUILD ENDURANCE

“Superset your main power exercises with a weighted step-up or some form of jump, such as dumbbell rockets. You’re learning to control a movement pattern and then move with the force again.”

INCREASE STRIDE LENGTH

7-8 9.90

“Bound: hop or leap from leg to leg, taking longer strides each time to build and carry momentum. Keep your chest up and hips square. Drive your knees and land on the balls of your feet.”

BODY FAT

100M PB*

*wind-assisted; 10.8 legal

Good Footwear New Balance FuelCell trainers or SD spikes.

Resistance Bands

For muscle activation: high knees, single-leg adduction/ abduction, extensions.

Skipping Rope

To warm up your tendons.

Trundle Wheel

To set out cones to mark out distances for reps.

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NAME: JACK ROBINSON FEAT: An up-and-coming surfer from Margaret River has a heated conversation with his father that inspires him to forge his own path

“IT WAS ONLY A SHORT CONVERSATION, BUT SOMEHOW IT BECAME THIS DEFINING MOMENT” 130 MEN’S HE ALTH

was going to lose his position of influence. So we’d finally decided, after this competition, that Dad was going back to Australia and I was going to compete on my own for the first time. But he wasn’t happy about it.

As I walked up to my dad in the car, he was already shaking his head at me. “You know what,” he told me. “This is all falling apart. You can’t do this.

And if you can’t do it, you’re going to have to get a real job. It’s time for you to have a good think about your life.”

It was kind of like a pep talk and an argument rolled into one, although it wasn’t expressed very nicely. Admittedly, there was a lot going on between us at the time – Mum and Dad were in the process of splitting up – and so my dad’s words did trigger me a bit. But I just looked at him and laughed. “Oh, is that right?” I said. “Just let me worry about these 12-foot waves at Pipeline. I’m off to do my job.”

It was only a short conversation, but somehow it became this defining moment for me that suddenly added fire to my dream. I walked to my car and drove straight down to Pipeline. In my head I was saying to myself: “All right, I’m going to go and show him. I’m on my own mission now.”

As I drove away, I knew that I was finally ready to be independent and make my own decisions. I’d had so much support from my dad for such a long time, but that had come with a load of extra pressure, too. Now, I was 20 years old and needed to be free, I needed to be my own man. Reaching that decision in my head was pivotal for me and taking on that responsibility helped me to thrive.

I won my event at Pipeline that day, then I won my next event and the very last event of the year. That year, I qualified for the world tour.

– Jack Robinson is an ambassador for Jeep

INTERVIEW: LUKE BENEDICTUS; PHOTOGRAPHY: REDBULL

DATE: January 4, 2019 6:30am

EARLY ONE MORNING on the North Shore of Oahu in Hawaii, I woke up and saw that the waves were already so big. Straight away I started feeling a few nerves, because ahead of me that day was the Da Hui Backdoor Shootout, a big competition for all the best Pipeline surfers. But as I walked down the steps of my house, where I was staying with my girlfriend (now my wife), I was surprised to see my dad parked next to the coconut tree in his car. When he saw me, Dad wound down the window and I was like, “Okay, here we go…”

The situation was that I hadn’t qualified for the world tour for three years. As a teenager growing up in Western Australia I’d done really well until I was about 15. There was a lot of hype around me, I had loads of sponsors and I even got labelled a surfing prodigy. But there was also a lot of pressure and between the ages of 16-18, I hadn’t done so well. People were starting to wonder, Oh, so where did he go?

It’d always been my dad’s dream for me to be a pro surfer. He’d wanted to become one himself, but hadn’t been able to and, after seeing my early potential, didn’t want me to make the same mistakes. As a result, he travelled with me all the time and I was home-schooled so I could go up and down the coast in order to surf. It made for a good childhood for sure and dad always wanted to help me. But things also became super-intense between us. If I got knocked out in the first round of a contest, he’d go off about it and could be pretty harsh. And then I met Julia, my girlfriend…

Dad and I had been inseparable for so long that when I met Julia, he maybe felt a loss of control in a way.

Perhaps he even worried that he

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