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STRONGER, FASTER, BETTER

JONATHAN

MAJORS HOW MARVEL’S HO

B BADDEST VILLAIN YET V BUILT THIS B

BODY B

Snack Awards 2022

Munch All Day + Build Muscle

NOVEMBER 2022 // MensHealth.com

FITNESS IS FOR

EVERYONE! 24

CHANGE MAKERS REVOLUTIONIZING HOW WE WORK OUT THE

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11.2022

“Your own discomfort is not necessarily a bad thing.

That’s growth.

It’s not comfortable.”

Jonathan Majors photographed exclusively for Men’s Health

by AB + DM. Styling by Ted Stafford. Styling assistance

by Chaun Cat. Grooming

by Morgan Bagnard for the Wall Group. Barbering

by Sincere Gilles. Prop styling by Wooden Ladder.

Production by Hyperion LA. On the cover: Swim shorts

by Emporio Armani; necklace by Miansai.

This page: Vintage tank, available at the Society Archive; necklace by Miansai.

FEATURES

—JONATHAN MAJORS, P. 46

46 THE METHOD MAN

With two big roles in the can (a boxer in Creed III and a naval aviator in Devotion) and Marvel’s next supervillain around the corner, Jonathan Majors is starting to flex.

BY CLOVER HOPE

PHOTOGRAPH BY AB + DM

STRENGTH IN DIVERSITY 2022

54 NEED A SPOT?

Places like Austin’s Liberation Barbell Club are rethinking gym inclusivity— and what fitness means for everyone.

BY LAUREN LARSON

64 “I’M NOT HIDING FROM SHIT.”

Carl Nassib, the first openly

78 INTO THE DEEP END

gay player in the NFL, is demolishing stereotypes on and off the field.

BY MICKEY RAPKIN

Wakanda Forever’s Tenoch Huerta is breaking new ground for Marvel.

70 SO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT ABILITY?

82 FLAVOR REMIX

One in four Americans lives with a “disability.” These nine people prove “limitations” are anything but.

BY NOJAN AMINOSHAREI

These chefs are fighting to make food accessible— and empowering.

BY GHETTO GASTRO

MEN’S HEALTH

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NOVEMBER 2022

1

CONTENTS

LIFE 23 Pop culture (read: Yellowstone) has resurrected the myth of the West, but it’s not John Wayne’s West anymore.

26 5 for $50: How to turn pork and beans into a versatile five-day protein feast.

28 The MH 2022 Snack

Awards! Open, chew, and dip into these nutrient-loaded, flavorpacked bites.

30 Ooh, that’s gonna leave a scar. Follow these dermatologist tricks for helping wounds heal.

33 Layer up with fall’s best wardrobe additions. Featuring Bros’ Luke Macfarlane.

36 Cool Dad: Karamo

Brown has learned to embrace surprises. The first one: He has a son!

MIND 39 For one man, hearing

loss meant losing music.

But there were ways of keeping the songs alive.

OFFICE PREP

Jimmy Chin’s earlymorning workout is also his job.

(See page 14.)

MH WORLD 7 Your favorite movie and TV villains, a no-BS guide to daily stretching, and what you thought of comedian Rick Glassman’s therapy session.

BODY 11 You use it every day,

18 Everything you but is it healthy and fit? It’s need to know about time to exercise your junk. the new fitness trend: landmine training.

14 6 a.m.: Mountaineer and filmmaker Jimmy Chin 20 Is pumpkin seed oil climbs to stay in shape— really your fix for heart and for work. and prostate issues?

16 Add movement (and fun!) into your workout and build your stabilizing muscles.

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NOVEMBER 2022

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MEN’S HEALTH

21 Transfor-nation!:

How one guy fought insomnia and reclaimed his z’s.

42 Gregory Scott Brown, M.D., on what to consider before treating your anxiety with cannabis.

43 How Armani Williams, a NASCAR driver with autism, stays focused on and off the track.

44 New tests may identify a predisposition to PTSD. But is diagnosing as easy as taking a blood test?

+

88 Six Pack: Gear from Dave Rienzi, the Rock’s trainer for Black Adam.

PHOTOGRAPH BY LANNA APISUKH

PJ210902-02

Your antioxidant armor.

Protect thyself in the fight against free radicals. With more antioxidant power on average than red wine, blueberry juice, or green tea, P∂M Wonderful 100% Pomegranate Juice is your body’s knight in shining armor. © 2022 POM Wonderful LLC. All Rights Reserved. POM, POM WONDERFUL, ANTIOXIDANT SUPERPOWER, the accompanying logos, and the Bubble Bottle Design are trademarks of POM Wonderful LLC or its affiliates. PJ211013-07

Personnel Question:

What new skill are you trying to learn right now?

TEAM

Nancy Berger

Richard Dorment EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Jamie Prokell Creative Director Caryn Prime Executive Managing Editor

“ I’m perfecting my kettlebell snatch.“

SVP, GROUP PUBLISHING DIRECTOR

Jack Essig SVP, Publishing Director Kathy Riess Group Executive Financial Director Leslie Picard VP, Sales Kristina McMahon VP, Marketing Marnie Braverman, Marianne Civiletto Group Marketing Directors

EDITORIAL Ben Court Executive Editor Ebenezer Samuel Fitness Director Ben Paynter Features Editor Nojan Aminosharei Entertainment Director Paul Kita, Jordyn Taylor Deputy Editors Marty Munson Health Director Keith Nelson Jr. Senior Editor Sean Abrams Senior Editor, Growth & Engagement Brett Williams Fitness Editor Evan Romano Culture Editor Joshua St. Clair Assistant Editor Milan Polk Editorial Assistant ART Matt Ryan Senior Art Director Chloe Krammel Digital Designer Leanne Mattern Design Assistant Jason Speakman Associate Digital Visual Editor Matthew Montesano Digital Imaging Specialist

INTEGRATED ADVERTISING SALES Colleen Kollar LaRoche, Hazel Jane Lyons, Julia Whalen, Doug Zimmerman “ Street Executive Directors, East Coast longboarding.

Jee Ahn, Margot Becker Giblin Mostly so my Executive Directors, West Coast legs aren’t super Monique deBoer, Alexis Herder weak come Sales Directors, East Coast snowboarding Hope Agase, Nikki Mueller season.“ Sales Directors, Midwest Dawn Franco Direct Response Manager Andrew Kramer Kramer Media, Pacific Northwest Erin McDonnell McDonnell Media, Southeast Travel Patty Rudolph PR 4.0 Media, Southwest Aliyah Wilson Executive Assistant to SVP Paulina Carrillo, Paulette Markarian, Angela Martinez, Emily Stevens Sales Assistants Karen Ferber Business Manager “Pilates— Emma Chapman Research Manager without Chris Hertwig Production Manager embarrassing

HEARST VISUAL GROUP Alix Campbell Chief Visual Content Director Sally Berman Visual Director James Morris Contributing Visual Director myself.“ Allison Chin, Dangi McCoy Deputy Visual Directors Giancarlos Kunhardt Visual Production Coordinator FASHION & COMMERCE Ted Stafford Fashion Director Christian Gollayan Deputy Editor, Commerce John Thompson Commerce Editor COPY Janna Ojeda Assistant Managing Editor John Kenney Managing Copy Editor Alisa Cohen Barney Senior Copy Editor Connor Sears, David Fairhurst Assistant Copy Editors RESEARCH Jennifer Messimer Research Chief Judy DeYoung Assistant Research Editor

MEET THE

“Growing flowers! It makes me feel happy and reminds me to be patient.“

PUBLIC RELATIONS Jaime Marsanico Senior Director, Public Relations CIRCULATION Rick Day VP, Strategy and Business Development PUBLISHED BY HEARST Steven R. Swartz President & Chief Executive Officer William R. Hearst III Chairman Frank A. Bennack, Jr. Executive Vice Chairman Mark E. Aldam Chief Operating Officer

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Milo F. Bryant, Michael Easter, Philip Ellis, Garrett Munce, Zachary Zane VIDEO Dorenna Newton Executive Producer Tony Xie, Elyssa Aquino Senior Creative Producers Kyle Orozovich Senior Video Editor Janie Booth, Carly Bivona Associate Producers HEARST MEN’S FASHION GROUP Nick Sullivan Fashion Director Alfonso Fernández Navas Market Editor Rashad Minnick Fashion Associate

INTEGRATED MARKETING Stephanie Block, Christina Cordero, Ariel Kaye, Melissa Macaleer Executive Marketing Directors Christie Lemley Brand Strategy & Storytelling Director Bonnie Blue Marketing Director Kelly Roma Marketing Director, Special Projects Rhyan Kelly Associate Marketing Director Stephanie Rubino Senior Marketing Manager Caroline Hall Associate Marketing Manager Grace McLoughlin Manager, Special Events Lulu Zeitouneh Creative Director Paula Prado Senior Art Director Flannery Wilson Sales & Marketing Coordinator

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HOW TO REACH US: Customer Service: To change your address, pay a bill, renew your subscription, and more, go online to menshealth.com/service, email mhlcustserv@cdsfulfillment.com, or write Men’s Health Customer Service, P.O. Box 6000, Harlan, IA 51593-1500. Editorial offices: 300 W. 57th Street, New York, NY 10019. Feedback: mhletters@hearst.com. Licensing & Reprints: Contact Wyndell Hamilton, Wright’s Media, hearst@wrightsmedia .com. Absolute satisfaction guaranteed. Scent-free subscription available on request. From time to time we make our subscriber list available to companies that sell goods and services by mail that we believe would interest our readers.

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Men’s Health carries the latest health, fitness, and nutrition reporting to provide you with useful information about your health. But every body is different; individual diagnoses and treatments can come only from a health-care practitioner. Printed in USA.

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Men’s Health is a registered trademark of Hearst Magazines Group, Inc.

MEN’S HEALTH

A DV I S O RY PA N E L

The doctors, scientists, and trainers who keep us honest and up-to-date.

BRAIN HEALTH

P. Murali Doraiswamy, M.D.

CARDIOLOGY

John Elefteriades, M.D. Foluso Fakorede, M.D. David Wolinsky, M.D.

DERMATOLOGY

Brian Capell, M.D., Ph.D. Corey L. Hartman, M.D. Adnan Nasir, M.D., Ph.D.

EMERGENCY MEDICINE Jedidiah Ballard, D.O. Italo M. Brown, M.D., M.P.H. Robert Glatter, M.D.

ENDOCRINOLOGY

Sandeep Dhindsa, M.D.

EXERCISE SCIENCE

Martin Gibala, Ph.D. Mark Peterson, Ph.D., C.S.C.S.*D Brad Schoenfeld, Ph.D., C.S.C.S.

GASTROENTEROLOGY

Felice Schnoll-Sussman, M.D.

INTEGRATIVE HEALTH Brenda Powell, M.D.

INTERNAL MEDICINE Keith Roach, M.D.

MENTAL HEALTH

Gregory Scott Brown, M.D. Thomas Joiner, Ph.D. Avi Klein, L.C.S.W. Drew Ramsey, M.D.

NUTRITION

Dezi Abeyta, R.D.N. Chris Mohr, Ph.D., R.D. Brian St. Pierre, R.D., C.S.C.S.

PAIN MEDICINE

Paul Christo, M.D., M.B.A.

SEX & RELATIONSHIPS

Debby Herbenick, Ph.D., M.P.H. Shamyra Howard, L.C.S.W. Justin Lehmiller, Ph.D.

SLEEP MEDICINE

W. Christopher Winter, M.D.

SPORTS MEDICINE

Michael Fredericson, M.D. Dan Giordano, D.P.T., C.S.C.S. Bill Hartman, P.T.

TRAINING

Lee Boyce, C.P.T. Mike Boyle, M.Ed., A.T.C. Ben Bruno, C.F.S.C. Alwyn Cosgrove, C.S.C.S.*D David Jack DeVentri Jordan Mubarak Malik David Otey, C.S.C.S. Don Saladino, NASM

UROLOGY

Elizabeth Kavaler, M.D. Larry Lipshultz, M.D.

WEIGHT MANAGEMENT

David Katz, M.D., M.P.H., FACPM, FACP Fatima Cody Stanford, M.D., M.P.H., M.P.A., M.B.A., FAAP, FACP Jeff Volek, Ph.D., R.D.

Your 12-Week Ultimate Upper Body Training Guide SUPERSIZE YOUR CHEST, BACK, SHOULDERS, AND ARMS. This exclusive 12-week guide was designed by a trainerto the stars who specializes in getting A-listers ready for big-budget action roles. Want to achieve superhero status like those guys? Your journey to a supersized upper body starts here.

Ready to Get Started?

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MVP members receive exclusive access to all of our top-notch fitness and nutrition PDFs and guides, including the 12-week upper body plan.

Access the MVP Challenge Central right here

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menshealth.com/signup

WORLD

BEHIND THE SCENES WITH THE EXPERTS, ADVISORS, AND READERS WHO BRING MEN’S HEALTH TO LIFE, AND THEN SOME.

Jonathan Majors, MH’s November cover guy, is about to become very famous playing Kang the Conqueror, Marvel’s next major bad guy. Which got us to thinking: WHO’S YOUR ALL-TIME FAVORITE TV OR MOVIE VILLAIN?

Homelander from The Boys. @KanoD attani

Mr. Burns in The Simpsons.

Count Balt ar and the Cylons on the origina l Battlestar Galactica. @blake421

@JesMasih

1

s doesn’t get @JaredHarri rn love for his tu nearly enough in arty. Iconic as James Mori es, character Sherlock Holm ly nails. te that he absolu ll

Marvel tor extermina Thaneoel1s15.

@HUCose

@Tarh

Getty Images

Hans Gruber in Die Hard. mins @seanmcum

llain is vorite movie vi fa e m ti l al y om M e antagonist fr th , ak m o N d Jare lade II horror film B the superhero es ley Snip . starring Wes Boloang Isaac

MEN’S HEALTH

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WORLD

EDITOR’S LET TER

What is

STRENGTH IN DIVERSITY?

H

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NOVEMBER 2022

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MEN’S HEALTH

Q. Okay, so how

much stretching am I actually supposed to be doing every day?

A.

Good news: just ten minutes.

That’s because any movement is better than no movement. Stretching increases your range of motion and improves circulation. If you aren’t stretching, you could lose range of motion as you age, making active things you love more difficult and painful. I recommend dynamic stretching before an activity, followed by a sport-specific warmup (8 to 10 reps held only for a few seconds each), then static stretching (lower reps held for 30 to 60 seconds) after an activity. I do a ten-minute dynamic-stretch flow every morning: a standing overhead reach to forward hinge and walk out to a plank and then a Spiderman lunge with rotation and into a scorpion stretch.

That’s all you need.

One caveat: If you feel pain, stop. Stretching should not hurt.

— DAN GIORDANO, P.T.,

D.P.T., C.S.C.S., MH SPORTS-MEDICINE ADVISOR

+

Have a question for Rich?

Tweet us at @MensHealthMag with the hashtag #AskMHRich and ask away.

Tyler Joe

But all the while, I kept studying the art of the gym—and drew up workouts for myself and others. And a decade later, I found my way here, after taking a long, hard scenic route that included stops building concrete foundations (I thought a job in construction might make me jacked) and stocking grocery-store shelves after getting the accounting degree Rich Dorment I never really wanted. (right), MH EIC, pictured here with It’s not a detour that Ebenezer Samuel. anyone should have to Rich is handing over take in 2022. But too this month’s column to Eb, who oversees many still wind up taking MH’s Strength in it, because they don’t Diversity Initiative. believe they fit in fitness.

And that’s because gym culture has never fully understood the strength that comes from diversity.

The truth about strength: It comes in many forms, and it isn’t limited to bodies with washboard abs, or the bodies in comic book movies, or even bodies that have all their limbs. We all have the ability—the right—to get stronger. We just need to push harder, to dare to do one more rep than we thought we could, to fight to run five seconds faster than we did yesterday. And regardless of race, gender, body type, or disability, we can all push.

This issue is dedicated to proving that, and to showing strength in diversity. From Woody Belfort reinventing bodybuilding — @richdorment poses in a wheelchair to the community at Liberation Barbell, a gym supporting the HEY, I KNOW that handle! And thanks for LGBTQIA+ community, page after page the handoff. Now, a little bit about me. I’ve is filled with compelling stories and clear been at Men’s Health for nearly six years, evidence that anyone and everyone can be but in another life, I’d have spent my whole strong. You’ll also meet the newest class of career here. Problem is, for a long time, I nev- our Strength in Diversity Initiative, a twoer believed the strength-building world had year-old program that works to give fitness a place for me—and I never believed I had pros from marginalized communities the anything useful to give to a fitness audience. resources, mentorship, and training to rise All I ever saw was a narrow vision of in the fitness industry. strength. From Hollywood to comic books It’s all meant to inspire you and remind (and even the early days of MH, when the whole you that no matter your situation or limitamag seemed dedicated to six-pack abs and tion or what anyone around you has said or blond-haired, blue-eyed Calvin Klein models), not said, you deserve to be strong—and you we’ve all been taught that strength looks like can get strong.

Captain America and Cena and Cavill and the And as you push to build that strength, you guy with the biggest biceps at your gym. never know who you may inspire.

Never mind that I wanted bigger arms so badly that I curled gallon water jugs in my basement throughout junior high. I was Asian and scrawny and always one of the last picks in gym-class kickball, so of course I studied accounting and journalism in college, 1,000 situps a night be damned, and Ebenezer Samuel, Fitness Director dove into a career in media.

ASK MEN’S HEALTH

WORLD

GOALS

THE MEN’S HEALTH TWITTER POLL

MVP

GLASS ONION, THE MUCH-AWAITED SEQUEL TO KNIVES OUT, FINALLY LANDS NEXT MONTH.

MEMBER

WHO’S YOUR FAVORITE

FICTIONAL DETECTIVE?

OF THE

MONTH

THE ONE FOOD I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT

FRANCISCO JOSÉ STATS

Eggs, especially the runny ones that ooze everywhere. . . . Delicious and nutritious!

AGE: 30

SCOOBY-DOO

OCCUPATION:

(YOU KNOW HIM.)

Business owner, fitness and nutrition coach LOCATION: Houston, TX

52.1%

BENOIT BLANC (KNIVES OUT )

23.7% BENSON AND STABLER

MEN’S HEALTH MVP members have access to some of the best health, fitness, and entertainment coverage on the entire Internet. Each month, we survey our MVPs and choose one whose story catches our eye. Sign up at join.menshealth.com and you could see yourself here one day.

MY ROLE MODEL RIGHT NOW My mom, for showing me what it takes to be strong, brave, and authentic.

MY PUMP-UP JAM “Sweet Dreams,” by Eurythmics, including all covers and remixes.

HOW I STAY MOTIVATED Freedom! Freedom to move, freedom to speak, freedom to be!

(LAW & ORDER: SVU )

12.4%

LUTHER

MY NUTRITION GOAL THIS YEAR

11.8%

To stop fearing fat— hello, rib eye!

(LUTHER)

IN MY GYM BAG Gym towel, creatine, resistance bands, water bottle.

MY DREAM WORKOUT PARTNER Zac Efron.

THE BEST PIECE OF ADVICE Be more afraid of missing out on something good than failing.

Alamy (Scooby-Doo, Law & Order, Luther). Lionsgate (Knives Out). Courtesy subject (José).

Based on 169 responses to @MensHealthMag.

OPEN, HONEST, AND BLUNT Head to @MensHealthMag on Instagram for Friday Sessions, a series of honest conversations with prominent men about their mental health.

In one recent episode, comedian and podcaster Rick Glassman—star of Prime Video’s As We See It and host of the Take Your Shoes Off podcast—shared his experiences living with an autism-spectrum condition. The 45-minute episode garnered more than 15,000 views and lots of happy commenters.

@donnafeldman @rickglassman this was the most authentic refreshing and real interview. Bravo to you for all the inner work you have done. @breakingchainsdgk We want the Jewish Heart Throb @rickglassman on the cover, dunking. @8o5guy This was great, Rick’s the man. @kwilliard Rick! Get that guy on the cover. @mightymaxfm I love Ricky.

MEN’S HEALTH

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NOVEMBER 2022

9

Reshape Your Life Bluetooth Indoor Training Bike with MyCloudFitness App

S H O P T H E F U L L C O L L E C T I O N AT M E N S H E A LT H . C O M / W H M H F I T N E S S

BODY VITALITY STARTS HERE

R U O Y P U R E W PO

!

E G A PACK

, rection ptimization e r e g on -o The str r-sex, penis now. bette u needB Y JON I R W I N o y n a l gp trainin

“FITNESS ROUTINE” USUALLY conjures

up whatever gets you more endurance or stronger muscles. But devoting a little time to a few routines and developing new habits can also result in a stronger, healthier penis. Think of it as Third Leg Day. Peak-performing junk (penis, balls, prostate, and pelvis—the whole enchilada) puts bathroom breaks under your

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAN FORBES

MEN’S HEALTH

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NOVEMBER 2022

11

BODY

YOUR PACK AGE

control and houses sperm that are both plentiful and swift. Whether you think your package is working great, struggling, or doing something in between, these tips will help you get your gear in gear.

HOW TO OPTIMIZE IF YOU ARE:

BASICALLY FINE

Everything is working okay—you just want to keep it that way.

RAISE THE FREQUENCY

Men who had sex less than once a week had a higher risk of erectile dysfunction than guys who did it at least once a week, according to a study in The American Journal of Medicine, making it one of the most useful (and fun!) ways to keep your penis strong. Even better, DIY sex is good, too. If you’ve noticed that you have a hard time maintaining an erection or reaching orgasm without, say, watching certain videos on the Internet, then you might want to try an orgasm ban during sex, even for a day, says sex educator Lawrence A. Siegel. This shifts the focus away from the endpoint and toward pleasure in the moment.

FIND THE RIGHT STUFF FOR YOUR STUFF

When jock itch is driving you nuts, bypass online advice to apply applecider vinegar, cocoa butter, or Vicks VapoRub—they can leave you more uncomfortable without helping—and start with an OTC antifungal cream (like Lotrimin). Then avoid repeat infections: Put those boxer briefs on carefully at the gym and treat athlete’s foot and sweaty shoes with an antifungal powder, says MH dermatology advisor Corey L. Hartman, M.D.

WRAP IT

Rates of the most reportable sexually transmitted infections have surpassed prepandemic levels, according to the 12

NOVEMBER 2022

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MEN’S HEALTH

CDC. At last estimate, one in five people in the U. S. has an STI. If you’re convinced condoms are still nothing but barriers to pleasure, you haven’t checked out the market for a while. P. S. condoms are known for feeling as if there’s nothing there. Skyn condoms have a soft texture and are nonlatex.

HOW TO OPTIMIZE IF YOU ARE:

SORT OF FINE

You have problems getting or keeping it up—and maybe bladder leakage. Things may also look slightly . . . off?

ADD A DAILY WORKOUT

Treat your pelvic floor like the muscles it’s made of and do isometric contrac-

tion sets. These Kegels improve bladder control and “have been shown to allow men to control ejaculations and enhance orgasm,” says Jamin Brahmbhatt, M.D., an assistant professor of urology at UCF College of Medicine. Tighten the muscles that stop your pee midstream for 3 seconds, relax them for 3, and repeat 10 times. Aim for 3 sets a day.

GET THAT CHECKED OUT

Pimples? Bumps? Rashes? Go to a doctor to figure out what’s going on.

Yes, there are apps out there, but MH urology advisor Elizabeth Kavaler, M.D., says that using an app to detect an STI is “totally crazy.” You can order an at-home STI test kit (LetsGetChecked .com, Everlywell), but if what you have

MY SOMEWHAT HORRIFYING

(BUT NOT AT ALL REGRETTABLE)

VASECTOMY EXPERIENCE isn’t an STI, the kit can’t tell you what the trouble actually is. Only a real live doctor can do that.

HOW TO OPTIMIZE IF YOU ARE:

NOT FINE

You can't maintain an erection. And the urge to urinate is all the time.

BOLSTER YOUR BLADDER

If “drip” describes your latest bathroom trip, you may have benign prostatic hyperplasia, a usually innocuous yet annoying enlarged prostate gland.

The good news is that there are many treatments after diagnosis. Talk to your doctor about saw-palmetto extract, a supplement that can reduce urinary symptoms for some men, says Dr. Kavaler. Prescription drugs and minimally invasive surgeries can also help.

ELIMINATE THE NEGATIVE

Having a hard time staying hard?

Maybe it’s your attitude. Men with higher levels of suspicious jealousy concerning their mate tend to have higher levels of erectile dysfunction, according to research by Gavin Vance at Oakland University. One way to cut through the envy is with sensate-focus therapy, a technique that uses touch, like holding hands, to decrease anxiety and increase intimacy.

SEEK TREATMENT FOR ED

If you’ve ruled out pills due to side effects or preexisting conditions, consider injectables. Sounds scary, but intracavernosal injections do the same thing as pills—increase blood flow—and people who use them consistently have high satisfaction rates, according to a 2019 study. Just stay skeptical of shockwave therapy, says Dr. Kavaler. Using high-frequency ultrasound to irritate the penis lining as a way to help new cells grow and increase blood flow is being investigated, but its marketing may be stronger than the evidence—at least right now.

And what you can learn from the usually routine procedure that men are lining up for.

HERE IS WHAT I don’t want to see when lying on a table with my pants down: a doctor, wielding sharp instruments, digging around in the numb valley of my groin, looking for something he can’t find. I feel a dull pressure and hear a snip. I peek out beneath my eyelids at the frustrated doc; he exhales, shakes his head.

Back into the fray he goes.

One week before my 41st birthday, I lay prone under harsh fluorescent lights for an hour and let a young doctor poke into my genitals. He was looking for something he described as “the size of a piece of spaghetti.”

Two pieces, actually: one vas deferens—the tube that supplies sperm to the urethra—for the left testicle and another for the right. My vasectomy was supposed to be over by now.1 With every empty snip, I began to wonder if I wasn’t supposed to be doing this.

I’d opted for a local anesthetic instead of a sedative. Big mistake: Those meds help the important parts get all nice and droopy.2 Apparently I was a bit tense, which made it hard for the doc to grab what he was looking for, and the excess cutting and poking causes the area to swell up, which makes it even harder to apprehend the offending party.

MH advisor Larry Lipshultz, M.D., at Baylor College of Medicine, tells me my procedure was highly unusual.

“Once you get the vas [deferens] in your clamp, it’s minutes before you’re done,” he says. “Once you find it, doing the rest of it is—snip, snip, snip.”

1 A vasectomy procedure takes, on average, 20 minutes.

2 Every patient is different, says Dr. Lipshultz, but the American Urological Association

Perhaps the hardest thing to find is the courage to make that first appointment. Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, urologists say they’ve seen men come out of the proverbial woodwork to do the deed.

Which makes me think men’s previous collective indifference had as much to do with our own apathy—we knew if something unexpected happened, our partner could always take care of it—as with misconceptions about vasectomies. About those myths: Will the big V hurt your sex life or change your ejaculation? No. The only difference will be a lack of sperm in your semen. That’s it.

In the days after, my balls went from looking like a chewed-up fig to a small, overripe avocado.3 Now they’re back to their wrinkled, pink selves. I did take a picture of the tool tray before I left. I realize it’s almost the exact opposite of a dick pic: evidence of a penis rendered powerless. Strangely absent are the scissors, despite the symphony of snipping sounds I heard.

All I know is that my wife will soon be off the Pill, her body resuming its rhythms after decades of being held hostage by hormone pills, our sex life cleansed of the terror of unintended consequences.4 If my experience can break the ice—which rested on my newly unproductive scrotum—then perhaps we men can take a more active part in the conversation about sex and reproduction. Even if it means never having Bolognese again. —J. I.

recommends a local anesthetic with or without oral sedation.

3 Some swelling is normal, and recovery usually takes a day or two, during which you need to protect your

testes from added strain, like lifting.

4 A vasectomy is well over 99 percent effective after a month or two, the delay due to testes storing 20 or so loads of sperm.

BODY

ON THE ROCKS

A

6 A.M. WITH...

HOLLYWOOD’S

HIGHEST CLIMBER At 49 years old, JIMMY CHIN, epic mountaineer turned Oscar-winning director, prides himself on a key mantra: “Never get out of shape.”

BY JOHN THOMPSON 14

NOVEMBER 2022

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PHOTOGRAPHS BY LANNA APISUKH

Location: Vital Climbing Gym

AT HOME IN JACKSON, WYOMING,

Jimmy Chin can step outside and run, ruck, or climb in Grand Teton. But these days, the pro climber turned Oscarwinning filmmaker (and father) is often on the road. Chin’s solution: hit the nearest climbing gym. Today, he’s at Vital Climbing Gym in Brooklyn and has 90 minutes to work out before a day of meetings and promotion that culminates in an 8:00 p.m. screening of his new show, Edge of the Unknown with Jimmy Chin, at the Central Park Conservancy Film Festival.

Chin will typically jump rope for a 15-minute warmup. “Then I’ll do an easy climb for 15 minutes, then I’ll ramp up the difficulty for about an hour,” he says.

Right now Chin is six feet up in the air in the gym, hanging off a boulder. After having worked up a light sweat with the jump rope, he’s spidering up the wall with no harness. He glances back at the photographer and adjusts his positioning. Then he jumps down and walks to the photographer to look at the monitor. Chin suggests moving to another spot in the gym to find better lighting. He’s working his creative muscles today, too.

“My goal is to never get out of shape. I strive to maintain 80 percent of my top shape so I can ramp it up at any time to get to an elite level. Bouldering gyms have made my life so much easier,” Chin says.

“It used to be that you had to drive somewhere and climb. With gyms like these, you can show up and climb for an hour.”

Chin notes he is pretty much required to stay in shape in order to do what he loves; the consequence of his slacking off could be catastrophic injury. “I used to spend ten-hour days climbing outdoors, and I could do that five days a week. Now with time constraints it’s a lot harder.”

If you ask him to describe what he does, Chin is adamant about being a climber first, followed by a photographer, then a director. And yes, among adventurers, he’s known for his ascent—and ski descent—of Mount Everest in 2006. But the world is more interested in what he’s done as a director. Chin was applauded for the Oscar-winning 2018 documentary Free Solo, about Alex Honnold’s goal of climbing El Capitan with no harness.

Chin’s new series on Disney+ tells pivotal stories of the world’s best extreme athletes and outdoorsmen.

BETWEEN SETS

Jimmy Chin develops his climbing ability with exercises like pullups (above), hanging leg raises (top right), and Turkish getups (right).

HOW DO YOU COMBAT JET LAG?

“Jet lag is horrible.

I think being outside in the sun and exercising is how I usually try to beat it. Exercise for sure is the best way for me.”

Jimmy Chin develops his climbing ability with exercises like pullups (above), hanging leg raises (top right), and Turkish getups (right).

FAVORITE RECOVERY TOOL YOU CARRY?

KETTLEBELL CRUSH

“Honestly, a lacrosse ball works great.

I also like the vibrating roller ball from Theragun.”

Chin builds the strength to climb with these 3 moves. Do each for 30 seconds, then rest 30 seconds; do 2 or 3 sets of each.

TURKISH GETUP Build total-body strength and push your shoulders and core.

DOUBLE-KETTLEBELL CLEAN AND PRESS Build explosive power and strong hips.

GOBLET SQUAT This classic leg builder rocks your core, too. Use a heavy kettlebell.

After more bouldering reps, Chin is ready for something bigger. His right brain is focused on finding a tougher challenge, while his left brain wants better angles for photos. Chin settles on the gym’s rooftop wall. For about 20 minutes, he glides up, down, and across the outdoor wall before pausing to review more shots. Chin notices one of the video cameras has a lens that can capture a better view of Manhattan in the background. The lens change is made. He just can’t help directing.

With the rooftop shots nailed, Chin goes back downstairs to strength-train. He starts with Turkish getups, lying on his back, left hand holding the kettlebell in the air. He methodically completes the steps of the getup, standing up with the kettlebell before returning to his back.

After two more kettlebell moves, he finishes with ring pullups.

Chin’s been climbing for decades now, but he’s not slowing down. “In the sense of pure rock climbing, I feel like I’ve been climbing as hard as I ever have,” he says.

With that, he’s off to shower and power through his day.

WHAT ARE YOU EATING/DRINKING POST-WORKOUT?

“I take this supplement called Hanah One. It’s an Ayurvedic supplement that I think is really good.

It has ashwagandha, and I make it into a smoothie with blueberries, almond milk, yogurt, and kale.”

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BUST A MOVE

BUILD MUSCLE

ON THE MOVE

An average workout has you standing in mostly one spot. Change that up by adding in lunges, crawls, leaps, and other exercises that have you going somewhere. You’ll strengthen critical stabilizing muscles—and have fun, too.

BY MILO F. BRYANT, C.S.C.S.

WORKOUT

DIRECTIONS: Do the exercises in order, completing 4 sets of each move. Do each set for 40 seconds, then rest for 20 seconds.

DIRECTIONS: Do this workout 4 or 5 days a week—but not more than 2 days in a row. Go for a 10-minute walk or run on nonworkout days.

1

WALKING PENDULUM LUNGE

WARMUP (a)

Start standing. Step your right leg backward and lower into a lunge.

Stand back up. As you stand, step forward with your right leg; lower into a lunge. Stand back up.

Repeat the pattern on the other side; that’s 1 rep. Do this until time is up.

(b)

WALKING SPIDERMAN LUNGE WITH ROTATION Start standing, then place your hands on the floor and walk them into pushup position (a). Step your right foot outside your right hand. Reach your right hand toward the ceiling (b). Reverse the movements back to pushup position, then walk your feet toward your hands. Stand up. Repeat on the other side. That’s 1 rep; do 5.

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2

DIAGONAL SKATER LEAP

Start standing, then lift your left foot off the floor. Shift it just behind your right foot. Take a small jump forward and to the left, landing on your left foot, knee bent. Shift your right foot behind your left and take another jump forward, this time leaping to the right. That’s 1 rep. Repeat until time is up.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY T YLER JOE

F E A T U R E D T R A I N E R : M I L O F. B R YA N T, C . S . C . S . , is the owner of

Milo-Limitless Fitness in Del Mar, California, and the author of Unstoppable After 40, which teaches you how to stay strong as you age. Bryant, who is 51, can still dunk a basketball.

P I C T U R E D H E R E : R H Y S A T H AY D E is a New York City–based trainer and a cofounder of the Phantom Fitness app.

3

LATERAL BEAR CRAWL

Get on all fours, hands directly below your shoulders, knees in line with your wrists.

Keeping your back flat, lift your knees so your shins are an inch off the floor. This is the start.

Now step to the left, moving your right arm and left leg at once. Follow by moving your left arm and right leg to the left. When you’re out of space, repeat the pattern, this time moving back to the right. Continue doing this until time is up.

4

PUSHUP PLANK DRAG

Get in pushup position on a hardwood floor, hands directly below your shoulders, your feet on sliders or a towel or in a pair of socks that let you slide across the surface. Without bending your elbows, walk your right arm forward a few inches; follow by walking your left arm forward, dragging your feet as you go. Keep your hips and shoulders square to the floor.

Repeat until time is up.

FINISHER

SHUTTLE RUN Place 2 cones, sneakers, or other objects about 15 feet apart.

Start with your hand touching the object to the left. Then dash to the other object and touch it.

Immediately dash back to the start. Repeat this pattern for 60 seconds. Rest 2 minutes.

Do 4 sets. tank, shorts, socks, and shoes by nike.

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GEEK TWEAKS

BUILD

E XPLOSIVE STRENGTH Landmine University’s fun, fast, and innovative rethink of the barbell can help you unlock new power and muscle.

BY MILO F. BRYANT, C.S.C.S.

Alex Kanellis, the founder of Landmine University, banging out a landmine split jerk. shirt by lululemon; shorts by ten thousand; shoes by under armour.

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PHOTOGRAPHS BY T YLER JOE

Y

YOU’VE USED BARBELLS

before, but never like this. Alex Kanellis, the founder of the program Landmine University, wants you to use your barbell as a “landmine,” a unique tool that’s gaining popularity among fitness heads. Kanellis wants you to put one end of your barbell on the floor, preferably in a landmine sleeve (see “Gear Up,” right), and load the other end with weight.

Next, grab the loaded end and lift it to your shoulder. Feel all that weight? Now you’re set up to do a host of new and explosive exercises that can build serious muscle and power.

The concept isn’t new. For decades, bodybuilders have used landmines to do everything from shoulder presses to rows, because landmines offer unusual resistance: As you lift your end higher, the weight gets slightly lighter, which allows bodybuilders to, say, squeeze their back muscles extra hard at the top of a landmine-row rep.

But trainers like Kanellis are using the landmine in new ways. With one end of the barbell anchored to the floor, the end you grab essentially functions as a “guided” dumbbell, letting you move it in any direction while it still provides slight stability. That makes it a perfect option for explosive exercises, like landmine cleans and snatches—

the kinds of movements that catch your eye on Instagram and TikTok. Kanellis, whose IG account, @landmineuniversity, has 36,000 followers, sometimes lifts a loaded landmine from the floor while simultaneously leaping into the air and twisting his body to one side, building glute, ab, and midback strength all at once.

It’s moves like this that form the backbone of Landmine University, which helps you forge athleticism using only the landmine. Kanellis, a former University of Iowa football player, developed the system after years of lifting. “Throughout my coaching career, I was looking for a good replacement for Olympic lifts,” he says. “Because I like explosive weightlifting, but it’s tough to teach.”

The landmine doesn’t have the barbell’s limitations, according to MH advisor David Otey, C.S.C.S. “Barbells force a fixed position, which may not be best for everyone,” he says. “Landmine training allows for a variable bar path, single-side training options, and broader exercise selections.”

That helps explain Landmine U’s rise in popularity. In 2021, Kanellis had 14 people in his first certification class; today, there are certified coaches in 18 countries. “It’s something that fits in a lot of people’s training regimens,” he says.

GEAR UP

If you’re training at home, try one of these landmine anchor setups.

BEGINNER DIY For basic moves, cram a thick towel (or a few!) into a corner to anchor the barbell.

ADVANCED DIY Place a 45-pound plate on the floor and put a heavy dumbbell on the plate. Wedge one end of the barbell beneath the dumbbell handle, setting yourself up for press and squat variations.

GO PRO The Rep Fitness Free Standing Landmine ($99; repfitness.com) is the ideal sleeve, securing your barbell perfectly while offering great range of movement.

Special thanks to the Strength Club NYC

LANDMINE ZONE BEGINNER

INTERMEDIATE

ADVANCED

THE SCREWDRIVER

COILED REVERSE LUNGE

SPLIT JERK

Hold the top end of the barbell at your chest with an overhand grip. Point your left elbow down toward your left hip; point your right elbow up. Rotate the bell so your right elbow points down and your left points up. As you do this, raise your right heel and drive your right hip toward your elbow. That’s 1 rep. Do 5 per side. Do 3 sets.

Start in the end position of a screwdriver.

Raise your right heel; continue to drive your left hip and left elbow together as you step back with your right leg and lower into a reverse lunge. Stand explosively. Rotate the bell so your left elbow drives toward the ceiling and repeat on the other side. That’s 1 rep; do 3 sets of 8.

Start in the end position of a screwdriver.

Without losing tension, step back with your right foot. Now thrust your right foot forward and your left foot back, jumping slightly, and straighten your left arm, driving the bell up and pushing your right elbow toward your right hip. Return to the start. Do 3 sets of 6 per side.

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SUPPLEMENT CHECK

THE GREAT

PUMPKIN SEED OIL

THE CLAIMS

Supplement manufacturers advertise that their pumpkin seed oils, extracts, and capsules support prostate health, improve heart function, and even reverse male-pattern baldness.

Incredible, right?

Your prostate! Your heart! Your hair!

Is there anything this supplement can’t help? The research seems to say . . . we need some more research.

BY PAUL KITA

WHAT’S ACTUALLY

SHOULD

YOU TAKE IT?

If you have an enlarged prostate, pumpkin seed oil may help. “Take note of the dose used in the 2021 study: 360mg twice daily. Make sure the dose meets what’s been shown [effective] in studies,” says Men’s Health advisor Chris Mohr, Ph.D., R.D. “And always buy a brand that is verified by a third party like NSF.”

TRUE

The prostate stuff. Men who took 360mg of pumpkin seed oil twice a day had fewer symptoms related to their enlarged prostate, a 2021 study found. The oil didn’t work as well as the drug (tamsulosin) used in the study, but men on the oil did not report side effects.

WHAT’S STILL UNCLEAR Yes, a 2014 study found that men with male-pattern baldness who took 400mg of a pumpkin seed oil supplement daily for 24 weeks regrew hair. Except the oil was just one ingredient in the supplement.

We need more evidence.

TEXT A DIETITIAN!

This month, we hit up Men’s Health nutrition advisor Chris Mohr, Ph.D., R.D.

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CAN HOT SAUCE REALLY FIRE UP YOUR METABOLISM? There’s some science suggesting the hot chemical in may cause a temporary increase in body temp, which boosts calorie

SO CHUG HOT SAUCE, LOSE WEIGHT? That might be a bit aggressive. One study showed adding hot sauce to slows eating, so you might eat fewer calories, but you’ll benefit more from regular and

PHOTOGRAPH BY PAOLA + MURRAY

Food styling: Olivia Mack McCool. Prop styling: Carla Gonzalez-Hart.

WHAT’S A STRETCH

Supplement companies argue that pumpkin seed oil is good for your heart because it’s high in essential fatty acids. Data shows that a diet rich in these fats is beneficial, but hardly any human studies link pumpkin seed oil with a healthier heart.

LIFT HERE TO EXPERIENCE VERSACE EROS

LIFT HERE TO EXPERIENCE VERSACE MAN EAU FRAÎCHE

LIFT HERE TO EXPERIENCE VERSACE POUR HOMME

BELK DILLARD’S MACY’S NORDSTROM

BODY

TR ANSFOR-NATION!

THIS GUY STOPPED

FIGHTING HIS INSOMNIA— AND FINALLY

GOT SOME SLEEP

BY MARTY MUNSON

IN 2020,

Wayne Tan, then 29, was stressed about getting enough sleep for his optometry-board certification exam—so much so that it led to chronic insomnia. When meds “didn’t get to the root of the problem,” Tan says, he found research on how changing your thinking about rest might help. With the aid of a sleep coach, “I slowly reformed my thoughts,” he says.

Now that he’s board certified (it’s official!), he sleeps seven to eight hours a night. These strategies finally let him rest.

JUMP OUT OF BED SLEEP EXPERTS SAY

Courtesy Wayne Tan

to get up and get out of bed if you’re tossing and turning. Tan found that the tactic really does “help reduce the negative emotions and associations you have to sleep and your bed.”

The trick: find something you look forward to doing when you’re up.

For Tan, reading fiction beat studying. He’d read, then turn in again when he felt sleepy.

INSOMNIA

BY THE NUMBERS

DO ALL THE

HYGIENE STUFF, TOO “I STAY AWAY FROM

coffee and try to get more sunlight during the day to help set my circadian rhythm so I’m wakeful in the morning and sleepy at night,” Tan says. These classic sleep-better tactics may not solve insomnia, because they don’t address the underlying psychological issues, but can alleviate alertness at bedtime.

27

PERCENTAGE OF FORMERLY GOOD SLEEPERS WHO DEVELOP ACUTE INSOMNIA EVERY YEAR, ACCORDING TO RESEARCH PUBLISHED IN THE JOURNAL SLEEP.

LET SLEEP WIN “WHEN I WAS ANXIOUS

about rest, I used the mantra ‘Sleep always wins,’ ” Tan says. Being awake builds up homeostatic sleep drive—the innate drive to sleep.

Over time, that drive becomes so strong that your body gives in and rests. Knowing that his body would sleep whether he wanted it to or not allayed stress about not getting enough.

72

PERCENTAGE OF PEOPLE WITH ACUTE INSOMNIA WHO EVENTUALLY RECOVER.

GO EASY ON YOURSELF TAN DOES A SHORT

meditation before bed to help him relax. When he didn’t have time and skipped it, he’d stress about not setting the stage for sleep. “I’ve learned to be okay with my circumstances and tell myself it’s okay I messed up my routine,” he says. “I learned that things might not be perfect, but I would be okay.”

7

PERCENTAGE OF PEOPLE WHOSE ACUTE INSOMNIA TURNS CHRONIC. THEY MAY ADAPT TO SLEEP LOSS OR TO BEING AWAKE AT NIGHT. MEN’S HEALTH

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LIFE

CHANGE FOR THE BETTER

INTO THE

WESTERNVERSE!

FROM YELLOWSTONE TO OUTER RANGE TO 1923 , THE WESTERN IS BACK IN ACTION—BUT LIVING THE WILD WEST LIFE MIGHT NOT MEAN YOU HAVE TO MOVE THERE. BY JORDAN CALHOUN

ILLUSTRATION BY NEIL JAMIESON

I WAS STEELING myself for what was going to be a three-hour horseback ride through Great Sand Dunes National Park when I realized I was unprepared. First, I didn’t have a ten-gallon hat.

(I learned early on that not a single outfitter within a two-hour drive of Colorado Springs Airport carried a Stetson that would fit over my dreadlocks.) I knew that the hat wasn’t required, but not wearing

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G I D D YA P

one just felt odd—like playing baseball without a cap. Second, I didn’t have chaps.

“Do chaps actually do anything?” I asked Ruby, a wrangler at Zapata Ranch in Mosca, Colorado. As I gazed out over the desert before us, Ruby patiently explained the many practical reasons chaps are a good idea (thorn-bush defense, rope-burn protection). She’d done this before— reassuring city people like me who had binged Yellowstone and were looking to the rough country as a means of escape.

And in a form of western hospitality I experienced many times during my extended weekend at Zapata, she guided me to the least troublesome situation for me without actually telling me so. “You’ll be riding Big Lil,” Ruby said.

Luckily, Big Lil appeared as kind and forgiving as Ruby.

“I lived in Montana for many years and can confirm the effect that Yellowstone, in particular, has had of late,” says Andrew Patrick Nelson, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Film & Media Arts and an associate professor of film studies at the University of Utah. “There are social-media accounts dedicated to locals documenting the fantasies of folks who’ve relocated from California or the East Coast, asking for directions to the Dutton Ranch.”

Data backs him up: During the pandemic, the population shrank in some of the nation’s largest cities while areas in the South and the West grew, according to the U. S. Census Bureau. Experts see Covid and the cost of living as the main drivers of the change. “The primary audience for a movie like The Power of the Dog or a show like Yellowstone is roughly the same, demographically, as the population now relocating to the West in increasing numbers: educated upper-middle-class whites,” Nelson says. But it goes beyond demographics.

“In popular culture, the American West has long functioned as a mythical space where people are able to imagine themselves leading alternative, more authentic and exciting lives,” he says. People like me might have preferred the energy of a city, but at the start of the pandemic I began fantasizing like the well-off whites Nelson described. Cities lost much of what made them special. What good was a place like New York without the endless restaurants, bars, and live performances?

That chaps-less ride on Big Lil (bless her gentle gait) left me exhausted and in a state of total-body soreness. And then there were chores to do. I’d come out to Zapata for a real taste of the West I had been streaming, but I was taken aback by how real it felt. Although ranch work didn’t seem any more intense than my jobs in construction and moving,

AS SOMEONE WHO GREW UP in Detroit and now lives in New York, I have taken pride in “making it” in big cities. But lately this life has been wearing on me—cramped apartments, soaring rent, pandemic paranoia. When New York is at its most crowded, expensive, and short-tempered, I fantasize about moving to a ranch or a cabin in the woods where I would become reliant on the land instead of on public transportation, food delivery, and noise-canceling headphones.

And I’ve found myself leaning into westerns like Yellowstone and 1883, as much for their action and drama as for their sweeping views of the West.

I’m not the only one. Westerns are going through a TV and movie revival. The Power of the Dog received the most Oscar nominations earlier this year, and Yellowstone was renewed for a fifth season (out November 13), followed by a prequel, 1923 (December), and a spin-off, 6666 (TBD). Even experts who study this stuff have noticed the new draw of the West.

“Your grandfather used to say you can’t fix a broken wagon wheel but you can use the parts to make a new one.”

—JOHN DUTTON,

Yellowstone

“A man’s made by patience and odds against him.”

—PHIL BURBANK, The Power of the Dog 24

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Courtesy Paramount (Yellowstone). Courtesy Netflix (The Power of the Dog).

SMART ADVICE FROM MODERN WESTERNS

J O R D A N C A L H O U N is the editor in chief of Lifehacker.

His memoir, Piccolo Is Black, came out this past spring.

Everett Collection (Dutton/Yellowstone). Courtesy Amazon (Outer Range). Alamy (Wheeler/Yellowstone).

there didn’t appear to be a hard clock-out time for wranglers at Zapata. On any given day, starting at 5:30 A.m., the ranchers would round up horses and cattle, dig to expand an already miles-long irrigation trench, brand the cows, clean a barn, and fix a busted gate. Work is over when every task is complete. And after you’ve finished your manual labor for the day, there’s paperwork to do into the night.

This won’t come as news to the millions of people who currently work in farming and ranching in the U. S., but I was raised with a different portrayal of the West. I hadn’t seen much maintenance and bookkeeping in classic John Wayne westerns like True Grit, of course, because that was the Wild West. Outlaws, bounty hunters, standoffs—that’s when the West was untamed and cowboys were its vanguard.

But the modern westerns I had binged prior to my trip to Zapata introduced me to a different depiction of ranching, one that reflected all that sweat and toil of running massive plots of land. Yellowstone’s Dutton family operates (for better or worse) as a unit, safeguarding its land and legacy. It’s easy to admire John Dutton’s leadership and determination to protect his family business, even when he’s vindictive.

The contemporary western is evolving from a gunslinging flick into a political drama. Although the characters on Yellowstone carry guns, they’re not shooting them as frequently or as mercilessly as John Wayne did. It’s a tamer, more family-centric western, and for that reason, the Westernverse may have tapped into early-pandemic escapism.

Yet that escapism isn’t free of stress or rough edges—it’s to a place that reflects our own modern sensibilities. We all strive to find meaning in hard work. We have all leaned into tribal, us-versus-them thinking. To belong in the West means having a true appreciation for what makes it beautiful enough to live in and defend. Western strength

isn’t something you gain simply by moving there, especially if you’re doing so to escape something else. In fact, the modern western is wise to chaps-less misadventurers.

On Yellowstone, the Duttons’ primary enemy isn’t an Angel Eyes or even a Doc Holliday. The family fights for its land against transplants and developers. The message is clear: You’re only as powerful as those around you and what you all stand for. During my final days at Zapata, I discovered I didn’t need to pack up my city life and move out to bigger pastures as so many Americans are doing—some of them perhaps as a direct result of the Westernverse. My tribe is where I am right now. The work I do is fulfilling. A vista that I could squint out over like John Dutton won’t change who I am and what I love.

I DON’T BELONG IN THE WEST. Not yet. Maybe not ever. And maybe fleeing to one part of this country isn’t the answer to problems in another. Maybe I can apply the lessons I learned at Zapata to my city life. Toil is worthwhile if it serves a purpose. Ownership demands a deep sense of commitment and care. Family—biological or chosen—really is everything.

And when someone inevitably hands you the reins to your metaphorical Big Lil, you’d better damn well take them.

I do think I’m tough enough to survive out west, but I’m not sure I’ll fit in until I respect the actual lifestyle enough to recognize what makes it special. And based on what I’m starting to learn from movies, TV, and real-life ranchers, to know what makes the West special is to want to protect it for as long as possible. So before I make the move, maybe I’ll admire everything from the sidelines a bit longer. There’s plenty to stream from my apartment, at least. Maybe I’ll even track down a cowboy hat big enough for my dreadlocks.

“I’ve made two decisions in my life based on fear, and they cost me everything.”

“You know, when you boil life down, it’s funny just how little you need, isn’t it?”

—BETH DUTTON, Yellowstone

—RIP WHEELER, Yellowstone

“It hit me that God is everything. Everything good, and everything bad.”

—ROYAL ABBOTT, Outer Range MEN’S HEALTH

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5 FOR $50

PORK & BEANS & ALL THE

PROTEIN

By getting creative with two strong proteins, you can eat cheap and take in the nutrients you need to build muscle all week. Just follow this easy meal-prep plan. BY MATTHEW KADEY, R.D.

PREP IT

Cook these simple recipes on a lazy Sunday so you can work them into delicious meals throughout the week.

P O R K C HILI In a large pan over medium, heat 2 tsp oil. Cook 1 cup chopped yellow onion and ½ lb ground pork till browned, about 5 minutes. Stir in 1 chopped, seeded red bell pepper and 1 chopped zucchini; cook 4 minutes more. Stir in ½ can corn, 1 can black beans, 1½ cups canned crushed tomatoes, 1 Tbsp taco seasoning, and ¼ tsp salt. Simmer covered for 15 minutes, stirring now and then.

SHOP IT You likely have oil, a few pantry staples, and seasonings.

This grocery list has everything else.

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P O R KAND-BEAN M E ATB A LL S Preheat your oven to 400°F. Line a large rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, mash ½ can pinto beans. Mix in ½ lb ground pork, ½ tsp salt, ½ tsp cumin powder, and ¼ tsp black pepper. Shape into golfball-sized meatballs; add to the baking sheet.

Roast till browned, about 15 minutes.

TH E E X TR AS

1. Cook 2 oz wholewheat elbow macaroni according to package instructions. Set aside.

2. Cook ⅓ cup quinoa according to package instructions. Set aside.

(You’re on a roll now.)

3. Using a spiralizer or a serrated peeler, slice

1 small zucchini into thin, noodlelike strips.

Set aside.

4. In a small bowl, stir 1 cup plain Greek yogurt, ⅓ cup chopped dill, 2 tsp lemon zest, 1 Tbsp lemon juice, and a pinch of salt.

Set aside.

1 Chili Mac

T H E E X P E R T : M A T T H E W K A D E Y is a registered

dietitian and the author of Rocket Fuel: Power-Packed Food for Sports & Adventure.

PACK IT

Store the food you made to feast on different meals all week.

1 Chili Mac 2 Meatball Zoodles

3 Meatball

Gyro Bowl

4

Med-Style Chickpea Jar

Layer the macaroni, half the chili, and ⅓ cup grated cheddar. Microwave till heated through; add chopped scallion.

In a large glass container, add a quarter of the yogurt sauce, ¼ can chickpeas, half the remaining quinoa, ¼ cup sliced cherry tomatoes, ¼ cup chopped cucumber, and 2 Tbsp chopped red onion.

Repeat with another layer of the same amount of each ingredient. When it comes time to eat, pour everything onto a plate or dig straight into the jar.

Nutrition per meal: 928 calories, 48g protein, 83g carbs (17g fiber), 45g fat

2 Meatball Zoodles Pack half the meatballs, ½ can pinto beans, 1 cup canned crushed tomatoes, and 1 Tbsp taco seasoning. Pack zoodles in another container. Dump reheated meatball mix onto the zoodles.

428 calories, 29g protein, 71g carbs (15g fiber), 4g fat

5

Chili-Stuffed Pepper

675 calories, 46g protein, 65g carbs (18g fiber), 26g fat

Pack half the chili and 1/3 cup grated cheddar. In a separate container, place 1 halved, seeded red bell pepper, cut sides up. Cover the pepper container with a paper towel and microwave on high for 5 minutes. Heat chili until warmed through.

Stuff pepper halves with chili; top with the cheese.

3 Meatball Gyro Bowl

5 Chili-

Stuffed Pepper

In a large container, pack half the quinoa, half the meatballs, ½ can chickpeas, ½ cup halved cherry tomatoes, ½ cup chopped cucumber, and 2 Tbsp chopped red onion.

Pack half the yogurt sauce separately and spread on salad before serving.

4 Med-Style

Chickpea Jar

PHOTOGRAPHS BY LAURA MURRAY Food styling: Barrett Washburne. Prop styling: Maeve Sheridan.

895 calories, 47g protein, 75g carbs (18g fiber), 45g fat

803 calories, 59g protein, 78g carbs (18g fiber), 28g fat

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IT’SSNACK Beneath all the flashy packaging, many so-called healthy snacks that debuted within the past few years are really just junk.

We went on a hunt for high-quality options that actually deliver on

MUSCLE-BUILDING PROTEIN, HEART-HEALTHY FATS, FILLING FIBER, and flat-out deliciousness. Go on, dig in.

4505 Chile Limón Chicharrones They’re puffed pieces of pork skin tinged with spicy-sour Tajín seasoning. A half-ounce serving contains seven grams of protein and less than one gram of carbs.

Your move, potato chips.

Just Crack an Egg Omelet Rounds, Three Meat

Vacadillos Carne Seca, Habanero These thin sheets of airdried beef boast a potent 15 grams of protein per serving and less than one gram of sugar.

The flavor comes from the fiery pepper and a whisper of garlic.

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Ithaca Squeeze, Plain Hummus Chickpeas are an underrated source of polyunsaturated fats. And they’re the main ingredient in this supremely smooth 200-calorie pouch.

PROTEIN

Two dark-chocolatecoated squares carry 14 grams of protein, with a better-thanan-Almond-Joy flavor going on that makes it tough to eat just two.

NOVEMBER 2022

Tillamook Smoked Black Pepper Snack Portions Why settle for boring ol’ cheddar when you can have it studded with nuggets of smoked cracked peppercorns?

Each domino-sized piece has five grams of protein and 90 calories.

Onnit Protein Bites, Chocolate Coconut Cashew

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The quintet of proteins (egg, cheese, sausage, bacon, ham) in just two of these mini egg nuggets provides 18 grams of the nutrient.

Eat them hot or cold.

MEN’S HEALTH

PHOTOGRAPH BY DAN FORBES

GOOD

TIME! Mezzetta Napa Valley Bistro Italian Olive Antipasto

Good-fat-rich green olives start the party. Peperoncini, red bell peppers, and garlic cloves keep it interesting.

HOW WE DID IT WE SCANNED THE store shelves and the Internet for new packaged snacks that are high in protein, good fats, and fiber while also being reasonable in terms of calories and added sugar. Then we taste-tested more than 50 chips, dips, and bites in order to find the most delicious products. Not every snack satisfied (and some were . . . blech). But these made the cut.

Let’s Be Bessties Crackers, Everything Bagel Flavor Most “good for you” crackers lack substance and taste like paper.

These thick rectangles have three grams of fiber apiece, and the seasoning tastes even better dunked into hummus.

Chosen Foods Classic Guacamole Premade guac can have a sharp tang due to additives.

But there’s nothing on this creamy, tastes-just-made guacamole’s ingredient list that you can’t pronounce.

Blue Diamond Almonds, Korean BBQ These whole nuts evoke all the flavors of bulgogi: umami-rich soy sauce, garlic, smoke, and sweetheat gochujang.

Courtesy brands

Honey Stinger Nut + Seed Bar, Almond Pumpkin

FATS

The nuts and seeds power this protein bar’s good fats. The jolt of real honey will help sustain you through long runs or rides.

FIBER

Popadelics, Trippin’ Truffle Parm Whole dried shiitake mushroom caps are dusted with a coating of vegan Parmesan and truffle seasoning. If that sounds wild, that’s the point. Nine caps have four grams of fiber.

Pipcorn Spicy Cheddar Mini Popcorn, Tabasco Popcorn is an unsung fiber source, and two ounces of this stuff packs four grams of the nutrient, along with that tonguetingling heat of the legendary hot sauce.

Yishi Foods, Red Bean Berry Oatmeal This sweet-tart mix throws in the flavor of dates, goji berries, cherries, and almond flour for a combo that makes eating its three grams of fiber easy.

Sun-Maid Mediterranean Dried Apricots One serving has three grams of fiber, and they taste great— slightly chewy, subtly sweet—straight out of the bag.

For 35 more incredibly delicious, amazingly nutritious snacks, check out MensHealth.com/snack-awards-2022.

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HEALING POWER

SCAR WHAT A GASH TO THE HEAD TAUGHT ME (AND CAN TEACH YOU!) ABOUT HEALING SMARTER.

BY CHRISTIAN GOLLAYAN

IT HAPPENED ABOUT A YEAR AGO. I was practicing new cocktail recipes ahead of a party. When I yanked the refrigerator door open, the whole handle came off and clocked me right above my left eyebrow. All I remember is pressing my palm against my forehead, crying, “This better not scar!” then finding my hand, shirt, and floor covered in blood. Indeed, this was going to scar.

The rest was a blur. Next, I was sitting in an emergency room, and my urgent-care doctor repeated the words “full laceration,” and I lay back while he sewed three stitches. The doctor told me to abstain from alcohol, sunlight, and exercise for a couple weeks to help the wound heal. The sort of good news: The doctor said the scar would be only somewhat noticeable to most people.

The bad news: If I wanted to reduce the scar’s appearance further, I’d have to wait six months for it to form before considering corrective surgery.

For the next year, I used buckets of Aquaphor and sunscreen and studied how skin heals from trauma.

And I learned a few valuable lessons.

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BA

THE 4 STAGES OF SCARR “Our skin has the miraculous ability to bounce back,” says Anthony Rossi, M.D., a surgeon at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Help your wound through its healing stages.

1 HEMOSTASIS

Immediately after trauma, your platelets work hard to form clots in order to close the wound and prevent further bleeding.

Action: Apply pressure until the bleeding stops. If the wound is deeper, go to an emergency doctor to receive stitches.

2 INFLAMMATION

White blood cells flood the injury site to force out harmful bacteria and pathogens, which also leads to redness and swelling. This stage starts in six to eight hours and lasts up to 48.

Action: Clean the wound thoroughly with soap and water. Then keep it moist with a petrolatum like Vaseline and bandage it.

5 PROVEN TOOLS THATDE-SCAR These dermatologist-backed treatments helped my scar almost disappear, and they just might do the same for you. —C. G.

AQUAPHOR: While the wound is open, use a petrolatum-based ointment like Aquaphor to keep it moisturized. Melissa Doft, M.D., a New York City–based plastic surgeon, recommends a petrolatumbased ointment because even a thin layer seals in moisture.

Our pick: Aquaphor Healing Ointment ($16; amazon.com)

TTLES

RING

Courtesy brands (products). Getty Images (remaining).

3 PROLIFERATION

The wound starts to close. Your skin cells leapfrog one another, laying down a fibrous network; then a type III collagen repairs the damaged dermal layer. Blood vessels grow, which contributes to a pink-red color. This starts five to seven days after injury and lasts a month.

Action: Dr. Rossi says to protect the wound from the sun using a bandage, or sunblock when it’s not covered. Keep it clean and moist with a petrolatum- or silicone-based ointment.

4 MATURATION

The collagen fibers secure themselves and the scar thins. Although the healing is finished, there are steps you can take to diminish the appearance of the scar itself, like those on the right.

SILICONE: Whether you use it in gel or strip form, silicone locks in moisture and prevents collagen from overproducing. These products “help smoothen and flatten scar formation,” says Dr. Doft. One thing to note: You need to wear them continuously during the first three months to really see results.

Our pick: ScarAway Silicone Scar Sheets ($48 for a pack of six; amazon.com)

SUNSCREEN: Because new scars are more fragile and prone to sunburn than the rest of your skin is, plastic surgeons recommend keeping the scar covered with clothing, or at least using an SPF 30 sunscreen to help prevent discoloration.

Our pick: EltaMD Skincare UV Clear Broad-Spectrum SPF 46 ($39; eltamd.com)

LASERS! Around six weeks after scar formation, plastic surgeons can reduce redness with V-beam, a laser-based therapy that helps remove red pigment from blood vessels. At-home laser devices advertise the same benefits, but Dr. Rossi says they don’t have enough oomph to make a difference. Dr. Doft recommends that patients book two to three weeks ahead (or even as soon as you suffer your trauma).

ACCEPTANCE: At the end of the day, a scar is permanent, and there’s nothing doctors can do to wipe it out completely. “After a year, your scar plateaus and it’s at its final resting place,” Dr. Rossi says. Just like with wrinkles, accept your scars as a badge of honor, a reminder of the scrapes and injuries that got you to where you are now.

Hey, it works for Jason Momoa.

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IMPROVED SLEEP

BLUE LIGHT BLOCKING FRAMES D I F F E Y E W E A R .C O M / M E N S H E A LT H

LIFE

M U L T I L AY E R E D P E R F O R M A N C E

IT

LAYER

ON Puff Out Your Chest Tommy Hilfiger’s travelready vest comes through in the clutch in colder weather, thanks to faux down fill that keeps you warm without overheating. Wear it over a faded tee for a foolproof brunch look, and pair it with water-repellent cargo pants on rainy days.

Vest ($149) by Tommy Hilfiger; T-shirt ($50) by Todd Snyder x Champion; pants ($80) by Wolverine; sneakers ($160) by Veja; Seiko 5 Sports watch ($295)

by Seiko; socks ($18) by Rhone.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY AARON RICHTER

Unpredictable temps mean dressing for fall is trickier than ever. Luckily, today’s best clothes are versatile, easy to throw on (and off), and great looking. LUKE MACFARLANE, Bros’ breakout rom-com star, shows us how to layer them.

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MULT IL AY ERED PERFORM A NCE

Track Everything Todd Snyder’s versatile track jacket is as lean as a blazer, with a poly-cotton fabric that makes it as cozy as sweats. Dress it up with dark denim jeans for a date-night look, or keep it casual with Boss’s tapered joggers for weekend errands.

Styling: Ted Stafford. Grooming: Melissa DeZarate/Kalpana.

Track jacket ($318) by Todd Snyder; T-shirt ($35) by Armani Exchange; pants ($198) by Boss; sneakers ($100) by Asics; Apple watch case ($910) and band ($319)

by Hermès; socks ($28) by American Trench.

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TAKE THE LEAD

LUKE MACFARLANE IS no stranger to playing historic roles onscreen. His first one was in 2008 on ABC’s Brothers & Sisters, where he participated in one of network TV’s first same-sex civil-union ceremonies. Now he’s the leading man opposite Billy Eichner in Bros, the first gay romantic comedy made by a major studio. “[Universal Pictures] is sticking its neck out,” Macfarlane says of the film, which features a mostly LGBTQ+ cast. “It wasn’t that long ago that a lot of the stuff we get up to in the movie was against the law in many states.”

And while Bros’ depiction of gay sex scenes (which are plentiful) is groundbreaking for a studio movie, its central love story is universal. Macfarlane plays Aaron, an emotionally unavailable lawyer who lives in quiet desperation until he falls for Eichner’s neurotic yet lovable podcaster, Bobby. “Both [characters] are in this act of discovering change that finally brings us together,” Macfarlane says.

“It’s an ode to the classic [rom-com].”

Just before Bros, Macfarlane was a Hallmark Movie Channel staple, starring in more than a dozen earnest, heterosexual romance flicks. Was it a big jump to work on an R-rated film?

“The kisses are a little bit longer, but it’s the same idea: Two people that we wanna see together get together,” he says. “R-rated just means you gotta do a few extra pushups before the scene.”

Unlike Aaron, the 42-year-old actor lives his life to the fullest. During his downtime, he goes hard on woodworking and even built a crib for his friend Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s baby. He’s an avid outdoorsman, describing his style as “classic American-heritage workwear.” In December, he plans to climb Argentina’s Mount Aconcagua, the tallest summit in the Americas.

Building cribs, climbing mountains, starring in movies—what is he trying to prove? “I know, it sounds a little American Psycho, doesn’t it?” he says. “But I promise it’s coming from an authentic place.”

—CHRISTIAN GOLLAYAN

Blaze Away Luigi Bianchi has your new office blazer. It’s just as polished as old-school jackets with its slim cut, notch lapels, and English pocket. But it’s made with natural stretch wool that’s a cinch to move in, and its attachable hoodie helps you stay warm once you step out of the office. Combine it with cotton cargo pants and retro runners to keep the cozy vibes going.

Jacket ($1,295) by Luigi Bianchi; T-shirt ($148) by Todd Snyder; cargo pants ($168) by Brooks Brothers; sneakers ($245) by Rag & Bone; sunglasses ($289) by Persol; the Mechanic watch ($1,450) by Shinola; socks ($14) by Bombas.

The Polo, Solo No need to put away your guns in the fall. Take this Vince polo, made with a flattering wool-cashmere fabric, plus cuffed sleeves to accentuate your arms.

Its two-tone colorway plays nicely under sweaters and jackets, but we recommend wearing it by itself on warmer days to stylishly show off your gains.

Polo shirt ($295) by Vince; pants ($139) by Bonobos.

LIFE

COOL DAD

T H I S M O N T H : K A R A M O B R O W N is the host of Karamo, a

daytime talk show, and one fifth of the Queer Eye crew. He’s also written two children’s books with his son, Jason “Rachel” Brown; the latest, called I Am Okay to Feel, is out November 8.

SURPRISE!

YOU’RE A

DAD.

I was 26 when I discovered I had a ten-year-old son—and the surprises haven’t let up since.

BY KARAMO BROWN

I FIRST MET MY SON

through a stack of papers. Jason was ten years old, the papers read, and I owed his mom back payments for childcare. I was shocked, but I complied. I knew his mom. (Yes, I’m gay, but don’t try to tell me all 15-year-olds don’t go through times of self-doubt.) I wouldn’t say that I was ready to be a dad back then, but I was ready to move on from the self-destruction of my early 20s, a time that consisted of near-constant late-night partying, alcohol and drug abuse, and simply not dealing with my own emotional challenges.

Soon after I met Jason, I agreed to take custody of him. Three years later, I did the same for his half brother, Chris. I’m 41 now (Jason is 25; Chris is 22), and at no point did I see any of this coming. But honestly, regardless of who you are as a parent, you never see anything coming.

Like right within that first year of raising Jason, he started giving me the dreaded one-word “fine” after I’d ask him how his day was at school.

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And I believed him because he would come home and be funny and engaging, and I would walk around the house thinking that my son was the most confident kid in the world. But then I began getting reports from school. Jason is struggling. Jason is having issues with anxiety. Basically, Jason wasn’t “fine.”

Taken off guard, I initially made Jason’s struggles all about me. I was heartbroken that he wasn’t sharing things with me. Was I not open enough with him? Not present enough? Or, worse still, not cool enough? But then I acknowledged my feelings and came up with a plan. My son wasn’t having the best experience at school, and he needed help. My sister was a counselor, so I asked for her advice. I used my heartbreak to push myself past my anxiety (and you wonder where he gets it from) and tried to create a safe place for my child.

It took some discussion, but we got to the root of it.

Back in my day, it mattered if you didn’t have the latest pair of Jordans. Now it’s the latest iPhone. If I didn’t get my hair cut for a month when I was ten, big deal.

If Jason went a week without one, who would like his Instagram pics? It came down to cash: We didn’t have much money; other kids did. So we talked about comparisons and inadequacy and—yeah, okay, okay—I started to take him to the barber more often.

Before I had kids, I always thought surprises had to be something big. Like deciding I wasn’t going to college anymore. Or shaving off my hair. Or, ha, finding out I had a son. But when you’re a dad, almost every day holds at least one micro surprise. When the kids are younger, it’s seeing them develop some new skill. When they’re older, it’s watching them successfully (or unsuccessfully) navigate social or professional situations.

But I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a bad surprise, whether it’s macro or micro. And I’m only ever really surprised if I’m setting an expectation. When my kids defy those expectations, I could resent them for doing so—or I could do what’s actually more helpful: grow with them. Because there are all the times your kids surprise you, but then there are the times you surprise yourself and your kids help you become a better human being.

It’s like getting a fresh new pair of Jordans—or an iPhone 14—but for your soul.

“

When you’re a dad, almost every day holds at least one micro surprise.”

ILLUSTRATION BY AKEEM ROBERTS

INSIDEOUT

EVENTS & PROMOTIONS

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SHAKE IT UP

Shakes are a great way to lose that extra weight BEING A TRAINER, BODYBUILDER, and nutrition expert means that companies frequently send me their products and ask for my stamp of approval. Most of the time I dive into research, test the product out, and send the company honest feedback. Sometimes, however, I refuse to give the product a try, because frankly, the ingredients inside aren’t real food. And I’d rather drink diesel fuel than torture my body with a chemical concoction.

Like my father always said, “What you put inside your body always shows up on the outside.”

One protein shake that I received, that will remain nameless, was touted as ‘the next big shake’ but really had a list of gut destroying ingredients. Everywhere I read I saw harmful artificial ingredients, added sugars, synthetic dyes, preservatives and cheap proteins; the kind of proteins that keep you fat no matter how hard you hit the gym, sap your energy and do nothing for your muscles.

Disappointed after reviewing this “new” shake, I hit the gym and bumped into my favorite bodybuilding coach. This guy is pushing 50, has the energy of a college kid, and is ripped. So are his clients.

While I firmly believe that the gym is a notalk focus zone, I had to ask, “Hey Zee, what protein shake are you recommending to your clients these days?”

Zee looked at me, and shook his head. “Protein shakes are old news and loaded with junk.

I don’t recommend protein shakes, I tell my clients to drink INVIGOR8 Superfood Shake because it’s the only all natural meal replacement that works and has a taste so good that it’s addicting.”

Being skeptical of what Zee told me, I decided to investigate this superfood shake called INVIGOR8.

Turns out INVIGOR8 Superfood Shake has a near 5-star rating on Amazon. The creators are actual scientists and personal trainers who set out to create a complete meal replacement shake chocked full of superfoods that—get this— actually accelerate how quickly and easily you lose belly fat and builds even more lean, calorie burning muscle.

We all know that the more muscle you build, the more calories you burn. The more fat you melt away the more definition you get in your arms, pecs and abs.

The makers of INVIGOR8 were determined to make the first complete, natural, non-GMO superfood shake that helps you lose fat and build lean muscle. The result is a shake that contains 100% grass-fed whey that has a superior nutrient profile to the grain-fed whey found in most shakes, metabolism boosting raw coconut oil, hormone free colostrum to promote a healthy

immune system, Omega 3, 6, 9-rich chia and flaxseeds, superfood greens like kale, spinach, broccoli, alfalfa, and chlorella, and clinically tested cognitive enhancers for improved mood and brain function. The company even went a step further by including a balance of pre and probiotics for regularity in optimal digestive health, and digestive enzymes so your body absorbs the high-caliber nutrition you get from INVIGOR8.

While there are over 500 testimonials on Amazon about how INVIGOR8 “gave me more energy and stamina” and “melts away abdominal fat like butter on a hot sidewalk”, what really impressed me was how many customers raved about the taste. So I had to give it a try.

When it arrived I gave it the sniff test. Unlike most meal replacement shakes it smelled like whole food, not a chemical factory. So far so good. Still INVIGOR8 had to pass the most important test, the taste test.

And INVIGOR8 was good. Better than good. I could see what Zee meant when he said his clients found the taste addicting.

I also wanted to see if Invigor8 would help me burn that body fat I’d tried to shave off for years to achieve total definition.

Just a few weeks later I’m pleased to say, shaving that last abdominal fat from my midsection wasn’t just easy. It was delicious.

Considering all the shakes I’ve tried I can honestly say that the results I’ve experienced from INVIGOR8 are nothing short of astonishing.

A company spokesperson confirmed an exclusive offer for Men’s Health readers: if you order INVIGOR8 this month, you’ll receive $10 off your first order by using promo code “MEN” at checkout. If you’re in a rush to burn fat, restore lean muscle and boost your stamina and energy you can order INVIGOR8 today at Invigor8.com or by calling 1-800-958-3392.

MIND WHERE STRENGTH MATTERS MOST

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE

MUSIC DIES?

Hearing loss has become a quiet, soul-crushing epidemic affecting millions of Americans. But as one man discovered, your body is always fighting for new ways to be heard.

BY DREW MAGARY

I THOUGHT I WAS DONE

with music appreciation after freshman year of college. I was wrong. In 2018, I suffered a catastrophic injury that left the hearing in my left ear damaged and the hearing in my right ear nonexistent.

I had never planned on being a partially deaf person, although I should have. The National Institutes of Health says that more than 37 million Americans aged 18 and over report some trouble hearing, and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAN FORBES

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MIND

MUSIC MAT TERS

School of Public Health says the number will rise to 76 million by 2060. Hearing loss hurts far more than your communication with others. It’s linked to loneliness and depression, and a recent report in The Lancet shows that if it happens in midlife, you’re at increased risk for dementia. Hearing loss is the quiet epidemic, and I can’t say I recommend being one of its victims. You struggle to make out what people are saying at parties. You get overwhelmed in big crowds. You feel older than your own parents.

But the worst part was losing the music.

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My favorite artist of all time, Bob Mould, released a new album titled Sunshine Rock the spring after my accident: a small bright spot in the middle of a long and existentially difficult recovery. Maybe you have a different favorite artist. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Bob’s music has been my companion throughout decades of my life. After my accident, I still wanted it to be. Needed it to be. But when I put his new album on, I couldn’t audibly process it. Because I was now deaf on one side, I had lost the binaural effect, in which you hear music in the center of your

mind. I had also lost what’s known as the summation effect, in which the brain interprets a sound coming into your two ears as louder than if it heard the same sound in just one ear.

Bob Mould is a very, very loud artist.

He plays so loud that he should be able to conjure the summation effect through sheer force of will. Lord knows he’s attempted it over the years. “I was trying to be a force of nature and create some kind of sonic calamity for people,” he told me of his early career. “I was just ridiculously loud onstage.”

Thanks to those sonic calamities, and to playing in dangerous proximity to both the cymbals and the monitors onstage, Bob gave himself a lifetime supply of tinnitus. For him, it was the price of doing business, one he didn’t really mind paying.

“As soon as it presented and it became this shadow that I work with, I just looked at it as occupational hazard. I didn’t beat myself up. I didn’t freak out.

It’s just like, Well, what did you think was going to happen?”

So Bob’s guitar should have had no problem reaching the center of my skull.

But this is what hearing loss does to you.

It takes away music—and the greater world—as you once heard it. What I got instead was a wash of ambient noise that I couldn’t fully inhibit. I could hear the songs, just not enough of them. And you need all of the song for it to take root in your mind, your memory, your life story.

It’s incredibly corny to say there is nothing like music. That’s real Cameron Crowe shit. But it’s true on both a physiological and a psychological level. You probably don’t need me to tell you that listening to music has tangible health benefits. It can help improve blood flow, reduce stress, and release all the good hormones. This is why parents play music for their newborns and often sing to them. Music is educational, soothing, and, above all else, fun. You need music. We all do. It’s the perfect medium for communicating the vast range of human emotion.

But it’s that vast range that’s a big problem for people like me who have substantial hearing loss. It’s not easy to listen to music, and I’m not referring strictly to Pink’s discography when I say that.

“If you think about music,” says Michael Morikawa, Au.D., an audiologist at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, “you have your really low, low bass pitches and your extremely high pitches. And pitch is really important for your ability to identify melody and can also help segregate multiple instruments along with timbral cues. Speech is in a much smaller range.”

In my case, I could hear people talking to me if we were alone, but not if we were trying to hold that same conversation while hanging out at, say, Yankee Stadium. Once other layers of noise entered the mix, untangling one sound from another became impossible. Music, on its own, has enough layers within it that it represents the ultimate stress test for your internal hearing system. If you have two working ears, you may not know just how much work they’re doing—in conjunction with your auditory pathways—to interpret multiple instruments, voices, and surrounding environmental sounds, all at the same time. And no two people, regardless of hearing ability, experience that interpretation quite the same way.

Josh Wynn, a live-audio engineer, told me how the subjectivity of music presents its own challenges to everyone who hears it.

“There’s a real, constant struggle between audio engineers and musicians being like, ‘Guys, I really want more squonk out of that.’ ” I was not getting enough squonk.

That’s why many people with hearing loss stop listening to music altogether or, as in my case, listen only to music they’ve heard before. New music, like that Bob album, can’t find purchase in your head.

But if I listened to a song I’d already heard 500 times over, memory would fill in the gaps. Yet even then, listening could be an emotional challenge, because I always had enough real sound making its way through that I couldn’t help but know how much I was missing. Your memory, in a cruel twist, ends up competing with your current, addled hearing, and memory usually wins out.

I didn’t wanna lose music. I had lost enough already. I wanted it back, and fortunately, I had two resources at my disposal: time and modern technology.

About the former: If you’ve suffered any kind of sensory loss, your brain will learn to work around it. Josh Stohl, director of

the hearing-implant company MED-EL’s North American Research Laboratory, told me, “There’s quite a bit of evidence as well that the brain rewires when it doesn’t receive inputs from both ears. The brain reorganizes and says, There’s nothing coming from this input anymore. I’m going to use that real estate for something else.” Hence, your brain adjusts to your disabled hearing and hears sound as more “normal” the longer you’re deaf.

This is what happened to me. A good four months after Sunshine Rock was released, and after I got a hearing aid for my remaining good ear, I put the album back on. Whether I played it out of sheer habit or out of light desperation, I can’t remember. All I remember is that this time, the chorus to its best track, “Thirty Dozen Roses,” finally hit pay dirt in the center of my mind. I got the song. I got the squonk.

It took up residence in the ol’ memory bank and has remained there ever since.

Quality hormone flow ensued.

Then there’s the technology part. Along with the hearing aid that spring, I got a cochlear implant (disclosure: It was made

by MED-EL, and no, they didn’t pay me to write this story) for the deaf ear that fall.

A cochlear implant includes an external processor that sticks to your head and relays sound through a surgically implanted series of electrodes directly into your cochlea. It reanimates dead ears, to put it bluntly. I had my implant activated, and soon both the binaural effect and the summation effect were back in full, rocking me along. I stumbled on guitars, particularly live, but both Wynn and Morikawa showed me how the levels of the implant were typically programmed: with human speech—which occupies a much smaller range of frequencies—in mind. I could change those settings, and have done so.

Squonk squonk.

I lost music for a significant amount of time, and now I know exactly how much time, sweat, love, and hardware you need to get it back. Again, I could get corny and tell you that music can never die.

But that’s not quite accurate. The truth is that the music changes. It evolves, and you with it. When you and the music fall out of harmony, be it through hearing loss or other means, you two will find your way back to one another. Because music, ultimately, wants to be heard. And will.

So listen closely.

YOUR GUIDE TO

THE OTC REVOLUTION FDA-regulated hearing aids could be available over the counter as early as this month.

Meaghan P. Reed, Au.D., the director of clinical audiology at Mass Eye and Ear, a Harvard teaching hospital, shares what you need to know.

NOT ALL

HEARABLES ARE WORTH IT

OTC “hearables” exist now, but they’re not actually hearing aids.

These personal sound-amplification products, or PSAPs, are regulated as consumer electronics, so there’s no penalty for underperforming. For a better experience, you may be able to match some of their features to your need, like directional microphones for faceto-face conversations or Bluetooth for TVs and cell phones.

THE TECH

IS GENERALLY SOUND

This new wave of hearing aids could include low-profile ITE (in the ear) and ITC (in the canal) models that use air conduction to channel amplified sound into the ear canal. They’re for anyone over age 18 with mild to moderate hearing loss—as in, you hear loud sounds but not soft or struggle to hear speech when it’s at a distance or in noisy environments.

YOUR DOCTOR

STILL KNOWS BEST

People with hearing loss may be overlooking related medical issues, like a buildup of wax or middle-ear fluid, which if left untreated could worsen your condition. If your hearing aid isn’t properly fitted, you won’t experience the full benefit, either. Reed recommends taking the Consumer Ear Disease Risk Assessment (sites.northwestern.edu/cedra/ whats-my-risk) prior to pursuing any hearing device.

—AMY MARTURANA WINDERL

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T H E E X P E R T : G R E G O R Y S C O T T B R O W N , M . D. , is a

CANNABIS

psychiatrist, a Men’s Health advisor, and the founder and director of the Center for Green Psychiatry in Austin.

BLUNT ADVICE

Ten years of legality. Ten years of lived experiences. Ten years of...wait, what was I saying? One decade into the Great Legal Weed Experiment, here’s what I tell my patients about edibles, vaping, and weed now.

BY GREGORY SCOTT BROWN, M.D.

WEED CAN BE RELAXING.

It can make you feel good. It’s cheaper than therapy. And it’s now legal for recreational use in 19 states. So it’s not surprising that my patients keep asking me, “A little pot can’t hurt, right?” Nobody ever wants to hear a pause right after they drop that question—especially when there’s some legit research into weed as a treatment for anxiety, PTSD, and insomnia.

But the fact is, when it comes to mental health, cannabis is a little squishy.

It’s been ten years since the first states legalized recreational weed, and a big research report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine says there’s conclusive evidence that it gets you more than high. Cannabis and the cannabinoids in it (compounds that interact with receptors that control sleep, pain management, eating, emotional processing, and other functions) have 42

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medical effects on your body, particularly for chronic pain, muscle spasticity from MS, and nausea from chemotherapy.

Yet there are so many questions to tackle and so many intricacies and so many cannabinoids being studied that there’s no standardized playbook yet. The FDA hasn’t approved cannabis for any mental-health conditions, and the American Psychiatric Association doesn’t recommend it, either. Of course, nobody’s waiting for official approval before testing whether it can take the edge off the Sunday Scaries or other issues, so I make sure my patients know these things:

WEED CAN IMPROVE ANXIETY. WEED CAN ALSO MAKE IT WORSE.

TO CUT through the complexities, I checked in with one of the most informed weed scientists today, Staci Gruber, Ph.D., director of the Marijuana Investigations for Neuroscientific Discovery (MIND)

program at McLean Hospital. She confirmed that cannabis with a low concentration of THC, the ingredient that makes you high, but with high concentrations of other, nonintoxicating cannabinoids can improve anxiety. The high-THC stuff—often considered to be anything over 10 percent THC—can worsen anxiety for some.

Unless you’re going to a dispensary, it’s hard to know how much THC, or any of the other 400 chemically active ingredients in cannabis, you’re getting. Right now, the best you can do—other than buy it from a reputable source and “start low and go slow”—is pay attention to its effects. If you always get paranoid or have mood swings, maybe high-THC cannabis is the cause. Or maybe there’s something more useful for your anxiety, like therapy, meditation, talking with supportive people, or those things plus cannabis.

WEED CAN PUT YOU TO SLEEP, BUT SO CAN FIGURING OUT WHY YOU’RE NOT SLEEPING.

THE PROBLEM with using cannabis products for sleep is that there’s probably a reason you’re not sleeping and it’s better to treat that than to soothe your racing mind with THC. Consider a patient I’ll call Jackson, a guy in his 40s who worked in sales. “I’m not doing well at work, and worrying keeps me up at night,” he told me. Jackson enjoyed weed socially, but over the previous couple months it had turned into a nightly habit. “It’s the only thing that helps me sleep,” he said. When it comes to sleep, Gruber confirms that

KKGAS/Stocksy

MIND

!

HOW I

KEEP IT TOGETHER with

ARMANI WILLIAMS MANEUVERING A CAR around a track at 180 miles an hour is stressful enough. But Armani Williams, 22, says that’s not the hard part about being the first pro NASCAR competitor to be open about having been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. “Routine is a must for me. Without having one in place, I get anxiety about not being on track,” he says. “I set alarms on my phone so I don’t miss the things that need to get done.” Like these. —MARTY MUNSON

8:00 a.m.

RISE AND READ

some cannabinoids, including THC, CBD, and one called CBN, do help some people. But Jackson had other symptoms—like being unfocused at work, feeling down most days, and not having much of an appetite—that led me to diagnose him with major depressive disorder and prescribe an antidepressant. Within a few weeks, he was sleeping better, feeling more upbeat, and smoking less.

It’s also worth noting that for both sleep and anxiety, often “products with little to no THC and higher levels of nonintoxicating cannabinoids like CBD are very helpful,” Gruber says.

Jason Raish (Williams)

IT’S IMPORTANT TO TAP INTO WHY YOU’RE TAKING IT.

I ASK PATIENTS what’s driving them to cannabis. As with any other drug, relying on it can become an unhealthy coping strategy. I’m not against using something to change your mood. But with prescription meds, for instance, they’re usually combined with talk therapy and monitoring by a mental-health professional.

Cannabis can be one of the many factors related to the manifestation of psychosis, and people with a family history of psychosis may be at higher risk. THC may also exacerbate symptoms if you have schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

So when my patients say, “A little pot can’t hurt, right?” I explain all this, as well as why it’s important for them to be up-front with themselves about whether it’s helping or masking their issues and if another approach might work better.

Williams catches up on racing news first thing, usually while eating the eggs he’s made. “My dad is starting to get me into smoothies because he’s excited about this Ninja blender he got.

I think he just wants to use it a lot.”

9:30–11:00 a.m.

STRENGTHEN RACE SKILLS

“I like to call my simulator my office,” Williams says. About three times a day, he gets into its cockpit—complete with steering wheel, gear shift, and video screens—to sharpen his reaction time and his hand and foot skills. Focus? He’s got that down. “People with autism have a laserlike focus on things that interest us. I feel I take that advantage to the track. A lot of drivers have it, but for me it feels different because I’m always so tuned in.”

11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

RECHARGE AND REACH OUT

A lunch break often

doesn’t involve a break from DMs. “I’m pretty much on my phone all the time,” he says. “I try to be responsive to fans who send me messages.

Also, there are many families that are impacted by autism, and I think it’s important for me to be responsive to them and provide hope and encouragement.”

His second workout, after dinner, is an hour-long strength session. “It takes quite a bit of upper-body and core strength to drive a race car for long periods of time at high speeds.” Planks and pushups are always in the mix.

3:00 p.m.

“My mom liked to cook for me as a kid, and now I’m sort of returning the favor and cooking with her,” he says. Salmon with mushrooms and spinach and linguine with green-olive sauce are their specialties.

“I pride myself on spending as much time with my family as I can because of how much support they have given me.

I want to do the same for them.”

SIMULATE, HYDRATE

During the day, especially as a race nears, he drinks plenty of Pedialyte, which has electrolytes that help keep him hydrated.

“Race cars can be extremely hot inside. It’s not uncommon to lose five to seven pounds of water weight over the course of a race.”

He downs the stuff after races, too.

5:00–5:30 p.m.

RUN AND JUMP

Williams’s first workout of the day is cardio— usually a combination of running and jumping jacks. “Running is essential because with the length of the races, you need to be in top shape,” he says.

5:30–6:30 p.m.

SERVE IT UP

9:30–11:00 p.m.

TUNE IN, TUNE OUT To chill out at night, he watches “anything that’s good” on TV. But not too much of it: “I set a sleep timer so I don’t leave the TV on all night.”

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MIND

JUNK OR SCIENCE?

SUPPOSE YOU’RE ON

CAN YOUR BLOOD PREDICT

PTSD ?

For way too long, you’ve had to suffer through symptoms of post-traumatic stress before finding help. A new test might just save you time.

BY SARAH ELIZABETH RICHARDS 44

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the front lines of any bad situation, right there with all its horrors. Maybe you’re a health-care worker in a Covid ward, a firefighter battling runaway forest fires, a soldier in major combat. Even if you witness death after horrible death, the odds are that you will eventually get over whatever trauma you have seen or heard or felt. Humans are by nature resilient and have survived a stream of tragedies throughout history.

Yet if you’re like some people, a few months later, you’re not sleeping much.

You feel on edge, can’t stop reliving what you saw, and suffer from a depression you can’t shake. Instead of gradually feeling better, you feel worse. As with six out of 100 adults, your healing process from trauma somehow got interrupted.

Another layer of stress settles over everything that’s going on: the frustration that mental-health experts still can’t nail down why you developed so-called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) instead of going about your life as so many others do.

But let’s say that you’ve already been screened for a biological predisposition to PTSD. Then you already know that exposure to extreme or prolonged stress might have a more detrimental effect on you than it does on other people. And you already know that you should be undergoing treatment because you have a plan in place. You’ll see a mental-health counselor, ramp up your self-care, and consider taking some time off. This is the hope of the creators of new testing that could revolutionize how we diagnose and treat lingering trauma.

“We usually wait until people are suffering or have a substance-abuse problem or broken relationships before focusing on mental health,” says Charles Cathlin, the CEO of the Maryland start-up Polaris Genomics. The company’s mission is to create simple blood tests to screen people for PTSD risk.

In any given year, according to the National Center for PTSD at the U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs, about 12 million adults in the United States have the disorder, which is marked by flashbacks, nightmares, severe anxiety, and depression. And military veterans, especially those who’ve been in combat, are more at risk; 11 to 20 percent of troops ILLUSTRATION BY MARK HARRIS

from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are estimated to be affected annually.

Research is finding that the physiology of people who are more vulnerable to PTSD may be different from the physiology of those who aren’t. In 2020, work by a national consortium assembled by the U. S. Department of Defense confirmed that biomarkers associated with trauma were present in veterans with PTSD but not in those without it. Pinning down its biological signature like this could get people the treatments they need faster and save years of distress.

SPARING THE SUFFERING

CATHLIN, a former Air Force officer and chief of the neurology-devices branch at the U. S. Food and Drug Administration, decided to focus his career on studying mental health after watching the psychological struggles of firefighters, police officers, and EMTs at Ground Zero after the 9/11 attacks.

Six years ago, Cathlin heard about the work of Rachel Yehuda, Ph.D., a neuroscientist who developed a way to identify PTSD sufferers based on biological changes in the blood. She’s currently the director of the Traumatic Stress Studies program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

Her research found that the children of people who developed PTSD after traumatic experiences like the Holocaust were more likely to develop the disorder themselves. Yehuda’s team created an early test that could detect such biological clues—hormonal and epigenetic changes in DNA—in blood cells. Cathlin and his cofounders became inspired to launch a company to bring the technology to market.

The military would be a logical first customer, and the Polaris team imagined that such a test might be used as part of troops’ routine health assessments. It could screen for those people with such biomarkers who may be more vulnerable to PTSD from the start. The point is not to rule out who might serve but rather to flag those who might eventually have a hard time overcoming trauma, so that they can get mentalhealth interventions in place.

The company is now using artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms to provide further evidence

that the tests and biomarkers are accurate. It’s at work on FDA approval for a first commercial product. Polaris has received grants from the likes of the U. S. Air Force to advance these efforts.

WHAT STANDS IN THE WAY

SOME EXPERTS caution that the science behind the test isn’t a slam dunk yet. “The field still has a lot of work to do,” says Paula P. Schnurr, Ph.D., executive director of the National Center for PTSD. Scientists still need to make sure that biomarkers detected in large groups of people are relevant on an individual level—that they are precise enough to diagnose PTSD or its severity.

Polaris is working to validate its findings in larger, more diverse groups.

It’s also determining whether the

testing might be able to help evaluate people’s response to the PTSD treatment they’re getting.

“We’re hoping that the tools we’re developing now will help us better define the conditions and therefore develop better treatments in the future,” says Polaris’s chief scientific officer and cofounder, Tshaka Cunningham, Ph.D. Given the state of the world, we probably can’t expect less trauma in the near future. That’s why it’s important for the mental-health field to be more proactive about reducing its harm, says Yehuda. “What we know about trauma is that the sooner you can deal with what happened to you, the more likely you are to recover from its chronic effects,” she says. “It’s a matter of being prepared.”

THE TRUTH ABOUT MODERN PTSD TREATMENTS Although science is still working on a better way to detect PTSD, it’s been going gangbusters on helping people resolve it.

“PTSD is a treatable condition,” says Paula P. Schnurr, Ph.D., executive director of the National Center for PTSD. MYTH:

TRUTH:

TREATMENTS DON’T WORK

There’s no single treatment that works for everyone. And even if the first treatment you try isn’t effective, others may help you finish healing from the trauma and stop the PTSD. Experts currently favor prolonged exposure therapy, EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing), and cognitive processing therapy.

PSYCHEDELICS ARE WISHFUL THINKING

The FDA is reviewing whether MDMA— yes, ecstasy—is a useful complement to psychotherapy. Proponents of the drug argue it reduces anxiety so that patients can work through a traumatic memory with less distress.

IT TAKES FOREVER TO GET OVER PTSD

Research—and real-life therapists—are finding that daily sessions for two to three weeks can deliver the same results for PTSD as once-a-week therapy for ten to 15 weeks.

Compressed sessions, especially via telehealth or texting, are more feasible for many people, so anyone who couldn’t access therapy or fit it in previously can do so now. “What’s amazing is that some people who’ve been suffering for years can see more progress in one week than in ten years,” Schnurr says.

H T E M E TH JONATHAN MAJORS

has risen from indie standout to blockbuster villain in the Marvel and Rocky Cinematic Universes. None of it—the acclaim, the fame, and this here body—came easy, which is exactly how he likes it.

BY

CLO VER HOP E

N A M D O H PHOTOGRAPHS BY

AB +D M

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J

JONATHAN MAJORS does not like

On set, it’s the same story. Hand him fake weights for a scene and he’ll look at you with incredulity and tell you in the politest, sincerest tone, “You’re fucking kidding me,” as he did while playing two of the most physically demanding roles of his career: a rough-edged boxer in the latest installment of the Rocky Cinematic Universe, Creed III, and an asocial bodybuilder in the dark drama Magazine Dreams. For both upcoming projects, Majors lifted real weights during filming.

“I will do this all day. We are not putting fake weights on. I haven’t been training for the past three months to get here and use Styrofoam,” Majors says on a hot and sunny day in London. “Put these fucking weights on so we can lift it, so you can shoot it, so I can tell the story.” Respectfully, anything less is “like putting fake tears in your eyes. Or putting fake sweat on you.

This is it. This is it! Let’s go.” He laughs.

It’s a little past 8:00 a.m. on Hampstead Heath, and the shutters of Kenwood House aren’t yet open to visitors. Majors is on a bench overlooking the sprawling 17thcentury manor. Despite the heat, the Texasbred actor is wearing sweatpants and a pinstripe button-up under a vest. The best guess is that he’s in London filming a Marvel title. He won’t say. A year ago, Majors debuted as the demented He Who Remains in the season 1 finale of Loki. That cameo has Marvel fans giddy about what he will accomplish as the Avengers’ next significant threat, Kang the Conqueror.

In talking to Majors for two and a half hours, you witness the extreme discipline he possesses. He is equal parts focus and 48

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sensitivity, and he wears his drive like a second skin. When the Michael Jordan documentary The Last Dance aired in 2020, Majors had friends texting him, “I understand you better now.” In conversation, he’s quick to affirm his dedication to his work, which includes three new films.

Devotion explores the real-life camaraderie between two naval aviators, Jesse Brown (Majors) and Tom Hudner, played

by Top Gun: Maverick’s Glen Powell. Then he turns up as Kang in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. He will also shoot the film adaptation The Man in My Basement, a thriller based on Walter Mosley’s book about preserving a cherished family home.

Majors stands out in a world short on new, exciting movie stars. His portfolio is like a capsule collection of art films, including his 2019 breakout, The Last Black Man in San Francisco; historical adventure stories and westerns (Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, the ensemble pic The Harder They Fall); and HBO’s Black horror series Lovecraft Country, for which he was Emmy nominated. He not only savors a challenge but seeks it out.

“When I look at a script, I look at the level of difficulty,” he says. “If it’s going to be easy, I don’t want to do it. The fitness community is going to scrutinize Magazine Dreams.

The Navy is going to scrutinize Devotion.”

Majors has proved himself as a multifaceted leading man, and he’s about to level up with consecutive roles that combine his physical and mental strengths. He’s shepherding Marvel through a crucial phase as the next big villain while pursuing indie projects, dealing with great expectations while still making savvy art. More than

pulling off his own stunts, which he does, he’s concerned with convincing the audience that his characters are real. “People have been following this character for two hours sometimes. I’ve been trying so hard to tell the truth, which is not easy,” he says.

“A part of you will know. That’s Kang, but that’s not my Kang. That’s Kang adjacent.

That’s a stunt guy. In The Harder They Fall, I ride a horse in a very particular way.

You put a stunty on that, and they go, ‘He don’t got the swag. His head ain’t bopping.’

You should never once think it’s not him.

You know it’s him. So you trust in him.”

Whatever it takes to establish that trust, Majors will do. Over the past year, he’s packed on ten pounds of muscle to play Kang, an extra five for Creed, and six more for Magazine Dreams. And he’s whittled his way down to 5 percent body fat to look believably ripped. Not every actor has the impulse or discipline to transform their body the way Majors does. He has that instinct in common with his characters, who wrestle with tragedy and have something to prove. It can come from ambition.

But Majors knows better than anyone that on the flip side of ambition are deeper, much more complex motivations. Details about his Creed III character, Damian, are under lock and key, but what Majors will say is that every fiber of Dame’s brawn comes from trauma. “There are certain reasons

Styling: Ted Stafford. Styling assistance: Chaun Cat. Grooming: Autumn Moultrie/the Wall Group. Barbering: Sincere Gilles. Prop styling: Wooden Ladder.

Production: Hyperion LA. 1979 Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL courtesy Mercedes-Benz Classic, Long Beach, California.

to take it easy. If you ask him to become a pilot, a professional boxer, or a bodybuilder for a role, the 33-year-old actor will commit to several months of brutal cardio, strength training, and mental conditioning until his muscles bulge and he fails his way to perfection. By the time he’s ready to perform, he will have become who he needs to be. “If I’m going to bench-press 250 in a film, I need to be able to bench-press 275 a few times,” he says, then corrects himself: “305 a few times.”

Pages 46–47: Swim trunks by Emporio Armani; necklace by Miansai. Opposite and this page: Shorts by Urban Outfitters; socks by American Trench; necklace by Miansai.

you build your body,” he says. “Dame’s body was built from loss. He had lost something, and that hole is what made him work the way he worked. When you see Dame’s body, you go, Oh, that makes sense. You don’t look like that and be happy with life.” In contrast, his Magazine Dreams character, Killian, who’s using bodybuilding as a coping mechanism, is fueled by rage. “That’s a pain body. A lot of guys build their bodies by anger, which is a secondary emotion,” says Majors. “And those bodies don’t look right.

Those bodies don’t engender emotion.”

Beyond aesthetics, he wants his characters’ bodies to convey emotional strength.

“When you see these guys, it’s like, Yeah, they’re fucking fit. But if you look at it, there’s a story there.” So what’s his story?

MAJORS HAS BEEN

in Jordan-esque attack mode since he was 17, when his high school coaches put him on the B team. “Basketball, football—I was a B teamer,” he says. “I was like, ‘You got me fucked up.’ No disrespect to the B team, but I felt like I’m better than that guy. I’m faster than that guy.” Majors was a churchgoing kid who grew up in Cedar Hill, a Dallas suburb, with his mother; his older sister, Monica; and his younger brother, Cameron.

He was nine when their father left. He attended school with the children of Dallas Cowboys players and developed a habit of taking things personally. Over the summer, you’d find him running to and from practice in his B-team jersey.

“You couldn’t outrun me. You wouldn’t outlift me. I was determined [not to feel] less than,” he says. “Then I transcended to where I am now: Fuck everybody. Fuck everything.

The coaches and the teachers were giving me the layout of what success looked like, and they said I wasn’t that. So then I began to work hard to be that....I was dealing with my daddy issues and also moving into adulthood.” Majors was constantly being kicked out of school for fights but later discovered reading and acting as a distraction from rebellion. His family gifted him a viewfinder his grandfather had brought back from his time in the military in Germany, along with books like The Three Musketeers and The Canterbury Tales. In time, Majors sanded away at his edges but kept the chip.

When he read the Devotion script, he connected with a particularly agonizing scene in which his character, Jesse, gives himself a pep talk during an insecure moment. “The doubt is overwhelming, and what he does to

get himself in position to succeed is heartbreaking and telling,” Majors says. “I was pulling from things I knew would hurt me.

Things I’ve said, to get myself where I need to be to tell Jesse’s story.”

Majors notes that part of the challenge with physical acting is quieting your body’s natural reflexes. Sometimes he can’t just let them go. “When you express that much discomfort, rage, or loss, that is a physical reaction. Your body doesn’t say ‘Cut!’ and you’re over it,” he explains. “You can’t turn it off, because it’s not acting.” The opposite instinct is turning it on. In the middle of a brutal take or workout session, he asks himself, “Am I dying?” And when a voice inside screams, “No!” he pushes. “It could be The Last Black Man in San Francisco, and it’s like, Go! My emotions are a muscle. I say, ‘All right, fire them motherfuckers up!’

You’ll hear me hollering. I scream on set like a quarterback. Oh-maha! Oh-maha!

It’s a thing.” Stephen Broussard, an executive producer on Loki and a producer on AntMan and the Wasp: Quantumania, recalls how Majors had “an insane work ethic” and would show up early on set every day wearing his Kang outfit, then jog around the soundstage with his portable speaker.

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Necklace by Miansai.

Majors is known around Hollywood for his immersive approach, a blend of different Method-acting styles. He says, “I’m not going to be an acting snob here. But I will say, when people talk about the Method, they’re talking specifically about Strasberg.” He points to the differences between the improv-based Meisner and Demidov techniques, both of which he studied at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and the School of Drama at Yale. Method acting has earned a reputation as somewhere between excessive and grandiose, and Majors is mindful of his energy while filming but emphasizes he’ll do “whatever it takes for me, whatever it takes.”

During production, Majors has sent his scene partners written letters and songs relevant to their roles. For Devotion, he took Christina Jackson, who plays his onscreen wife, Daisy Brown, on an old-fashioned ice cream date to get in character. When shooting a take for the opening scene of Magazine Dreams, Majors was lifting with such intensity, snot and tears running down his face, that director Elijah Bynum told him to “take it easy.” Majors chuckles at the memory. “He almost got his head bit off.”

He adds, “I’m not trying to prove anything to anybody. I’m just trying to finish the mission. I’m never doing more than I need to. That’s economy. I’m usually relaxed.” Before accepting the role in Devotion, Majors asked his costar Powell to meet him at a Russian bathhouse in Manhattan’s West Village, where they sat in a sauna and discussed the movie and their upbringing for around five hours. “As an actor, you have to be incredibly sensitive and be able to get in touch with things that a lot of other people maybe cover up,” says Powell. “To make it as an actor in Hollywood, you also have to be relentless, and that’s Jonathan. It’s like he’s got these two sides where he’s the greatest empath and also a warrior.”

MAJORS WILL SOON

take on the task of following up Josh Brolin’s Thanos with Kang, the anchor of the MCU’s multiverse saga. Avengers: The Kang Dynasty is slated for release in 2025. Majors says, “It was the character and dimensions of Kang [that drew him to the role]. And the potential that it had. I thought, I’ll take a chance on that.” He first talked to Marvel head Kevin Feige only after filming Loki and sealing the deal to play Kang. “Jonathan is an incredibly compelling actor who puts in the work yet makes it look effortless, and

“ I’M NOT FEARLESS. I AC T U A L LY E N C O U N T E R F E A R A LOT. I JUST DON’T GIVE A FUCK.” he’s also just cool—everyone pays attention when he steps into the room,” says Feige.

Majors is prepared to give a rich, multidimensional performance unlike any other. “Killmonger, Thanos, and Kang are not related, and that’s good for the MCU. It adds diversity,” he says. In 2021, he started layering on muscle for his portrayal of Kang in the newest Ant-Man film, working with strength-and-conditioning coach Jamie Sawyer. Sawyer used the same approach he uses when training boxers and MMA fighters, prioritizing performance over aesthetics. “He is the warrior version of Kang, so there was a focus on what that warrior would look like who’s been around through the ages and has developed every type of combat skill,” says Sawyer. “It was about making him look like an imposing figure.”

Audiences know an actor’s physical transformation is part of the job, but they’re also aware of the temptation to overdo it, especially when playing a chiseled superhero. “I look at Kang and I go, Okay, cool. It’s a certain IP where people expect this at a bare minimum,” says Majors. “No one should put themselves or their families in a place where they’re hurting, but your own discomfort is not necessarily a bad thing. That’s growth. It’s not comfortable, but you’re here to save the world, aren’t you? Or take over the world.”

While filming Ant-Man last year, Majors also began readying for Creed III with his primary trainer, Mark “Rhino” Smith, and boxing coach Robert Sale. Rather than simply prepare him for the movie, Sale wanted Majors to inhabit the essence of a fighter and taught him how to box. At points, he had Majors spar with professional fighters (minus the hitting). The actor’s athletic IQ helps him understand the science of boxing. “The trick to becoming believable on film is to embody it philosophically,” says Sale. “He ate up every component of the information ideologically.”

Michael B. Jordan, who plays the Creed

franchise’s prizefighter Adonis, makes his directorial debut with the third installment. He knows the amount of mental prep required to sell the choreography of boxing.

“Jonathan, you know, lives a little bit of the character, so there’s a fluidity from off set to on set that you respect,” says Jordan. “The time it takes to do these fights and what it takes out of you daily is truly incredible.”

Majors is taking nothing for granted. He wakes up around 4:00 a.m. to run or train, and his six-foot build is low-single-digit body fat and striations that “cannot be bought.”

Still, the past year of preparation has tested the limits of his mind and body. “I’ve always been athletic, but these are body roles— where the body is part of the given circumstances,” he says. “Creed taught me things about my craft, my body, and the marriage of the two. There’s levels to this shit.”

THE VIBE IN

800-acre Hampstead Heath, with its rolling hills and gentle shrubs, is serene. But Majors can’t help adding an even more tranquil backdrop.

An hour into our conversation, he grabs his iPhone and raises the volume on a classical song: “Luminous,” by Italian pianist and composer Ludovico Einaudi. It turns out he was playing music the whole time, so low it was imperceptible. When I ask him later if music is part of his routine, he texts back, “Music is an integral part of my life. I play it often to keep some spirits away, but often to invite them. It stays with me and plays the yang to yin of silence, which I also yearn for very often.” His uncle was a jazz saxophonist, and his mother, a minister of music, told him music had spirits in it, so he shouldn’t listen before bed, which made Majors do the opposite.

A notebook peeks out of his pants pocket—he journaled a bit in the surrounding meadows on the way over. He tells me that he’s writing about his creative process, characters he’s played, loves, MEN’S HEALTH

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RAPID FIRE losses, and memories. Later, we walk to the nearby Brew House Café, where he fills his plate with eggs, spinach, and four strips of bacon. Those muscles need fuel.

Majors isn’t very social outside of work, and he isn’t on social media. He joined Facebook when he was 17 and deactivated his account not long after. “I had broken up with my girlfriend from Texas, and I never really got back to it. I’ve always been an outcast.”

This past spring, Majors was in Los Angeles filming Creed III when a photo of him shirtless on set leaked online.

Obscene tweets ensued. His publicist and his mom notified him of the photo. “Now I kind of step away from that part,” Majors says. “There’s nothing wrong with that. I embrace it. I also mostly wear hoodies when I’m out. I stay covered up.” He adds, “I think that’s part of being sexy. I’m not conscious of it. My brother was the pretty boy. I was never the cute boy growing up. I was just J.” You won’t find J partying. He does walk his dogs and run a lot. While out with his two Belgian Malinois, Captain and Hero, one day in Los Angeles, he met an amateur bodybuilder named Jason Best, who complimented the dogs and had just seen him in The Harder They Fall. From then on, Best would bring Majors coffee every day, and they’d sit on the corner with the dogs and chat about religion, relationships, and fatherhood. (Majors has a nine-year-old daughter and won’t discuss his relationship status.) “Regular homie.

That’s who I fuck with,” he says. “If you build castles, everyone that approaches you is an enemy. But if you’re amongst the people, everybody’s an ally. I’m actually with you.”

To get ripped for Magazine Dreams, JONATHAN MAJORS spent 12 weeks working with trainer Mark “Rhino” Smith, relying on supersets. Do each of these supersets twice a week to build size.

THE LEG-DAY CRUSHER (4 SETS)

ARM ANNIHILATION (3 SETS)

BARBELL DEADLIFT

WALKING LUNGE

OVERHEAD EXTENSION

HAMMER CURL

Aim to move a heavy weight.

Do 4 to 6 reps per set.

After going heavy, focus on volume.

Do 50 total lunge reps (25 per leg).

Move only at the elbow as you pull the cable. Do 15 reps per arm.

Do 10 reps per arm. Don’t swing the weights!

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Ben Mounsey-Wood (illustrations)

MAJOR MUSCLE

CHEAT MEAL? When a sked where greatness. I tell him few “A burger at Shake Shack.” home is, Majors says, people care enough to “I’ve been without a perreach the level of focus LAST PODCAST YOU manent physical address he somehow sustains.

RECOMMENDED for six years now, with“That’s true. That’s the TO A FRIEND? “This Jungian Life.” out rent or mortgage and secret weapon,” he says. “I never in one place for have a tremendous amount MOTTO? longer than three to five of faith in my preparation “What are you waiting for?” months.” Four years ago, and faith in something LAST TIME YOU CRIED? he called himself an actor greater than me.” To him, “Last night. I was for the first time, and it control is preparation.

FaceTiming my daughter, didn’t feel right. The more “I’m not fearless. I actuand she was telling me about he performs, the more he ally encounter fear a lot. I her first day of school.” realizes he’s still learnjust don’t give a fuck. I MEAL YOU COOK TO ing. He rarely celebrates, know I can do it, and it’s IMPRESS SOMEONE? but he does find romance something or somebody “Spaghetti Bolognese. My in his work. “It’s an occuelse sneaking in and saygrandma’s recipe.” pation. It actually is what ing, ‘Be careful.’ Which is EUPHEMISM FOR SEX? occupies my mind all the like the person telling me “Take a nap.” time, outside of my intiyou’re on the B team. Tellmate relationships. I’m ing me you’re not smart MOST IMPORTANT lucky in that way. I just enough or you’re not handQUALITY IN A ROMANTIC really like it.” He laughs. some enough or you’re not PARTNER? “Understanding.”

“Some days it is a job. But talented enough. And I that’s the athlete in me, go, Oh, but I know I am,” where it’s like, Okay, that’s says Majors. “And not another rep; it’s the last round. There’s because my ego tells me I am but because something romantic about that. You get off I’m ready. I haven’t had a carb in two and work at 4:30 in the morning, drive home in a half months. I know I can take my shirt Los Angeles through Topanga Canyon, and off. I’ve been running miles. And because nobody’s on the road. I bring my dogs to I’ve failed. I’ve already had another grown work. So I got my dogs in the truck. I got my man pull the weight off my chest because windows down. Got my Radiohead playing. everything has died. I’ve already tried to I’m just gunning it. That’s the best, man.” jump on the horse and broke my heel. This Majors cuts a commanding figure walk- is not going to be worse.” ing alone back to his residence near Kenwood. Once in a while, you’ll encounter clover hope is a Brooklyn-based culture someone like him with an intense, almost writer and the author of The Motherlode: painful ambition that propels them to 100+ Women Who Made Hip-Hop.

Vintage tank, available at the Society Archive; track pants, Adidas Originals by Wales Bonner; necklace

by Miansai.

NEED A SPOT?

FITNESS HAS AN INCLUSIVITY PROBLEM:

NOT ALL GYMS WELCOME EVERYONE. BUT ACROSS THE COUNTRY, PLACES LIKE AUSTIN’S LIBERATION BARBELL CLUB, WHERE LIFTING IS A HUMAN RIGHT, ARE CHANGING THAT.

BY LAUREN LARSON

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ARTURO OLMOS MEN’S HEALTH

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EVEN WITH AN INFUSION of some of the best marketing available—a turn on an episode in the sixth season of Queer Eye—the promotional wheel never stops a-spinning for a nascent gym. So it is at Austin’s Liberation Barbell Club on a sweltering Saturday in midJuly, as Laurie Porsch and Tyler Jacob Villarreal tend to the club’s Instagram. Porsch, 35, is the owner of Liberation, which she founded just before the dawn of the Covid era. Villarreal, 23, is a trainer at the club who has also taken on social-media duties.

Porsch is small, strong, and quick, with hot-pink nails and a cloud of dark, curly hair. Fueled by “an unhealthy number” of Red Bulls, she has lifted off from the standing desk in the front office and is now darting around the gym, demonstrating for Villarreal how to properly photograph Liberation’s clients for Instagram. The day’s visitors are a distillation of Austin-core: They are tattoo prone and friendly, and everyone looks like they could paddleboard for 20 miles. Nobody seems self-conscious when Porsch squats down and begins taking pictures of them in front of the giant wall of pride flags that backdrops the heavy-duty strength-training equipment.

“Show me how it’s done, Laurie,” Villarreal says a little sardonically, following her around the gym.

“You’re overthinking it—it can be super simple,” Porsch says, ignoring Villarreal’s Gen Z cynicism and hunching down, phone up, behind a client who is easily slicing through the air on a rowing machine while chatting with a friend.

But Villarreal’s task is not so straightforward: How do you capture a gym’s vibe?

Even if you’re really gym savvy, walking into a weight room for the first time can conjure a “new kid in the lunchroom” anxiety, compounded, for many, by the fact that serious lifting equipment can signal an intimidatingly macho, cishet scene.

Most commercial gyms, such as Gold’s Gym and Planet Fitness, have sought to mitigate that intimidation and to create safe and inviting spaces for everyone—regardless of disability, ethnicity, fitness level, gender identity, income, race, and beyond—through marketing campaigns, nondiscrimination policies, and more-tactile investments, such as wheelchair-friendly equipment. But these 56

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sprawling, franchised communities don’t always instill that inclusive attitude in their clientele and staff the way a local gym, like Liberation or Seattle’s Rain City Fit, strives to do. In 2015, a Michigan pest sued Planet Fitness for revoking her membership after she complained about sharing a locker room with a trans woman, and in 2018, a trans woman in California sued a Crunch Fitness after she was denied the use of the women’s locker room. The gravity of the “fitness for everyone” movement is most potently felt in Liberationsized gyms.

Just look to the flags. The north wall of Liberation looks like the pride United Nations: A genderqueer pride flag is flanked by a bisexual pride flag and a trans pride flag, and the procession continues across the wall. “Most people will come in here and go, ‘Well, I know the rainbow one, but . . . I think that’s a trans one? What are these other ones?’ ” says Ean Ashford, 38, a Liberation employee turned client who just strolled through the door. “It’s endless—you can be whatever you want.”

An Italian flag hangs on an adjacent wall, a Washington, D. C., flag on another.

“For anybody else who doesn’t feel at home, we’ve got some country flags,” Ashford says, laughing. “Military, we got you covered, too. Chicago, we got you covered.

Texas, we’re good. Whew!”

Porsch has a background in martial arts and the U.S. Marine Corps, so she was used to being the only woman in maledominated gyms. “People will be like, ‘Oh my God, but the guys there are the nicest,’ ” she says of those spaces. “Well, of course they’re the nicest, but there’s still a barrier to entry.” Porsch wanted Liberation to be immediately inviting for all—she says one client used to arrive in a MAGA hat—but

its target demographic is those who traditionally might not see themselves represented in strength sports like Olympic lifting, powerlifting, and strongman.

“It started with a friend of mine who happens to be transmasc, and he said something about how he was really dehydrated at work because he didn’t want to use the restroom,” Porsch says. She asked him where else he didn’t feel comfortable going into the restroom, and he told her the gym could be stressful. “In my head, I was like, I can make it where you’re not stressed at the gym.”

Porsch wondered what would happen if she combined the best equipment she could source with a very intentional design, with elements that would appeal to people who may have felt disenfranchised by gyms in the past. Gyms that made clients choose between a men’s and women’s locker room, for instance, or whose code of conduct did not address hateful language.

Client Ryli Webster, 40, says that when he and his partner joined Liberation, they had previously been members of a gym that aspired to be inclusive and that they liked. But even there, “a lot of the ways that they talk about the standards of athleticism and fitness were very binary in terms of gender,” he explains. “It’s a typical CrossFit type of gym: They have bars that are allocated for women and bars that are allocated for men and certain weight prescriptions that are allocated for each.”

Porsch wanted to nullify all those moments of uncertainty in the gym.

Besides the flags, Liberation would have bright blue walls and orange accents, and it would be well lit. On the website, each trainer and staffer would be introduced as a smiling cartoon, with their pronouns listed beneath their name. The restrooms would be gender neutral and single stall.

(In one, a stick-on banner atop the mirror reads you’re doing amazing, sweetie— an encouraging post-pee message for all.)

Ten “elements of dignity,” from conflictresolution researcher Donna Hicks, Ph.D., would hang near the entrance, right over the gym’s code of conduct, which reminds Liberation-goers that “invalidation of individual rights makes people feel like shit” and to rerack all weights and barbells.

The gym’s aesthetics were important.

But the most critical element of all would be the people. lauren larson lives in Austin and writes about culture and entertainment.

THE

LIBERATION BARBELL

TEAM

Tyler Jacob Villarreal COACH

COACHING ICON: John Berardi, Ph.D., C.S.C.S.

Laurie Porsch OWNER

WORKOUT ANTHEM: “H B I C,” by Gin Wigmore “THERE’S TONS OF QUALIFIED TRAINERS,” Porsch says when asked how she selected her staff of seven. In addition to trainers who deal in sound science, she looks for people who are “professional but not cold.” No trainer has the lived experience of every community reflected in the flags on the wall, but Porsch does require trainers to be open to the identities around them and familiar with the vocabulary of inclusivity.

“Really, the way you train someone who is, say, trans nonbinary is no different than how you should train anybody else,” she says. Every client has individual needs, anxieties, injuries, and goals, all of which should be approached thoughtfully. “If everybody came in with the same recognition of dignity,” Porsch says, “everything would work itself out.”

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VILLARREAL WAS RAISED in a small conservative town in the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas.

“Anything outside the cishet experience was ‘weird,’ ” says the trainer, who is currently exploring his identity.

But in 2020, he fell into a productive spiral over the country’s terminal injustices. He now has an Instagram account, @theleftistlifter, that seeks to “bridge the gap between Leftism & health and fitness."

Villarreal appreciates that empathy and acceptance are the default at Liberation. “Having people like Laurie, who create something like this where people can come and feel safe and feel seen and feel loved and accepted for who they are . . . it’s a really cool thing.”

Angel Flores

I idolize are those who train beside me.”

COACH

TRAINING ICON: “My training is unique and specific to me and my identity. The only people

ANGEL FLORES FOUND LIBERATION in August 2020 when she was looking for a coaching job. “It was a space that allowed me to completely experi-

Isaac Stehlik FRONT DESK STAFF

FRENEMY EXERCISE: Bulgarian split squats “BEING A STRAIGHT CIS MAN, it doesn’t bother me going to commercial gyms or anything, but in the same sense, if I go to a commercial gym and take off my shirt, people are going to come up to me and be like, ‘Oh, you’re so this, you’re so that,’ ” says 22-year-old Isaac Stehlik, who is sixfoot-four. “Usually it’s like a good thing . . . but sometimes

you don’t want to be scrutinized by everybody. When you come here, people are just gonna do their thing and more or less ignore you, unless you want to talk to them, in which case they’re super friendly.”

ence the new things that I was experiencing, since I was also freshly transitioning at that time,” she says.

Liberation became a bastion for her during her transition. She used the gym as a sketch pad for new movements, a new body, and new clothing.

Then, in March 2021, Netflix called. Flores’s Liberation peers had nominated her for Queer Eye. Now she bops around the country doing speaking engagements, spreading the word about the club wherever she goes.

Generally, people are surprised to learn that there’s a queer gym in Austin. It’s an easy sell, though: “If I’m able to safely train in a space, then damn near anybody can safely train in a space, because I’m like a high minority,” Flores says, laughing.

Jazmín Reyes

HEAD POWERLIFTING COACH

BEST FITNESS ADVICE: “Perform every movement with effort and intention, even your warmups. This will ultimately train your body to lift more efficiently and explosively.”

JAZMÍN REYES, 27, began training in Chicago; there, she says, powerlifting is a pretty niche community. “There’s like one or two powerlifting gyms, and there’s not a lot of women in the sport.”

Now she coaches a powerlifting group at 6:00 a.m., comprising mostly people who are new to the sport. Several athletes have even gone on to compete in powerlifting.

“Being in the health space for a long time”—Reyes has done martial arts, gymnastics, swimming, and boxing—“I’ve definitely seen the toxic parts. I’ve definitely been told, ‘Oh, don’t get too big.’ ‘Don’t hurt your pretty little face.’ . . . I’m just like: I’m gonna keep doing this, and I’m gonna be good at it.”

SEVEN MORE SPOTS WHERE FITNESS IS FOR EVERYONE EQUALLY FIT

IRONBOUND BOXING

“IRON” MIKE STEADMAN, former U. S. Marine Corps infantry officer, founded a free boxing program in Newark, New Jersey, Ironbound Boxing, and serves as its CEO.

FINDING A NEW PURPOSE as a military veteran isn’t the most straightforward transition. For “Iron” Mike Steadman, 35, a former Marine infantry officer, his civilian purpose came from boxing. In 2017, two years after leaving the service and relocating to Newark, New Jersey, he started the nonprofit Ironbound Boxing, a free boxing program for kids from marginalized communities.

“Giving back was extremely important to me, especially being a Black male growing up in a single-parent home. I understand firsthand the challenges faced by young men and women of color, and I didn’t want to just be remembered as an infantry officer,” says Steadman (above, left). Through boxing and the military, he’d transformed himself from an insecure kid into a college grad, a three-time national collegiate boxing champ, and a commissioned officer in charge of leading others.

Working as a residential housing director at St. Benedict’s Prep in Newark, Steadman founded a small boxing club but needed a gym in order to expand. After being given a space by the city, he raised money from veterans groups and others to get the gear necessary to open. All of the coaches are volunteers.

“Boxing has a violent stigma,” he says. “So you’re going into an urban environment where there’s already a certain level of aggression. And sometimes people in corporate America get confused about why we are teaching these kids how to box. But veterans understand old-school values, the principles of facing adversity head-on while building grit and resilience in the ring.”

Calling Ironbound a gym would be underselling it. Steadman describes boxing as a conduit to “capacity building,” teaching the intangibles—quick thinking, patience, timing—that are key for real-world success. Five years after Ironbound opened, Steadman isn’t satisfied, even though the program has awarded $25,000 in educational scholarships and $15,000 in microgrants to young entrepreneurs. Ironbound has trained 150 kids and sent teams to the USA Boxing Nationals every year.

This year alone, it sent six boxers and fully funded their trips. —CLYDE GUNTER 60

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THE FACT THAT rates of obesity, diabetes, and depression are all higher among those with autism spectrum disorder is the main reason trainer Mark Fleming, who was himself diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome at age 11, opened Equally Fit, a gym in Tampa for neurodiverse people, in 2018. “Exercise not only improves your overall health, but especially your mental health,” he says.

“Having an outlet where you’re exercising and gaining confidence and greater independence can be life changing.”

Fleming (below, left) often works with neurodiverse people who might be distracted by the loud music in a typical gym and who may need different motivation. The goal is to use functional training that incorporates strength and cardio as well as things that can help improve motor planning and social skills.

Initially he focuses on exercises that deliver obvious benefits (think balance moves) or feel good (think stretches).

Fleming is also studying for a Ph.D. in kinesiology and starting a fitness nonprofit called the Disability Fitness Foundation in order to reach as many people as possible. —BEN COURT

Courtesy Ironbound (Steadman). Courtesy Equally Fit (Fleming). Courtesy Adaptive Training Academy (Zirkenbach). Courtesy Front Runners.

MARK FLEMING, a trainer on the autism spectrum, embraces neurodiversity at his gym.

THE ADAPTIVE TRAINING ACADEMY

Founded by ALEC ZIRKENBACH, this nonprofit equips fitness pros with the expertise needed to train people with disabilities.

AFTER HIS RIGHT LEG was crushed between two ships while serving in the Navy in Somalia in 2009, Alec Zirkenbach spent almost a year rehabbing before de-

ploying again. Zirkenbach (above, right) leaned into CrossFit to forge the fitness he needed to serve—he says the community spirit saved him—and just before leaving

the Navy, he founded Fathom CrossFit in San Diego in 2012. The initial goal was to provide a space where wounded soldiers could train, but that quickly expanded to include all people with disabilities. “Fitness isn’t specifically aesthetics,” he says.

“It’s not siloed [away from] your mental health—it’s all connected. Without community-based fitness and a supportive network, I wouldn’t exist today.”

Zirkenbach’s personal experience, as well as what he learned in talking with other veterans, athletes, trainers, doctors, and therapists, led him to develop an adaptive training program for CrossFit and eventually to form the Adaptive Training Academy (ATA) in 2017. It provides fitness professionals with the skills they need to train those with physiological and cognitive impairments, whether that means adjusting exercises for amputees or creating programs for people in wheelchairs.

“One quarter of Americans have a disability, but when you walk into a gym, that’s not what you see, even accounting for people without visually expressive conditions like neuromuscular impairments,” he says. “In every fitness facility, there should be at least one trainer that has taken some [adaptive training] education, preferably ours.” So far, 2,700 trainers have graduated from ATA. Zirkenbach is also the accessibility and adaptive sport specialist for CrossFit and runs the CrossFit Games’ adaptive program, which now has eight categories. —B. C.

THE FRONT RUNNERS

This running club welcomes all people for group training, fun runs, and more.

THE BEST FITNESS CLUBS deliver more than exercise. “When I came to New York, I didn’t know anybody. Now all of my friends are from Front Runners,” says Gilbert Gaona, president of Front Runners New York. “If I didn’t have this club, I would be lost.” Front Runners started in 1974 in San Francisco as a running club for gay and lesbian people, and it now has 100 clubs worldwide. New York’s was founded in 1979 and offers three fun runs and five coached workouts weekly. All adults are welcome. Group runs are divided by pace, and no one runs alone. Runners often ask head coach Mike Keohane how they can get faster, and he has three tenets: 1) Run hills once a week, whether it’s an up-and-down route or hill repeats. There’s no better way to strengthen your legs. 2) Run at high intensity once a week. If you’re breathing easy, push harder and try to maintain that faster pace while exerting the same energy. And 3) Be consistent and patient—your body needs time to adapt. —B. C.

The NYC Front Runners squad at the 2022 Percy Sutton 5K. MEN’S HEALTH

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FREE TO MOVE

Trainer AK MacKELLAR founded their own fitness platform to welcome beginners, the LGBTQ+ community, and people with chronic pain and illness.

WHEN A MOUNTAIN-BIKE crash left AK MacKellar with a traumatic brain injury, the personal trainer reset their approach to fitness. “I was always an athlete, always going hard and pushing my limits,” says MacKellar, who lives in Vancouver. “After the crash, my body said slow down.”

MacKellar realized that others like them might benefit from a gentler approach to fitness, embracing all body types and with an open mind to the gender spectrum. “Many people feel that they’ll be judged or looked at in some way. Free to Move is for all of them.” MacKellar founded Free to Move in 2020, offering virtual sessions, both live and on demand, plus movement challenges.

The approach resonated. Soon they had 130,000 followers on TikTok, with some reels, like a primer on motivation, garnering 500,000+

views. MacKellar wants to help clients reach their fitness goals, but the focus is long-term. “I often say, ‘Remember, this fitness journey could last 50 years or more. Take it slow.’ ” In a recent IG post, they wrote, “I’ve been strength training for 13 years. . . . And my body looks pretty much the same.” But then they listed all the benefits: stronger core, hip pain reduced 90 percent, improvement in managing mental-health flares, and increased energy. The takeaway: Fitness should make you feel better. Recently, MacKellar has urged clients to do a ten-day “get outside” challenge. “The goal is to motivate people to move outdoors for ten days, whether that’s doing a long trail run or walking around the block. It’s about doing what you can. Every little bit helps you feel better. ” —B. C.

NUBABILITY ATHLETICS When he was 17, SAM KUHNERT recognized the need for sports camps for kids like him who are limb different.

YOU CAN’T, YOU’RE NOT CAPABLE,

you’re going to fail. That’s what Sam Kuhnert, who was born without a fully formed left hand, heard over and over growing up in the three-light town of Du Quoin, Illinois. But Kuhnert persevered, playing basketball and football and excelling as a baseball pitcher. At 17, he was invited to Camp No Limits, a workshop in Missouri for kids with limb loss or limb differences, and realized he could be a differ-

Ava Church lifting at NubAbility's 2021 All Sports Camp.

ence maker. Most of the children were missing one hand, and most said they played only soccer. “I felt like kids should try different sports, even if they fail,” he says. “I realized many kids are being held back and only pushed into these sports that their parents think they can play.”

With the help of his own parents, Kuhnert organized a sports camp in 2012 for 19 limb-different kids with seven coaches and mentors who looked like them. His

mentality is that being limb different is not a disability, but it is a difference. He recalls a game of Wiffle ball at that first camp when Zoe, a four-year-old with no arms, came up to bat. “I was wondering, What’s she going to do? How can she be successful?’ Zoe said, ‘Give me the bat.’ ” He put it right under her chin. She hit the first pitch into the outfield, and Kuhnert says he’s never doubted a child’s ability since.

He created the hashtag #dontneed2 (whether it’s hands, arms, or legs) to express that attitude and found that it helped grow the kids’ confidence. Every year, his NubAbility Athletics Foundation runs more camps for more kids—13 in 10 states in 2022—and about 70 percent of participants attend on a scholarship. “We don’t ever want a child to feel like they’re gonna be held back out of finances,” says Kuhnert, who fundraises year-round for the program. What’s next? He hopes to take the camps global.

Kuhnert, 30, is pursuing his own fitness goals, too, and aiming to bench-press 400 pounds by the time he turns 40. He’s lifted 315, so he’s getting close. “It gets a little scary once you get more weight up there, but one thing about fitness that I’ve learned— and it goes back to living with limb difference—is if you beat yourself in your mind before you ever get under the weight, the weight’s a lot heavier. But if you have the confidence to go at it, knowing that you can achieve it, the weight gets lighter.” —B. C.

IN

INITIATI V E

THE FITNESS WARRIORS

MEET THE FACES OF

THE FUTURE OF FITNESS Sure, we all need more strength, but that doesn’t mean everyone needs to bodybuild (or run, or do yoga). The eight most recent members of our Strength in Diversity Initiative understand the necessity for different experiences. Get to know their personal motivations and their best advice.

Kezia Nathe (MacKellar). Keith Brake Photography (NubAbility). Courtesy Sports Backers (Martin). Courtesy subjects (Future of Fitness).

RICKY MARTIN started a free fitness class that now reaches 7,000 people.

RICKY MARTIN, a trainer and community-outreach worker in Richmond, realized his people were suffering: He saw high rates of obesity and diabetes—“[We all had] family or friends who were dying”—and little structure to help folks begin a fitness journey. In 2014, he created a pilot program to instruct people how to teach a group fitness class. “The volunteers came from underserved communities, and they looked like people in those communities, and so they had a heart for it because they understood the urgency,” he says. Ten women showed up for the first session and learned to teach a class Martin developed with the American Council on Exercise. It requires no equipment and mixes calisthenics and core moves.

Then Sports Backers, a local nonprofit that encourages active living, teamed up with Martin to scale the program and give it a name: Fitness Warriors. It grew and grew; so far it’s offered as many as 60 free fitness classes weekly in the greater Richmond area. Martin says the challenge is that students in a class often have a diverse range of abilities, so instructors need to be able to adjust for, say, an elderly obese person as well as a fit young man recently released from jail. One of Martin’s favorite workouts is a 10-10-10 ladder of jumping jacks, situps, and pushups, all moves that can be easily modified (on your knees for easier pushups, clapping for harder).

His personal record is 2 minutes, 43 seconds. He says the group typically does it in under seven minutes, with participants cheering each other on to finish.

During the pandemic, Fitness Warriors switched to virtual and outdoor classes and saw attendance drop from nearly 14,000 annual participants to 7,000, but the numbers are going back up now. As for the need for and benefits of the classes: Data from 2021 reveals that 82 percent of participants were overweight or obese and that 84 percent improved their ability to do daily tasks, 56 percent lost weight, 35 percent reduced their medications, and 90 percent reported decreased stress. Martin, now 66, says the program is strengthening the community in every way and hopes that other states can institute similar free fitness classes.

“It’s not just the program that changes people; it’s the connections they make that change people.” —B. C.

ALMONI ELLIS 25, Chesapeake, Va.

PATRICIA GREAVES 55, Long Island, N.Y.

ERIC SUNG 28, Queens, N.Y.

“Keep going! Sometimes you just won’t feel like doing much of anything. Keep going. Last two reps of that last set? Don’t stop now.”

“Attaining wellness isn’t by luck but by choosing it as a lifestyle. Don’t be afraid to lift weights!

Your older body will thank you for it.”

“If I can’t find a reason to work out for myself, I find a reason to do it for others. Ask questions like ‘How can I be a better partner or son?’ ”

JADI COLLADO 36, Philadelphia

JAIMAR BROWN 30, New York City

“Build momentum by truly doing what you love. Down the line, those ‘shoulds’ will start turning into ‘wants.’ ”

“My goal is to inspire Black kids in the LGBTQ community to find the courage to unapologetically be themselves in any space.”

BRITTANY SPENCER 34, Atlanta

VERONIQUE GRAVES 43, Riverdale Park, Md.

JERRY SAINT LOUIS 37, Bronx, N.Y.

“I plan to change the idea that ‘healthy’ is a certain body type or looks a certain way by highlighting the importance of mental and emotional health.”

“Low on motivation?

Think about your ‘why.’ Do you want to increase strength, sleep better, lose weight? Keep that end goal in mind.”

“Intimidated at the gym? Tune everyone out and focus on the reason you’re there.

It’s not how you start the race but how you finish.”

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“I’M NOT HIDING FROM

SHIT.”

IN THE 16 MONTHS SINCE HE CAME OUT PUBLICLY AND BECAME THE FIRST OPENLY GAY PLAYER IN THE NFL,

CARL NASSIB HAS BEEN QUIETLY DEMOLISHING THE TIRED OLD STEREOTYPES SURROUNDING SEXUALITY AND PRO SPORTS. HE’S NOW BACK WITH THE BUCS FOR HIS SEVENTH SEASON, BUT HIS BIGGEST VICTORIES MIGHT BE OFF THE FIELD.

BY MICKEY RAPKIN PHOTOGRAPHS BY MICHAEL SCHWARTZ

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C

SEVERAL WEEKS AFTER CARL NASSIB CAME

out in June 2021—becoming the first openly gay active player in NFL history—he completed a strip sack leading the Las Vegas Raiders to a week-one win over the Baltimore Ravens. It was a thrilling play and an impressive show of athleticism from the defensive lineman. It was also, in its own way, a statement. For years, coaches, commentators, and league officials had wrung their hands, suggesting that an openly gay player in the locker room would divide the team and sow chaos; the fear was so pervasive it became known as the distraction myth. Yet in one swift play—with 15.3 million people watching at home, marking ESPN’s most viewed season opener in nearly a decade—Carl Nassib vanquished the ghost.

He showed that all the talk about who’s gay and what it may or may not do to the team was the actual distraction—Nassib was there to make some tackles and play some football, and he did them excellently.

“Imagine I ruined it for everyone?” he says now. “Like, I let up a touchdown or something. And people were like, Go back in the closet! That could have been horrible.”

Nassib’s laughing—and it’s funny—but he also makes it clear that he hasn’t really thought much about that game since. He didn’t step out onto the field that day with the weight of the world on his broad shoulders. “I felt really lucky that I could be on a big stage and, like, make a good play while representing the community,” he says. “To be the first out player in a game and then to win. That’s sick, that’s fucking cool. But I go out with the same mentality every game, just trying to beat the shit out of the team across from me. My whole thing is, I’m a football player who is gay,” or, more clearly, who happens to be gay. “I don’t think that straight players are thinking, Oh, I’m straight and I’m playing this game.”

He’s right, of course. And he didn’t ask to be the first active openly gay player.

He isn’t even sure others will follow soon, though there are certainly closeted gay players in the league. (More on that later.)

Still, he wears it well. In his minute-long coming-out video, notable for its nonchalance—“I just want to take a quick moment to say that I’m gay”—Nassib swiftly pivoted the attention away from himself, announcing he was donating $100,000 to 66

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the Trevor Project, a nonprofit focused on suicide prevention and crisis intervention for LGBTQ youth. The NFL matched that sizable donation (not a given from a league that did Colin Kaepernick dirty), as did the travel website Booking.com.

Daily donations to the Trevor Project also doubled that week, with traffic to its site up by more than 350 percent.

It wasn’t just that people were suddenly giving money. These were new donors, explains Kevin Wong, vice president of communications for the nonprofit. “The Venn diagram of people who might have been fans of the Raiders and know about the Trevor Project—maybe that sliver isn’t so big,” says Wong. “Carl changed some hearts and minds that day.”

It was a historic moment. And in the 24 hours following Nassib’s announcement—which garnered more than 766,000 likes and drew praise from President Biden—Nassib’s became the top-selling jersey. But then what?

What if the person at the center of this seismic shift would rather talk about anything but?

NASSIB AND I

meet via Zoom in late August. He’s just signed a one-year contract with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and is still getting settled in. He spent the day car shopping, he tells me, deciding on (he thinks) a GMC Yukon. At six-footseven, he had limited options: “They have a new electric Hummer that I sat in, and I

couldn’t even get in. Like my head kept hitting the fucking ceiling. So that sucked.”

He also had to buy kitchenware for the house he’s renting from a former NFL player (a man who presumably doesn’t cook). Nassib turns the camera around to show me the space, which looks like the kind of generic, well-appointed home you’d see on HGTV as you were falling asleep. “I’m not always a big fan of open concept,” the 29-year-old says, “but he did a good job with it.”

That Nassib would be playing football this season—in Tampa or anywhere, really—was never guaranteed. He was cut by the Raiders in March, a victim of the salary cap. (Nassib signed a three-year, $25 million deal in 2020 but was let go after two good-but-not-$25-million-good seasons.) The average NFL career also spans about three years; this would be Nassib’s seventh. Still, prognosticators assumed someone would pick him up. The NFL is a pass-happy league, and Nassib’s a productive pass rusher. Yet the months ticked by, with Deadspin publishing an article in June titled “Has anyone noticed Carl Nassib isn’t on an NFL roster?”

Fans speculated that Nassib’s sexuality (or the media attention around it) was to blame. It was a reasonable assumption, considering how the league treated Michael Sam. In 2014, Sam (a defensive end and star college player for Missouri) was picked by the Rams, becoming the first openly gay player drafted by an NFL team. Sam famously kissed his boyfriend live on ESPN that night, and he arguably paid the price. Sam would put up decent numbers in practice, but St. Louis cut him before the regular season and he wound up in the Canadian league. He now plays for the European League’s Barcelona Dragons. I had remembered this whole thing differently—had been certain Sam just wasn’t good enough—but Outsports crunched the numbers, and the only thing separating Sam from 25 other defensive ends signed to futures contracts that year was his sexuality.

Despite being cut, Nassib felt he had “a lot in the tank” and bet on himself, building a serious gym on the six-acre farm he’d bought in his hometown of West Chester, Pennsylvania. “I’m not a naturally built guy,” he says. “I have to constantly work out. I haven’t taken a vacation in ten years, because I can’t miss a week of working out.

The NFL is the best athletes in the world with the best work ethic. I can’t take my

Getty Images

foot off the gas.” He prefers being in control. And that routine extends to breakfast. “I have the same five eggs and quinoa every single morning with spinach and some sharp cheddar cheese.” By the way, he says those eggs are “fucking delicious. I had it this morning. Ten out of ten.”

There’d been talk in May that the Rams were interested, but nothing was confirmed. “I was pretty positive I was going to play this year,” Nassib says. But tick-tock.

Not long before the Bucs called in August— offering him a one-year deal worth $1.035 million, plus a $152,500 signing bonus—Nassib nearly bought an apartment in Manhattan’s Gramercy Park. “I don’t want to say who I turned down,” he says. “I don’t want to be disrespectful. This is my seventh year. I’ve done really well.

I’m just so lucky that I didn’t have to take the first opportunity that came knocking—because it was a shit opportunity.”

As with everything in his life, this was all about timing. Nassib was not a natural athlete. His father, Gilbert—who’s a VP of sales for a brokerage firm—played football for Delaware. His mother, Mary, was a volleyball champion at Villanova (and later worked for Wells Fargo). Carl is one of five kids, and his childhood was, in many ways, idyllic. On Saturday mornings, his dad would coach the boys in the yard, setting their football uniforms out on the couch. One imagines the family home smells a lot like pumpkin spice right about now.

Carl’s older brother, Ryan, went on to play quarterback for Syracuse and then for the New York Giants. But Carl was lanky, a late bloomer who never started a single game in high school. He was a walk-on at Penn State. And when he told the coach that he wanted to play in the NFL one day, the man told him to “get the fuck out of my office.” He wasn’t kidding. As a 215-pound walk-on, Carl would be lucky to play on the scout team, he was told.

That’s the kind of real talk Nassib gets off on. “I hate losing more than I like winning,” he says. What he lacked in physicality he made up for in grit, putting on 60 pounds of muscle on his way to becoming a unanimous All-American. In 2016, he was drafted by the Cleveland Browns.

Nassib’s brothers recently asked him why he’d been so competitive with them as children. He rejected the premise, telling them, “I’m just in competition with every single person on this fucking planet. You just happen to be on this fucking planet.”

IF YOU KNOW

anything about Nassib—besides the other thing—you will remember him as the breakout star of the HBO docuseries Hard Knocks. It was 2018, and Nassib was a 25-year-old defensive lineman—a cocky, Abercrombielooking motherfucker with a big mouth and charisma for days. Not much has changed. Before this interview ends, he’ll offer to assist me with this very article, saying, “I can’t tell you how many books I start and throw into the fucking garbage because the writing isn’t good. If you need help with any vocab words, your boy is the one to come with.”

In a now legendary Hard Knocks clip, Nassib—an outspoken advocate for financial literacy for athletes—stood in front of a whiteboard explaining the benefits of

That is who he is.”

Except not all of who he is. As I watched that scene back now—seeing him talk about how much he loves Taylor Swift— the whole thing was giving off “my girlfriend lives in Canada” vibes. Was he overcompensating? I float the idea to Nassib, who pushes back hard.

“I would be in a platonic relationship with Taylor Swift in five seconds!” he says. “I’m in love with Taylor Swift. I almost bought a Rollie just to be her friend, not even to date her. She doesn’t hang out with any fucking nerds. She only hangs out with rich, exciting people. So no, I wasn’t overcompensating.”

Years before he did so publicly, Nassib started coming out to the people in his life, he reveals. “They were so shocked. And I

LET’S GO! Carl Nassib was drafted in the third round in 2016 by the Browns and played two seasons. He joined the Bucs for two seasons and was a defensive captain in 2019. He then played for the Raiders for two seasons before rejoining the Bucs this year.

compound interest to his confused teammates. In a speech riddled with expletives, he scrawled complex equations with a Sharpie, schooling the players on the advantages of (among other things) living below your means—though Nassib also admitted that before meeting Taylor Swift, whom he’s now seen in concert three times, he’d considered buying a Rolex just to impress her, or in his parlance, “so she knows I got it.”

Former Browns coach Hue Jackson suggested that while some of his athletes were playing to the cameras, “this is the real Carl Nassib. Do not let him fool you.

was so annoyed! My sister didn’t believe me. I still get women in my DMs. I’m like, Read the room!” To be clear, the shock he’s talking about is the “you’ll always be our son” kind, not the shock that leads to heartbroken families. It’s just that no one really suspected. And there were, considering his profile, concerns. “Some of my friends and family,” he says, “they were nervous. You know what I mean? They weren’t like, You shouldn’t do it. They just were like, You’re gonna catch a lot of shit.

Which I have. But the benefits have been way, way worth more.”

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GAME FACE. Nassib photographed at Tampa’s Skyway Park in September 2022.

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coming out—to raise money for an organization that helps kids whose families aren’t as supportive as his.

Says Nassib, “It crushed me to hear the stats on young LGBTQ kids and how they’re nearly five times more likely to attempt suicide [than their peers].

And that if they just have one accepting adult—just one person to say, like, ‘Hey, I got your back’—it cuts their chances of hurting themselves by 40 percent.”

Nassib has rarely spoken publicly about coming out in the year-plus since, consenting to a single sit-down with Michael Strahan following the one-year anniversary of his announcement (before which he pledged another $100,000 to the Trevor Project). I get it.

His coming out, he tells me firmly, is “old news,” adding, “I’m ready to be a football player again.” And I’m fine to move on.

But he has another point to make.

“When I came out,” Nassib continues, “it was like, This is gonna fucking suck.

Because all anyone’s gonna remember about me is that I’m gay. I was born this way. I haven’t worked for it. That’s why it’s easy for me. It’s not even on my mind. I don’t choose every day to be gay. I choose to work hard and be a better person than I was yesterday. Doing interviews like this is not my favorite thing. I don’t want to ever feel like, Oh, I’m hiding from something. I’m not hiding from shit. It

just doesn’t seem like a valuable use of my time. The number-one thing why I do these fucking interviews is to keep the conversation going about the Trevor Project,” which—it should be noted—is the only account he follows on Instagram.

This is maybe an odd transition—and I have no idea whether Nassib is a religious man—but it does seem like there’s a cosmic reason that the first out athlete in the NFL happens to be playing in Florida at this exact moment in time, as the corrosive “Don’t Say Gay” law is forcing a review of every book on classroom shelves and driving teachers to take down pride flags.

I’m not saying Nassib is a divine emissary of change. Let the dude just play football. But if anyone could reach across the aisle, maybe it’s a cis Ken doll (and registered Republican!), a corn-fed, sentient block of granite in a superhero costume every Sunday. Of the timing of his arrival in the Sunshine State, he says, “Only time will tell. It definitely wasn’t in my mind to, like, go down to Florida and change minds. Hopefully, if I can change as many minds as I can, that’d be great.

No matter where they live.”

WHEN YOU’RE

the first at anything, you don’t get to decide what you represent to people. If Nassib never says another word about his sexuality, he’s

Grooming: Danielle Battaglia

history. He acknowledges that he benefits greatly from every member of the community who came before him and dared to live their truth. But he’s had his head down. As he explains, he didn’t even grow up watching football. “My brothers used to make fun of me because I couldn’t name three players on the Eagles—and the Eagles were our team. I barely know any players, let alone gay players that played 40 years ago. Obviously I knew about Michael Sam. He reached out to me after I came out, said some nice words.”

There’s a tough, important 30 for 30 episode to be made about white privilege and how Michael Sam walked (if only to get cut off at the knees) so Carl Nassib could run. Which is not to take away from Nassib’s accomplishments or bravery.

As his former Raiders teammate Darren Waller says, Nassib is a “lone wolf,” and he is—out there every week, playing football at the highest level. Nassib previously admitted that, in the days after his initial announcement, “I went out to practice and I just felt like I was suffocating.”

When coming out, he tells me, he wanted to control the narrative. He had started dating someone, “and I definitely didn’t want to be outed.” But more than anything, he felt an obligation to the community and, more specifically, to use what he knew would be a lightning-rod moment—the first active NFL player

already made history and sent the elevator back down. By simply going to work every day, he’s proved what is possible.

And keep in mind that in the wake of his coming out, the league mostly shrugged.

Okay, Jon Gruden of the Raiders—Nassib’s head coach at the time—was forced to resign last year after racist and homophobic emails surfaced. But wasn’t that punishment a sign of progress? As Derek Carr, the Raiders’ quarterback and a devout Christian, revealed on Cris Collinsworth’s podcast, he’d texted Nassib directly after seeing his Instagram post, writing, “I love you, bro. All I want to do is win a Super Bowl with you.”

As an outsider—me, personally—I’d love to see Tom Brady maybe tweet (or retweet) a kind word about the gay community. I don’t ask Nassib about that—because there’s no way he’d cross his newest and most famous teammate.

However, earlier in the year, Brady told Variety that he thought there could “absolutely” be an openly gay quarterback in the NFL and that “there are gay players— not that many openly gay players, for one reason or another.”

The question remains: What will it take for others to come out? “I’ve heard that question a lot, and it pisses me off. It’s really hard to come out in a regular setting.

You know what I mean? In a normal situation, but then to come out publicly?” If he has to be the only one for a long time, that’s fine, too. He’s excited about the future, wondering aloud, “What high school kids, what grade school kids, what college kids have been weeded out [of sports] because the track to get here was so noninclusive?

Ten years from now, we’ll see a lot more.”

GET IN GAME SHAPE During the pandemic, Nassib converted the barn at his West Chester, Pennsylvania, home into a gym—installing the same Sorinex equipment he trained on as a walk-on at Penn State.

(He has his motto, “Walk-On U,” embossed on the equipment.

“When I was in college, I used to say I was part of Walk-On University.”) As for what’s playing through his speakers, he says, “It depends. Kim Petras, Lil Wayne, AC/DC. Taylor Swift, obviously, every single day.”

Earlier in our conversation, Nassib casually mentioned his boyfriend, presumably the public-health worker and Real Housewives fan who occasionally appears in Nassib’s Instagram Stories.

I ask if his boyfriend is also moving to Tampa—which seems like a fair question, since he’s already mentioned the guy— but Nassib shuts it down, saying kindly but firmly, “I think we can talk about my boyfriend at a different time.”

Again, I get it. He’d like some privacy.

But if the public had to endure constant updates about Aaron Rodgers’s relationship with Shailene Woodley, I say, maybe we can ask one question about the only out player’s boyfriend?

Nassib thinks about this for a second and then barks, “Who the hell is Shailene Woodley?”

“She’s an actress,” I say. “She was dating Aaron Rodgers. She was in Big Little Lies?”

“I love that show,” Nassib says, leaning toward the camera. “Which one was she?”

Nassib’s coming out may be old news, as he says, but he’s still playing. What if this next chapter, then, is about Carl Nassib the NFL personality? Because man, can he talk, bragging about “slinging margaritas” before engaging himself in a debate about the best Marvel movies. (“Captain America: The Winter Soldier is my favorite,” he says, “but Avengers: Endgame was the best. Ah, fuck. I don’t know. No, Endgame is better.”) Get this guy a talk show.

When asked about his time on Hard Knocks—and his mocked speech about compound interest—he points out that he was way ahead of the curve. “Seventy per-

To ensure he was ready to play when he got the call, CARL NASSIB followed this regimen.

MONDAY: Upper body, explosive cardio.

TUESDAY: Lower body with long running conditioning.

WEDNESDAY: “Arm farm and abs.”

What is arm farm exactly? “Biceps and triceps. Just say ‘beach body.’ ”

THURSDAY: Repeat Monday.

FRIDAY: Lower body with more conditioning—think long-distance running, hills, sprints, gassers.

SATURDAY: Beach body.

SUNDAY: Recovery.

cent of former NFL players experience financial stress after retiring,” Nassib says. “You know it’s a problem because [the league] used to give us 17 checks for 17 games. Now they give us 34 checks because all these players were spending all of their money during the season.”

But being prudent with his cash wasn’t always easy. He went to a nightclub once, he tells me, where he watched a teammate drop $40,000 on bottle service.

“I’m there—with my friends outside of football—and I’m like, Are we fucking up? They’re killing it, ordering bottles of Dom, and I’m over there with my vodka soda. You know what I mean? And my friend goes, ‘We don’t buy bottles, we buy properties.’ I was like, mic drop, bitch.”

He debuted strongly in the season opener against the Cowboys, where the Bucs won ugly (but still won). If he looks comfortable, perhaps that’s because it’s a bit of a homecoming. Nassib previously spent two years playing for the Bucs; of his 22 career sacks, 12.5 happened here, as did 25 of his 53 quarterback hits.

(Tampa is also where Nassib got the idea for an app he launched in 2018 called Rayze, which connects users with local volunteer opportunities and makes setting up recurring donations easier.)

On bringing Nassib back to Raymond James Stadium, coach Todd Bowles told reporters, “Carl’s tough in the run. He’s a very good pass rusher on the outside, and he can also play inside on some nickel situations.” And Nassib really wants to play this season—to contribute wherever the team needs—and they could use a guy with his skill set. Cam Gill, an outside linebacker, suffered a foot injury in the preseason, and Tampa Bay didn’t re-sign Jason Pierre-Paul. Nassib is also hungry.

“Nothing’s guaranteed,” he tells me.

“I mean, I’ve been fired twice in this job already, so it’s a very, very crazy business playing in the NFL. [Football] is the most competitive fucking thing in America.

Every year, there are these new young guys that come in the NFL—twerps coming to take my fucking job.”

And if they do? If this all goes south, will we—I don’t know—see Carl Nassib on Dancing with the Stars? “Absolutely fucking not. If I’m on any reality TV show, know that someone has a gun to a family member.” mickey rapkin is the author of Pitch Perfect and It’s Not a Bed, It’s a Time Machine.

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U O Y O S O T T N T WA U O B A K L A T

?

Y T I L I B A

our of us!— f n i e n o — s n a called ion Americ y ll l i l m a e u s n u -o y ’s t t x a i S form of wh e m o s h t i w at the e v h t li w o h s le p o e hese nine p em back T h . t y t ld i e l i h b e a c s n i o d e a ight hav things that m tial and n e t o p r i e h t pose. ashed r e l u p n u d y n l a n , o r e e v ha ength, pow r t s m e h t n e v gi

BUT FIRST, A WORD FROM ONE OF OUR AUTHORS . . .

the picture to the ing relationship interest right, though my mom says I’m very handsome, too—I have an n called cenconditio a from muscles with my own disability. Born with chronically weak hide that possibly can’t I While stand. or walk to able tral core disease, I have never been I want me. know to get people when view from fades hope I ing someth fact in person, it’s too sends who guy the world to see Alex—a funny (hopefully), smart (it could be argued) They unique. equally are pages g many TikTok videos of cats. The people on the followin changing our world but inspire me, not because they are people with disabilities who are ssly and ambitiously relentle while all are, they who of all ing embrac because they are because of them. We or pursuing big goals. We are not who we are despite our disabilities GARDNER —ALEX relate? t just are—and want the most out of life. Who couldn’

AS A MAN WHO USES A WHEE LCHAI R— no, that’s not me in

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Woody Belfort Champion bodybuilder Read his story and those of eight more able-and-ready-to-rock stars starting on the next page.

PHOTOGRAPH BY

Jo rd an Ni ch ol so n

THE

THE

CHRISTINE HA discovered her love of cooking in college, about the same time she began suffering from neuromyelitis optica, an autoimmune disorder that can cause blindness and paralysis. Over the next eight years, her eyesight deteriorated; she now uses a cane and feels as if she’s “looking into a steamy mirror right after a very hot shower.” She took vocational-rehab classes to relearn how to handle a knife and get around a hot kitchen.

After winning on the reality show

HEAVY LIFTER

“THE

Wo o d y B e l f o r t , 2 6

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Jordan Nicholson (Belfort). Elizabeth Cox (Witous).

I like to select poses that show I’m big and I’m not here to mess around. I try to hold myself in positions for two seconds or more to demonstrate strength and stamina. I did some of the standard upper-body poses, but then I shared my own moves—the ones I came up with.

“I did a backflip in my wheelchair.

Then I did a handstand and held it with the chair upside down, too, still attached.

At the end of my routine, I balanced on the chair’s foot bar and pulled off both wheels to finish out my poses. The audience loved it. Standing ovation!

“In the bodybuilding community, I’m the only one doing crazy stunts. I taught myself them because I thought they would be cool. I hope kids with disabilities see me and that it inspires them to try things they want to do. Whether that’s a sport they want to play with their friends or even something else, it’s worth the training and hard work. We are in control of how we live our lives. We set our own limits. We can challenge them. If something looks fun, why not try it?” —AS TOLD TO A. G.

Courtesy Fox (Ha).

Champion bodybuilder and motivational speaker

’M A BODYBUILDER. Yes, you heard that right. You’re probably thinking of guys who look like the former governor of California and whose arms are so big they can’t scratch their backs—not a dude whose legs don’t work. But for the last three years, my goal has been not only to get jacked and put on a show for the audience but to make people rethink what an outrageously strong body looks like.

“I was born with a form of cerebral palsy and have used a wheelchair for essentially my whole life. Some people with a physical disability may steer away from activities that are just that—physical. I steer into them. That mentality bleeds into nonathletic pursuits, too. I speak four languages and wrote a book, Why Walk When You Can Fly? But more than overcoming obstacles, I want to be in the spotlight, feeling the energy of a crowd, competing and enjoying the moment.

“In June 2022, I entered a bodybuilding competition, the IFBB Professional League Toronto Pro SuperShow. For me,

V IS

F

IO N A R Y CHEF MasterChef in 2012, she wrote her own cookbook and opened two restaurants, the Blind Goat and Xin Chào, in Houston.

“Being visually impaired forces me to focus on my own situation and work,” she says. “I’m less distracted by what others are doing.

This especially came into light during my season of MasterChef, when I was competing on the culi-

Christine Ha, 43

Mast erCh ef winn er, cookb ook autho r, and resta urate ur nary TV show. Because I couldn’t see what the other contestants were doing at their stations, I was never second-guessing my own choices of dishes, etc. Instead, I started focusing only on what I was cooking, making sure that what I did that day was better than what I did the day before. Now that’s a philosophy I take along with me every day in life.” —KEVIN SWAN

I T T E ST DWAR F ON E A RT H ” M i k e y W i t o u s , 3ion0

Wh eel WO D cha mp an d Cr oss Fit ath lete

1 IN UP TO 40,000

Those are the odds of Mikey Witous’s average-height parents having a child with achondroplasia, one of several genetic conditions associated with dwarfism.

While Witous has three average-height siblings, he became the family sports star: Inspired by the movie Rudy, he played football as a kid and wrestled competitively enough in high school to be recruited by college teams before a diagnosis of spinal stenosis, a narrowing of the spinal column, forced him to quit or risk paralysis. He’s also earned a black belt in tae kwon do and dominated at CrossFit.

5 DAYS

That’s how often each week Witous trains at his local CrossFit gym in South Bend, Indiana.

“I believe in rest both mentally and physically,” he says. ”I don’t want to burn out, so I make sure I’m enjoying it and not making it feel like work.”

18 YEARS OLD

That’s the age Witous was when he attended his first Little People of America event, a place for people of short stature to connect. “I realized just being able to look eye to eye with another person, or not receiving stares or laughs or people trying to take your picture, was actually nice.”

485 POUNDS

That’s the weight the self-proclaimed “fittest dwarf on earth” can back-squat. He can also do 30 pullups in a row. And he took first place in the inaugural short-stature division of WheelWOD, an adaptive CrossFit competition. “I want to show parents of dwarfs that everything will be okay,” says Witous, who is married to a woman of short stature and has a son. (Two daughters died from genetic complications.) “Your child will still have chances like any other child.”

20,000+ FOLLOWERS

@MikeySwoosh1 is crushing it on Instagram.

“I am a dreamer, and my parents always made it known that dreams can be reality if you work hard enough,” he says. “My favorite thing my mom ever told me was: Life’s not fair; get over it. The sooner you do, the sooner you will be happy.” —K. S.

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Zack Gottsagen, 37, a n d To m my J e s s o p , 3 7 Film and TV stars

ON THE POWER OF DEFINING YOURSELF TOMMY: If you’re being labeled, then

you are being stuck in a box. My message to anyone out there in the world is: Just think of us two people as living life to the full and wanting to play characters who can make a difference and save the day.

CTORS ZACK GOT TSAGEN AND TOMMY JESSOP are breaking

barriers on opposite sides of the Atlantic. Gottsagen starred in 2019’s Peanut Butter Falcon, alongside Shia LeBeouf. He went on to become the first person with Down syndrome to present an Oscar and appears in the ambitious dramedy God Save the Queens, recently seen at the Tribeca Film Festival. Jessop, meanwhile, has played Hamlet onstage and is the first person with Down syndrome to star on a BBC One prime-time drama, the critically acclaimed dark cop show Line of Duty. MH talked to both about their ascent.

ZACK: I don’t mind saying to people that I have a disability. Because I have been trying to get that out there.

I want to give people notice about who I am right now: I do believe in myself and how I can get through.

ON WHAT ROLES ARE STILL MISSING TOMMY: Well, I think they might be

casting James Bond right now. So I’d say the next Bond, James Bond. . . .

Shaken, not stirred.

ZACK: We need more romantic roles.

I worked with [the indie rock band] Delta Spirit on their video “What’s Done Is Done.” We did a very lovely story with Jamie Brewer, an actress and model with Down syndrome. I just had so much fun doing that.

TOMMY: I second that because I can also be a romantic at heart. Then you could see the softer side of my

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character, because recently I’ve played a murderer, a fisherman, a thief, a boxer, and a football fan.

ON DEALING WITH DISCRIMINATION ZACK: If [people] don’t accept us,

move on, and I would say just go forward. But please don’t give up.

Just keep on trying.

TOMMY: What people should be talking about is the gifts, skills, and talents we all have to give the world. All kinds of people are capable and want to show their skills and talents. . . . To quote a certain Dwayne Johnson, and this is a message to anyone [spreading hate] out there, “It doesn’t matter what you think.”

ZACK: I don’t know about that, but life is about yourself. About the words you believe about yourself. Think about what you want to make possible, what change you want to make.

Benus (Herman). Courtesy subjects (remaining).

ACTOR A DV O C A T E S

Getty Images (Gottsagen, Jessop). Studio Twelve:52 (Burcaw). Noah

THE

NEW VITRUVIAN MAN THE

Jerron Herman, 31 r Pr ofe ssi on al da nce

ERRON HERMAN never expected to become a dancer.

Then he interned with a theater company in New York and was inspired. During college, he auditioned for Heidi Latsky Dance, a collective of dancers with and without disabilities. “Heidi was interested in my form of cerebral palsy, as I moved in a way that excited her, even though the left side of my body is impacted by spasms and mostly restricted movement,” he says. He became a lead dancer and eventually began performing independently, booking shows everywhere from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to the Whitney Museum of American Art. “You have to give yourself grace,” Herman says. “My movement on the day of a performance could be very different from prior rehearsals. I have learned to be okay with that. There’s even a beauty in the uniqueness of each performance. I most recently choreographed and performed, as a Black disabled man, my rendition of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man to get others to think about disability aesthetics and man’s function. But I think every single time I dance, I am communicating freedom. It’s the freedom to be true to myself. The freedom to listen to my body. The freedom to create. You don’t need to be able-bodied to be free.” —A. G.

THE

VI R A L S E NSATION

Shane Burcaw, 30

Cocre ator of Squir my and Grub s, a YouT ube chan nel abou t

“MY PARENTS, my brother, and I would tease each other mer-

cilessly every single day. Even with spinal muscular atrophy, which caused extremely weakened muscles and the need for a wheelchair, I was not safe from a thoughtful—often sarcastic—insult. But because of that, I learned to see the humor in others and in myself. I learned not to take life too seriously.

“When I entered college, I wasn’t looking to become a public figure with a popular Instagram or start a YouTube channel with over 1 million subscribers. Kind of impulsively, I started an anonymous blog called Laughing at My Nightmare. It became popular enough to lead to an opportunity to write a book and go on a speaking tour, and when that happened, I decided that I would use the attention to advocate for people with disabilities.

his life and marr iage

“A lot of advocating has to do with simply letting people know that people like me exist in the world and sharing stories of me navigating it. That might be the story of me meeting my nondisabled best friend, Hannah [left], and then marrying her. Or it might be that one time my brother had to help me pee in a bus at 2:00 a.m. in a Wendy’s parking lot in Jacksonville, Florida. Both pretty romantic stories.

“We still get rude comments on our YouTube. As we’ve said before, one of us has a severe muscle-wasting disease and uses a wheelchair.

The other one of us . . . doesn’t. And that’s led to some hatred. But I remind myself that these anonymous people are real people potentially spreading their ignorant thoughts and beliefs about disability to others, and we cannot tolerate that sort of closed-mindedness in our society. In this way, it’s easier to make the next video. To remember that our work is vital.” —AS TOLD TO A. G.

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THE

“ O P E N LY AU T I S T I C ” T R I AT H L E T E HAVE A FAVORITE SHIRT I wear at every race. It says boldly in big letters, autism is my superpower. I don’t see my autism as a disability but as an advantage, because being autistic allows me to be ultrafocused and not easily distracted during endurance races. I see myself as an athlete with autism rather than an autistic athlete.

“My autism probably plays a role in how energized I feel. My dad thinks it is crazy how I can rise and shine without ever thinking, I really don’t feel like training

Sam Holness, 29

Ironm an Worl d Cham pions hip comp etitor today. It’s routine to wake up and train every day except for Friday, my rest day.

I just do it, even when I have to train in a heat chamber in temperatures of 104 degrees. During a race, I can cycle for 112 miles without losing concentration.

I’ll tell myself, ‘Come on, legs,’ and keep going. It’s just how my brain works. I will never give up.

“Earning my degree in sports science has helped with many of the tools that are necessary to become a competitive triathlete. This includes the use of metrics like VO2 max, heart rate, and power output during cycling and running. I focus on increasing or decreasing those numbers to improve my performance. Last year, I completed the Ironman 70.3 World

T H E U R O L O G Y OP E R A Former Marine raider team commander and founder

“ON JUNE 14, 2012, I led a small team to conduct an ambush patrol in Afghanistan, and we came under heavy fire. I was shot through my left shoulder, and the bullet caused a bit of damage on its way to my spine.

I have a spinal-cord injury and am paralyzed from the chest down. One of the major problems for people like me is that you can’t empty your bladder without using catheters and that the bladder becomes spastic and overactive.

“Personally, I went from planning and leading some of the most challenging special operations in the world to—in an instant—the total opposite end of the spectrum, where I have anxiety anytime I go out with friends and drink a beer, hoping that I don’t piss myself. But after I put my ego and self-doubt aside, I realized that so many others have some serious trials and tribulations. If you live long enough, you will be challenged. The

way you respond is the true measure of your character.

“I decided to go back to business school. In March 2021, I founded Bright Uro to develop the next generation of diagnostic devices for urology. We’re using technology developed at the Cleveland Clinic to create the first wireless, catheter-free method to help diagnose lower urinary tract symptoms. The field of urodynamics has not changed since it was invented nearly 50

Courtesy subject (Herrera)

Dere k He r re ra , 38

Abo ut Our Contrib utors

Kevin Swan, 41,

has written for Men’s Health and Fatherly on topics like mental strength, parenting, and marketing. He has been a disability advocate since his diagnosis of ALS in 2012 and is a self-improvement junkie.

Championship in Utah, and a reporter said that I was the first autistic person to do it. My dad and I corrected them. I was the first openly autistic person. Autism is an invisible disease. We assumed there had to have been many autistic athletes competing. Sure enough, individuals started coming forward.

TIVE

Sportgraf (Holness). Courtesy subjects (remaining).

and CEO of Bright Uro years ago. Ultimately, this will help tens of millions of people dealing with prostate, incontinence, or other bladder issues.

“I have always been motivated by service and helping others.

Bladder function is one of the most intimate and personal bodily functions. Helping someone regain control over something they thought was lost forever is a calling and motivates me to push forward through any obstacles we may face.”

—AS TOLD TO K. S.

“I compete against neurotypical people because there isn’t a category for people like me with intellectual disability. I want everyone to not only see me as a person but see what people and athletes like me can accomplish.”

—AS TOLD TO A. G.

Alex Gardner, 32,

HERRERA’S MANTRAS “ADVERSITY IS YOUR ASSET” John Wooden’s famous maxim helped Herrera think about how to inspire positive change. Here are three more mantras he deploys:

“CALM BREEDS CALM” “In all aspects of life, the example you set is contagious and will influence others,” he says. “Some of the best Marines I have ever served with taught me this, and it was a very important measure of the effectiveness of members of our team.”

“YOU CAN LEARN SOMETHING FROM EVERYONE YOU MEET”

has written for Men’s Health and is currently a senior press officer for a medical school and health system in Pennsylvania. He uses an electric wheelchair and plays the violin, piano, and guitar.

“In the special-operations community, we deploy to foreign countries and work with people from all walks of life. Without this skill, ego gets in the way and results in a significant reduction in the chances for success.”

“EVERY DAY IS A CHOICE” “While I was dealing with [my injury], three Marines I served with were killed in Afghanistan,” Herrera says. “That makes it nearly impossible to feel sorry for myself. Every day, I choose to take advantage of the opportunities I have and live life to the fullest.”

Jordan Nicholson, 33,

has shot for Apple, Google, and Nike and has photographed Pharrell, Drake, and Ciara.

Born with TAR syndrome, a rare condition that causes short arms, he believes his unique perspective informs his work.

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BEFORE CLAIMING THE MANTLE OF A ROYAL OCEAN-DWELLING WARRIOR IN BLACK PANTHER: TO LAND A MAJOR ROLE IN A MARVEL MOVIE—TENOCH HUERTA HAD TO BREAK

BY NOJAN AMINOSHAREI

WAKANDA FOREVER—AND BECOMING ONE OF THE FEW MEXICAN ACTORS BOUNDARIES AND PUSH HIS OWN PHYSICAL LIMITS IN WAYS HE NEVER IMAGINED. PHOTOGRAPHS BY CARLOS ÁLVAREZ-MONTERO MEN’S HEALTH

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O

ONE DAY IN EARLY 2020, Tenoch Huerta was

on a Zoom call with Ryan Coogler, the director behind Creed, Black Panther, and its sequel, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever—the subject of their meeting. He was offering Huerta a role.

“He was telling me something like, ‘So the shaman gives them a drink, they drink it, then they jump into the ocean, and—’ And then he was frozen,” says Huerta. This time he’s Zooming with me from his home in Mexico City, and he lurches toward the camera, pausing to act out those agonizing seconds or minutes or eons Coogler was frozen. “Then he came back, and he was like, ‘So that’s it. What do you think?’ And I was like, ‘I’m in, I’m totally in, I love it!’ ” It wasn’t until the next day that Huerta found out what he’d signed up for, when his agents called to tell him the role he’d accepted was that of Namor the SubMariner, a character who debuted in Marvel Comics #1 in 1939, the very first issue under publisher Timely Comics, which itself would be renamed Marvel Comics more than two decades later. He’d be playing the latest incarnation of the halfhuman prince of Atlantis, an antihero who spent World War II–era story lines fighting alongside the Allies at sea. (He’s also, ahem,

the original Atlantean scion. Aquaman first appeared two years after Namor from a rival publisher that later became DC Comics.)

Huerta’s friend, a comics fan, immediately began to get him up to speed.

B esides b ei ng one of t he longes trunning characters in Marvel comics, Namor brings with him potential implications for the future of the Mar vel Cinematic Universe. (In modern comics, Namor is a mutant, a detail not lost on fans eagerly awaiting the arrival of the X-Men into the MCU.) And now he’ll be played by a Mexican actor, one of the few (including Salma Hayek in Eternals) to appear in a major role in a Marvel movie. It’s a lot of pressure, or it would be if Huerta weren’t so preoccupied with one particular aspect of the reference images he saw.

“The Speedo!” he says. “Fuuuuck.”

Huerta later took to calling Namor’s iconic skimpy green shorts his “shame shorts,” since he wore them on the walk of shame from his trailer to set and back when filming. Like the rest of us, he hadn’t exactly spent the pandemic rising and grinding. “I enjoy Mexican food so bad, so I wasn’t in my best shape,” he says.

After accepting the role, though, he had just five months to get there. It was time to dive in.

WHILE HE’D TRAINED

for roles before—he gained more than ten pounds of muscle mass to play infamous Mexican bank robber Alfredo Ríos Galeana in El Más Buscado and learned to wrestle for the Mexican series Blue Demon—Huerta realized he needed professional coaching.

For that, he worked with two local trainers: biomechanics and sports-rehab specialist Martín Gleizer and nutritionist Jerónimo de la Peza. With gyms shut down during the pandemic, they gutrenovated an old kindergarten, turning it into a commercial gym that Huerta now co-owns. The 41-year-old actor played football (Brady, not Beckham) from ages five to 21, and he only stopped because he dislocated his shoulder during a game in college. He had surgery but still struggles with alignment issues and some chronic pain. So Huerta eased into his training.

“We never went crazy with the weight. All the exercises were the kind of exercises that help you to heal and prepare your body,” he says. “And from that point on, you can increase what you are asking from your muscles.”

He trained six days a week: two highintensity workouts, one low-intensity workout, repeat, rest. “Sometimes we would push him a little bit more, and he always embraced the challenge,” says Gleizer. But the point wasn’t to get Thor fit or Cap fit—it was to get Namor fit.

That meant swimming, where Huerta, er, needed some work.

“The director asked me, ‘Do you know how to swim?’ And I was like, ‘I’ve never drowned before!’ ” he says. “Then the producer asked me. I said, ‘I’ve never drowned before.’ Then my team asked me. I said, ‘I’ve never drowned before.’ And they said, ‘No, seriously, do you know how to swim?’ ” By the end of his training, Huerta was doing 90-minute pool sessions. (See “Get Namor Jacked,” right.) “I’m not Michael Phelps. That guy is a real superhero—he’s an actual mutant,” he says. “But we did a lot of free diving, since we shoot underFrom left: Huerta training at his gym in Mexico City; the actor playing Namor in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever; the comicbook version of the Speedo-clad Sub-Mariner.

Grooming: Marco Casasola. Courtesy Eli Adé. © 2022 Marvel (Namor). Alamy (comic).

vwV

water, and I learned to hold my breath for up to five minutes.

Now when I’m down there, holding my breath in the middle of the water, it is so peaceful. It’s like meditation.”

JUST AS HUERTA

has transformed to become Namor, Namor has undergone his own transformation. Coogler and company have reimagined the character’s background, trading in the kingdom of Atlantis for Talocan, an under water civilization descended from an ancient Mayan community. Wakanda Forever drew inspiration from the culture and iconography of ancient Mesoamerican civilizations to envision how such a community might have evolved, hidden in the depths of the ocean and unfettered by outside influences like colonialism.

“We’re imagining a community that’s anchored to its own Indigenous past,” says the film’s costume designer, Ruth E. Carter, who won an Oscar for Black Panther. “We were inspired by all of the pageantry that you see in Mesoamerican history. There are these vases that they painted to depict figures in headdresses and all kinds of clothing that I used to inspire the clothing of the Talocan.”

A mong t he he a dd r e s s e s w a s a n instantly iconic one that Huerta wears in the movie’s trailer—“the feathered serpent,” Carter calls it. “We worked with historians who were experts on the Mayan culture to learn about what part of the trajectory of the ancient Mesoamerica area we would draw from,” she says. “And so we looked at beautiful sculptures of different scenes depicting the lifestyle of post-classic Yucatán, and the feathered-serpent figures were the ones that were the most powerful looking.” The headdress weighed “about ten pounds,” and a version with wireworks had to be built to allow mobility in scenes where Huerta has it on while maneuvering 20 feet underwater.

The weight of a heavy Mayan crown is almost too on the nose as a metaphor for a dark-skinned Mexican actor of Indigenous descent about to star in the biggest superhero movie of the year. Huerta grew up working-class and studied journalism in college before his father, a film buff, encouraged him to take acting classes on the side. The classes soon turned into a career, but, well, not much of one at first.

“Most Mexicans, we have some Indigenous heritage,” he says. “We have Indigenous blood in our veins.” Yet colorism still ran rampant in Mexican media. “It was almost impossible to see brown people in Mexican television, movies, commercials,” says Huerta. “Almost everybody

was white and blond. You’d go to a movie theater in Mexico and be like, ‘Is this a Danish movie?’ ” Huerta ended up turning down a lot of parts early on, finding that “brown-skinned people were always the thieves, the criminals, the bad guys.” Eventually he built a strong résumé of Mexican movies and TV series as well as a handful of international projects, until he got his big break playing legendary real-life cartel boss Rafael Caro Quintero on Netflix’s Narcos: Mexico. But a Marvel platform blows all that out of the water.

What excites Huerta the most is the chance to help create for viewers like him what Black Panther created for Black viewers when it gave them Wakanda—a vibrant, living testament to their past, their pride, and their potential. “We brought in Mesoamerican scholars—they call themselves Mesoamericanistas—and the production was really open to listening and taking all the experience they could provide. And that makes my character and everything built around him even more deep and profound,” says Huerta.

“Because it’s not just lights and explosions.

Every detail is meaningful.” He believes in the power of a deep dive. nojan aminosharei is the entertainment director of Men’s Health. He has turned down sex to stay home and read comics.

GET NAMOR JACKED

When Tenoch Huerta began training for Wakanda Forever, he weighed 205 pounds. More than five months later, he’d dropped to 185 pounds while packing on size in targeted areas (quads, hamstrings, and shoulders). Here’s how.

RULE 1:

START WITH Z Due to an old injury, “he was constantly battling the shoulder pain and the limited range of motion,” says Martín Gleizer, one of his trainers. One fix was the single-arm Z-press: Huerta sat on the floor with a dumbbell at his shoulder, tightened his abs, and pressed overhead. Do 3 sets of 8 to 10 reps, using a light weight.

RULE 2:

RULE 3:

STRENGTH FIRST, MUSCLE LATER

BODYWEIGHT FTW

Huerta hadn’t been training beforehand, so Gleizer focused on full-body conditioning, relying on compound exercises like barbell back squats, dumbbell Romanian deadlifts, and dumbbell bench presses. Each session lasted 45 to 50 minutes, building a base of strength.

He also relied on classic pullups and plenty of archer pushups: Put your hands wider than shoulder width, fingers pointed out. Keeping your right arm straight, bend at the left elbow and shoulder, then lower your chest within an inch of the floor; press back up. Do 3 sets of 8 to 10 reps per side.

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THIS. IS. THE. FLAVOR. REMIX. GHETTO GASTRO, A CULINARY COLLECTIVE FROM NEW YORK CITY, HAS TRANSFORMED

COOKWARE, FOOD-STAGRAM, AND SO MANY LEGENDARY DISHES

WITH DIVERSE PAN-AFRICAN FLAVORS. NOW THE GROUP’S NEW COOKBOOK WANTS TO

REINVENT HOW YOU EAT.

BY

JON GRAY, PIERRE SERRAO, AND LESTER WALKER (AKA GHETTO GASTRO)

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LET’S FIRST DEAL WITH

is from the Bronx or Brooklyn or Harlem.

Ghetto is our aura, our style.

Ghetto isn’t about excluding people.

It’s about telling the rest of the world, We are here. We’ve been here. We’re going to serve what we feel like, especially when many fail to acknowledge our existence.

Ghetto Gastro is often described as a culinary collective, which is a little vague, we know. But we are a difficult crew to contain within boundaries.

We started in 2012, throwing parties in N. Y. C. Jon has his roots in fashion and art. Pierre and Lester are formally trained chefs. We discovered that we had friends across creative industries who loved to dine, loved beautiful, interesting, thoughtful food but couldn’t find experiences that spoke to them. As our popularity grew, so did our mission.

We’ve found that we can be thoughtful about where we cook, what ingredients we select, how we describe a dish. We route funds back to our community in the form of mutual aid. We’ve partnered to sell limited runs of specialty items and big pushes of cookware appliances.

We’re building a retail-food brand, Gastronomical, using plant-based ingredients that originate in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, the ancestral roots of the cultures that enrich us. We’re not just trying to sell people stuff. We are intentional with what we do, when we do it, and who we do it with.

While we know that not everyone can access our products, we want the people from our community and from communities like ours to know that they deserve fun things just like anyone else. Money itself is not our aspiration. In our worldview, everybody eats.

what usually needs to be dealt w ith. O ur na me ma kes a lot of people uncomfortable. It’s not our intent to polarize for the sake of ceremony. In fact, we were all young boys when we learned that our existence itself could be polarizing to folks who didn’t know us. Ghetto is used as a derogatory term to dismiss and separate cultures from their mainstream counterparts. Ghetto is used as a way to cue discomfort, to cue the Other. When that unknowable thing is over there, you don’t have to deal with it, you don’t have to be with it. That’s what ghetto is supposed to do—dehumanize.

You recognize this unsettling feeling because you might not be sure if it’s polite to say the words Ghetto Gastro. (You can, and we hope you do. Watch out, though—say them three times fast and we just might run down on you. Ya dig?)

You feel this discomfort because you might have worked to get out of the ghetto, surviving difficult circumstances to create a more sustainable life. Or you might wonder why someone would be proud to claim an identifier that could sound off-putting to outsiders.

For us, ghetto means home. It’s a way to locate our people, not just in the Bronx of New York City, where we as a group formed.

In the ghetto, food is a denominator of class and a reminder of what you can and can’t have. Food is weaponized against people in the ghetto when they have easier access to soda and chips than to fresh produce. When subsidized commodities like sugar, wheat, and soy make buying oranges and greens unaffordable, something is deeply wrong. Weaponizing food against people is watching generation after generation fall to diabetes and cardiovascular disease. These are our people. And for decades they’ve been given an unfair shake.

But ghetto isn’t just about struggle and disenfranchisement.

Ghetto is the flower blooming in the sidewalk cracks. Ghetto is our love language, a patois so specific From left: Lester Walker, and rooted in place that if you Jon Gray, and Pierre Serrao know, you can hear when someone of Ghetto Gastro.

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BLACK POWER WAFFLES We pay homage to the Black Panther Party’s groundbreaking community-based free breakfast program. The mix of cocoa powder and coconut creates a slightly nutty, mild flavor. It’s not too rich or sweet and makes a moist waffle.

W H AT YO U ’ L L N E E D 2 CUPS ALL-PURPOSE FLOUR 1 CUP UNSWEETENED BLACK COCOA POWDER 1 CUP UNSWEETENED SHREDDED COCONUT ¼ CUP CANE SUGAR ¾ TSP KOSHER SALT ¼ TSP BAKING SODA

1 (14 OZ) CAN COCONUT MILK ½ CUP COCONUT OIL 2¼ TSP ACTIVE DRY YEAST 2 LARGE EGGS ½ CUP CHOCOLATE SYRUP ½–1 TSP BLACK FOOD GEL (OPTIONAL) ½ CUP WARM WATER

H O W T O M A K E I T Makes 4 to 6 waffles 1. In a large bowl, whisk the flour, cocoa powder, shredded coconut, sugar, salt, and baking soda.

Make a well in the center. Set aside.

2. In a medium saucepan, warm the coconut milk and coconut oil over low heat until the temp reaches 110°F. Remove from the heat; whisk in the yeast. Allow the yeast to bloom for 10 minutes, till bubbling on the surface.

3. Add the eggs, chocolate syrup, and food gel (if using) and whisk thoroughly for about 30 seconds, until thickened slightly.

Pour the coconut-milk mixture into the well in the flour mixture.

Whisk to make a smooth batter, switching to a rubber spatula as it thickens. Add the warm water and mix.

Allow to sit at room temp for 15 to 30 minutes. The longer the batter rests, the fluffier the waffle.

4. Prep a waffle iron according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Make the waffles according to the iron’s specifications. Stack the waffles on a plate as you make them and cover with a clean, dry dish towel to keep warm. Serve with your preferred butter, sorghum syrup, banana, or vanilla or coconut ice cream (or any combination that rocks your world).

CURRY CHICKPEAS

If you grow up in the north Bronx, Caribbean cuisine and culture are part of the tapestry.

Bronx by way of the Caribbean is, of course, the result of merged food influences from African and Indigenous cultures in the islands and Indian cooking traditions. This homage is something a little Trini, a little BX, and a lotta bliss.

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W H AT YO U ’ L L N E E D ½ MEDIUM YELLOW ONION, DICED 1 TBSP FRESH GINGER, GRATED 4 TSP CURRY POWDER

2 TSP WHITE MISO PASTE 1 LEMON-GRASS STALK, BRUISED AND CHOPPED

1 SCOTCH-BONNET PEPPER, SEEDED AND MINCED 1 TSP COCONUT SUGAR (OPTIONAL)

½ TSP CUMIN SEEDS 1 (14 OZ) CAN COCONUT MILK 3 CUPS COOKED CHICKPEAS

H O W T O M A K E I T Makes 4 servings 1. In a mortar or blender, combine the onion, ginger, curry powder, miso, lemon grass, Scotch bonnet, coconut sugar (if using), and cumin seeds and blend into a paste. Set aside.

2. In a medium pot over high, add a quarter of the coconut milk. Allow the liquid to evaporate and let the milk reduce until you see thick bubbles.

Stir in the curry paste you made earlier

and cook until a sauce begins to form. Lower the heat as necessary to avoid burning.

3. Stir in the chickpeas and the remaining coconut milk. Cover the pot, reduce the heat to medium low, and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes or until the liquid has reduced by half.

Season with salt to taste. Serve with store-bought roti or rice.

KING JAFFE JOLLOF The insider’s joke about jollof is that its many fans debate who deserves credit for bringing us this perfect mix of rice, tomatoes, peppers, and spice.

We’re not about to weigh in on the so-called jollof wars, but we’re inspired by all approaches.

W H AT YO U ’ L L N E E D ½ CUP GRAPE-SEED OIL, PLUS 4 TBSP 1 LB FRESH TOMATOES, CHOPPED 1 SCANT CUP RED BELL PEPPER, CHOPPED ½ CUP RED ONION, CHOPPED 1 HEAD GARLIC, CLOVES PEELED AND CHOPPED 2-INCH PIECE FRESH GINGER, PEELED AND CHOPPED 2 SCOTCH-BONNET PEPPERS, SEEDED AND CHOPPED 3 OR 4 DRIED CHIPOTLE PEPPERS, DICED 1 TBSP SMOKED PAPRIKA 1 TBSP BLACK GARLIC (4 CLOVES), CHOPPED

1 TBSP WHOLE BLACK PEPPERCORNS 1½ TBSP MADRAS CURRY POWDER 1½ TSP CINNAMON, GROUND 1½ TSP CUMIN SEEDS, TOASTED AND GROUND 1½ TSP HOT SAUCE (PREFERABLY TABASCO) 3 TBSP SOY SAUCE 2 TSP WORCESTERSHIRE SAUCE 1 TSP AGAVE SYRUP 1 TBSP FLAKY SEA SALT 2⅔ CUPS UNCOOKED JASMINE RICE, RINSED AND DRAINED WELL 2½ CUPS MUSHROOM BROTH

HOW TO MAKE IT

Makes 6 to 8 servings 1. In a medium saucepan, heat ½ cup grape-seed oil over high. When the oil starts to smoke, add the tomatoes and sizzle, about 5 minutes. Flip and cook till they begin to break down.

2. In a medium bowl, add the bell pepper and onion and toss with 2 Tbsp of the oil.

3. In a separate saucepan, heat the remaining oil over high. Add the bell pepper and onion and leave to char for 2 to 3 minutes. Add the garlic and ginger, gently stir, and leave to char for 1 to 2 minutes more.

4. Add the charred vegetables to the pan with the tomatoes. Add the remaining peppers, paprika, black garlic, peppercorns, curry powder, cinnamon, cumin, hot sauce, soy sauce, Worcestershire, agave, and sea salt. Stir well, reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook for 20 to 30 minutes, until softened.

5. Transfer the mix to a blender and blitz to a smooth paste. Add a little water and blitz again.

Strain through a sieve into a container.

6. In a cast-iron pan, add the rice, mushroom broth, and ½ cup of the strained sauce. Cover and simmer for 18 to 20 minutes, until the rice is cooked. Remove from the heat and rest, covered, for 10 minutes. Serve with roasted vegetables or fried sweet plantains.

The introduction and recipes are adapted from the new cookbook Ghetto Gastro Presents Black Power Kitchen, by Jon Gray, Pierre Serrao, and Lester Walker, with Osayi Endolyn (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2022. Food photographs by Nayquan Shuler and atmospheric photographs by Joshua Woods.

SIX

THE STUFF WE CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT

PACK

6. Firewire Seaside Surfboard

Rienzi took up surfing again seven years ago, but it’s been difficult to track down a board that can accommodate his 220-pound build. “Finding this one took a lot of trial and error,” he says. “This has the right amount of volume and float for my weight but also has maneuverability.” From $860; firewiresurfboards.com

5. GilletteLabs Heated Razor Starter Kit Whether he’s shaving his head or his face, Rienzi uses Gillette’s heated razor to get the job done.

“It gives such a close shave and feels fantastic,” he says. “I don’t get any bumps or irritation from it.” $134; amazon.com

DAVID RIENZI The celebrity trainer is the man responsible for Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson’s superhero physique in Black Adam. Here, the 38-year-old cofounder of ZOA Energy shares six things that keep him in top shape.

4. Ember Mug2 As a big coffee drinker, Rienzi takes this high-tech mug wherever he goes. “It keeps your coffee heated to a certain temperature, and it’s such a game changer,” he says. “It’s hard to go back to drinking out of a regular mug.” $129; amazon.com

BY CHRISTIAN GOLLAYAN

1. PSO-Rite Psoas Muscle Massage Tool While training for Black Adam, Rienzi and Johnson used this tool before leg and back workouts. “The psoas is a tricky muscle,” Rienzi says. “Sometimes you need that manual therapy to really release that muscle.” $80; amazon.com

2. Under Armour Men’s UA TriBase Reign 4 Pro 3. ZOA+ Pre-Workout Energy

Yeah, Rienzi cofounded ZOA, but he swears by his pre-workout’s benefits. “Lots of other pre-workouts give you energy fast, and you also crash hard,” he says. “With this, it’s a nice sustained energy and lasts past the workout, so there’s no crash.” $40 for 12; zoaenergy.com

Men’s Health (ISSN 1054-4836) Vol. 37, No. 8 is published 10 times per year, monthly except combined issues in January/February and July/August and when future combined issues are published that count as two issues as indicated on the issue’s cover, by Hearst at 300 W. 57th St., New York, NY 10019. Steven R. Swartz, President & Chief Executive Officer; William R. Hearst III, Chairman; Frank A. Bennack, Jr., Executive Vice Chairman; Mark E. Aldam, Chief Operating Officer. Hearst Magazines, Inc.: Debi Chirichella, President; Regina Buckley, Chief Financial and Strategy Officer & Treasurer; Kate Lewis, Chief Content Officer; Catherine A. Bostron, Secretary. Copyright 2022 by Hearst Magazines, Inc. All rights reserved. Men’s Health is a registered trademark of Hearst Magazines, Inc. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY and at additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send all UAA to CFS. (See DMM 507.1.5.2); NON-POSTAL AND MILITARY FACILITIES: Send address changes to Men’s Health Customer Service, P.O. Box 6000, Harlan, IA 51593-1500. IN CANADA: Postage paid at Gateway, Mississauga, Ontario; Canada Post International Publication Mail (Canadian Distribution) Sales Agreement No. 40012499. Postmaster (Canada): Send returns and address changes to Men’s Health magazine, P.O. Box 927, Stn Main, Markham ON L3P 9Z9 (GST# R122988611). Mailing Lists: From time to time we make our subscriber list available to companies that sell goods and services by mail that we believe would interest our readers. If you would rather not receive such mailings by postal mail, please send your current mailing label or exact copy to: Men’s Health, Mail Preference Center, P.O. Box 6000, Harlan, IA, 51593. You can also visit preferences.hearstmags.com to manage your preferences and opt out of receiving marketing offers by email. Customer Service: Visit menshealth.com/service or write to Men’s Health Customer Service, P.O. Box 6000, Harlan, IA 51593-1500.

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MEN’S HEALTH

Miguel Cortes (Rienzi). Courtesy brands (remaining).

“If I’m looking for a low-profile shoe, this one’s fantastic,” Rienzi says. “It has a 2mm heel drop, which makes them great for leg days.” $130; underarmour.com

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