Whether you're a newbie to the gym, anxious to start putting on some size with simple moves, or a grizzled veteran after a fresh way to add muscle mass quickly, our bulk up plans range from beautifully simple and easy to cutting-edge and hardcore. Our readers have put on hundreds of pounds of muscle over the years using scientifically-calibrated plans created exclusively for Men's Health.
Were it Swiss, Seiko’s reputation on these shores would be even higher than it already is. In its native Japan, where it was founded in 1881, it’s revered, seen as one of the great historic brands and recognised for high quality production standards that cover every aspect of watchmaking. Its slightly muddied rep over here is partly down to its role at the heart of the quartz revolution that swept the world in the 1970s, all but crushing its traditional Swiss watchmaking equivalent with its cheap timekeepers. But Seiko’s list of firsts is deeply impressive, as is its contemporary collection, which is full of intriguing innovations. Forget the past, Seiko is a fine company.
Seiko’s 1980s watches paved the way for the smartwatches of today. In 1983 it made the world’s first TV watch and the first watch with a sound recorder, and in 1985 it made the UC-2000, a watch that came with a keyboard accessory that turned it into a computer.
It demonstrates balance and control over your body, something we happen to put great importance upon here at Nerd Fitness. It’s also one HELL of a party trick, something you can work on without a single piece of equipment, builds functional strength and muscular endurance, and it’s a skill you can work on in just a few minutes every single day.
How do I know this? Because I’m typing this while in a handstand RIGHT NOW. Okay, I can’t do that. But Jim, Master of the NF Fitness Universe can:
jim typing
I love working with gymnastic rings, because they have such a great tutorial level. Handstands are exactly the same way: it’s a great skill to work on as a beginner, but also is infinitely challenging depending on your skill level.
Plus, in addition to Jim, Luke Skywalker does them. It’s time to stop looking at other people doing cool things and start today saying “hey, I can do that too!”
Why handstands are awesome
Jim-Bathurst
Team Nerd Fitness member Jim Bathurst has been training and working on handstands for years. From humble beginnings, he taught himself a standard handstand and eventually worked his way up to one-handed tricks like the photo above.
Now, you won’t be doing this anytime soon, but it doesn’t mean you can’t start today learning how to go inverted.
Fun fact: I can’t say the word inverted without thinking of Top Gun’s line “because we were inverted,” but that’s only because I used to watch that movie with my brother every day from ages 3 to 5.
I’ve fallen in love with handstands for a few reasons:
Like other bodyweight training, there’s no excuse. If you have room to stand up, you have room to practice handstands.
It recruits DOZENS of muscles in your body. From arm strength to wrist mobility to core strength to shoulder mobility and muscular endurance, handstands do it all. When you are trying to balance, it makes your body work as one complete unit.
It scares you – yes, that’s a positive. We grow outside our comfort zone and for many people, just the thought of a handstand is enough to make their palms sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy. Vomi… nevermind. The point is that the handstand is just as much of a mental challenge as it is a physical one. How scared do you think this guy gets on a regular basis?
Do you train hard and see little in the way of muscle gain? How about an endless toil in the gym, struggling to lose fat? The chances are, you're going about it all wrong. The real way to hit your training goals is adapting your plan to your body type.
Men can generally be classed as one of three body types.
Ectomorphs: skinny guys that struggle to gain weight. They're your classic “hard-gainers”.
Endomorphs: large-bodied and generally soft, these bodies gain bulk easily but also store fat along the way.
Mesomorphs: the ones everybody envy because they're naturally lean and athletic. They can put on muscle comparatively easily and they don't require huge amounts of maintenance.
The hot potato squat may sound like a kid’s recess activity, but don’t be fooled—it’s also a cutting-edge fat-loss exercise that will get your heartpumping and your muscles burning in almost no time, says BJ Gaddour, C.S.C.S., owner of StreamFit.com. It starts with one of the most effective exercises invented: the squat. When done correctly, a squat trains a lot of muscles, particularly big ones like your quadriceps, hamstrings and glutes. In fact, it burns more calories per rep than almost any other exercise.
But why stop there? Gaddour throws an airborne dumbbell into the mix to make this classic move even more challenging and beneficial. “Holding the weight on just one side of your body increases the demand placed on your core to keep your body stable,” he says. “As the weight changes from side to side, your core muscles are worked from every angle.”
The plank strengthens the dozens of muscles between your shoulders and hips.
But if you jack your feet in and out as you do it, the plank suddenly becomes so much more than just a core builder.
ADVERTISEMENT
MEN'S HEALTH RECOMMENDS
Million Dollar Luxury Homes You Have to See to Believe
MANSION GLOBAL BY DOW JONES
15-Minute Workout: 3 Moves, 300 Muscles
MEN'S HEALTH
An Exercise to Protect Your Liver From Too Much Booze?
FOR MEN
2 Pushup Workouts That Hit Every Muscle in Your Core
MEN'S HEALTH
Knowing is half the battle" So when it comes to education, what's the other…
QLIK
The Spartacus Workout
MEN'S HEALTH
Recommended by
DAILY DOSE
your email address
SIGN UP
YOU MAY UNSUBSCRIBE AT ANY TIME.
YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS | ABOUT US
The quick movement of your feet provides a great dynamic stability challenge that makes your abs scream, and ramps up your heart and metabolic rate.
And you can make it even more difficult by changing up your arm positioning. This creates an unbalanced foundation, so you have to work harder to perform the same exercise.
Put it all together using the plank jack complex below. Do each of the following four plank variations for 15 seconds each without resting. Once you’ve completed the fourth exercise, rest one minute. That’s one round. Perform up to five total rounds.
Do you train hard and see little in the way of muscle gain? How about an endless toil in the gym, struggling to lose fat? The chances are, you're going about it all wrong. The real way to hit your training goals is adapting your plan to your body type.
Men can generally be classed as one of three body types.
Ectomorphs: skinny guys that struggle to gain weight. They're your classic “hard-gainers”.
Endomorphs: large-bodied and generally soft, these bodies gain bulk easily but also store fat along the way.
Mesomorphs: the ones everybody envy because they're naturally lean and athletic. They can put on muscle comparatively easily and they don't require huge amounts of maintenance.
You think you know leg-day pain? PT igh-volume supersets will leave you duck-waddling down the stairs for days. It'll also build you pins that look like they're carved by Rodin. Complete each superset twice, then move on to the next bit of kit.
Nearly two thirds of gym memberships go unused. Don’t let yours be one of them. Make sticking to your fitness plan effortless with these five easy ways to boost motivation. And if you don’t have a plan yet, use ours: sign up to our free Men’s Health #5in5 workout programme to lose 5kg fat and gain 5kg of muscle in just five weeks!
Pepper your day with casual clues – trainers by the front door at home, gym bag ready-packed in your car, protein shake on your desk at work – as reminders of your intention to train, and take time to recall how great you felt after your last workout. Positive memories of your last session send motivation levels soaring, found researchers at the University of New Hampshire. Just be sure to focus on how great you felt after squeezing out that squat, rather than how difficult it was to walk down the stairs to the changing room afterwards.
People who report their progress to others are more likely to carry on with a training plan. But that reporting doesn’t have to be face-to-face, according to research in the Journal of American College Health. The study authors found that logging fitness activity online for others to see inspired as much motivation as regularly working out with a group. But remember: you are notJen Selter. Spare your followers an endless stream of #fitspiration by signing up for the Men’s Health Personal Trainer tool and get access to training and nutrition plans personalised for your unique strength, stats and training goals.
Would you be more likely to go to the gym if you had to fork out a fiver for skipping it? If the answer is yes, you’re not alone, according to a handful of studies and the creators of Pact, a clever smartphone app that has users check in at their gyms via GPS and charges them for missed workouts. Each week, money is pooled from the non-exercisers and distributed among Pact users who have managed to hit their workout goals. Sign up and never skip a workout to earn money and muscle.
If you work out with a buddy, make sure he’s in similar shape, suggests a study in the journal Science. Researchers found participants who exercised with partners similar in BMI, age, and fitness level were more than three times as likely to stick with their fitness plans as those with less compatible partners. Whatever you do, don’t work out with someone much fitter, say scientists. That sets unrealistic goals and undermines motivation.
Large goals can seem unattainable. Instead, focusing on incremental victories brings better results, report scientists in the Journal of Consumer Research. So rather than dwelling on the 15 pounds you want to lose, think about doubling your current 3-pound loss.
Dame Sally Davies, England’s chief medical officer today stated in her annual report that tackling obesity should be a national priority to avert a “growing health catastrophe”.
While the report looked specifically at women, England’s top doc said obesity was so serious that is should be a priority for the whole population. She also warned that the food industry needed to pull its socks up or face a sugar tax (do we need a sugar tax? Join the debate).
Obesity throughout the country is an epidemic, and we need to act fast before it overwhelms our body, the NHS and the economy. It’s causing a fatal class divide and thousands of deaths. If something isn’t done, our nation could collapse under its own weight.
Men’s Health investigates what can be done…
You don’t need a time machine to glimpse this fatter future. A trip to Coatbridge, Lanarkshire will do. According to market researchers CACI, this Scottish town has the UK’s fattest residents. One in five has a BMI above 30 and cabbies limit loads to two passengers. It’s no coincidence that Britain’s fat capital is also one of its most deprived areas. A map of the UK drawn by the National Obesity Observatory (NOO) shows a stark class and geographical divide. The fattest areas include the North East, where unemployment rates are among the highest at 9.6%. Earning power seems directly linked to your girth, with only 21.6% of top-earning households seriously over weight, compared with 29.3 % of households where cash is tight.
If we don’t act, our ‘fatocalypse’ will become reality. The Foresight report predicts that by 2050 we’ll have an economic and health crisis if current trends continue. If you’re one of those making up the far-too-round number, the personal consequences will be dire. The British Dietetic Association warns that risk of fatal disease increases by 1% for every pound you’re overweight. Obesity ups your risk of heart disease by 82%, your risk of type 2 diabetes doubles if your BMI hits 25 and University of Aberdeen research found a 20lb (9kg) weight increase cuts your chances of fatherhood by 10%. Harvard Medical School has even coined a new term for patients suffering from obesity-related diabetes: ‘diabesity.’
Looking at the big picture, the cost to society will be crippling. NHS spending will increase from £104 to £114bn by 2015, but in real terms it will be static, thanks to rising costs and patient numbers. Health charity The King’s Fund and economic think tank The Institute of Fiscal Studies estimate this leaves a £20bn funding gap. “There’s a gap between what we’d like to spend and what we have, and obesity comes into that,” says King’s Fund health economist John Appleby. “NHS funding is flat in real terms and the cash just won’t be there.”
While the NHS budget flatlines, obesity costs are soaring. Over 5.5m over-16s are on obesity registers, a rise of 250,000 in the past year. Research by Diabetes UK shows the impact of this in a 5.5% rise in type 2 diabetes cases in a single year. Treating diabetes costs the NHS an annual £8bn, the cost of prescription weight-loss drugs is up 13% to £47m, and obesity operations 40% to £32m. Perhaps the most shocking figure is that each NHS hospital spends an average of £60,000 annually on ‘supersizing’ beds, wheelchairs and equipment for heavier patients. All this while cancer drugs are being rationed.
Related: Are you sleepwalking your way towards type 2 diabetes?
The predicted cost to the nation also includes the amount taxpayers will be funding in incapacity benefit for those whose obesity-related health problems mean they can barely walk, let alone travel to an office. “The consequences are so wide-ranging that no country, however wealthy, will be able to afford the fallout – whether it’s pervasive diabetes affecting 30-50% of adults or heart disease, ar thritis, cancers or respiratory problems,” says Professor Philip James, chair of the International Obesity Task Force. He points out that the fat epidemic is already responsible for half of all the increasing costs of the US health sector.
So far, the government’s response has been to ‘nudge’ the public into slimming down, with initiatives like cinema tickets for children who walk to school. The Department of Health says it is ‘concerned’ about the prevalence of obesity and its ‘serious implications’. A spokesman told MH that ministers were ‘working hard’ on new measures but ‘nannying’ people to lose weight is not on the agenda. “The Government’s role is not to lecture people, not to nanny them, not constantly to be legislating or taxing them,” says the DoH spokesman. Many experts argue that more drastic action is needed.
Some German politicians have already suggested fat people should pay higher taxes because of the burden they place on the health system. Or there should at least be a tax on fatty food. “A junk food tax is sound in principle,” says Paul Sacher, specialist dietician at Great Ormond Street Hospital.“ But it will only work if it’s high enough to stop people buying high-fat, sugar and salt foods. Otherwise it just becomes a tax on the poor.” And, he argues, cash raised through a tax on unhealthy foods should be used to subsidise more nutritious foods. Sacher also supports limiting advertising unhealthy foods to children to ‘minimise’ the ‘pester power effect.’
The influential health journalist Ian Marber takes a more radical stance, calling on the Government to bring in National Insurance pay bands which reflect our individual lifestyles. Those who don’t exercise, or have a high body fat, should pay the top band. “Those who don’t drink or smoke and eat healthily should pay the lowest amount,” says Marber. “It’s like any other type of insurance. You pay according to your risk.”
How we stop the next generation from supersizing is one of the most vital issues. Children are feeding their ‘fat future’ before the age of five and parents are often to blame, argues Terry Wilkin, professor of endocrinology and metabolism at Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth. His long-term research found sons of obese fathers are six times more likely to be obese, and he stresses that we need to tackle parents to stop this ‘conveyor belt’. “Obese parents are ‘recycling’ their obesity through inappropriate feeding,” says Wilkin. The demise of family mealtimes has an impact, he argues, because we no longer understand the impact of portion sizes. It’s a theory backed by University of Wales research, which showed children who don’t have set mealtimes don’t learn appropriate eating habits. “It’s vital that we educate children at an early age, but it has to be a whole family approach – the parents buying the food need the knowledge and understanding, too,” says Sacher. Wilkin’s solution is controversial: “We should target obese couples pre-conception.”
Related: Obesity is gentic but it can be fought!
Obviously blame doesn’t rest solely at the (partially obscured) feet of overweight individuals. Many stress that the food industry’s role in the global obesity crisis needs to be tackled. No one force-feeds us quarter pounders, but are they playing with our minds? Dr David Kessler, former commissioner of the US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), warns that food chains – including supermarkets – are manipulating us so that we consume more. His book, the New York Times bestseller The End of Overeating, highlights the use of salt, sugar and fat as the most commonly used ingredients, in terms of dietary manipulation. His investigations revealed that some restaurant chains deliberately increase these ‘killer’ ingredients in starters, so we eat more throughout the meal and are more likely to develop addictive eating behaviour.
Related: 11 of the best exercises to lose weight
A first step in controlling the food industry could – and many say should – be to ban the use of trans fats. These chemically-altered vegetable oils are public enemy number one, according to Professor Lindsey Davies, president of the UK Faculty of Public Health. They’re in many of processed foods because they’re cheap, bulk ingredients, which prolong shelf lives. But they have no nutritional value, Davies points out, and cause a redistribution of fat tissue into the abdomen, upping your bodyweight, even when you’re controlling calorie intake. Their link to obesity has been confirmed in research by Wake Forest University in the US. “Thousands are dying from them,” says Davies. “And we get hysterical about E. coli, which may kill a handful of people. Trans fats are contaminating food.”
If our weighty issue isn’t tackled now, we could be facing a bleak nutritional future. Wilkin believes there will come a time when there will be draconian measures, just as society came round to a public smoking ban. The Future Foundation goes further, predicting a Christmas Future where sugary foods are banned and chocolate is rationed. It’s not so improbable. In the US, education chiefs in Pennsylvania have drafted regulations limiting classroom birthday parties to one a month.
In the meantime, maybe it’s better to give that burger a miss.
The plank strengthens the dozens of muscles between your shoulders and hips.
But if you jack your feet in and out as you do it, the plank suddenly becomes so much more than just a core builder.
ADVERTISEMENT
MEN'S HEALTH RECOMMENDS
Million Dollar Luxury Homes You Have to See to Believe
MANSION GLOBAL BY DOW JONES
15-Minute Workout: 3 Moves, 300 Muscles
MEN'S HEALTH
An Exercise to Protect Your Liver From Too Much Booze?
FOR MEN
2 Pushup Workouts That Hit Every Muscle in Your Core
MEN'S HEALTH
Knowing is half the battle" So when it comes to education, what's the other…
QLIK
The Spartacus Workout
MEN'S HEALTH
Recommended by
DAILY DOSE
your email address
SIGN UP
YOU MAY UNSUBSCRIBE AT ANY TIME.
YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS | ABOUT US
The quick movement of your feet provides a great dynamic stability challenge that makes your abs scream, and ramps up your heart and metabolic rate.
And you can make it even more difficult by changing up your arm positioning. This creates an unbalanced foundation, so you have to work harder to perform the same exercise.
Put it all together using the plank jack complex below. Do each of the following four plank variations for 15 seconds each without resting. Once you’ve completed the fourth exercise, rest one minute. That’s one round. Perform up to five total rounds.
In life, each of us tends to move at our own pace. Some of us walk, talk, and eat faster or slower than others.
Research tells us that different speeds come with different costs and benefits. Walking faster, for example, burns more calories than walking slowly. Those who talk faster are more persuasive. And those who eat fast tend to eat more.
ADVERTISEMENT
MEN'S HEALTH RECOMMENDS
Where the World's Billionaires Live
MANSION GLOBAL BY DOW JONES
5 Surprising Ways to Make Your Biceps Grow
MEN'S HEALTH
25 Gifts That Every Man Secretly Wants, My Boyfriend Totally Deserves…
LIFEBUZZ
4 Daily Exercises Every Navy SEAL (and Every Fit Guy) Should Do
MEN'S HEALTH
How he learned 9 languages fluently
BABBEL
The Ultimate Morning Workout
MEN'S HEALTH
Recommended by
DAILY DOSE
your email address
SIGN UP
YOU MAY UNSUBSCRIBE AT ANY TIME.
YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS | ABOUT US
So someone struggling to lose weight might be advised to eat slower and walk faster, and to beware of fast-talking salesmen trying to push the latest supplement miracle.
It’s no surprise that in the gym, we also lift at different speeds. The open
It demonstrates balance and control over your body, something we happen to put great importance upon here at Nerd Fitness. It’s also one HELL of a party trick, something you can work on without a single piece of equipment, builds functional strength and muscular endurance, and it’s a skill you can work on in just a few minutes every single day.
How do I know this? Because I’m typing this while in a handstand RIGHT NOW. Okay, I can’t do that. But Jim, Master of the NF Fitness Universe can:
jim typing
I love working with gymnastic rings, because they have such a great tutorial level. Handstands are exactly the same way: it’s a great skill to work on as a beginner, but also is infinitely challenging depending on your skill level.
Plus, in addition to Jim, Luke Skywalker does them. It’s time to stop looking at other people doing cool things and start today saying “hey, I can do that too!”
Why handstands are awesome
Jim-Bathurst
Team Nerd Fitness member Jim Bathurst has been training and working on handstands for years. From humble beginnings, he taught himself a standard handstand and eventually worked his way up to one-handed tricks like the photo above.
Now, you won’t be doing this anytime soon, but it doesn’t mean you can’t start today learning how to go inverted.
Fun fact: I can’t say the word inverted without thinking of Top Gun’s line “because we were inverted,” but that’s only because I used to watch that movie with my brother every day from ages 3 to 5.
I’ve fallen in love with handstands for a few reasons:
Like other bodyweight training, there’s no excuse. If you have room to stand up, you have room to practice handstands.
It recruits DOZENS of muscles in your body. From arm strength to wrist mobility to core strength to shoulder mobility and muscular endurance, handstands do it all. When you are trying to balance, it makes your body work as one complete unit.
It scares you – yes, that’s a positive. We grow outside our comfort zone and for many people, just the thought of a handstand is enough to make their palms sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy. Vomi… nevermind. The point is that the handstand is just as much of a mental challenge as it is a physical one. How scared do you think this guy gets on a regular basis?
Do you train hard and see little in the way of muscle gain? How about an endless toil in the gym, struggling to lose fat? The chances are, you're going about it all wrong. The real way to hit your training goals is adapting your plan to your body type.
Men can generally be classed as one of three body types.
Ectomorphs: skinny guys that struggle to gain weight. They're your classic “hard-gainers”.
Endomorphs: large-bodied and generally soft, these bodies gain bulk easily but also store fat along the way.
Mesomorphs: the ones everybody envy because they're naturally lean and athletic. They can put on muscle comparatively easily and they don't require huge amounts of maintenance.
Your body is a machine that constantly reinvents itself. Every minute of every day, it breaks down its own tissues and replaces them with new stuff it makes from a combination of the food you eat and recycled material it scavenges from other tissues.
No matter how old your Facebook profile says you are, your component parts are considerably younger. Even your bones replace themselves every 10 years. By that standard, your muscle cells, with an average age of 15 years old, are the adults at the party.
ADVERTISEMENT
MEN'S HEALTH RECOMMENDS
Jimmy Carter cured himself of metastatic melanoma
RECHARGE BIOMEDICAL
The Best Proteins for Men
MEN'S HEALTH
China procrastinates its way to growth
NIKKEI ASIAN REVIEW
How to Maximize Your Protein Intake Every Day
MEN'S HEALTH
Guy Fieri’s Kids: “The Food Network is Killing Our Father”
ABOVE AVERAGE
Is Protein Safe?
MEN'S HEALTH
Recommended by
DAILY DOSE
your email address
SIGN UP
YOU MAY UNSUBSCRIBE AT ANY TIME.
YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS | ABOUT US
Your workouts will cause the protein in your muscles to break down and build up much faster than it does in ordinary circumstances. In fact, when you work out with the goal of becoming more awesome than you are now, the entire point is to get that protein to turn over. But it only helps if you end up with more than you had when you started.
There are two ways to do that. The first, and by far the easiest, is to eat more protein than you currently do. Protein, all by itself, is anabolic. It wants to be stored in your muscles. The second is to work out in a way that disrupts your muscles and forces them to respond by getting bigger and stronger.
The combination of a diet rich in high-quality protein (like this whey protein powder from the Men’s Health store) and a great strength-training program is the oldest, best, and only non-pharmaceutical way to reach that goal. This article will show you how much protein you need to eat, and when.
Some people thought they'd found the ultimate leg-day workout. They thought wrong. PT Phil Sims, the mind behind our brutal 400-rep arm-building workout, now brings you the 500-rep workout, soon to hit a gym near you. And critics (i.e. us) are already hailing this lower body-building circuit as the best (or worst, depending on your mindset) yet. Why? The extraordinarily high reps will shock your legs and eat into their glycogen stores, stripping your entire body of fat. Plus, it’ll send your lactate threshold and testosterone through the roof, transforming your legs into powerful pistons. Just be careful, this brutal workout is rated R for reps.
Subscribe
There is no man that will say he enjoys the bottom of a barbell squat.
It’s the portion of the exercise where you probably feel the most uncomfortable. And if you fail or dump the weight, it usually happens when you’re in the hole.
ADVERTISEMENT
MEN'S HEALTH RECOMMENDS
Where the World's Billionaires Live
MANSION GLOBAL BY DOW JONES
The Ridiculously Easy Way to Improve Your Pullup and Overhead Press
MEN'S HEALTH
How he learned 9 languages fluently
BABBEL
The Best Abs Workout You've Never Done
MEN'S HEALTH
9 Free Business Productivity Tools For Startups
TWEAK YOUR BIZ
5 Surprising Ways to Make Your Biceps Grow
MEN'S HEALTH
Recommended by
DAILY DOSE
your email address
SIGN UP
YOU MAY UNSUBSCRIBE AT ANY TIME.
YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS | ABOUT US
That’s why I want you to hang out in the bottom of the squat longer.
Related: THE 21-DAY METASHRED—an At-Home Body-Shredding Program That Strips Away Fat and Reveals Lean, Hard Muscle
A pause squat requires you to come to a full, extended stop at the lowest part of the rep. Now, this is by no means an Earth-shattering idea. However, it’s something I find many guys (coaches and trainers included) don’t do often enough.
Here are the main benefits of pause squats:
1. You strengthen the weakest portion of your squat.
2. You gain more confidence and learn to become more comfortable “in the hole.”
3. You increase your muscles’ Time Under Tension (TUT), which plays a major role with increased mass. In short: more TUT = bigger muscles.
The plank strengthens the dozens of muscles between your shoulders and hips.
But if you jack your feet in and out as you do it, the plank suddenly becomes so much more than just a core builder.
ADVERTISEMENT
MEN'S HEALTH RECOMMENDS
Million Dollar Luxury Homes You Have to See to Believe
MANSION GLOBAL BY DOW JONES
15-Minute Workout: 3 Moves, 300 Muscles
MEN'S HEALTH
An Exercise to Protect Your Liver From Too Much Booze?
FOR MEN
2 Pushup Workouts That Hit Every Muscle in Your Core
MEN'S HEALTH
Knowing is half the battle" So when it comes to education, what's the other…
QLIK
The Spartacus Workout
MEN'S HEALTH
Recommended by
DAILY DOSE
your email address
SIGN UP
YOU MAY UNSUBSCRIBE AT ANY TIME.
YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS | ABOUT US
The quick movement of your feet provides a great dynamic stability challenge that makes your abs scream, and ramps up your heart and metabolic rate.
And you can make it even more difficult by changing up your arm positioning. This creates an unbalanced foundation, so you have to work harder to perform the same exercise.
Put it all together using the plank jack complex below. Do each of the following four plank variations for 15 seconds each without resting. Once you’ve completed the fourth exercise, rest one minute. That’s one round. Perform up to five total rounds.
In life, each of us tends to move at our own pace. Some of us walk, talk, and eat faster or slower than others.
Research tells us that different speeds come with different costs and benefits. Walking faster, for example, burns more calories than walking slowly. Those who talk faster are more persuasive. And those who eat fast tend to eat more.
ADVERTISEMENT
MEN'S HEALTH RECOMMENDS
Where the World's Billionaires Live
MANSION GLOBAL BY DOW JONES
5 Surprising Ways to Make Your Biceps Grow
MEN'S HEALTH
25 Gifts That Every Man Secretly Wants, My Boyfriend Totally Deserves…
LIFEBUZZ
4 Daily Exercises Every Navy SEAL (and Every Fit Guy) Should Do
MEN'S HEALTH
How he learned 9 languages fluently
BABBEL
The Ultimate Morning Workout
MEN'S HEALTH
Recommended by
DAILY DOSE
your email address
SIGN UP
YOU MAY UNSUBSCRIBE AT ANY TIME.
YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS | ABOUT US
So someone struggling to lose weight might be advised to eat slower and walk faster, and to beware of fast-talking salesmen trying to push the latest supplement miracle.
It’s no surprise that in the gym, we also lift at different speeds. The open
What you scarf post-workout matters for building and repairing muscle. And while scientists have long known that protein should be a key component of whatever you consume to get the job done, two new studies in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reveal one reason whywhey protein stands above all others: It’s the leucine.
“Whey is a high-quality milk protein that’s a rich source of the essential amino acid leucine,” says Stefan Pasiakos, Ph.D., a physiologist with the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine. And consuming lots of leucine leads to greater muscle protein synthesis—the intricate process that helps promote the remodeling, repair, and muscle growth that occurs after exercise, the study explains.
More from MensHealth.com: The Truth About Protein
In Pasiakos’ study, military members rode stationary bikes for 60 minutes at a moderate intensity on two separate occasions. Both times they chugged a beverage with equal amounts of protein, but one drink contained 1.9 grams of leucine, while the other packed 3.5 grams. (For reference: 10 grams of regular whey protein contains about 1 gram of leucine.) Researchers found protein synthesis was 33 percent higher after the larger leucine dose. “Leucine can help trigger complex signaling networks within muscles that turn on muscle protein synthesis,” Pasiakos says.
Meanwhile, the second American Journal of Clinical Nutrition study found that consuming 25 grams of whey protein that contained 3.5 grams of leucine after a resistance training workout led to higher blood concentrations of amino acids, including leucine, than when participants downed smaller repeat doses of whey meant to mimic another type of protein called casein. The reason? Whey is digested quickly, and makes essential amino acids available sooner—leading to a greater muscle protein synthesis response, Pasiakos says.
Doing 100 reps of any exercise isn’t easy.
Doing 100 reps of burpee-pullups as fast as possible may be one of the hardest challenges you’ll ever perform at the gym. It works every muscle in your body and leaves you feeling like your heart and lungs are going to explode.
ADVERTISEMENT
MEN'S HEALTH RECOMMENDS
3 Weight-Training Biceps Exercises - For Dummies
DUMMIES.COM
The Ultimate Workout For Aesthetics
MEN'S HEALTH
25 Gifts That Every Man Secretly Wants, My Boyfriend Totally Deserves…
LIFEBUZZ
The Only Type of Cardio That Gets You Jacked
MEN'S HEALTH
Education is about what you can do, not just what you know
QLIK
4 Ways to Become a Pullup Powerhouse
MEN'S HEALTH
Recommended by
DAILY DOSE
your email address
SIGN UP
YOU MAY UNSUBSCRIBE AT ANY TIME.
YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS | ABOUT US
Related: THE 21-DAY METASHRED—30-Minute Cutting-Edge Workouts That Torch Fat Fast. One Guy Lost 25 Pounds in Just 6 Weeks!
Here’s how to do it: Stand in front of a pullup bar. Do a burpee, and then immediately jump up into a pullup. When your feet hit the floor, drop into a burpee again.
As pirates on the TV series Black Sails, actors Tom Hopper (above), Toby Stephens, and Luke Arnold have to look like men who spend all day heaving cannonballs, pulling sails, and climbing ropes.
In other words, utterly shredded.
Strength coach James White, the toughest trainer in South Africa, put them through a grueling boot camp to help them build brawn and cut fat—in just eight weeks.
The excess of abs in the photo above tells you everything you need to know about the effectiveness of White’s program, which is detailed in the April issue of Men’s Health.
After all, TV pirates aren’t the only ones who need to look good with their shirts off. Click to find out what it takes to get into the best shape of your life.
Currently, in the United States, improving physical fitness and overall levels of health is largely regulated to two different elements; that of exercise and diet. Yet, to simply focus only on these two elements of physical well being is to do a disservice to what is required to live a healthy, fulfilled life.
This section of our website is intended to shed light on a part of fitness that is often overlooked: that of mental health, stability, and wellness. The mental stability and well being of an individual is subject to disease and entropy just as the body is. This being said, when compared to physical and nutritional health, mental health and wellness is equally important. Hence, to truly live a lifestyle that is filled with good health and fitness, individuals must include achieving mental wellness as well.
One approach to ensuring mental balance and wellness that can be utilized, and has been for thousands of years, is the practice of meditation. While meditation can be, and often is, practiced independently, it can be paired with several other exercise types including Yoga and Pilates.
The earliest records of meditation date back to 50,000 years ago. The practice originally developed as a ritual involved in a number of different religions. In fact, almost every major religion utilizes meditation in one form or another, from Hinduism to Christianity. Throughout time, however, the practice has found a place outside of the realm of religion. This is most likely because people became aware of the vast array of benefits that meditation can provide a person even when it is void of any religious implications.
Although Meditation and Yoga are very closely related, Meditation as a formal and separate practice did not arise until much later, a little more than 5,000 years ago (actual recorded writings about Meditation). Granted, people have likely been practicing some form of meditation since the beginning of their existence. Any time that you take some time out to gather your thought or get some fresh air to clear your mind, you are technically using meditation to relax and focus your mind.
David Lee, Vice President of Certified Pre-Owned at Tourneau, offers an easy-to-understand guide to the fundamentals of horology. It’s always a good time for a primer on setting and winding a watch—whether the timepiece is powered by a battery, requires near-daily winding, or winds itself when worn on the wrist.
The materials in this website are in no way intended to replace the professional medical care, advice,
diagnosis or treatment of a doctor, qualified personal trainer, therapist, dietitian or nutritionist OiiO Fitness.
