Men's Fitness South Africa May 2017

Positivity So much has happened in our beautiful country over the past couple of weeks. As a result, we’ve been downgraded by two very significant ratings agencies in the span of a few days. At the moment all seems to be very doom and gloom. I myself was in a pretty negative space for a few days there. Late one night, after returning from my best friend’s four-day bachelor party in Cape Town, I was feeling rather fragile while scrolling through my Instagram timeline. Then I saw a familiar quote from a poem that pretty much realigned everything for me. The powerful message by Marianne Williamson has been used in numerous movies and plays, and by coaches all over the world in a bid to motivate their troops for battle.…

MAY 5 -7 Arnold Classic Africa SANDT O N , J H B • The Arnold Classic Africa is the biggest annual multi-sport event on the African continent with a fitness and lifestyle Expo spanning over 3 days. The event is hosted on 6 continents and will be held in Johannesburg on the 5th, 6th and 7th of this month. The iconic movie star (and former Governor of California) Arnold Schwarzenegger will be in attendance so what more would you need? The event will host more than 50 sports and events with more than 12 000 participants. webtickets.co.za MAY 1 1 Biogen BrrrRun BRYANST O N , J H B • The concept behind the BrrrRun is interestingly different to the average ‘run’ event. The idea was to combine a…

Hard-hitting news from the cutting edge of modern research Want to lessen your chances of getting the big C? Keep moving! Consistent physical exercise may be the king of the cancer killers, according to a ‘yuuuge’ new meta-analysis from the American National Cancer Institute. Researchers sifted through 12 studies on 1.4 million Americans and Europeans and found that those who worked out the most had a 10–20% reduction in three of the four most common cancers in the U.S. — lung, breast, colon and rectal cancer — along with myeloma, head and neck cancers, and bladder cancer. And, amazingly, they found that these avid exercisers had a greater than 20% reduction in oesophagal, liver, lung, kidney, stomach, and endometrial cancer, and myeloid leukaemia as well. Gallbladder cancer, small intestine cancer,…

Dietitians often caution against eating lots of high-energy foods, like nuts, to avoid putting on kilograms. But a one-year study presented at a recent Experimental Biology conference in the USA found that when subjects ate up to 15% of their daily calories in walnuts, it had no effect on their body weight, and even reduced their LDL (bad) cholesterol levels compared with non-nut eaters. And that wasn’t the only great walnut-centric revelation to come out of the meeting: A USDA study found that just 43 grams of walnuts a day can change your gut bacteria in a way that helps decrease inflammation and cholesterol, potentially improving heart health. Another study from the University of Georgia, USA, showed that diets high in polyunsaturated fats — like those found in walnuts —…

It’s simple: Texting at the wheel doesn’t just distract you a little or take your eyes off the road for a few insignificant seconds. It also short-circuits the part of your brain that keeps you driving in a straight line on the road. And not even an ace car jockey like you is a match for a brain that’s gone AWOL. Researchers from the University of Houston, USA, hoping to learn why drive-texting is so deadly (see the frightening stats below), put students in high-fidelity simulators and distracted them with texting as well as complex and emotional questions. In all cases, their car handling became jittery — but only texting caused dangerous lane deviations and unsafe driving, because it severed the hand-eye connection needed to activate the “sixth sense” that…

• Bet right now you’re feeling pretty curious yourself, huh? So here’s the deal. Researchers from the Florida State University in the US asked 278 heterosexual newly-wed couples to keep a sex diary of the frequency and quality of their sex during a two-week period. They also completed a personality profile measuring conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness to experience, neuroticism, and extraversion. When analysed, the diaries showed that how frequently the couples had sex (the average was three to four times in two weeks) depended on the personality of the woman: In the couples who had sex the most often, the woman was more agreeable or open to new Smokers Make Le$$ Money • Healthy lungs not enough incentive to quit? How about a healthy bank account? Smokers don’t just pay through…