Innholdsfortegnelse for September - October 2021 i Men's Fitness South Africa

Think the whole “barefoot” sneaker trend is just for runners? Think again. According to researchers at Hong Kong’s Poly University, wearing minimalist shoes while exercising can make your legs and feet significantly stronger than wearing regular sneakers. The six-month study followed 18 runners in regular kicks and 20 runners in minimalist shoes (stretchy-fabric uppers, zero heel-to-toe drop, and a 3mm outer sole — no midsole cushioning or arch support). At the end, the regular-shoe wearers’ leg/foot muscles hadn’t grown — but the leg muscles of the barefoot-shoe folks had gone up in size by 7%, their foot muscles by 9%, forefoot muscles by 12%, and rear-foot muscles by 7%. And though the study was done on runners, researchers believe that wearing a similar shoe during other types of workouts, including…

At age 21, Morton was a struggling college student living off of taco bell and ramen noodles. Just two years later, he became a millionaire. Now, with his earnings elevating over $50,000,000, 31-year-old Morton is an entrepreneur, momentum creator, best-selling author, and speaker who simply wants to help as many people as he can level up in their lives. He spends his days educating and inspiring people around the world to turn their dreams into a reality. He’s simplified the philosophy behind becoming a success. Whether the goal is wealth, health, or simply pure happiness – life can be like riding a jet ski when you understand the rules to the success game. According to Morton, the first step to reaching a goal is knowing exactly what you want. Picture…

THIS MASTERFULLY SEARED TUNA — ATOP A TASTY BED OF SPINACH, BLACK BEANS, PEAS, WALNUTS, AND PARMESAN — IS ONLY 4.6 GRAMS OF (NATURAL!) SUGAR, WITH A WHOPPING 14.6 GRAMS OF FIBRE. Zero Sugar Diet, is an in-depth eating plan specifically designed to detox your body, bring your hormones into balance, heal your liver, and take away food cravings while delivering rapid weight loss. Generally speaking, it works by doing one thing very, very effectively: drastically lowering your sugar consumption while boosting your fibre intake at the same time. Zero Sugar Diet requires lots of whole foods like fruits, vegetables, and whole, unprocessed grains; plenty of lean, healthy, satisfying, sugar-free foods like eggs, turkey, chicken, and fish; and just the right amount of sugar-free fats, like guacamole. With the dishes…

SWure, Swedish-born chef Gabriel Hedlund is a Michelin star winner. But seeing his lean physique and massive bi’s, it’s words like “fitness freak” not “full-time foodie” that instantly spring to mind. One of his secrets: the vegetable-heavy, intrinsically healthy New Nordic fare (like raw mackerel with nasturtium, green tomato, and horseradish) he’s become famous for. But Hedlund follows an even simpler diet at home and sticks to a strict fitness regimen, too. We asked the chef, whose new joint N’eat (short for “Nordic eatery”) just opened in NYC, USA, for specifics. How do you balance a chef’s lifestyle — crazy hours, tons of food — with staying fit? It’s about staying focused. What I cook at the restaurant is all about flavour; what I cook at home is more like…

SO YOU FINALLY persuaded HR to buy you that standing desk. Congrats! (Also: Welcome to 2018.) Maybe you’ve invested in a stress ball, tomato timer, foam roller, and standard-issue sound-cancelling headphones, too. This is all great stuff to improve your daily grind, and we wholeheartedly approve. But if you think you’ve done everything you can to pimp your workspace for the sake of your productivity, you’ve still got a ways to go. With the smart buys that follow, you can turn any drab cubicle into an oasis of good energy and intense focus where great work gets done. Because when you’re at the office, you should work smarter and faster, not harder. Get a more charitable foundation Sure, a standing desk helps break the office monotony, but it also shifts…

LET’S NOT KID EACH OTHER: AS MUCH AS WE HIT THE GYM TO FEEL AWESOME, LIVE LONGER, COMPETE WITH OUR BUDDIES, RELIEVE stress, and, of course, have a damn good time slinging giant pieces of steel, it doesn’t hurt that working out makes us look damn good too. Which means that, if you’re a guy seeking to round out your sex appeal, you’re probably more than familiar with all the coveted (admittedly superficial) physical attributes that constitute a “perfect male physique” — the ones even hardcore gym rats have trouble achieving. These include the well-defined arm “horseshoe” (see: Mark Wahlberg in The Fighter), ridiculously chiselled V-cut abs (see: Brad Pitt in Fight Club), and the giant wingspan of a well-carved upper back (see: Hugh Jackman in any film in which…

1) EZ-BAR CURL Sets: 3 Reps: 8–10 Rest: 60 sec Hold an EZ-curl bar with a shoulder-width grip. Keeping your upper arms against your sides, curl the bar until your biceps are fully contracted. 2) DUMBBELL HAMMER CURL Sets: 3 Reps: 10–12 Rest: 60 sec Hold a dumbbell in each hand with your palms facing your sides. Keeping your upper arms against your sides, curl the weights up. 3) EZ-BAR REVERSE CURL Sets: 3 Reps: Work for 60 sec. Rest: 60 sec Hold an EZ-curl bar with an overhand grip, hands spaced shoulder-width apart. Don’t allow your elbows to drift forward as you curl the bar. 4) TRICEPS PUSHDOWN Sets: 3 Reps: 12–15 Rest: 60 sec Attach a rope handle to the top pulley of a cable station and…

Eating a big, healthy salad that’s chockfull of a variety of colourful veggies — kale, peppers, broccoli, tomatoes, carrots — for lunch is an easy way to get a wide range of essential daily nutrients. And a study from 2015 revealed that simply adding some eggs to your salad can bump up your body’s ability to absorb antioxidants called carotenoids by up to eight times. Now a follow-up study has found that tossing three cooked eggs into a salad can increase your absorption of vitamin E nearly sevenfold. Vitamin E — found mostly in leafy greens, oils, seeds, and nuts — has potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, supports the immune system, and may help prevent heart disease, so use this easy trick to up your levels without taking supplements. Curry…

Rejoice, fellas: You needn’t banish your favourite bowl of gloppity goodness to cheat days, or — even more depressing — load your go-to sauce on some underwhelming pasta understudy (see: “whole wheat”, anything labelled “gluten-free”).Easy-to-make spiralised vegetables — whole veggies sliced into spaghetti-like threads — can turn the tuber or legume of your choice into a to-die-for Italian feast. Unlike flour-based pastas, noodles made of squash, beets, sweet potatoes, et al, are low in calories, high in smart carbs/fibre, super filling (because of their water content), and won’t spike your blood sugar. Best of all, with the right sauce, they’re flat-out tasty as hell. Squash spaghetti! (And other great plant pastas) More than 20 veggies can be spiralised. Here, the six we love most. SWEET POTATO TASTE: Honeylike; makes sauces…

If I’m eating clean, is three hours of cardio a week enough to lose fat? ELIAS S, JOHANNESBURG ■ If you make the right meal (and drink) choices, get enough sleep, and do resistance training (to boost calorie burning), then, yes, three hours of cardio a week should do it. While you’re at it, try these tweaks to ignite extra fat burning: DURATION: Do 30–60 minutes of cardio at a time. INTENSITY: Keep your heart rate at 65–85% of your anaerobic threshold but spike it with higher-intensity intervals. FREQUENCY: I’d say daily, so it becomes routine. But bottom line, do what fits your schedule without adding stress — that raises cortisol, causing your body to hoard the very fat you’re trying to jettison. Just be consistent and have fun with…

I Egemen, great to have you on the cover this month! Everyone has their own special story about how they got involved in health and fitness, could you tell us a little bit about your journey to where you are today? Growing up in Izmir, Turkey, my family taught me to play all types of sports and physical activity. In high school I became a certified professional life guard, from there I continued to work as a professional water aerobics instructor, certified massage therapist with the American Red Cross. It was in college when I started focusing my attention on physical fitness. After graduating with my bachelor’s degree in physical education I moved to the USA to gain experiences, share my passion and knowledge with others, and make my family…

GOAL NO. 1 THE TAPERED TORSO • REMEMBER THE OLD ADAGE that “abs are made in the kitchen?” Well, the same principle applies to your entire midsection. “You can do all the gym work in the world”, says Zach Even-Esh, founder of New Jersey’s The Underground Strength Gym in the US, “but if your body’s covered by a layer of fat, then nobody will know”. That’s why getting yourself on a very strict, clean diet — with the right balance of proteins, fats, and carbs — is the key to transforming your flabby torso into a perfectly cut, tapered midsection. But how do you do it? The first order of business is to get your math in order, and that means calculating what your overall calorie intake needs to be,…

Morning guys get out at the butt crack of dawn. Day guys try to squeeze something in at lunch. (Good luck with that.) Late guys hit it once the work whistle blows. But it’s all good as long as the workouts are consistent, right? Maybe not. According to a new study out of Northwestern University USA, muscle tissue runs on the same circadian clock — the internal 24-hour timer that regulates cell functioning — that the rest of the body does. If true, that means there’s an optimal time for muscle cells to use oxygen to create energy and allow for better performance. The study found that when the muscles in mice were genetically altered to ignore the little rodents’ circadian clock, they lost their ability to use sugar for…

Scratch most “regular exercisers” and underneath you’ll find someone who tried HIIT (high-intensity interval training) once and just couldn’t hack it — the short-but-extreme bursts of effort can be daunting for fitness pros and sweating-like-a-pig newbies alike. It’s a shame, because HIIT can boost your body’s fat-burning abilities and give you a time-efficient cardio and health strategy: Just 10 minutes, three times a week, can get you as healthy as the recommended 150 minutes a week of low-intensity exercise (see below). But there’s hope: Listening to music of any kind — as long as it’s your favourite tunes — during HIIT will make you not only enjoy it more but also look forward more to the next brutal session, says new research in the Journal of Sports Sciences. So pop…

The greatest invention in romance since condoms, dating apps are pure efficiency: thousands of women, no long profiles to read, no grammar mistakes to harrumph over, nothing but the essentials: picture, age, first name, and a fortune cookie. If you’re interested only in hook-ups, there’s a mathematical strategy for maximising hits: Swipe right for everyone. This works when you think about dating the way a shark thinks about eating. But if you’re looking for love — or simply good company — you’re in for “Hot or Not?” the video game. And, like any gamer, you need a winning strategy. WHEN YOU’RE LOOKING FOR A SITE TO GET SEXY ON YOU THINK: All single women are on Tinder and variety is my ally. SHE THINKS: Tinder is a Greyhound bus full…

Q: Tell us a bit about yourself and your history as an athlete. A: I’m a Physiotherapist by profession, running two physiotherapy departments at two specialised TB hospitals. As a child growing up, I was very athletic and active. I played all sports and often found myself playing cricket, soccer and games with the boys during school intervals and holidays. I always made it onto the school athletic and sports teams, competing in sprints, long distance running, long jump, high jump, netball, etc. I never had a problem with my weight or health growing up. I used to eat like a horse and still have a healthy weight because I was so active. I excelled in sports and academics. When I had completed my Honours degree in Physiotherapy at…

Cold-press juice is more nutritious and even lasts longer in the fridge. Calling all juicing fiends: If you haven’t invested in a “cold press” (aka masticating) juicer yet, do it now. That’s right: Now. Here’s why: Juicers come in two basic types. The most common, the “centrifugal” juicer, grinds and spins fruits and veggies at high speed to separate juice from pulp, in the process creating heat (hence “cold” in the name of its competitor, the “cold press”). But, more notably, a centrifugal juicer also creates oxidation, which can damage nutrients and affect the juice’s shelf life. (Think: Apple slices turning brown when exposed to air.) A masticating juicer, on the other hand, slowly crushes the fruit/veg and squeezes out the juice, which extracts more juice, especially from leafy greens.…

NOW, WE ’D NEVER, EVER, try to stand between you and your first marathon, a major weight loss, or the job of your dreams. Thinking big — and having big goals — is important, especially as you set your sights on a new year. That said, sometimes thinking a little bit smaller — in fact, maybe making just a few minor tweaks to your routine — can yield some pretty big W’s, too. That could mean just swapping out a single drink of the day for water and watching your weight plummet. Or using a simple timer at your desk that will up your productivity tenfold. Or even doing some very small, invisible exercises that will have a major impact on your sex life. Best of all: None of these…

RELAX IN CASUAL LOOKS THAT HIT THE SWEET SPOT BETWEEN GYMWEAR AND HANGOUT GEAR.…

ONE MY STRUGGLE WITH SUGAR IF YOU ASKED THE 25-YEAR-OLD ME TO PREDICT WHAT my 40s would look like, I would have used just one word to describe them: fat. Fat was my inevitable destiny. I’d grown up as a lonely latchkey kid with a serious sugar addiction; my best friends were the Three Musketeers, and all I knew of the world outside my suburban Pennsylvania neighbourhood was French vanilla, English toffee, and Dutch chocolate. When my 90 kilograms went into the US Navy Reserves after college, I could see the disgust on the faces of the basic-training instructors: Who sent us this leaky old tugboat? And how the heck are we supposed to turn it into a battleship? The Navy did whip me into shape — morning revelry of…

Max your protein: Sample Day 1 BREAKFAST • ¾ cup dry (1½ cups cooked) oatmeal topped with: 1 tbsp raisins ¾ cup blueberries• 2 whole eggs + 2 egg whites (hard-boiled or pan-fried) 1 tsp olive oil for cooking Topped with ¼ avocado MIDMORNING SNACK • 1 cup low-fat cottage cheese topped with: 1 tbsp slivered almonds• 1 medium apple LUNCH • 90-120g grilled chicken (27g) topped with: ⅓ cup hummus• 1 whole sweet potato topped with: 2 tsp whipped butter and cinnamon• 2 cups cooked non-starchy veggies (asparagus, peppers, spinach) SNACK • 1 whole banana topped with: 30g all-natural nut butter (or a side of whole almonds or walnuts) WORKOUT • Drink 500ml water DINNER • 120g Herb-Crusted Pork Tenderloin (SEE RECIPE, RIGHT)• 1 cup whole-grain couscous 1 tsp…