Innholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2025 i Men's Health

SHOE SMACKDOWN From Air Jordans to Adidas Samba OGs, we logged hundreds of miles in running, training, hiking, and work-ready sneakers to find the best. Go to MensHealth.com/sneaker-awards-2025. STRESS TEST We asked Chris Hemsworth, Dave Franco, and others about their most nerve-racking roles in our brand-new video series. Watch at youtube.com/MensHealthMag. STACK STRATEGY We analyzed the studies and talked to the experts about everything from ashwagandha to zinc to build one definitive guide to all things supplements. Check it out: MensHealth.com/supplement-guide.…

WHAT THEY ARE MITOCHONDRIA ARE LIKE subcontractors that do jobs for your cells. In fact, scientists believe these organelles were once separate bacteria that formed a symbiotic relationship with an ancient ancestor of our cells. Mitochondria have their own ways of communicating and can even move between cells. And while they indeed make energy, they’re also “true multitaskers,” says Stanford professor Daria Mochly-Rosen, PhD, whose new book, The Life Machines, looks at what mitochondria do for us now. WHAT THEY DO FOR US THEY GIVE US ENERGY YOU’LL FIND MORE mitochondria where more energy is needed: Ceaseless heart muscle cells, for example, are 30 to 40 percent mitochondria by volume. Mitochondria process food—mainly fats and carbs—and make ATP, the fuel that drives cellular activity. ATP stores lots of energy in…

THE SKY SHIMMERED A STEELY BLUE. THE TEMPERATURE PUSHED 90 DEGREES. IT WAS JULY 2, ANOTHER HOT SUMMER DAY IN CORPUS CHRISTI, TEXAS. PETTY OFFICER SCOTT C. RUSKAN SPENT THE MORNING BEING DUNKED UPSIDE DOWN INTO A POOL IN A CAGE DESIGNED TO SIMULATE A HELICOPTER COCK-PIT AS PART OF WHAT THE U.S. COAST GUARD CALLS SHALLOW WATER EGRESS TRAINING. Ruskan is an aviation survival technician, better known as a rescue swimmer. The key to successfully completing the exercise is to take a deep breath before impact, stay calm underwater as you unbuckle or cut your harness, open the door, and swim to safety. “It’s not a good feeling being strapped in going underwater,” he says. “The Coast Guard follows a crawl-walk-run approach. Your first dunk, you’re the right way…

MCKAY FUGAL WOKE UP TO AN EMAIL ONE MORNING THIS PAST SPRING THAT MADE HIS STOMACH DROP. The subject line was unremarkable, the tone polite. But the message in the attached document was devastating. Epogee, the supplier of the most critical ingredient in the line of low-fat, high-protein chocolate bars he’d helped invent, was cutting the business off. No negotiation, no warning. Just a brief note to say that any pending orders would be fulfilled, but then no more, effective immediately. Together, Fugal and his wife, Leilani, had spent the past three years building their start-up, Defiant Chocolate, out of a rented commercial kitchen south of Salt Lake City. Mckay, a competitive bodybuilder and commercial real estate broker by day, and Leilani, a former college basketball player who worked full-time…

THERE ARE A FEW WAYS TO USE THE WHEEL. • START OUTSIDE. Locate a cheese you like, such as Gouda. Then go try others in the “buttery” category. • START INSIDE. Find your flavor profile by identifying other types of food you like. If you’re a pickle guy, you’re also a “Tangy” guy, and you’ll probably enjoy a nice briny Halloumi. • GO STRAIGHT TO THE YELLOW CIRCLES. ’Cause sometimes you know exactly what flavor (butterscotch! peanuts! uh, grass?) you’re in the mood for. Erika Kubick is the author of Cheese Sex Death and Cheese Magic.…

BANDED JAB STEP Affix a long exercise band to something sturdy, loop it around the back of your waist, and step backward so there is tension on the band. From an athletic stance, take a short lunge-step forward with your left foot. As quickly as you can, push off the foot and return to the starting position. Alternate legs for a total of 10 steps. BANDED LATERAL TRIPLE THREAT Holding a medicine ball, assume an athletic stance with the same exercise band from the previous exercise around your waist. Turn 90 degrees to the anchor point so that the band is pulling you to your right. Take a large, explosive step to your left with your left foot, and rotate your upper body into the triple threat position with the…

THE SUN IS RISING on the California coast as Joe Kudla stares out at the Pacific Ocean, a surfboard under his arm. The days are busy for the founder and CEO of the activewear brand Vuori, recently valued at $5.5 billion, and Kudla is cherishing this moment of peace. Chasing waves has a calming effect on his mind and does wonders to activate his body. “My mornings have become a sacred time for me,” he says. He wakes before dawn in his home in the beach community of Leucadia, just 10 minutes from Vuori’s offices in Carlsbad. This lets him make the most of the quiet hours before his two daughters rise. Kudla spends this time doing a short Kelee meditation, then journals or dips into a classic book on…

HEAVYWEIGHT wellness companies in the $77.6 billion global biomarker market are promising to enhance your healthspan through huge batches of screenings. Some services, like InsideTracker, test hundreds of data points to assess your overall health. Others, like Function Health and Superpower Health, offer biomarker testing and analysis by AI and/or human experts. There’s a ton of hype around all this, so we brought in two top docs to debate what it means for you. MH: What actually is a biomarker? DR. CHRISTOPHER KELLY: A biomarker is a biological substance that can be objectively measured and tracked to provide information about a health condition. A few common examples include LDL cholesterol, which is a biomarker of metabolic health, and prostate-specific antigen, which is a marker used to screen for and monitor…

AFTER 20 YEARS of living with diabetes, chef Yia Vang thought he had it managed. Then in 2024, he tore a muscle in his left leg, which led to an infection. He was hospitalized for weeks—and wondering if he’d make it to 40. Three surgeries later, he was still alive and, miraculously, could walk. Vang, who owns Union Hmong Kitchen and Vinai in the Twin Cities, started lifting and returned to protein-centric family recipes—like Hmong spa chicken, which hails from an ethnic group whose roots are in China. Since his surgeries, Vang has dropped 20 pounds, tamed his blood sugar, and recharged his drive. “In the Hmong culture, it is believed that we must embrace death—how you’re remembered and how your children will tell your story is how we live…

THE COACH SNOOP DOGG → Founder of the Snoop Youth Football League, coach on The Voice, Olympics hype man BEFORE CREATING and coaching in a league in which more than 60,000 kids have played—over 1,000 earning college scholarships, and 50 making it to the NFL (including C.J. Stroud, JuJu Smith-Schuster, and Romeo Doubs)—Snoop Dogg stood on the sideline of a Rowland Heights Raiders football game in 2003. As he watched his 8-year-old son, Corde (nicknamed Spank), Snoop had a thought—one that many parents on sidelines have long noodled over: I want to be more involved. “I just couldn’t allow those coaches to not coach my son like I knew he should be coached,” says Snoop, who also played football as a teen. “I wasn’t gonna be a disgruntled father.” The…

OHIO STATE FOOTBALL’S weight room sounds like it’s hosting a raucous initiation, the air ringing with howls, clanking weight plates, and the shink of chains hitting the floor. It’s just after 10 a.m. on a Tuesday in late June, and half the team is taking a back squat max test. The 28 weight racks are surrounded by groups of players; some you know—Caleb Downs, the top defensive player in the country, is at one platform, receiver and Heisman Trophy favorite Jeremiah Smith at another—while others are 18-year-old kids eager to earn cred by pushing more and more weight. Guys heft the bars onto their shoulders, then gut through reps as their teammates scream and clap. It’s controlled chaos; each player who hits a PR lift blows an air horn to…

CHEESE! YOU LOVE CHEESE! Oh, wow, queso. Mozzarella sticks. The best part of French onion soup. Grilled cheese. But also, wait a second, aren’t you supposed to not love cheese? Don’t most diets—paleo, Whole30, whatever “plant-based” means these days—ban cheese? Won’t heart doctors blame your cholesterol on your cheddar block habit? Why is Men’s Health doing something on cheese, anyway? We get it. There is, after all, lots of mixed messaging on cheese. Some cheese isn’t great for you (though delicious), and yeah, you should probably avoid the dicier ultra-processed stuff or indulge only once in a while. But a lot of cheeses are great for you, from one-chunk-is-all-you-need cave-aged Gruyère to super-fresh-tasting chèvre. Real cheese has tons of muscle-building protein, bone-strengthening calcium, gut-healthy probiotics, and stomach-satiating fats. “Cheese can…

WHEN I WAS growing up in Ohio, football was a foundational pillar of my identity. I played for 15 years in the state, starting at age 7, through high school, and at Kenyon College (and later I played pro football in Germany). The sport is essential to the region’s social fabric, from towns rallying on Friday nights to tailgating on Saturdays and Sundays—and there’s no team more important than the Ohio State University Buckeyes. When I visited Columbus to experience the defending champs’ offseason training earlier this summer (page 66), I was reminded of a crucial aspect of football culture: building bonds through shared sweat. I watched the Buckeyes run and lift across two days in June and witnessed a group of guys focused on getting better, together, in ways…

ALEX SCHNEIDER STATS AGE: 33 OCCUPATION: NYPD detective, MLFD firefighter LOCATION: Queens, New York MEN’S HEALTH MVP members gain access to the best health, fitness, and entertainment coverage anywhere. And each month, we survey our MVPs to choose one guy who is changing his life. Sign up at MensHealth.com/signup and you could see yourself here one day. THE MEAL I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT Chicken parmigiana and pasta with vodka sauce. IN MY GYM BAG Wrist wraps, Rogue Monster bands, AirPods. HOW I STAY MOTIVATED The choices I make to be physically prepared today could be the difference between me coming home—or not—tomorrow. DREAM CELEBRITY WORKOUT PARTNER Mark Wahlberg. MY ROLE MODEL Nick Bare (athlete and podcaster). MY PUMP-UP BAND Killswitch Engage. WHAT MAKES ME FEEL STRONG An upper-body HIIT/hybrid workout.…

A CALORIE SURPLUS isn’t always a bad thing. Do it right and you can juice your activity level while giving your body the raw materials to build more muscle. This concept is at the heart of an oft-misunderstood idea known as a “lean bulk.” What’s a lean bulk? Essentially, it’s a teensy surplus designed to help you pack on muscle with minimal fat. Typically, a bodybuilder may eat 500 (or sometimes more!) calories above maintenance every day for several months to add size. The downside: They’re adding a blend of muscle and flab. During a lean bulk, you eat just 200 to 300 calories above maintenance. This surplus isn’t significant enough to pack serious size onto your frame, but it can earn you some muscle. The key: You need to…

THE COACH GREG OLSEN → Fourteen-year tight end for the Seahawks, Panthers, and Bears; Fox NFL analyst; and host of Youth Inc., a youth sports–focused podcast OKAY, SO you’ve decided to coach. How the hell do you do it? The trick is to take it slow, take it seriously, and have realistic expectations for the kids and yourself. Because there’s pressure. Parents shell out thousands each year on gear, camps, private coaches, and travel tournaments because they think it’ll pay off. The hard truth: Only about 2 percent of high school athletes earn Division I scholarships. “There’s nothing wrong with those goals,” says Greg Olsen, a multisport coach for his three middle-school kids. “The problem is we’re skipping so many steps along the development path—physical development, mental development. The system…

SONNY STYLES SENIOR, LB, PICKERINGTON, OH “Having your guys around you is such a good feeling. I think it makes you go harder. It makes you want to prove the guys right, because everyone knows you can do it, believes you can do it. That’s something Coach Mick instills in us: If you’re training in the weight room, you’re required to motivate and inspire whoever you’re working out with—and if you’re not, then it’s an unsuccessful day. No matter if you lifted a bunch of weight today, if you didn’t motivate and inspire someone else, you didn’t have a good day.” DAN CENCER, CSCS, CPSS ASSOCIATE SPORT SCIENTIST “The most important thing here is culture—we’re doing things together, and we’re doing things hard. All these tests have to be maximal…

I SURVIVED: A R APIDLY FAILING HEART MY LIFESAVER: A TITANIUM TICKER DONAVON HARBISON, A 35-YEAR-OLD former collegiate offensive lineman, looked like a hearty, healthy guy. He was crushing it as a dad and educational consultant in Graham, North Carolina… until almost two years ago, when he started coughing a lot and having trouble breathing and took himself to the hospital, suspecting pneumonia. When doctors did a chest X-ray and compared it to an old scan in his file, they saw that Harbison’s heart had ballooned in size—a sign of severe heart failure. Further testing confirmed that his heart was failing fast. His ejection fraction, a measure of how well the heart pumps blood to the body, was 15 percent. It should have been at least 55. Without a transplant or…