Men’s Health: Fitness or Bogus?

As a person very interested in the fitness and nutrition world, I have read my fair share of Men’s Health magazines. You can find it in pretty much any grocery store, but does Men’s Health actually give good advice, or is it just bogus advice. In this article, I will review Men’s Health, revealing the pros and cons of this wildly popular magazine whilst answering the question many of you have: is it worth the money?

In 1987, Men’s Health began as a health-oriented service magazine founded by editor Mark Bricklin. But today, this once small magazine has evolved into a massive guide covering all aspects of a guy’s life: health, fitness, fashion, nutrition, relationships, travel, technology, fashion and finance. With over 12 million monthly readers, it has established itself as the best-selling men’s magazine in the US. Throughout its existence, Men’s health has been nominated for 8 National Magazine Awards. In addition, its website has over 40 million hits per month and provides free daily content similar to what you would find in the actual magazine. With all this hype, Men’s Health must be amazing, or at least good, right? Keep reading to find out…

Workout Plans

Read through a copy of Men’s Health and you will find tons of different workouts for your biceps, triceps, pecs, and pretty much every other muscle. But are these workout plans actually effective, or are they just a waste of time? For the most part, the exercises discussed in Men’s Health follow a pretty basic rep and set structure. By this, I mean that most of the plans say that you should perform the exercises with 8-12 reps of 3 sets.While working out like this won’t hurt, such a plan is too generic for any serious athlete or bodybuilder to follow. Because of several properties of muscle, using different combinations of sets and reps can be very beneficial to some people, such as athletes or bodybuilders. For more information on how to maximize the benefits of your workout, please read my article The Science behind Muscle Growth and pay particular attention to the section on the two types of muscular hypertrophy. To the magazines credit, they do an excellent job of promoting some uncommon exercises that can help you mix up your workout. So while Men’s Health includes some decent exercises plans, the lack of depth in the workout structures leads me to give Men’s Health a 4 out of 5 for workouts.

Nutrition

Inside each copy of Men’s Health lies tons of tips on nutrition and dieting, but how credible is this advice? For the most part, nutritional information in Men’s Health is found in the form of little tips to make your diet cleaner, instead of having actual diet plans to follow. But occasionally they do have basic guides to diet plans, which is the case in the August issue, which briefly discusses the TNT diet (written by people who work for Men’s Health). Even though most of nutritional information found in Men’s Health is the standard low-fat type of stuff you can find anywhere, this diet plan really struck me because its similar to the diet plan most professional bodybuilders follow during their cutting (weight loss) phase. To lose weight, most people hit the gym more and limit their fat intake. But while most nutritionists recommend such a plan, bodybuilders who need to get their body fat down to as low as 3% follow a low-carb, high fat and high protein diet. So I would recommend checking out the TNT Diet, as it packages the classic diet of a bodybuilder into a plan that anyone can follow. So even though most nutritional information in Men’s Health is only so-so, this one article really led me to give it a 4 out of 5 for nutrition.

Marketing

The way Men’s Health advertises its articles pisses me off so much that i needed to make a whole section discussing it. They use the same tactics as women’s magazines to try to decieve you into thinking that their magazine contains magical workouts and diets to help you lose weight super fast.It’s kinda hard to read, but in the picture to the right I have underlined in blue one of the MOST bullshit marketing lines I have ever seen. It read “Six-Pack ABS! See Results in just 9 days!” WTF!!!! There is no way possible that you could see significant results from any sort of results in 9 days. This is especially true for abs, which are some of the hardest muscles to improve without a strict diet plan. For more information on the real way to get a six pack, please read my article “Secret” to Sculpted Abs. While I have previously states in this article that there is some pretty decent information to be had in Men’s Health, don’t believe their bullshit about fast results for one second. To get a real health, it takes time and dedication, not some magical workout. I therefore rate their marketing 1 out of 5, because it blows.

Value

My final category for reviewing Men’s Health is value. Is this magazine really worth your hard-earned money? Ultimately, I would say it is not. While there is a bunch of useful stuff inside the magazine, most of it can be found on their website FOR FREE.In addition, there are so many great websites out there with good fitness advice that doesn’t cost a penny. So unless you don’t have internet access (which you do), I would not recommend paying for a subscription to Men’s Health, as ultimately their advice can be found for free either on their website or somewhere else on the internet. Therefore, I rate it a 2 out of 5 for value.

In total, Men’s Health only recieved 55% of the possible points. So really, don’t spend your money on it. Just keep reading this blog instead .