Men's Health Australia April 2022

IN 2004, young actor Eric Marlon Bishop took the idea of suffering for your art to a new level when he was cast as the lead in a big-budget Hollywood biopic. Having built a steady career off the back of comedic roles, the ambitious thespian resolved to play the part of a blind man with the utmost respect, immersing himself in a world without sight. Upon the suggestion of the director, to achieve a complete understanding of the role, Bishop wore prosthetics over his eyes for 14 hours a day leading up to filming, in what he later described as a “jail sentence”. The movie was Ray, and Bishop, known professionally as Jamie Foxx, went on to win numerous accolades for his portrayal of singer Ray Charles, including the Best Actor…

THE BIG QUESTION Q I have only 30 minutes a day to work out. What should I do? – AS HIIT and “big” exercises. Do two upper-body days, two lower-body days, and some core or core/aerobic days. “For exercises, target as many muscles as you can with each move,” advises exercise physiologist Mark D. Peterson. That means, for example, chin-ups rather than concentration curls for your arms. And for your legs, squats or deadlifts rather than leg extensions. You get the idea? You don’t have time to mess about with foo-foo isolation moves. “Progression is important, so increase load or intensity when it’s not challenging to finish 10 reps,” adds Peterson. And maybe tweak your perception of what constitutes working out. Okay, you’re devoting 30 minutes each day to ‘pure’ exercise. But try to…

YOUR MONTHLY DOWNLOAD OF THE LATEST LIFE ENHANCING RESEARCH IF YOU’RE A non-runner and reading this from the couch, stay seated – for now – and picture yourself in the final stages of an ultra-marathon, your legs like jelly and your lungs screaming. Just as you start to think you’re kaput, you see the finish line ahead, calling you like a siren song. To the soundtrack of cheers, you dig that little bit deeper, summoning Kipchogean reserves of stamina and mental fortitude. You stride across the line and collapse into the arms of your beautiful girlfriend, whose tender embrace and peachy fragrance lift you further still. (Hey, this is a visualisation exercise: sensory details, as you’ll see, are important.) Sounds fanciful? Preposterous even, given the only running you do is for the…

YOU’VE DONE THE CRIME, but for your own sake, don’t do the time – ‘time’ in this case being the seconds after flushing when bacteria will erupt from the toilet bowl if you haven’t shut the lid. A new analysis from the ANU and University of South Australia assessed 38 different studies from 13 countries that investigated the risk of infectious disease transmission in public toilets. Researchers found that leaving the toilet lid open after flushing can disperse contaminated droplets up to 1.5 metres, and that these can remain in the air for up to 30 minutes. That’s right: 1.5 metres. It’s enough for you to rule out entering public toilets unless you’re in a hazmat suit. If you already regarded these stench blocks as satanic germ traps, your suspicions were spot on. The…

SURE, YOU MIGHT WANT a six-pack for the tail end of beach season. And you’d also like to be able to perform a muscle-up as your party trick. But what really motivates you to get in shape might be something more existential: the fear of death. At least that’s according to a study out of the University of Waterloo in Canada, where researchers found fitness apps that emphasise illness or death-related messaging are more likely to be effective in motivating participation than social stigma, obesity or financial-cost messaging. Basically, it’s the Squid Game approach to fitness. In the study, 669 people were asked to indicate how persuasive different types of messages were in motivating them to work out at home with a fitness app. “I did not expect only illness and death-related…

ON ANY GIVEN DAY, Byron Bay’s General Store can play host to any number of improbable guests and intriguing characters. A frequent haunt of Hollywood superstars, sporting icons and the odd food blogger or 10, ‘The Gen’ is a holiday destination in and of itself. The interior is conspicuously open plan, created to encourage collaboration and discussion between patrons, with rustic trimmings and greyscale photos of yesteryear adorning the walls, a tribute to the original General Store that stood in this very spot. It’s an ode to “the old soul of Byron”, the town before Instagram, co-owner Ben Gordon told me when we caught up earlier this month. It’s unseasonably wet outside and Omicron lingers still. These factors combined with the start of the school year mean that The Gen is…