love your

Drinking unsweetened Lipton black and green tea every day can help support
a healthy heart.* Go on, make your heart smile one cup at a time.

Tea is one of the best sources of flavonoids in the diet.

Flavonoids are natural dietary compounds, which have
been associated with heart health benefits.


 











  


 
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 “I want to have the
same 80-, 85-year
experience that
everyone has.
I don’t want to
miss anything.”
—JACOB ELORDI, P. 54

Jacob Elordi photographed

exclusively for Men’s Health
by Beau Grealy. Styling by Ted
Stafford. Grooming by David
Cox/Art Dept. Set design by
Danielle von Braun/Art Dept.
Production by Crawford & Co
Productions. On the cover:
T-shirt by Cotton Citizen; pants
by AG. This page: Tank by Calvin
Klein; sweatpants by Russell
Athletic, available at Macy’s.

54 ON THE BRINK 72 THE TESTOSTERONE 86 HOW TO MAKE THIS

FEATURES

Euphoria breakout star Jacob Elordi REVOLUTION YOUR HEALTHIEST, MOST

has a hot show, a new movie, and
everything to gain in 2022.
BY LAUREN LARSON
62 TRANSFORMATIONS
2022: BIG CHANGE
STARTS NOW
These eight men have rebuilt their
bodies, minds, and lives. They can
help put yours back on track, too.
PHOTOGRAPH BY BEAU GREALY
How you can actually maintain,
restore, and optimize your T.
BY BILL GIFFORD, KEVIN DUPZYK,
AND MADDIE BENDER
80 SHAQ VS. THE BIG FIVE-0
Shaquille O’Neal is nearly 50, but
the NBA all-star/DJ/sheriff/legend
is having too much fun to slow
down now. BY JEWEL WICKER
MEN’S HEALTH
DELICIOUS YEAR EVER
Make your meals better, faster,
and more nutritious all year long.
BY PAUL KITA
90 FEAR, LOATHING &
MAN CAMP
An NFL player turned wellness
guru wants to help broken men
heal. BY JASON ROGERS
| JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 1
 CONTENTS

LIFE
29 How to make money
and friendship mix, fea-
turing YouTube kingpins
Dude Perfect.
32 30/10: Turn your
college ramen recipe
into a protein-packed
pork belly feast.
34 Enough of celebrity
tequilas. Sip on (or
shoot!) these no-frills
tequilas instead.
36 The Stream: Why
we still love Jackass,
22 years after the first
poo cocktail.
38 Lost weight? Gained
muscle? Here’s how
to buy new clothes
that actually fit.
42 Beat winter
dandruff with these
grooming tactics.
44 Memoirist and
exhausted Cool Dad
Wajahat Ali wants
his own set of Legos,
dammit.

YOUR MIND
ULTIMATE 47 Welcome to life after
EQUIPMENT burnout: Recharge your
UPGRADE mind and body now.
Featuring everything
you need to make this 50 Can supplements
your fittest year yet. do the work of prescrip-
(See page 11.) tions? A doc unpacks
how to take the alterna-
tive approach.
BODY 20 Take on YouTube’s 51 How Future CEO
most extreme fitness Rishi Mandal keeps
11 The MH Home Gym challenges. First up:
Awards! Smarter himself and his business
the “#5and500.” at the front of the
turn a 30-minute dumbbells, fun cardio
break into the best machines, high-tech 22 Your liver might fitness pack.
workout, and recovery tools, and more. be in trouble, and 52 Sober fun! Ten ways
everything we’re you can’t blame it to quell anxiety that
excited about 16 Build core strength and on the alcohol.
injury-proof your whole don’t include the bar
this month. and another drink.
body—with a twist! 24 How to strengthen
your immune system,
18 6 A.M.: CBS Mornings’ starting right now. +
Jeffrey Salter

Nate Burleson brings 96 Six Pack: TikTok

the gym (and his NFL 26 Diet Decoder: phenom Noah Beck’s
mindset) to his basement. Should you go pegan? essential stuff.

2 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH

 THE ORIGINAL
PLANT PROTEIN ™

:LWKVL[JUDPVRISURWHLQDQGWKUHHJUDPVRIğEHULQHDFK
GHOLFLRXVVHUYLQJ:∂ QGHUIXO3LVWDFKLRVLVDJRRGVRXUFHRI
SODQWSURWHLQZLWK]HURJXLOW
 Personnel Question:
TEAM What’s your
remedy for a cold?
MEET THE
MEN’S HEALTH
Richard Dorment Nancy Berger A DV I S O RY
PA N E L
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF SVP, GROUP PUBLISHING DIRECTOR

Jamie Prokell Creative Director “Ten hours of Kathy Riess Group Executive Financial Director
Ellen Payne Executive Managing Editor uninterrupted Leslie Picard VP, Sales
sleep. Works Stacy Nathan Group Executive Director We know a lot about
EDITORIAL every time.” Kristina McMahon VP, Marketing
Ben Court, Mike Darling Executive Editors Marnie Braverman, Marianne Civiletto
health and fitness, but we don’t
Ebenezer Samuel Fitness Director Group Marketing Directors know as much as the doctors,
Ben Paynter Features Editor
INTEGRATED ADVERTISING SALES
scientists, and trainers who
Nojan Aminosharei Entertainment Director
Jordyn Taylor, Spencer Dukoff Andrea Foster, Marissa Perri, Doug Zimmerman keep us honest and up-to-date.
Deputy Editors Executive Directors, East Coast
Marty Munson Health Director Jee Ahn, Margot Becker Giblin BRAIN HEALTH:
Paul Kita Senior Editor Executive Directors, West Coast P. Murali Doraiswamy, M.D.
“Eat citrus, Nicole Shuldiner, Julia Whalen
Brett Williams Fitness Editor drink water, CARDIOLOGY:
Taylyn Washington-Harmon Health Editor Sales Directors, East Coast
and a slice of John Elefteriades, M.D.
Evan Romano Associate Editor Hope Agase, Nikki Giovannoni
lemon on Sales Directors, Midwest
Foluso Fakorede, M.D.
Joshua St. Clair, Milan Polk Editorial Assistants my forehead David Wolinsky, M.D.
Alexis Herder Sales Manager
to alleviate
ART headaches.”
Dawn Franco Direct Response Manager DERMATOLOGY:
Nathan Sinclair Contributing Art Director Patty Rudolph PR 4.0 Media, Southwest Brian Capell, M.D., Ph.D.
Chloe Krammel Digital Designer Andrew Kramer Kramer Media, Pacific Northwest Corey L. Hartman, M.D.
Jose Carneiro Design Assistant Taylor Martin Executive Assistant to SVP Adnan Nasir, M.D., Ph.D.
Jason Speakman Associate Digital Visual Editor Bintou Camara, Paulina Carrillo, Hannah Cianci,
Matthew Montesano Digital Imaging Specialist Angela Martinez Sales Assistants EMERGENCY MEDICINE:
Karen Ferber Business Manager Jedidiah Ballard, D.O.
HEARST VISUAL GROUP Paul Baumeister Research Director Italo M. Brown, M.D., M.P.H.
Alix Campbell Chief Visual Content Director “Applesauce. Alison Papalia Executive Director, Robert Glatter, M.D.
Sally Berman Visual Director As soothing Consumer Marketing ENDOCRINOLOGY:
James Morris, Justin O’Neill Contributing as ice cream, Chris Hertwig Production Manager
Sandeep Dhindsa, M.D.
Visual Directors but fruit.” INTEGRATED MARKETING EXERCISE SCIENCE:
Scott M. Lacey Deputy Visual Director
Stephanie Block, Melissa Macaleer
Amy Wong Senior Visual Editor Martin Gibala, Ph.D.
Executive Marketing Directors
Giancarlos Kunhardt Visual Assistant Mark Peterson, Ph.D., C.S.C.S.*D
Ariel Kaye Marketing Director
Dangi McCoy Contributing Deputy Visual Director Brad Schoenfeld, Ph.D., C.S.C.S.
Alesandra Ajlouni, Bonnie Blue
FASHION Associate Marketing Directors GASTROENTEROLOGY:
Ted Stafford Fashion Director Moira Smith Marketing Director, Research Felice Schnoll-Sussman, M.D.
Christian Gollayan Senior Style & Commerce Editor Kelly Roma Marketing Director, Special Projects
“Vicks Rhyan Kelly Senior Marketing Manager INTEGRATIVE HEALTH:
Dale Arden Chong Gear & Commerce Editor
VapoRub on Caroline Hall Associate Marketing Manager Brenda Powell, M.D.
COPY my chest and Grace McLoughlin Associate INTERNAL MEDICINE:
Janna Ojeda Assistant Managing Editor forehead. And Marketing Manager, Events
then a glass Keith Roach, M.D.
John Kenney Managing Copy Editor Lulu Zeitouneh Creative Director
Alisa Cohen Barney Senior Copy Editor of lime juice Paula Prado Senior Art Director MENTAL HEALTH:
Connor Sears, David Fairhurst with honey.” Flannery Wilson Sales & Marketing Coordinator Gregory Scott Brown, M.D.
Assistant Copy Editors Thomas Joiner, Ph.D.
PUBLIC RELATIONS Avi Klein, L.C.S.W.
RESEARCH Nathan Christopher Executive Director, Public Relations
Drew Ramsey, M.D.
Jennifer Messimer Research Chief Anouska Best Public Relations Coordinator
Nick Pachelli Assistant Research Editor NUTRITION:
CIRCULATION
Dezi Abeyta, R.D.N.
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Rick Day VP, Strategy and Business Development
Chris Mohr, Ph.D., R.D.
Milo F. Bryant, Michael Easter, PUBLISHED BY HEARST Brian St. Pierre, R.D., C.S.C.S.
Philip Ellis, Garrett Munce, “Emergen-C Steven R. Swartz President & Chief Executive Officer
Zachary Zane in a cup of William R. Hearst III Chairman
PAIN MEDICINE:
hot water Frank A. Bennack, Jr. Executive Vice Chairman Paul Christo, M.D., M.B.A.
VIDEO and a bowl of Mark E. Aldam Chief Operating Officer SEX & RELATIONSHIPS:
Dorenna Newton Executive Producer chicken noo-
HEARST MAGAZINES, INC. Debby Herbenick, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Tony Xie, Elyssa Aquino Video Producers dle soup.” 
Debi Chirichella President, Shamyra Howard, L.C.S.W.
HEARST MEN’S FASHION GROUP Hearst Magazines Group, and Treasurer Justin Lehmiller, Ph.D.
Nick Sullivan Fashion Director Kate Lewis Chief Content Officer SLEEP MEDICINE:
Alfonso Fernández Navas Market Editor Kristen M. O’Hara Chief Business Officer W. Christopher Winter, M.D.
Rashad Minnick Fashion Associate Catherine A. Bostron Secretary
Gilbert C. Maurer, Mark F. Miller Publishing Consultants SPORTS MEDICINE:
ADMINISTRATION Michael Fredericson, M.D.
Caryn Karnare Editorial Business Coordinator INTERNATIONAL Dan Giordano, D.P.T., C.S.C.S.
Mariah Schlossman Editorial Business Assistant Jonathan Wright President, Hearst Magazines International Bill Hartman, P.T.
Kim St. Clair Bodden SVP/Editorial & Brand Director
MEN’S HEALTH Chloe O’Brien Deputy Brands Director TRAINING:
INTERNATIONAL EDITIONS Lee Boyce, C.P.T.
Australia, China, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mike Boyle, M.Ed., A.T.C.
Korea, Latin America, Netherlands, Poland, Ben Bruno, C.F.S.C.
Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Spain, UK Alwyn Cosgrove, C.S.C.S.*D
David Jack
Mubarak Malik
HOW TO REACH US: Customer Service: To change your address, pay a bill, renew your subscription, and more,
David Otey, C.S.C.S.
go online to menshealth.com/service, email mhlcustserv@cdsfulfillment.com, or write Men’s Health Customer
Don Saladino, NASM
Service, P.O. Box 6000, Harlan, IA 51593-1500. Editorial offices: 300 W. 57th Street, New York, NY 10019. Feedback:
mhletters@hearst.com. Licensing & Reprints: Contact Wyndell Hamilton, Wright’s Media, hearst@wrightsmedia UROLOGY:
.com. Absolute satisfaction guaranteed. Scent-free subscription available on request. From time to time we make our Elizabeth Kavaler, M.D.
subscriber list available to companies that sell goods and services by mail that we believe would interest our readers. Larry Lipshultz, M.D.
If you would rather not receive such mailings by postal mail, please send your current mailing label or exact copy to:
Men’s Health, Mail Preference Center, P.O. Box 6000, Harlan, IA 51593-0128.
WEIGHT MANAGEMENT:
David Katz, M.D., M.P.H., FACPM, FACP
Fatima Cody Stanford, M.D., M.P.H.,
M.P.A., FAAP, FACP, FAHA, FTOS
Men’s Health carries the latest health, fitness, and nutrition reporting to provide you with Men’s Health is a
useful information about your health. But every body is different; individual diagnoses and registered trademark of
Jeff Volek, Ph.D., R.D.
treatments can come only from a health-care practitioner. Printed in USA. Hearst Magazines Group, Inc.

4 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH

 IMPROVED SLEEP

BLUE LIGHT BLOCKING FRAMES

M E N S H E A LT H .C O M / E Y E W E A R
 RELIGHT
YOUR FI R E ! in g re al ly fr ea ki n g tired all the Beers man bee
rs lo
Mental fog, bluesy vi
bes, feel
re al . On page 47, we turn
to @Edwin.Kerik l.
uw il l: B ur nou t is
time— call it what yo t fati gu e. B ut w e al so asked on social:
to figh
the ex perts for ways
e BUR N O U T ?”
“How do you escap
Set new goals. Think
positive, get away from
Run arou
the house nd what drains you.
@D naked.
eric.Arm
Delete the negative factors
amento
in your environment.
Be happy with yourself.
@Steve.Krililion

Crank some Pantera.

@Thomas.Greene

Golf. Long bicycle Sleep and

g
And switc ym.
rides. Weights!! hi
with swim ng up
@Frank.Blan
co.771 @IonutBo
ming.
gdan

p all weeken d, recharge

Slee !!! .. .
ks. Do yoga. up for Monday ee
Read booael.Reyes
h coff
and Deathwisarcia14
@Raf
@MikeS

Sleep well, eat clean, exer

cise
regularly, listen to uplif
ting
music, enjoy the outdoo
Travis Rathbone/Trunk Archive

@JeffDu
rs.
randsProfile

MEN’S HEALTH | JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 7

 WORLD EDITOR’S LETTER
ASK THE E.I.C.
How do you think
our attitudes
about HEALTH AND
WELLNESS will
B
change in 2022?
—Mike Gorman
BEFORE I GET to my bold predictions for 2022,
a few words about 2020 and 2021: We just went
through a lot—a lot. Every month seemed to
bring earthshaking developments in how or
why we do things, and we collectively experi-
enced a decade’s worth of oh-shit moments
in a mere 18-ish months. It was constant,
exhausting, and confusing, and nothing—
from working to working out, from parenting
to partnering, from medical care and mental
health to travel, TV, haircuts, and handwash-
ing—feels quite the same today as it did two
years ago. Not sure how you feel about it, but I
emerged from this whole thing a slightly differ-
ent person. A little less certain of my certainty;
a little more wary of the world; stronger and
steadier, but at a cost. In a word: changed.
As the Men’s Health team gathered (vir-
tually, mostly, because change) to plan this
issue, the first of the new year, and map out
the rest of 2022, we began to look for what
massive changes in health and wellness lie
8 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH
ASK AN
EXPERT
in wait for us as we round this next bend.
As much as I want to say we see massive
Q. I have only
changes afoot—2022 will be the Year of the 30 minutes
Bear Crawl! Get ready for the Acorn Diet!—
my educated guess is that we’re entering a
each day to
period that some evolutionary biologists work out. What
might refer to as stasis. It typically occurs should I do?
right after a monumental, fundamental Big-
Ass Change in history, and it’s when things
begin to settle down, the Big-Ass Change A. HIIT and “big”
exercises. Do two
upper-body days, two
really sinks in, and we start the slow, steady
process of adapting to what just happened. lower-body days, and
Will there be a new iPhone at some point? some core or core/
Probably. Will one giant fitness company aerobic days. For
acquire another one, or will some obscure exercises, target as
herbal supplement attain a billion-dollar many muscles as you
market cap because of some Kardashian-ian can with each move.
affiliation? Yes, I think they will. But other-
wise, we’re good with big changes in health
That means pullups
and press movements
and wellness for a minute.
As for our attitudes about health and
for your upper body
and squats and
wellness, I don’t see any of us turning back
to the old ways of doing or seeing things.
deadlifts for your lower
body. Progression is
We’ll continue to build on the workout-
from-anywhere ethos honed during the
important, so increase
weight or intensity
lockdown with the amazing products in
this year’s Home Gym Awards (turn to page
when it’s not challeng-
ing to finish ten reps.
11). We’ll continue to refine and redefine Supplementing these
the boundaries between work, family, and 30-minute HIIT
friends, like the five Best Bros Forever of sessions with a simple
Dude Perfect (see page 29), who figured out evening activity like
how to mix money and friendship. We’ll playing with your kids
continue to take greater control over our or going for a family
personal health, like the guys trying to make walk after dinner will
sense of the “Testosterone Revolution” maximize benefits for
currently under way in their own bodies as your heart and muscles.
well as those direct-to-consumer ads in their —MARK D. PETERSON, PH.D., M.S., FACSM,
MH EXERCISE-SCIENCE ADVISOR
Instagram feeds. (More on that starting on
page 72.) And we’ll continue to invest in our
bodies, our minds, and one another, because
if we’ve learned nothing else in the past two + Have a question for Rich?
Tweet us at @MensHealthMag
years, that’s all we’ve got, really. with the hashtag #AskMHRich
That’s not going to change—I think? I and ask away.
hope? Yes!—and thank God for that.
Allie Holloway
Richard Dorment, Editor-in-Chief
 GOALS WORLD

THE GOOD FIGHT MVP

THE MOST POPULAR VIDEO on the Men’s
Health YouTube channel back in Septem-
Kange is
pushing hard
MEMBER
OF THE
ber—with more than 1 million views—was to make it as MONTH WHY I WANT
“Gym & Fridge” with UFC head honcho Dana a wrestler
this year. TO LIFT WITH
White. “The reason I work out is because I
UFC FIGHTER
love food and I love to eat,” he said. Here’s a FRANCIS
taste of YouTube Nation’s reaction: NGANNOU
My father is from
Cameroon, and to
see another Camer-
oonian thriving in the
JASPER world and becoming
KANGE UFC champ is DOPE.
STATS
THE ONE
AGE: 31 FOOD I CAN’T
LOCATION: LIVE WITHOUT
San Antonio, TX Chips and queso.

OCCUPATION: MY PUMP-UP JAM

@johnnyHellkite Professional
Respect. “I work out to clear “ULT” by Denzel
wrestler Curry.
my mind and be able to eat
whatever I want, too.”
MY ROLE MODEL
My former wrestling
coach R.J. Meyer,
@Soham Chatterjee MEN’S HEALTH MVP members have access to the best who passed away
People usually have a gym in health/fitness articles out there. Each month, we survey our from leukemia. His
their house, Dana has a house MVPs and choose one whose story catches our eye. Sign up at work ethic is some-
in his gym
join.menshealth.com and you could see yourself here one day. thing I aspire to!

@Chris Haley MY PERSONAL MY FITNESS GOAL IN MY WHAT MAKES ME

Killing yourself in a gym and eating GOAL FOR FOR THIS YEAR GYM BAG FEEL STRONG
rice cakes and quinoa sucks. En- THIS YEAR Build recovery work Headphones, Staying the course.
joy life, it’s too short. I respect him Sign with a into my daily routine to bands, a few shirts,
now more than I did before! major wrestling increase mobility in my a notebook,
promotion. hips and shoulders. and a snack.

@MotoCzar
Dana:
“People say I look bigger than THE MEN’S HEALTH TWITTER POLL
I ever have.”
Also Dana:
“So this donut fried chicken is one
WHAT’S THE THING YOU
of my favorites.
Also here’s my dedicated ice MOST WANT TO IMPROVE
cream freezer.”
MY
IN 2022?
MY
DIET
24.1%
Earl Gardner (Kange). Getty Images (dumbbell, apple, brain, hands).

@Gunnar00
I was expecting him to have
McGregor drawings on
his fridge
MY
RELATIONSHIPS
@David Maldonado
Dana’s talking like he’s MY 10.9%
preparing for an upcoming MENTAL HEALTH
fight
24.7% Based on 891 responses to @MensHealthMag.

MEN’S HEALTH | JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 9

 MAX DAILY SUPPLEMENT
STRENGTH TO ENERGIZE
MEDICINE & REPLENISH*

NIGHTLY SUPPLEMENT MAX

TO REST STRENGTH
& REPLENISH* MEDICINE
*
THESE STATEMENTS HAVE NOT BEEN EVALUATED BY THE FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION. THIS PRODUCT IS NOT INTENDED TO DIAGNOSE, TREAT, CURE OR PREVENT ANY DISEASE.

READ EACH LABEL. USE AS DIRECTED. SUPER C IS NOT INTENDED TO TREAT COLD OR FLU.
 VITALITY STARTS HERE

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THE 2022
HOME GYM
AWARDS
Everything you need to MOVE, 
SWEAT, LIFT, and RECOVER your way to
WHEN TRAINER Rashaad Slowley
(above) moved from New York City
to Miami near the end of 2020, he
planned to build a garage gym. He
just didn’t plan on that task being
so hard. “I quickly learned that this
is not an overnight job,” he says.
“A lot of sweat equity and money was
muscle and strength—without ever   put in to build something great.”
That’s because the ideal home
leaving the comfort of your own home. training space is more than a yoga
mat and a Shake Weight. The
BY THE EDITORS OF MEN’S HEALTH

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JEFFREY SALTER MEN’S HEALTH | JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 11

 BODY
perfect home gym holds your
attention long-term because
it offers a variety of training
options, letting you crush a
cardio session one day, build
strength the next. And now
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vation in a host of forms, as This six-foot-long adjustable slide
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design of a basic dumbbell. comes with “mittens” for your hands
to use on core moves like slide-board
Slowley’s home gym in- rollouts. $299; thebrrrn.com
cludes all he needs to train,
making it just the spot for
him to work toward a late-
2022 Spartan Race. And it
was also the ideal place for
his first in-person meet-
ing with up-and-coming
Baltimore-based trainer
Justin Inman (right), whom
Slowley mentored in the
Men’s Health Strength in
Diversity Initiative last year.
The program aims to super-
charge the careers of young
trainers from marginalized
communities with men-
torship and education. Of
course, the pair had to get a
sweat session on in Slowley’s

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MEN’S HEALTH | JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 13

 BODY
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YBELL NEO
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14 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH

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 BODY NE W Y EAR, NE W MOVES!

TWIST AND SHRED!

Start 2022 by reminding your body that it’s built to twist and turn. This underrated skill utilizes
muscles you know well (abs, obliques, lats, and glutes, among others), but it’s
often forgotten in training plans. That leaves you vulnerable to injury when you shovel snow
or pick up your toddler. Fix that by doing this workout four times a week.
All other days, go for a 20-minute run. BY RUI QIANG LIU, C.S.C.S.

Do this workout as a WORKOUT

Rest 60 seconds after each round.

1
WARMUP LATERAL LUNGE TO
OVERHEAD PRESS
Start standing, holding dumb-
bells at your thighs, shoulder blades
squeezed, abs tight. Step to the left
with your left foot. Keeping your right
leg straight, and keeping the majority
of your weight on your left leg, push
your butt back and bend your left knee.
Lower until your left thigh is parallel to
(b) the floor or you feel your back round,
whichever comes first. Push through
your left heel to drive back to standing
position. Push your butt back slightly,
then explosively stand, pulling the
dumbbells up to shoulder height as
you do this. Press the dumbbells over-
head. Return to the start and repeat on
the other side. That’s 1 rep. You’re
building lower-body strength
and shoulder muscle, too.

2 PLANK ROW TO SIDE PLANK

Blast your abs and build posture-saving back muscle. Start
CORE FOCUS!
Keep your hips
square to the
in pushup position, hands on dumbbells directly below your floor during the
shoulders, feet wide. Lower into a pushup. Press up; as you do, row. Let them
row the right dumbbell toward your rib cage. Return to the start. rotate during
(a) Do another pushup. Press up, remove your right hand from the the reach.
dumbbell, and reach it toward the ceiling. Hold, then return to the
BEAR CRAWL TO REACH JUMP start; repeat the entire sequence on the other side. That’s 1 rep.
Start in bear-plank position, back flat,
hands directly below your shoulders, knees
below your hips, shins off the floor (a).
Keeping your back flat and abs tight, walk
forward 2 steps. Aim to move your right
arm and left leg at the same time (and vice
versa). Walk back 2 steps, then stand up.
Jump and reach for the ceiling (b). That’s
1 rep. Do reps for 30 seconds, then rest 30
seconds. Do 3 sets.

SHORTS BY ON; SHOES BY REEBOK.

16 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH PHOTOGRAPHS BY KATHRYN WIRSING

 P I C T U R E D H E R E : A U S T I N “ D O T T Y ” D O T S O N is a
California-based trainer, actor, and Instagram
personality. Follow him at @adotty10.

3 Up next, bulletproof
RACK-DOWN
WALKING LUNGE
Now build your ham-
strings and glutes (and
more core strength than
you’d think). Stand, hold-
ing a dumbbell at your
left shoulder and another
at your right hip, abs and
glutes tight. Step forward
with your left leg; lower
into a lunge. Drive through
your left leg and push off
your right foot, driving
your right leg in front of
your left; immediately
lower into another lunge.
Continue doing this for 30
seconds. (Switch dumb-
bell positions each set.)
4 TALL KNEELING
WOODCHOP
your back and abs to
twist and turn at any
moment. Kneel on your
shins, abs and glutes
tight, holding a dumbbell
at your left hip with both
hands. Raise the dumb-
bell across your body
and to the right, lifting it
as high as you can; keep
your hips square while
you do this. Lower it back
to the start. That’s 1 rep;
MAKE IT YOURS do reps for 30 seconds.
Raise the dumbbell Do 1 set on each side.
only as high as is
comfortable. This
shouldn’t hurt
your shoulders.

6 SITUP TO FIST PUNCH

Finish by going old-school to carve your abs and obliques. Lie on your
back, feet near your butt, core and glutes tight, hands held in front of your
face. Keeping your neck relaxed (imagine a baseball between your chin
and your chest), squeeze your abs and raise your torso so it’s at a 45 degree
angle with the floor. Punch your left hand past your right knee; repeat with
your right hand. Lower with control. That’s 1 rep.

POWER UP!
Punch like you mean
it! Explode into each
punch, and turn your
shoulders as far as
5 possible to each side.

DUMBBELL OVERHEAD
ISOMETRIC HIP EXTENSION
Almost done! Blast your glutes now, insulating
your body against lower-back pain. Lie on your back,
holding a dumbbell with both hands directly above
your shoulders, feet about 6 inches in front of your
butt. Keeping your abs tight, squeeze your glutes and
drive your heels into the floor, lifting your butt off the
floor. Reach the dumbbell backward; squeeze your
abs hard as you do this. Hold for 30 seconds.

WHO CAME UP WITH THIS ROUTINE? The mind behind your first workout of 2022 is Rui Qiang Liu, C.S.C.S., a San
Francisco–based trainer who was part of the second flight of the Strength in Diversity Initiative, a newish Men’s Health
Courtesy subject (Liu)

program that works to build diversity, equity, and inclusion in the fitness industry. Systemic issues have long prevented
trainers from marginalized communities from forging successful careers. Strength in Diversity offers those trainers a jump start.
Liu, 36, is the head strength and conditioning coach at Albany High School, and he’s working on a personal-training program,
Lightning Dragon Athletics. Follow him at instagram.com/ldathletic. And expect more from Liu; he’s just getting started.

MEN’S HEALTH | JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 17

 T
BODY RISE AND GRIND

THERE’S A PART of Nate Burleson that

doesn’t want to be in his New Jersey
basement gym on this late morning—he’s
been awake since well before dawn and
his triceps are already on fire.
But Burleson set up this gym date for
himself, something he does three days a
week—so he damn sure has to finish it.
He grabs the rope handle in front of him,
inhales deeply, and blows out a whoosh of
air. Then he aligns his arms to his torso,
squeezes the rope handle, and guts out
one final set of triceps pressdowns. “I
kind of look at it like dating yourself,” he
says when he’s done. “You’ve got to set up
a time, know where you’re going, know
what you’re going to wear, and have an
end result. It’s just like a date.”
These days, the 40-year-old Burleson
needs gym dates with himself more than
ever, because his days overflow with
obligations, starting at 4:15 every weekday
morning, when he heads to Manhattan
to cohost CBS Mornings. On the week-
ends, he works as an NFL analyst and
hosts a Nickelodeon football-highlights
show. And when he’s not being his most
megawatt self in front of the camera, he’s
at Don Bosco Prep, working as the high
school’s receivers coach so he can spend
time with his two sons, Nathaniel, 17, and
Nehemiah, 15.
This leaves little time for fitness. Then
again, Burleson spent 11 years in the NFL
before retiring and shifting to TV, and
he’s enjoying training like a “civilian,”
as he puts it. “I wanted to be the stron-
gest, fastest, most explosive version of
myself,” he says of his NFL mentality
regarding working out. “It was a priority
because I was paid to be an athlete.”
That changed after Burleson was cut
by the Cleveland Browns in 2014. He had
little interest in going to a gym to “com-
pete with some stranger next to me who’s
clinking the weights and screaming.” So
he stopped working out and gradually
6 A.M. WITH...

NATE BURLESON
From cohosting CBS Mornings to serving as an NFL
analyst to coaching and playing with his kids,
this ex-NFLer has little time for his own training. But he
still never misses a workout. BY MARK LELINWALLA
ballooned to 220 pounds. His suits and
jeans no longer fit, and he’d wind up
out of breath after a game of backyard
anything. Later that year, his best friend
blasted him for all this. “He said, ‘Man,
there was a time where you were beauti-
ful. You were like an Adonis,’ ” Burleson
recalls. “He was like, ‘Muscles every-
where. Look at you now: pitiful.’ ”
Not that Burleson headed back to the
gym. Instead, he brought the gym to his

18 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH PHOTOGRAPHS BY LANNA APISUKH

 100 STRONG
When Burleson needs a quick hotel upper-body pump, he does
5 sets of 20 reps (100 reps total) of each of the following
exercises. Rest as needed; aim to finish in under 30 minutes.

PUSHUP BENCH PRESS DUMBBELL CURL BETWEEN

In pushup posi-
tion, lower your
Lie on a bench and
lower dumbbells to
Stand with dumb-
bells at your hips SETS
chest to the floor. an inch from your and curl them to
Press up. chest. Press up. your chest. Lower. FAVORITE GYM
ANTHEM?
“Jay Z’s ‘PSA.’ He starts
it with ‘Allow me to
reintroduce myself,’
and that line defines
me and my approach
Nate Burleson combines cardio and to life, because we
weight training into a workout that pre- have to constantly
serves his athleticism—and has him redefine ourselves.”
looking pretty jacked at age 40, too.
FAVORITE EXERCISE?
“Cleans. That was the
one exercise where I
house, transforming his basement saw the most immedi-
ate results. Hang cleans
into a space that includes everything right below the knee,
from free weights to jumping boxes to bring it up close to the
a Tonal, a wall-mounted home cable body, snap it up, drop
machine that uses electromagnetic underneath it, and then
explode up. I’m talking
resistance instead of weights. He
about within months
uses it to do pressdowns, pulldowns, you’ll see results.”
and chest-defining cable flies. “It’s a
complete machine,” he says. “I don’t LEAST FAVORITE
need to go anywhere.” He describes EXERCISE?
“I hate the stair climber.
himself as an “old 40” and has I think it’s the worst
embraced kinder, gentler workouts. thing invented. It’s the
Rather than lifting heavy, he chooses most boring thing ever,
exercises like pressdowns and push- but it does work.”
ups, and he almost always does three
DREAM FITNESS
sets of ten of every move. PARTNER?
Right now, Burleson is grabbing a “The Rock. He shows up
pair of dumbbells, facing a mirror, Okay, he wants a little more than on IG, blood all on his
and hiking his shoulders, doing shrugs to that, he admits. Burleson settles into a face, chains around his
neck. I’m thinking to
blast his traps. He follows that with box right-side plank, then crunches his left myself, You going that
jumps, because he needs to stay athletic knee toward his left elbow, squeezing hard? I want to see if I
to hang with Nathaniel and Nehemiah. his obliques. He’s aiming for at least a could make it through
“If my kids start sizing me up in the hint of that old Adonis body. “I want to a workout with him.“
kitchen and they call me out,” Burleson be able to take my shirt off at 40 and be
says, “I need to be built to play any game proud of what I see. It’s all about endur-
they want to play.” ance and looking good.”

MEN’S HEALTH | JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 19

 BODY NEW YEAR, NEW CHALLENGE!

This spring, JAKE BOLY

plans to become the
latest athlete to lift
500 pounds (via dead-
lift and squat) and run a
sub-five-minute mile.

DARE TO TRY THE

#5AND500
An obscure CrossFit challenge that simultaneously tests strength
and endurance is YouTube’s latest viral fitness hit. Use it—or another
challenge—to energize your own training this year.
BY LINDSAY BERRA

JAKE BOLY KNOWS this isn’t going
to be easy. This April, the trainer turned
YouTuber plans to squat and deadlift 500
pounds and then run a mile in less than
five minutes—all on the same day. He can
already deadlift 575 pounds, so that part
is no problem. The mile? He’s not so sure.
“This,” Boly says, “is going to suck.”
You’re not supposed to pick up massive
weights one moment, then hammer a fast
mile the next. Lifting heavy helps your
body pack on muscle mass, but that same
thickness can slow you down when you
run. Boly is fighting to master this blend
anyway, because he wants in on YouTube’s
latest extreme-fitness curiosity. You’ve
seen plank challenges and partner
carries, but the combo that we’re dubbing
the #5and500 is different. Undertaking
this challenge (or something similar) can
help you build muscle and shed fat and
give you serious fitspiration in 2022.
The #5and500 is a long-term goal that
gives your workouts purpose. The five-
day-a-week, one-hour-a-day gym grind
can be boring, but a fitness challenge
changes that, especially if you can show it
off on social media. The basic targets are:
Deadlift or squat 500 pounds once and
run a sub-five-minute mile in the same
day. Boly’s spent about six months prepping;
a gym newcomer may need to budget a year
to tackle a lite version. (See sidebar.) “Com-
bining heavy deadlift and run training, no
matter what, challenges you in a unique
way,” says MH fitness director Ebenezer
Samuel, C.S.C.S. “You need aerobic capacity
for the run and pure power for the lift.”
The #5and500 traces its origin to CrossFit
Games director Dave Castro’s Constructing
the CrossFit Games. In a single paragraph in
that 2018 book, Castro recalls a conversation
with five-time Games athlete Scott Panchik.
The pair decided that completing a sub-five-
minute mile, a 500-pound back squat, and

20 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH PHOTOGRAPHS BY BENJAMIN RASMUSSEN

 YOUR TRAINING PL A N TO FORGE SPEED
50 unbroken pullups in one day was an You’ll run on a track three days a week, resting at least one day between each
especially “elusive” fitness challenge. run, in this program from Nike running trainer Jes Woods. Continue your
And for two years, the #5and500 was
buried in that book, in part because most
people thought it was impossible. 200 MADNESS FAST 400’S
Then in the summer of 2020, when Run 16 Run 10
200-meter 400-meter
Covid shut down CrossFit competitions sprints, aiming sprints. Aim to
everywhere, Adam Klink, a CrossFit to finish each finish each in
coach from Virginia with a popular in under 40 80 seconds.
YouTube channel, decided to try Castro’s seconds. Jog Jog 200 meters
200 meters after each.
challenge. He made it his pandemic
after each.
goal to complete it, and after ten weeks
of training, he posted an 18-minute
video of himself first finishing a mile in
4:56, then squatting 500 pounds, then
doing 50 straight kipping pullups later
that day. That video scored 126,993
views, and it spawned millions of media YOUR TRAINING PL A N TO BUILD STRENGTH
Run three times a week to continue honing your mile time. In the gym, focus
impressions. Since then, a handful of on also building deadlift strength by doing each of the workouts below at
YouTube fitness influencers have also
completed Castro’s version.
REP WORK THE BUILD SINGLES DAY
Michael Miraglia, aka Purple Sonic, Do 5 sets of Do 5 sets of Warm up with
made the most significant edit to the deadlifts. Do deadlifts. Do 2 sets of 5 reps
challenge, ditching the pullups and 5 reps in each 3 reps in each of deadlifts.
set, aiming set. Aim to add Then do 4 sets
swapping the squat for a 500-pound to 5 to 10 pounds of 1 deadlift.
deadlift, a more accessible exercise. add every set. Try Rest 2 minutes
Miraglia also added drama, aim- 5 to go heavy. between sets.
ing to complete both portions in five to
10 pounds
minutes or less. (He finished in 4:49.) every set.

record holder Ryan Hall tried to dupli-

cate Miraglia’s feat but fell short, finish-
ing in 5:28. It’s since become a popular
challenge, with fitfluencers like former
Olympian Nick Symmonds, physiology
professor Jacob Goodin, Ph.D., and
trainer Fergus Crawley shooting video
detailing their plans to train for it and
notching up hundreds of thousands of
views and lots of fitness-podcast airtime.
Boly is remixing the challenge again.
He’s simplifying it and “burying my
ego,” he says, ditching Miraglia’s back-
to-back structure and aiming to just
complete all his events in the same day.
He plans to hit the 500-pound squat, gut
out his mile, and then return to the gym
hours later for a 500-pound deadlift. “I
want to push the challenge further,” he
says. “But you have to blend it in a way
Ben Mounsey-Wood (illustrations)
WANT A DIFFERENT CHALLENGE?
HAVE AT IT!
The absurd numbers of the #5and500 may feel unattainable. But there
are other challenges you can try this year. Some will force you to deadlift
and run. Others push you in completely different ways. Here are four:
1 PERFECT FOR
BEGINNERS
THE BODYWEIGHT-PLUS: Work to a 1-rep deadlift that’s
20 pounds heavier than your bodyweight. On the same
day, aim to run a personal-best mile. As with the #5and500,
you’ll challenge both strength and endurance.
2 IF YOU WANT
AN INTENSE
THE DOUBLE-PR: The goal of this challenge: set a person-
al record in the deadlift and the one-mile run on the same
PUSH day. You’ll have to push yourself harder than you’d think
in both disciplines to pull it off.
3 FOR AN
UPPER-BODY
THE ROW-AND-PRESS BATTLE: Bench 185 pounds 20 times,
then row 500 meters. Rest as needed. You must finish all the
CHALLENGE work in under five minutes total. This one is fast, but it’ll test

upper-body strength and take more cardio than you’d think.

that works for you.”
That last sentence is key. If lifting 500
pounds and running a sub-five-minute
mile seems insane, you can still use the
idea of the #5and500 to motivate your
fitness in 2022. Get after it!
4 FOR ULTIMATE
ENDURANCE
THE MILE FARMER’S CARRY: Find two kettlebells or dumb-
bells (or sandbags) that equal at least 80 percent of your
bodyweight. Walk one mile, resting as needed. This is about
grip strength, upper-body strength, and endurance.

MEN’S HEALTH | JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 21

 BODY INSIDE EDITION

LIFE VS. YOUR LIVER

You don’t need a “detox” to face the growing threat to this MVP organ.
Just use these simple steps to fight back. BY MIKE ZIMMERMAN

BEFORE WITH EVERYBODY you’ve ever followed on social media doing

Dry January or some kind of cleanse, how is it that about 25 percent of
adults in the U. S. have a dangerous liver condition right now? Sure, your
liver appreciates the break. But alcohol is not the only thing hurting it,
says Michael D. Leise, M.D., a Mayo Clinic transplant hepatologist.
“I don’t drink much” needs to be retired from the “my liver’s fine” canon,
because if you carry extra weight, get minimal exercise, or have bouts of
overeating, your liver’s probably not fine.
Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a condition that’s exactly
what it sounds like: Unhealthy amounts of fat build up in your liver. Over
time, this can cause that organ to swell, scar, and eventually fail or develop
cancer. In 2016, NAFLD cases in the U.S. were predicted to rise 18 percent
by 2030 to more than 100 million. Risks are higher if you’re overweight
or have obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, or high cholesterol. But
NAFLD can hit people without these issues.
That’s because regardless of risk, your diet can help prevent or cause
NAFLD. See, your liver gets first dibs on the blood coming from your diges-
AFTER tive system, so whatever was in what you ate filters through it before going
anywhere else. Overeating backs up the liver’s processing capabilities—
especially if you eat a lot of foods high in carbs and fat.
Scared? Good. That’s incentive to reverse fat buildup in your liver. You
can do that fairly quickly—within a matter of weeks, says Elizabeth J.
Parks, Ph.D., who studies NAFLD at the University of Missouri. What to do:

AVOID “DOUBLE POWER UP ON of being burned off during

WHAMMIES”
As in foods that are high
in fat and processed
carbs, like doughnuts or
barbecue-chicken pizza,
says Parks. After you eat
fat and carbs, your liver
converts the sugar in the
carbs to fat, and both are
stored as energy. The
AND AFTER-AFTER trouble is, many people
never get it out of storage.
Fat buildup in your liver
can happen fast. Parks
coauthored a study that
mimicked a tailgate:
18 guys downed about
5,000 calories’ worth of
high-fat, high-sugar food
and drinks (keeping blood
alcohol at 0.10) in an
afternoon. Within hours,
nine had new fat deposits
in their liver. Don’t go light
on all fats, though—unsat-
urated fats, especially
omega-3’s (the kind in fish
and walnuts) may help
POLYPHENOLS
The usual good-for-you
diet is well proven to help
reduce liver fat. Good
thing, because there
aren’t any medications
that can do it. To satisfy a
sweet tooth, turn to fruit;
research suggests that
foods rich in polyphenols
may help prevent fat
storage in the liver. Other
foods high in polyphenols
to get more of: green
tea, coffee, and nuts
(especially walnuts), says
Dr. Leise.
QUIT EARLY
Even if you’re eating
healthy food, your daily
calorie intake matters.
Weight gain is one of
the biggest risk factors
for NAFLD. One easy-ish
weight-management
strategy: Set a carb cur-
few. While your morning
the day, a sugary cereal
bedtime snack is more
likely to become liver fat
overnight, says Parks.
SWEAT
Being sedentary may
cause NAFLD—even if
you’re not overweight.
Movement of any type,
even three or four 20- to
40-minute moderate-
intensity workouts a
week, can help eliminate
existing liver fat and pre-
vent new fat from being
produced and stored.
Both resistance and
cardio training help.
GET TESTED
Ask for a liver-function
test next time you get a
routine blood panel. Doc-
tors may not automatical-
ly order this for you unless
you are at risk for NAFLD,
but it doesn’t hurt to have
Alamy

keep NAFLD at bay. bagel has a good chance the numbers.

22 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH

 Reshape Your Life
Bluetooth Indoor Training Bike with MyCloudFitness App

S H O P T H E F U L L C O L L E C T I O N AT M E N S H E A LT H . C O M / W H M H F I T N E S S
 BODY IMMUNITY

HELP

YOUR BODY BUILD ITS

BARRIER
Your immune system is astonishingly
complicated. Fortunately, keeping it in
peak shape doesn’t have to be.
BY ALLA KATSNELSON

“IMMUNE SUPPORT”
supplements, “immuni-teas,” cheese
puffs that “help strengthen the
immune system”: Covid has amped up
all kinds of weirdness in the well-
ness market. None of this (surprise,
surprise) is stuff you actually need, say
immunity experts. Yes, sometimes
your immune system can use some
help, but science—not marketing—has
discovered realistic ways to do it.

1. LEAVE THE
SUPPLEMENTS
ON THE SHELF
VITAMINS AND MINERALS, like
vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin B12, and
zinc, help keep your immune system in
top shape. Some of these even provide
the raw materials for your body to make
the immune cells it needs. But here’s the
thing: Most people get enough of these
nutrients from the food they eat.
Since the start of the pandemic, vitamin
D has received a lot of attention because
of research suggesting that low levels
may be linked to inflammation and even
respiratory infections. However, there
is still insufficient evidence to say that
taking a vitamin D supplement protects
people from getting Covid. Experts
agree that if you’re vitamin D deficient,
you need to bring it up to a healthy level.
And getting more of it is fine (unless
you’re supplementing with 100 times
the recommended daily allowance for
months). It’s just that a surplus of any
vitamin, including D, won’t help you,
because your immune system just can’t
use it, says infectious-diseases expert
Peter Chin-Hong, M.D., at the University
of California San Francisco School of
Medicine. You can shore up weak points
in your immune system’s performance,
but you can’t make it stronger than
it is, he says. “Adding extra won’t give
you superpowers.”
Beyond vitamins and minerals,
some immunity supplements contain
probiotics. A healthy gut microbiome is
crucial for a well-functioning immune
system, but probiotic support is still only
promising in theory. The bottom line:
Save the time and money you’d spend
on supplements that promote easy fixes
and instead focus on doing things that
actually can keep your immune system
running smoothly. Like . . .

24 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH


2. PLUG
IMMUNITY LEAKS
YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM has a million
moving parts, but if you look at the big
picture, there are two key components,
and both need to be in good condition to
fend off disease. Think of the first one,
the innate immune system, as a defensive
line protecting you from foreign viruses,
bacteria, and other pathogens, blocking
Getty Images
them from infecting your body. While
it’s doing its job, your adaptive immune
system, an elite strike team—T cells and
antibody-producing B cells—is
identifying and neutralizing
invaders that infiltrate the body’s
defenses. Boring, predictable
health moves—get enough sleep,
be active—can have some real
value in keeping both parts of the
system functioning optimally.
Take sleep: Too little can
make people more susceptible
to illness, says immunity expert
Jim Boonyaratanakornkit, M.D.,
Ph.D., at the Fred Hutchinson
Cancer Research Center in
Seattle. There’s something about
consistently not sleeping enough
that decreases the production
of proteins that help the innate
immune system do its job. Re-
search has shown that sleep also
bolsters T-cell activity, part of the
adaptive system.
Exercise, another immune-
function biggie, produces key
immune proteins called cyto-
kines and helps white blood cells
circulate through your body.
Regular workouts also help reduce
stress, which has a complex way
of wearing down parts of your
immune system.
3. BRING IN
PROFESSIONAL
HELP
THE PROVEN AND EFFECTIVE way to
“boost” your immune system is a vac-
cine. That’s because a vaccine works by
presenting the adaptive immune system
with specific pathogens (or, in the case of
Covid, parts of those pathogens). These
act as training material (like introduc-
ing a scent to a bomb-sniffing dog), spur-
ring the production of antibodies and
teaching the adaptive immune system to
fight the pathogen if it shows up for real.
You want that. Your immune system,
when you treat it right, can be a powerful
thing. But it appreciates the help.
MEN’S HEALTH
WHAT ABOUT
ANTIBODIES?
AND WHAT THAT COVID
ANTIBODY TEST CAN—AND
CAN’T—TELL YOU ABOUT
YOUR IMMUNITY.
Q.  CAN FREQUENT ANTIBODY
TESTS TELL ME WHETHER
IT’S OKAY TO HANG OUT UN-
MASKED AT A CROWDED BAR
THAT WEEKEND?
A.  If only it were that easy! If you’ve
had a Covid vaccination or the
illness itself (and you’re not immuno-
compromised), it’s safe to assume
you have antibodies to SARS-CoV-2.
True, over time, the number of anti-
bodies you have declines, but that
doesn’t mean you’re unprotected.
Immune cells that fight SARS-CoV-2
get archived for later use. What you
have now is immune memory, and an
antibody test isn’t going to measure
that. Nor can it measure other cells
important in immunity. “Antibodies are
just one small part of our immune re-
sponse,” says Sarah Wheeler, Ph.D., the
associate medical director of clinical
immunopathology at the University
of Pittsburgh Medical Center. So you
can’t base a decision to do potentially
risky things on antibody-test results.
(Home tests, by the way, are far more
likely to produce an inaccurate result.)
Q.  DOES A LOW ANTIBODY-TEST
RESULT MEAN I SHOULD
RUSH OUT FOR A BOOSTER?
A.  Unfortunately, antibody tests
can’t tell whether your immune
system’s memory of SARS-CoV-2 has
faded enough to require a reminder.
Most antibody tests are not entirely
quantitative. They are either qualita-
tive (do you have antibodies or not?)
or they’re “semi-quantitative.” What
the heck that means is complicated,
but basically, according to the WHO,
the results are only an estimation of
antibodies. All this said, if you qualify
for a Covid booster shot, get one.
Q.  BUT MY SECOND TEST CAME
BACK FAR HIGHER THAN
MY FIRST. DOESN’T THAT MEAN
I’M BETTER PROTECTED?
A.  Unless you’ve been reexposed
to the virus, there’s no biologi-
cal reason for antibody levels to rise
in people who are basically healthy
and not taking immunity-modulating
medicines. So if your levels oscillate
strongly, it may be a testing fluke.
And if you think you’ve been reex-
posed and wonder if you should
quarantine, you need a Covid test,
not an antibody test. —A. K.
| JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 25
 BODY DIET DECODER
IT’S PALEO! IT’S VEGAN! IT’S . . .  COMPLICATED.
This doctor-built plan claims it’ll help you maintain muscle and torch fat.
ABBY LANGER, R.D., author of Good Food, Bad Diet, weighs in.
WHAT IT IS
Pegan is a mash-up of
paleo and vegan. On
the diet, you can eat
whenever you want and as
much of anything as you
want—as long as you’re
filling your plate with
75 percent plant-based
foods and 25 percent
sustainably raised ani-
mal products. (So, yeah,
not really vegan.) Mark
Hyman, M.D., developed
the diet—and wrote a
best-selling book about it.
26 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022
THE PEGAN DIET:
THE PROMISE
Dr. Hyman says his
pegan diet can reduce
inflammation, prevent
chronic disease, and
promote weight loss
while also taking care
of the planet. Because
you can still eat meat, fish,
and eggs on pegan, you
don’t have to worry about
protein intake, a common
concern with a vegan diet.
| MEN’S HEALTH
WHAT YOU THE GOOD
CAN’T HAVE Eating more plants is
Quite a lot, actually: always beneficial. Fruits
nonorganic produce, and vegetables house
vegetable oils, dairy disease-fighting antioxi-
(except for organic sheep dants as well as fiber, which
or goat milk), gluten, helps you stay full and
more than a half cup of feeds good gut bacteria.
cooked grains or legumes Also nice: There are no
daily, and soy, plus MSG, calorie or macronutri-
artificial sweeteners, ent (fat, protein, carbs)
additives, preservatives, restrictions on the pegan
and dyes. Whew. diet, and—grains and
legumes aside—you don’t
have to measure portions,
which is just annoying.
PHOTOGRAPH BY TED + CHELSEA CAVANAUGH
THE NOT
SO GOOD
Dr. Hyman states
that dairy is linked to
cancer (not true), gluten
causes obesity (also
not true), and grains
and legumes can
trigger autoimmune
disorders (sigh).
There is no solid
scientific evidence
that suggests any
of the foods he excludes
from this diet, in mod-
erate amounts, can
cause poor health.
THE
VERDICT
Plant-forward
diets have a
studied history of
reducing disease
and helping
people maintain
a healthy weight.
But pegan is
too restrictive,
excluding foods
based on over-
blown or outdated
Food styling: Michelle Gatton. Prop styling: Jacqueline Draper.
claims. A varied
inclusionary diet
remains the best
way to eat well,
manage weight,
and have a healthy
relationship with
good food.

CBD IS FOR ME
Everyone feels the hurt as you age, but CBD can
help you deal with it.
L
ife really does fly by. Before I knew it, my
40s had arrived, and with them came
some new gifts from dear ol’ Mother Na-
ture—frequent knee pain, stress, low energy
and sleeplessness. Now, I’m a realist about these
things, I knew I wasn’t going to be young and re-
silient forever. But still, with “middle-age” nearly
on my doorstep, I couldn’t help but feel a little
disheartened. That is until I found my own secret
weapon. Another gift from Mother Nature.
It began a few months back when I was com-
plaining about my aches and pains to my mara-
thon-running buddy, Ben, who is my same age.
He casually mentioned how he uses CBD oil to
help with his joint pain. He said that CBD has
given him more focus and clarity throughout
the day and that his lingering muscle and joint
discomfort no longer bothered him. He even felt
comfortable signing up for back-to-back mara-
thons two weekends in a row this year.
That made even this self-proclaimed skeptic
take notice.
But I still had some concerns. According to
one study in the Journal of the American Med-
ical Association, 70% of CBD products didn’t
contain the amount of CBD stated on their la-
bels. And, as a consumer, that’s terrifying!
If I was going to do this, I needed to trust the
source through and through. My two-fold re-
search process naturally led me to Zebra CBD.
First, I did a quick online poll—and by that,
I mean I posed the CBD question on my Face-
book page. Call me old fashioned but I wanted to
ADVERTISEMENT
know if there were people whom I trusted (more
than anonymous testimonials) who’ve had suc-
cess using CBD besides my buddy. That is how
I found out that Zebra CBD has a label accura-
cy guarantee which assures customers like me
what is stated on the label is in the product.
Secondly, I wanted cold hard facts. Diving
deep into the world of CBD research and clin-
ical studies, I came across Emily Gray M.D., a
physician at the University of California at San
Diego (UCSD) Medical School and medical
advisor for Zebra CBD who is researching the
effects of CBD. Dr. Gray wrote “early results
with CBD have been promising and we have a
lot of research underway now. I’ve had several
patients using CBD with good success. It’s im-
portant that you know your source of CBD and
how to use it properly.”
After hearing it from the doctor’s mouth, I re-
turned to my online poll and was amazed by the
number of close friends and family who were
already on the CBD train. Apparently, I was the
only one without a clue! And funny enough, a
couple of friends who commented were us-
ing the same brand as my buddy—Zebra CBD.
There was no consensus as to why they were
using CBD, but the top reasons given were for
muscle & joint discomfort, mood support, sleep
support, stress and headaches, as well as sup-
porting overall health & wellness.
Eventually, even the most skeptical of the
bunch can be won over. With a trusted CBD
source in mind, I decided to try it.
When I viewed Zebra CBD’s selection online,
I was impressed by its array of products, includ-
ing CBD oils called tinctures, topicals, chewable
tablets, mints and gummies. After reading on
their website that all their products are made
with organically-grown hemp, I ordered... and it
arrived within 2 days!
The first product I tried was the rub. Now
this stuff was strong. Immediately after rubbing
it on my knee, the soothing effects kicked in. It
had that familiar menthol cooling effect, which I
personally find very relieving. And the best part
is, after two weeks of using it, my knee pain no
longer affected my daily mobility.
The Zebra Sleep Gummies, on the other hand,
had a different but equally positive effect on my
body. To take it, the instructions suggest chew-
ing thoroughly. This was simple enough, and the
taste was, well, lemony. After about 15 minutes, a
sense of calm came over my body. It's hard to de-
scribe exactly; it's definitely not a "high" feeling.
It's more like an overall sense of relaxation—and
then I was out. Needless to say, I slept great and
woke up refreshed.
While it hasn’t been a catch-all fix to every one
of my health issues, it has eased the level and fre-
quency of my aches. And it sure doesn’t seem
like a coincidence how much calmer and more
focused I am.
All-in-all, CBD is one of those things that you
have to try for yourself. Although I was skeptical
at first, I can say that I’m now a Zebra CBD fan
and that I highly recommend their products. My
40s are looking up!
Also, I managed to speak with a company
spokesperson willing to provide an exclusive of-
fer to MH readers. If you order this month, you’ll
receive $10 off your first order by using promo
code “MH10” at checkout. Plus, the company of-
fers a 100% No-Hassle, Money-Back Guarantee.
You can try it yourself and order Zebra CBD at
ZebraCBD.com/Men or at 1-888-762-2699.
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 CHANGE FOR THE BETTER

GO AHEAD,
MIX FRIENDS AND MONEY
YouTube megastars Dude Perfect prove that doing business with
your buds can be awesome—if you know how. BY JASON ROGERS
YOU’VE HEARD THE OLD WARNING: “Friendships and knew that it would be hard, but we had to give it a
money don’t mix.” Well, the five buddies behind shot.” Before Dude Perfect grew into a 56-million-
Dude Perfect, whose YouTube channel is one of the subscriber-strong YouTube channel, the members
platform’s most successful ever, used to hear it, of the group—Cory and his twin brother, Coby,
too—all the time. “The reality was we could either plus Tyler Toney, Cody Jones, and Garrett Hilbert,
try it or bail,” says Cory Cotton about their initial all in their early-to-mid 30s now—were friends at
discussions on starting the business. “I think we Texas A&M. And in their free time, they made a

ILLUSTRATION BY NEIL JAMIESON MEN’S HEALTH | JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 29

 LIFE S U C C E S S!

variety of low-budget sports-related videos. Then, in 2009, they

went viral with “Dude Perfect Backyard Edition,” three min-
utes of basketball trick shots (Off the chimney!), joining the
ranks of earlyish YouTube titans like “David After Dentist” and
“Charlie Bit My Finger!” Over the next four years, the fivesome
amassed more than a million subscribers as clips from their
videos made the rounds on ESPN shows.
Though ad revenue was beginning to come in, Dude Perfect
wasn’t pulling in enough income initially to support all five
guys. Most of them worked day jobs and had started families,
which meant that the channel often operated as a grueling
nights-and-weekends passion project. At one point, the pres-
sure and workload were so intense that Cory Cotton developed
Bell’s palsy from stress and lack of sleep. 
The group’s leap-of-faith moment arrived when Toney with pals. For Dude Perfect, that idea was filming one another
received a call from his boss while shooting a new video: He goofing off and one-upping each other. Ever since they committed
needed to either quit Dude Perfect or quit his job. That ultima- full-time to their channel, their brand has expanded to include
tum inspired the Dudes to crunch the numbers, figuring out they mobile apps, a seven-figure online merch shop, a best-selling
could afford groceries for a year if they all quit their jobs. With children’s book, and dozens of deals with companies such as
the support of their wives, the collective went all in. Marvel, Pringles, and Nerf. Liam Hemsworth, Serena Williams,
They were ahead of a curve. Quitting your job and starting some- Zac Efron, and others have appeared as guests.
thing new has become a trend. This past August, 4.3 million Amer- That’s not to say the Dudes haven’t faced financial stress and
icans left their jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports—a the mounting pressure that comes with life on the road, a grow-
record shift that psychologist Anthony Klotz, Ph.D., has dubbed ing team to support, and a need to raise the stakes creatively
the Great Resignation. One factor: Covid-19 caused people to look with every video they produce. They say they’re no strangers to
at their work-life balance. Now, Klotz says, “pandemic epipha- flared tempers and shouting matches; once, one of the guys even
nies” are leading many to turn toward “entrepreneurial ven- threw a rock at another’s head. (It missed.)
tures . . . friends . . . and things they really love doing.” When disagreements arise, they try to air their feelings
So why not combine all three? While social data from the off camera. “We have no shortage of time with each other,”
pandemic is still emerging, previous research finds that around Cory Cotton says. “So I think it actually is good proof that we
65 percent of small-business owners are men and 16 percent of still like hanging out even when we’re not being paid to hang
all new founders started their business to follow their passion. out.” Today, they say that going into business pushed their
You have probably, at some point, kicked around a business idea friendship to a new level: one that feels more like family.

How to Do BUSINESS with Your BUDDIES

Tips from the dudes of Dude Perfect,
with commentary from therapist
Sepideh Saremi, L.C.S.W.

1 2 3 4

PUT EVERYTHING DEFINE EVERYONE’S BE (BRUTALLY) PLAY THROUGH

IN WRITING
Since the beginning, Dude
Perfect has operated as an
equal partnership, spelled
out in writing. Written agree-
ments don’t just help mitigate
future conflicts—they can
also help the founders align
on a shared vision. “It forces
you to think things through,”
Saremi says. “The entrepre-
neurs that do the best are the
ones that have formalized
things in advance.”
ROLE
Effective teammates di-
vide the work. Behind the
scenes, each Dude Perfect
member takes on a re-
sponsibility: Cory Cotton
leads production, Toney
runs creative, and so on.
Every business starts as a
small business, which then
may scale, Saremi says.
But if your partner doesn’t
want to do a job, you’re just
going to be fighting.
HONEST
Dude Perfect attributes its
success to communication.
Before going into business
with a friend, consider how
they respond to conflict.
“When you confront them
with something . . . are they
curious about it? Or are they
defensive?” Saremi says.
“If they’re not committed
to self-improvement, then
you’re going to have an im-
possible time growing.”
WORK
Members of Dude Perfect still
regularly golf together and
play a weekly pickup basket-
ball game. Sometimes they
talk business; sometimes they
don’t. Saremi recommends
that partners put a standing
meeting on their calendars,
even if there’s no friction to
address. “That makes it eas-
ier to resolve conflict before
it spills over and becomes
part of the culture.”

30 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH


Branching out from their signature trick-shot
videos, the members of Dude Perfect have
flown with the Blue Angels (left), gone on tour
(above), and had deep-sea-fishing battles
(right). And fine, they still do pretty amazing
trick-shot videos (below).
Getty Images (Ben and Jerry). MediaPunch Inc/Alamy Stock Photo (Warby Parker). Alamy Stock Photo (James, Carter). Courtesy subject (remaining).
GREAT MOMENTS IN
BUSINESS
WITH
BUDDIES!
1978
Ben Cohen and Jerry
Greenfield open their
first ice cream scoop
shop in a renovated
gas station in Burling-
ton, Vermont. Yes, that
Ben & Jerry.
2007 2012
Roommates Brian John Gray, Lester
Chesky and Joe Gebbia Walker, Pierre Serrao,
rent out an air mattress
in their living room
and several others
start a culinary collec-
to make a few extra
bucks. Airbnb begins
tive, Ghetto Gastro,
that grows into a pow-
operations a year later. erhouse kitchen-appli-
ance brand, CRUXGG.
2010
Neil Blumenthal, Dave
Gilboa, and two of their
friends see a future in
online eyewear and
found Warby Parker.
2020
LeBron James teams
up with his childhood
friend and longtime
business partner, Mav-
erick Carter, to launch
SpringHill, a media and
production company.
MEN’S HEALTH
When
FRIENDS and
Cash CLASH
Not everyone can be
Dude Perfect. If money
threatens your friendships,
try these smart social
strategies.
PROBLEM: Your friend never Ven-
mos you back. For anything.
SOLUTION: Start asking for separate
tabs. And then for the money still
owed, Saremi says, “say something
about it directly and privately,
in person if possible, like: ‘Hey,
it looks like I’m still waiting for x
amount in Venmo. Can you pay me
back now?’ ” Payment apps make it
too easy to ghost.
PROBLEM: They’re trying to rope
you into what appears to be a
multilevel-marketing scheme.
SOLUTION: Let someone else
explain. “Follow up with a link to the
John Oliver segment about MLMs
and say, ‘What you sent me made
me think of this. Have you seen it?’ ”
says Saremi. Hopefully they’ll get
the hint (and escape the scheme).
PROBLEM: They keep emailing,
asking you to contribute to their
harebrained Kickstarter project.
SOLUTION: Ignore and dodge. “If it’s
a mass email, it’s safe to disregard.
If the email is personalized, send a
quick note thanking the friend for
thinking of you,” says Saremi. “Let
them know you can’t contribute
now, but you’ll keep an eye out and
you’re looking forward to hearing
how it goes.”
PROBLEM: Your friend keeps pes-
tering you about why you’re not
investing in Dogecoin.
SOLUTION: Put up a fence. “Invest-
ing is super personal, and you don’t
owe anyone a rationale or visibility
into your personal portfolio,” says
Saremi. “Tell your friend you’ve
made your investment alloca-
tions for the year.” Then leave it at
that—or distract them by starting a
conversation about NFTs.
| JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 31
LIFE 30/10

You may see ramen as a carb fest, but if you invert the portions—
more meat, less noodle—you’ll feast on 30 grams of muscle-building
protein and 10 grams of filling fiber.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY HEAMI LEE

 T H E E X P E R T : A K I K O T H U R N A U E R , who
created this recipe, is the chef and owner of
Cha Kee in Manhattan.

THE PROTEIN 30g THE FIBER 10g

While a bowl of ramen can have any number of toppings, this recipe leans on pork The ramen almost gets you to
belly, which offers six grams of protein per 2.5-ounce serving, and an egg—a large the 10 grams of fiber you need to
stay full between meals. These
one typically has about six grams of protein.
simple sides will push you over.

BUY IT
If you don’t want the fatty skin, you can have the butcher remove it for you. But then
you’ll miss out on that skin crisping up to crunchy perfection when you roast it . . . .

Oven-Roasted Pork Belly Miso Ramen

This recipe makes four big bowls of ramen, meaning you can reheat leftovers for lunch
or dinner all week. One super-important note on reheating: Remove the eggs before
microwaving or they’ll explode. Just add them back to the hot broth and they’ll warm up.

W H AT YO U ’ L L N E E D
1 LB PORK BELLY, SKIN ON
OR SKINLESS
2 TSP SUGAR
6 CUPS NO-SALT-ADDED
CHICKEN STOCK
1 THUMB-SIZED PIECE GINGER,
PEELED AND GRATED
1 SMALL GARLIC CLOVE, PEELED
AND GRATED
3 TBSP WHITE MISO
1 TBSP SOY SAUCE
1 TSP TOASTED SESAME OIL
HOT SAUCE (SRIRACHA, CHILE
OIL), TO TASTE
2 150G PACKS RAMEN (SHIN OR
NEOGURI BRANDS PREFERRED),
FLAVOR PACKETS DISCARDED,
COOKED TO PACKAGE
INSTRUCTIONS, DRAINED
4 HARD-BOILED EGGS, PEELED
AND HALVED
TOPPINGS: CORN KERNELS, SLICED
SCALLIONS, BEAN SPROUTS,
CHOPPED BOK CHOY, NORI
SQUARES, MORE HOT SAUCE
HOW TO MAKE IT
1. In a large, wide bowl, mix 4 tsp kosher salt with the
sugar and a few grinds of black pepper. Pat the pork
dry with paper towels. If you opted for skin on, using
the tip of a knife, score the skin every half inch at a
diagonal. Repeat in the opposite direction to create with 2 Tbsp furikake seasoning (or
a diamond pattern. Add the belly to the bowl, turn to a combination of sesame seeds,
shredded nori, and sea salt). Feeds 4
coat, cover, and refrigerate for 1 hour.
2. Preheat your oven to 450°F. Remove the pork Per serving: 124 calories, 10g
from the rub, brushing off any excess, and place it
in a large oven-safe skillet, skin side up. Roast the
pork on the middle rack in the oven until the skin is
well browned, about 30 minutes. Reduce the heat to
275°F and roast until tender, about 1 hour. Transfer
to a cutting board to rest.
3. In a medium pot, bring the stock to a boil over
high. Add the ginger, garlic, miso, soy sauce, sesame
oil, and hot sauce. Adjust the heat to medium low and
simmer, stirring occasionally, until the miso dissolves,
5 to 10 minutes. Season to taste.
4. Cut the pork into ⅛-inch slices. Among 4 bowls,
divide the ramen, broth, egg halves, pork, and your
desired toppings. Feeds 4

Nutrition per serving

(with ¼ cup all toppings, except nori square): 695 calories, seasoned rice vinegar, 1 Tbsp soy
34g protein, 74g carbs (8g fiber), 46g fat sauce, 1 tsp toasted sesame oil,
and a pinch each of sugar and salt.
Cut 2 large cucumbers into ⅛-inch
slices; add to the bowl and toss to
coat. Refrigerate for 1 hour or serve
IF YOU HAVE IF YOU HAVE IF YOU HAVE immediately, topped with ¼ cup
10 MINUTES . . . 15 MINUTES . . . THE NIGHT . . . peanuts, finely chopped.
Food styling: Pearl Jones. Prop styling: Sophie Strangio.

Per serving: 87 calories, 3g protein,

. . . swap soft-boiled
eggs for hard-boiled.
The jammy yolks will infuse
the broth with extra richness.
Fill a medium pot with 1 inch
of water and boil over high.
Using a slotted spoon, lower
in 4 chilled eggs. Put a lid on
the pot and boil for exactly 6
minutes. Using the spoon,
transfer the eggs to a bowl
and run them under cold
water till cool enough to peel.
. . . tender-ify the
vegetables.
Blanching the bok choy and
bean sprouts will mellow
their flavors—in a good way.
Bring a medium pot of salted
water to a boil. Place a large
bowl of ice water beside it.
Add the bok choy and bean
sprouts to the boiling water
and cook till just softened, 30
to 60 seconds. Drain, transfer
to the ice bath, then remove.
. . . caramelize!
You can make the roasted
pork taste even awesomer.
After it cools to room temp,
seal the pork in plastic wrap
and refrigerate overnight.
The next day, remove the
pork from the wrap, cut into
⅛-inch slices, and sizzle in
a hot pan till browned on
both sides, about 5 minutes
total, just before adding it
to the hot broth.
6g carbs (2g fiber), 6g fat
30g SO 30/10 IS
WHAT NOW?
10g
30/10 brings you filling, muscle-
building meals with 30 grams of
protein and 10 grams of fiber. For an
entire month’s worth of recipes,
head to MensHealth.com/30-10.

MEN’S HEALTH | JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 33

 LIFE DRINKS

TEQUILA’S NEW STORYWOOD

SUNRISE
TEQUILA
Most aged tequilas are
matured in bourbon or whis-
key barrels, but Scotsman
Michael Ballantyne ages this
global crossover in Speyside
single-malt casks for seven
months. Served straight
(which is exactly how you
should drink it), the 80-proof
Speyside 7 starts off dry but
blooms into sweetness, with
pops of heat and oak. $57;
brand, you have to wonder if there’s whiskykingdom.com

shots. Here are the best new bottles PĀTSCH

you likely haven’t tried . . . yet. BLANCO
BY SUSANNAH SKIVER BARTON The bottle looks
like a prop from The
Warriors, but the
80-proof tequila inside
is actually smooth, creamy,
and niiiiice. You’ll taste a rush
of pink peppercorns and fresh
herbs at first, but then the
follow-through is bright and
clean with a tingling finish.
You can dig it—especially
over a big cube of ice. $80;
winechateau.com

TEQUILA KOMOS
REPOSADO ROSA
Sommelier and agave
whisperer Richard
Betts ages this 80-proof
tequila in French-oak Napa
Valley red-wine barrels. It
pours the color of a beach
sunset, is easy going down,
and carries a subtle fruitiness,
meaning it’s as effortless to
pair with food as a glass of
pinot is. $110; komos.com

MAESTRO
DOBEL PAVITO
Food styling: Olivia Mack McCool. Prop styling: Paige Hicks. Courtesy brands (still lifes).
During distillation, this
company throws in fruit,
herbs, and . . . wait for
it . . . a whole turkey breast.
The tradition, usually found in
mescal production and con-
sidered a nod to ancient sac-
rifice rituals (seriously!), adds
body to the spirit—so don’t
expect Thanksgiving flavors.
The texture is silky and the
flavor pineappley and lightly
spiced, making the 80-proof
TOUGH It isn’t really
diabetic friendly.
Its agave sugars don’t
make it lower-calorie.
And it can definitely
give you a hangover. tequila almost a cocktail unto
TALK ABOUT THE TRUTH: Fermentation THE TRUTH: Tequila THE TRUTH: There’s
itself. $69; reservebar.com
TEQUILA and distillation negate
any effect. No tequila
contains no more or
no fewer calories than a
no magic shot. If you
drink enough of any
Puja Uppal, D.O.,
debunks a few (and no alcohol) is great shot of any other spirit, alcohol, you’ll feel it
popular myths. for diabetics. agave sugars or not. the next day.

34 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH PHOTOGRAPH BY PAOLA + MURRAY

 Give the Gift
of Style

LEFT TO RIGHT: Red Tiger Eye Bead Bracelet in 14k Gold-Plated Sterling Silver, $375; Heavy Serpentine Link
Bracelet in 14k Gold-Plated Silver, $800; 22” Chain Necklace in 14k Gold-Plated Sterling Silver (one of 2-pc
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 LIFE THE STREAM

UNDAUNTED
be okay; and (c) they chose to do it.

THE Yet if Jackass were just about guys

kicking each other in the dick, it’s unlikely
we’d still be watching 20 years later. What

PERSEVERANCE
makes it more universally appealing is
that these guys obviously care about one
another. Whether they’re doling out paper
cuts or drinking each other’s sweat, the
Jackass boys share a tacit trust and affec-

JACKASS
tion that is oddly endearing. The crew
has seen death (Ryan Dunn was killed in
OF a car crash in 2011) and addiction (Bam
Margera was allegedly fired from the
production of Jackass Forever last year for
violating a sobriety agreement) but also
The gross-out stunt series returns with its life (Knoxville has three kids now) and
final film installment, Jackass Forever. recovery (Steve-O has been clean for 13
So why do we still watch? The reason is deeper years). In short, they’re—in some ways—
than a Poo Cocktail Supreme. like any other close circle of friends.
BY SEAN O’NEAL Jackass Forever is a timely reminder,
amid the fractured social nature of
JACKASS SEEMED to drop out of the sky in because Jackass understands something Covid, of how important it is to actually
the fall of 2000, like a billiard ball hur- its imitators never could: It’s not about do things with your friends. If you’re part
tling toward a guy’s testicles. The MTV the trips to the emergency room; it’s of the Jackass crew, that could mean
series appeared hell-bent on disappear- about the friends we make along the way. covering your friend in honey and salmon
ing just as suddenly: Four months after Psychologist Peter McGraw, Ph.D., and having a bear confront him. Or, for
the show debuted, Senator Joe Lieber- has theorized that humor relies on a your own crew, it could mean planning a
man was calling for its cancellation, “benign violation”: We like seeing some- ski trip, heading out for a day hike, or—at
citing its “exploitative and degrading” one’s world upended, but only if it feels the very least—seeing the movie together.
influence on teens who’d injured them- safe. We also need enough psychological Might we suggest something that tickles
selves imitating its stunts. When host distance from the victim so that our buzz your sense of benign violation?
Johnny Knoxville quit Jackass in 2001, isn’t killed by empathy. Watching some-
frustrated by the network’s censorship, one flung skyward inside a poop-filled S E A N O ’ N E A L is a writer at large at
it had eked out only 24 episodes—too porta-potty is funny, therefore, because Texas Monthly and the former editor of
fast to live, too young to syndicate. (a) we don’t know that person; (b) they’ll the A.V. Club.
But like its reckless cast, the show
miraculously rebounded. The franchise
returned in 2002 as a series of movies, The Benign Violation Spectrum!

Plotted with iconic Jackass stunts

with the final entry, Jackass Forever,
hitting theaters on February 4. (Knox-
ville is 50 years old now, yet he can still
get shot out of a cannon like a man half
his age.) And although the last episode
of Jackass aired two decades ago, the
road rash it left on our culture lingers, Rent-a-Car Crash-Up The Beekini (2000) The Poo Cocktail
red and angry, in countless videos of Derby (2002) Supreme (2010)
Internet pranksters aping its stunts.
While those quasi-celebrities may
have latched on to the show’s joyful
brainlessness, they’ve never even come
Alamy

close to matching its heart. That’s

Wasabi Snooters (2002) Butt Piercing (2000)

36 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH
 LIFE STYLE

THE 
NIGHTHAWK

Kareem Welch, 26,

a car-rental specialist
by day and a party pro-
moter by night, is a
man on the move. But
three years ago, he
could barely walk up a
flight of stairs. “My
heart would beat so
fast, I thought I was go-
ing to die,” says Welch,
pictured above in 2019.
So that year, on a trip
to his family’s home in
Trinidad and Tobago,
he decided to improve
his health and fitness.
He powerlifted, he ran
laps, and he started
eating more fruits and
vegetables. By the time
he returned to New
York City in 2020, he
was down 90 pounds.

4 MEN, 4 WHOLE-LIFE
TRANSFORMATIONS
These guys made huge changes
in their lives last year—and we helped
 them dress the part for 2022 and beyond.

38 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDRE PERRY

 LIFE STYLE

THE
POWER SUIT

Prepandemic, financial-
services professional  But now he’s learned
Adam Okin, 50, enjoyed
the perks of the job—
happy hours and multi-
course dinners. But as his
weight ticked upward
(that’s him, above, in
2019), his self-esteem
slid. During shelter-in-
place, he set health goals,
which led him to Icono-
clast Fitness, the New
York gym that gave him
a meal-prep plan and a
HIIT-focused workout.
A year later, Okin had lost
30 pounds and found a
new self-confidence.
The Style
Upgrade
Before his physical
transformation, Okin
says, he would hide
his body in baggy,
neutral-toned suits.
to embrace colors and
fits for his new shape.
Favorite piece: the
slim drawstring pants,
which look sleek
enough to wear out
but feel like his work-
from-home sweats.
Jacket ($699), sweater ($89),
pants ($199), and sneakers
($199) by Suitsupply;
watch by Movado.

THE
FIGHTER

Retired martial-arts
trainer Norman Smith,
64, had always been
active—until last Febru-
ary, when a mini-stroke
sidelined him for two
weeks. He gained 20
pounds. “My belly was
hanging out of my
belt, and I just didn’t
look like myself,” he
says. Eventually, Smith
(pictured above in 2019)
worked his way up to
doing high-intensity
interval training and
cardio five times a week.
Coupling that with an
anti-inflammatory
diet, he lost 25 pounds
in six months.
The Style
Upgrade
This crewneck sweater,
shirt, and pants combo
from Boss offers
a slimmer take on
Smith’s wardrobe sta-
ples. “Before, nobody
could see my body,”
he says. “I love how fit-
ted these clothes are.
They show off my new
shape, and I just feel
and look younger.”
Bomber jacket ($995),
sweater ($158), trousers
($198), boots ($350), and
watch by Boss.

40 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH

 THE
JOURNEYMAN

When Anthony
Figueroa, 34, became
an HVAC technician in
2018, he noticed that his
heavier colleagues in
their 40s and 50s would
complain about their
backs and knees hurting.
“I knew that would be me
in a few years if I didn’t
change,” he says. But it
wasn’t until the pan-
demic that he enlisted a
trainer, who put him on
a 12-week meal-prep 
program. Figueroa (pic-
tured above in 2015)
dropped 100 pounds in
nine months. Now he has
enough energy to play
with his daughter. “Be-
fore, I’d just push her to
play with a tablet.”

The Style
Upgrade
Figueroa looks forward
to weekends with his
family, and this Rodd &
Gunn jacket fits his new
active lifestyle. “This
jacket just takes my out-
fits to a whole ’nother
level,” he says. “It makes
me feel kind of im-
portant.” Plus, his New
Balance 574 sneakers
have him looking like the
coolest dad at the park.
Coat ($498) by Rodd &
Gunn, nordstrom.com;
sweater ($132) by AllSaints,
nordstrom.com; stretch
jeans ($178) by Levi’s
Styling: Ted Stafford. Grooming: Eloise Cheung.

Premium, nordstrom.com;
sneakers ($85) by New
Balance, nordstrom.com;
socks ($15) by Kane 11.

MEN’S HEALTH | JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 41

 LIFE GROOMING

NOT
PICTURED
HERE

As temps dip, you might find more than snow accumulating on

your head and shoulders. Treat dandruff and dry scalp
with this winter survival kit.
BY GARRETT MUNCE

THE
SYMPTOM: Flaky, scaly dead skin Red, irritated, dry, itchy scalp
THE It’s dandruff. “It’s caused by an overgrowth Um, a dry, itchy scalp. Cold weather can One-
DIAGNOSIS: of yeast on the skin,” says dermatologist
Raymond Kleinfelder, D.O. That yeast thrives
hamper your skin’s ability to produce
and maintain moisture, which can turn Question
on moisture; stress, sweat, and the wrong
hair-care products can all lead to dandruff.
an otherwise healthy scalp into an arid
environment come deep winter. Q&A
THE “Grab an antiyeast, antifungal shampoo Easy on the shampooing. “I recommend Q: Can dandruff
TREATMENT: that contains selenium sulfide or zinc pyri- men only shampoo their hair once or cause hair loss?
thione,” says Dr. Kleinfelder. Massage it into twice a week, especially in winter,” says A: No—and treat-
your scalp and let it sit for a minimum of five Dr. Kleinfelder. On no-shampoo days, use ments shouldn’t
minutes so the ingredients can go to work. a conditioner to enhance moisture. make it worse. Just
don’t use dandruff
TRY: Head & Shoulders Clinical Strength Odele Ultra Sensitive Shampoo ($12)
and hair-loss treat-
Dandruff Defense + Advanced Oil and Jack Black Nourishing Hair & Scalp
ments at the same
Control Shampoo ($9) Conditioner ($22)
time. Use one in the
morning and one at
night to maximize
WELL, THAT Psoriasis Folliculitis the benefits of each.
A super-itchy Try Neutrogena If you feel bumps Fear not! Try CLn Classic minoxidil
DIDN’T WORK. scalp with heavy T/Gel Therapeu- on your scalp Shampoo ($33), treatments like
NOW WHAT? buildup could tic Shampoo in addition to which contains Rogaine can be oily,
Sabine Villiard/Trunk Archive

If snowy conditions signal this disor- ($8), which has itchiness, your antimicrobial so try HairStim (by
don’t improve, ask der—especially coal tar (totally pores could be ingredients that prescription from
your dermatologist if you notice a safe!) to calm the clogged. And can help kill the your dermatologist)
about the following. crusty dryness itch and scaling. what’s worse, bump-causing because it’s not as
on your elbows, If that’s not bacteria may bacteria. greasy. —RAYMOND
knees, hands, effective, request have infested KLEINFELDER, D.O.
and other areas. a prescription. your hair follicles.

42 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH

 INSTANT
DOWNLOAD!

Build Big Muscle. No Gym Required.

Learn More at MensHealth.com/Dumbbells
 LIFE COOL DAD
I BOUGHT my first Lego set last
year at the ripe old age of 40. The set, ad-
mittedly, was over-the-top—a 2,300-piece
re-creation of the Ghostbusters Ecto-1
vehicle with a ghost trap and a gunner seat.  was focused. He was still. And something
I remember calling my wife from the
Lego store. We were in the lockdown stage
of the pandemic, my face was flushed
with embarrassment, and I asked her if I
could spend $200 on a toy. I was ashamed
because I couldn’t tell her that it was for
our seven-, five-, or one-year-old. No, this
toy was for me, a man seen (by some) as a
(somewhat) responsible adult who com-
ments on politics and current affairs on
TV and in reputable publications.
To back up, my family entered lock-
down mode before Covid. My now-six-
year-old, Nusayba, received a stage 4
cancer diagnosis in April 2019. Over-
night, we became a “hospital family,” liv-
ing on the edge of uncertainty and unable
to give our children any semblance of
“normal” experiences.
At some point between our numerous
and exhausting hospital visits, my oldest,
Ibrahim, asked me to buy him a Lego
Ninjago set. Despite my drawn-and-quar-
44 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH
T H I S M O N T H ’S C O O L D A D : WA J A H AT A L I’s first book,
Go Back to Where You Came From, is out January 25.
tered state of mind, I handled his request
and later that night I assembled it with
him. From the moment he sat on my lap
till the final brick, he was enraptured. He
else unexpected happened: So was I.
Over the next two years, Ibrahim
and I built. Each time, we entered into a
“zone,” quietly creating, brick by brick,
something wild yet ordered. Nusayba
even joined us, if only to sit on my knee
to watch us create. In those moments, I
could tune out the smartphone alerts, the
blip-blip-blip of my daughter’s various
hospital monitors, and the worry and the
dread. While cancer and Covid played for
“
all the marbles, we played Lego.
Like most experiences you come
to cherish as a parent, Lego time with
Like most experiences you come to
cherish as a parent, Lego time with
my children was brutally ripped away
from me by my children.
Batmobile and Ecto-1, next to the
Infinity Gauntlet and many Simpsons
characters, who seem to be preparing for
The Purge: Springfield at the Kwik-E-
Mart. They’ll soon be joined by my latest
build: a classic Nintendo Entertainment
System of my youth.
These past few years taught me that
I had to relearn the act of focused play as
something that’s not childish or imma-
ture. In fact, it’s downright necessary
for adults, now more than ever, to help
anchor us to both joy and calm during a
period of immense uncertainty and anxi-
ety. My daughter has survived cancer
thanks to a liver donation, and I Lego on.
While the kids sleep, I steal a few minutes
to Lego just for myself, building a sense
of structure whenever the world seems to
be falling apart.
ILLUSTRATION BY ETUBI ONUCHEYO
 Get All Out Arms, the new
program from Men’s Health
Fitness Director Eb Samuel,
plus 100s of other programs
on the All Out Studio app.

We Have
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Big Arms
MensHealth.com/AllOutApp

Brought to you by the editors of

m p

YOUR GUIDE TO
SHRINKING THAT GUT
Need to drop some pounds? Lose Weight with a
morning shake
B
eing a trainer, bodybuilder, and nutrition
expert means that companies frequently
send me their products and ask for my
stamp of approval. Most of the time I dive into
research, test the product out, and send the
company honest feedback. Sometimes, however,
I refuse to give the product a try, because frankly,
the ingredients inside aren’t real food. And I’d
rather drink diesel fuel than torture my body with
a chemical concoction.
Like my father always said, “What you put
inside your body always shows up on the outside.”
One protein shake that I received, that will
remain nameless, was touted as ‘the next big
shake’ but really had a list of gut destroying
ingredients. Everywhere I read I saw harmful
artificial ingredients, added sugars, synthetic
dyes, preservatives and cheap proteins; the kind
of proteins that keep you fat no matter how hard
you hit the gym, sap your energy and do nothing
for your muscles.
Disappointed after reviewing this “new”
shake, I hit the gym and bumped into my favorite
bodybuilding coach. This guy is pushing 50, has
the energy of a college kid, and is ripped. So are
his clients.
While I firmly believe that the gym is a no-talk
focus zone, I had to ask, “Hey Zee, what protein
shake are you recommending to your clients
these days?”
Zee looked at me, and shook his head. “Protein
shakes are old news and loaded with junk. I don’t
recommend protein shakes, I tell my clients to
drink INVIGOR8 Superfood Shake because it’s
the only all natural meal replacement that works
and has a taste so good that it’s addicting.”
Being skeptical of what Zee told me, I decided
to investigate this superfood shake called
INVIGOR8.
Turns out INVIGOR8 Superfood Shake has
a near 5-star rating on Amazon. The creators
are actual scientists and personal trainers who
set out to create a complete meal replacement
shake chocked full of superfoods that—get this—
actually accelerate how quickly and easily you
lose belly fat and builds even more lean, calorie
burning muscle.
We all know that the more muscle you build,
the more calories you burn. The more fat you
melt away the more definition you get in your
arms, pecs and abs.
The makers of INVIGOR8 were determined
to make the first complete, natural, non-GMO
superfood shake that helps you lose fat and
build lean muscle. The result is a shake that
contains 100% grass-fed whey that has a
superior nutrient profile to the grain-fed whey
found in most shakes, metabolism boosting
raw coconut oil, hormone free colostrum to
promote a healthy immune system, Omega 3,
6, 9-rich chia and flaxseeds, superfood greens
like kale, spinach, broccoli, alfalfa, and chlorella,
and clinically tested cognitive enhancers
for improved mood and brain function. The
company even went a step further by including
a balance of pre and probiotics for regularity
in optimal digestive health, and digestive
enzymes so your body absorbs the high-caliber
nutrition you get from INVIGOR8.
While there are over 2500 testimonials on
Amazon about how INVIGOR8 “gave me more
energy and stamina” and “melts away abdominal
fat like butter on a hot sidewalk”, what really
impressed me was how many customers raved
about the taste. So I had to give it a try.
When it arrived I gave it the sniff test. Unlike
most meal replacement shakes it smelled like
whole food, not a chemical factory. So far so good.
Still INVIGOR8 had to pass the most important
test, the taste test.
And INVIGOR8 was good. Better than good.
I could see what Zee meant when he said his
clients found the taste addicting.
I also wanted to see if Invigor8 would help me
burn that body fat I’d tried to shave off for years to
achieve total definition.
Just a few weeks later I’m pleased to say, shaving
that last abdominal fat from my midsection
wasn’t just easy. It was delicious.
Considering all the shakes I’ve tried I can
honestly say that the results I’ve experienced from
INVIGOR8 are nothing short of astonishing.
A company spokesperson confirmed an
exclusive offer for Men’s Health readers: if you
order INVIGOR8 this month, you’ll receive
$10 off your first order by using promo code
“MEN10” at checkout. If you’re in a rush to
burn fat, restore lean muscle and boost your
stamina and energy you can order INVIGOR8
today at www.Invigor8.com/Men or by calling
1-800-958-3392.
MEN’S HEALTH | JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 47
 MIND REBOOT

And maybe the changes you’ve FIND YOUR

made to your life during the
pandemic have been, as weird as
it feels to admit, pretty positive.
You might be working from home
more. Perhaps you stopped drink-
ing (at least Monday through
Wednesday) or you took up trail
running (900 feet of elevation
this morning!). But even thinking
about work leaves you exhausted.
Unenthusiastic. You’re crispy
around the edges.
What to do now: Bringing your-
self back from being fried is about
adjusting how you think and
what strategies you use to prevent
yourself from getting all burned
up again in the future. Consider
the following. . . .
2 PERCENT
When career strategist Stacey Sta-
aterman is coaching someone through
feelings of burnout and disillusionment,
she tells them that they can put about 98
percent of the blame on the workplace.
True, employers have cut people and
left you to pick up the slack, so there’s
no way you can shut your laptop at
6:00 P.M. “The safety net’s full of holes,
and there’s pressure from up top, and
everything has just gotten faster and
more expensive,” Kelley says.
Still, that’s only 98 percent. “You need
to ask yourself, ‘What’s my 2 percent?’ ”
Staaterman says. “Maybe it’s that you
can’t say no to anyone. Maybe it’s that
you treat everything on your to-do list as
equally important, so you’re in a pressure
cooker all the time.” That’s the stuff that’s
going to travel with you from place to
place and burn you out again and again.
Drill down and find your patterns.

INTERROGATE
YOUR URGE
TO QUIT
The problem with
quitting is that quitting is
a lot of work. Suppose you
decide to do something
new. “To make it commen-
surate with what you were
doing before, you usually
end up working more
hours,” says Manhattan-
based clinical psychologist
Brien Kelley, Ph.D. “Worse,
you work less-boundaried
hours.” So before you
get the heck out of your
current job, you’ve got to
wonder, “What’s on the
other side of quitting?”
Note: Hustling is mostly
unpaid work.
DETACH FROM “PASSION”
Meaningful work can burn you
out just as much as meaningless
work. People who think they have
a passion for something and aren’t
finding it in what they do report
lower job and life satisfaction, more
conflict with coworkers, and higher
burnout, says Kira Schabram, Ph.D., a
burnout researcher at the University
of Washington.
Schabram saw this clearly in
research she and a colleague did with
animal-shelter employees. They’d
assumed that those who were the
most passionate would also be the
most likely to do well. They found the
exact opposite: The ones who came
in wanting to make the world a better
place for animals were working long
hours, neglecting other parts of their
lives, and feeling overwhelmed by
stress. But the ones who said, “I’m
just here to work, to learn, and to be
part of a community” were leading
the field 20 years later, she says.
What you really need from a job isn’t
“meaning”; it’s to feel that you have
autonomy and competence—the
sense that you can gain mastery over
what you’re doing and that you are
connected to others. Living without
these “satisfactions,” as researchers
call them, is tinder for burnout. Mean-
ing, it turns out, may not be something
you start with and work down from.
Instead, it’s the act of meeting these
needs—deciding how you’re going to
apply your skills to gain mastery, for
example—that creates meaningful
work. Sit down and figure out which of
them are missing and what you can do
about it, says Staaterman.
 TAKE
TRANSGRESSIVE
BREAKS
Experts agree that working more won’t
pull you out of burnout. Pausing for a
moment and doing something else may.
But here’s the thing: You need a pause
that’s not just a walk-around-the-block/
call-a-friend pause. It has to feel like
something you’re not “supposed” to do.
It shouldn’t be something that gets you
ahead or that you have to ace, like going
on a long hike so you can post about it.
Kelley says, “For instance, if I have all
sorts of billing crap to do but I just had an
early-afternoon cancellation for an hour,
you’d better believe I’m taking a nap.”
This kind of break may not be easy at
first. Best-selling author Eve Rodsky’s new
book, Find Your Unicorn Space, is about
how to make time for yourself when you
don’t have time. In interviewing 750 peo-
ple for this and a previous book, she saw
that no one felt guilty when they were
making money from a side hustle. They
didn’t feel guilty when they were parent-
ing or if they were taking care of some-
one, but the second they didn’t assume
any of those roles, the idea of “Oh, I can’t
do it. I don’t have time” came out.
The things you “don’t have time” to do
are exactly what you need to do. “Going to
the gym is great, but that’s your baseline,”
Rodsky says. “I’m talking about thriving.

SKIP
Thriving comes with the active pursuit of
what makes you you—and sharing that
with the world.” Give yourself permission
WORK-SPONSORED to be unavailable from your other roles
and do what doesn’t get you ahead. Ide-
WELLNESS ally, share it with others. Guide a hike on
your favorite trail with your friends. Teach
Employers love wellness initiatives. Mental-health experts
someone to play the drums.
get why you don’t. “You’re working at some place and you’re
Because, of course, those activities
grinding out 85, 90 hours a week, and then they throw you a
actually do get you ahead. Make time for
workshop . . . a mindfulness workshop?” says Kelley. It feels like
them. Look at it this way: The extra time
one more thing to do. And it might not even be effective. A 2019
you’ve given work adds up. A nap here,
Harvard Medical School study found that one large company’s
a drum riff there is not an indulgence in
workplace wellness program didn’t ultimately improve crucial
today’s work environment. Work pushes
markers of wellness: absenteeism, job performance, and
into our lives, so we need to push what
health-care spending. Instead, a change to a more supportive
rejuvenates us into “work time.”
corporate culture might help. Burnout researcher Christina
When you commit to meaningful
Maslach, Ph.D., at the University of California, Berkeley, puts it
breaks—even short ones—you’re not
Dan Saelinger/Trunk Archive

this way: “Imagine investigating the personality of cucumbers

just restoring your energy and optimism;
to discover why they had turned into sour pickles without ana-
you’re also restoring work’s proper role
lyzing the vinegar barrels in which they had been submerged.”
in your life. It isn’t a monolithic, oppres-
But for many people, corporate change is not going to happen.
sive everything but rather something
If that’s the case, then “you have to look at all the systems
you can manipulate when it demands too
and processes you’re participating in and ask, ‘What can I
much of you. The Great Resignation is
control? What can I influence? And what can I absolutely not
leaving lots of workers with more lever-
control?’” Staaterman says. Then take one small step at least
toward controlling what you can control. age. Don’t quit. Push back.

MEN’S HEALTH | JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 49

 MIND MOOD BOOSTS T H E E X P E R T : G R E G O R Y S C O T T B R O W N , M . D. , is a
psychiatrist, a Men’s Health advisor, and the founder and
director of the Center for Green Psychiatry in Austin.

SO MAYBE YOU DON’T NEED A

PRESCRIPTION...
A LOT OF GUYS ARE surprised when they
ask me if there are supplements they can take
instead of prescription mood meds and I say, “Yes.”
Many docs recommend prescription medications
because they’re so well studied. Supplements are
trickier because they don’t have that same amount
of backing. Yet there is evidence for some of them.
Below are my favorites—with caveats, of course.
Ideally, talk to a doc before taking them to be sure
they won’t interact with other meds. Since supple-
ments aren’t approved by the FDA, scan the label
for an NSF, Informed Choice, or other third-party
certification; it’s the best way to know if they con-
tain what they say they do. If your mood symptoms
are mild, here’s what we know so far about what
may help you feel better.

FISH OIL ASHWAGANDHA SAM-E RHODIOLA ROSEA

USEFUL FOR:

WHAT TO TAKE:

WHAT ELSE TO KNOW:

50 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH ILLUSTRATIONS BY ELIAS STEIN

KEEP IN MIND
The effects of supplements
are milder than those of RISHI MANDAL
prescription products.
They shouldn’t be used as COMPETING WITHApple Fitness, Peloton, and others for a sliver of the
a strategy to treat severe $5-billion-plus home-workout pie is daunting. Rishi Mandal, CEO
mental illness without of Future, devised an app that brings real trainers (almost as many
working closely with a
as the U. S. military employs!) into your smartphone, reportedly
psychiatrist. If you have
raising more than $30 million in funding. Here’s how the 36-year-
severe depression, bipolar
disorder, schizophrenia,
old father of two schedules his day. —TAYLYN WASHINGTON-HARMON
or suicidal thoughts, some
supplements can exacer-
bate these conditions.
6:30 A.M. He claims it helps
him step back and
ning note on his phone
aptly named “TIL” for
GET UP AND ABOUT listen more. “I have a “Today I Learned.” His
If Mandal isn’t woken three-column system most recent auditory
up by his alarm, he’s where I’ll write notes read? The American
woken up by his kids, on the left, feedback Story, by David M.
aged one and four. in the middle, and ran- Rubenstein. “Hopefully
He brings them in for dom ideas I have on writing down notes
some quality family the right, and it turns embeds them more
time first thing in the into a chronological deeply,” he says.
morning. “It’s a little timeline of the day,”
bit of chaos to start
every day,” he says. “A
he says.
6:15 P.M.
time I can really lean
into and enjoy.” 12:00 P.M. CHEF IT UP
Aside from CEO, hus-
FIT IN SOME band, and dad, Mandal
L-THEANINE 8:00 A.M. FUTURE
On weekdays, he
plays the role of home
chef, whipping up a
WALK AND TALK pencils in a weightlift- self-described “elab-
The rest of his morn- ing session with his orate” meal for his
ing, he’s on autopilot, Future coach to keep family each evening.
starting with coffee in shape. “I never miss His baked fish with
(a bright Ethiopian [a workout], because I sherry and a pat of but-
blend) and a veggie relentlessly schedule ter is a hit. “I always
breakfast burrito like everything,” he says. make a first course,
clockwork. His first “I don’t have to think fast, which is usually a
phone meeting of about anything. I just vegetable like romane-
the day, often with hit start.” After, he sco broccoli,” he says,
Future’s chief operat- grabs a meal-prepped to keep the kids from
ing officer, is always a lunch, which is usually getting hangry. “The
walking one, no video salmon, a complex fish comes out amaz-
required. “Getting carb like brown ing, and you have to
moving and thinking rice, spinach, and do very little.”
kinda sets the tone for roasted carrots, to
my day,” he says. eliminate excess
decision making and
10:00 P.M.
9:00 A.M. keep himself on track. PUZZLE DOWN
Mandal’s a rough
TRACK RANDOM
THOUGHTS 2:00 P.M. sleeper, and his solve
for getting a better
Mandal doesn’t get NEVER NOT night’s sleep is a puz-
many meeting gaps LEARNING zle habit. “Doing these
during the day, leaving Due to the pandemic, puzzles helps me stay
little room to decom- Mandal adopted a engaged and turn off
Jason Raish (Mandal)

press. To keep track of habit of listening to my screens,” he says.

his thoughts, he keeps audiobooks after By the time he’s done,
it old-school: with a lunch, compiling his he’s more than ready
physical notebook. thoughts into a run- to drift off to sleep.
 MIND DE-STRESS

Play
10 WAYS TO 2

UNWIND WITHOUT
Pickup
You may not miss the booze,
but you’ll probably miss the bar. So
round up some fit friends and/or
coworkers and schedule a weekly
run, pickup basketball game, or

HITTING lifting session. These activities

don’t require a ton of people to be
enjoyable (unlike pickup baseball

THE BOTTLE or kickball) and allow time for what

makes bars so great: conversation.

Whether you’re cutting out drinks or Do Things

just cutting back, you can keep your spirits up
without the spirits. BY SCARLETT WRENCH
3 on Your Own
You’ll do yard work and grocery
shopping alone—so why not the fun
stuff? Researchers have found that
people who go to the movies, see a
concert, or visit an art gallery solo
experience mental-health benefits
similar to those of people who go
in groups. Sounds like an excuse to
treat yourself to a nice dinner.

4 Rock
Out
Chills from your top
workout song signal that
your brain is pumping
out dopamine, a pleasure

1
chemical also released
by alcohol. Get more
workout tracks from
Cue Up Men’s Health on Spotify.
a Comedy
Laughing produces gamma waves, the same
high-frequency brain waves generated during a
solid meditation session, according to research
from Loma Linda University in California. And
the anticipation of a laugh can reduce stress
hormones. Start with Seth MacFarlane’s Star
Trek spoof The Orville: New Horizons.
52 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH
 8 Remix
Your
Schedule
Most people have a predictable drinking
routine, so note the moments when you’re
most likely to reach for a glass, says Dru Jaeger,
a cofounder of the mindful-drinking group
Actually
Delicious
Nonalcoholic
“Alcohol”
IF YOU LIKE . . .

IPAS, TRY:
Boulevard
Club Soda, and then prebook another event Brewing
on those days and at those times. If you tend to Company’s
Flying Start
chase the Sunday Scaries with a cold one and Slightly hazy,
TV, try a FaceTime with family. It’ll spare you pleasantly
the added stress of practicing self-control. peppery, and totally
capable of convincing you
for 30 minutes felt and your friends that NA
craft beer is a thing.
better than those who
did about 45 minutes of 9 Get Some LAGERS, TRY:
Brooklyn
Real Sleep Brewery’s
Special
Even one drink can leave you with that Effects
O’Doul’s this is
morning-after fog and slight headache. So
not. Finished
instead of a nightcap, order up that good rest with a round of dry
you keep saying you need. Gradually shift hopping, this beer is crisp,
it’s good for you. clean, and just complex
enough to stay interesting
6:00 A.M
sip after sip.

STOUTS, TRY:
Write
6 Things Off
Bravus
Oatmeal Dark
It’s as chocolaty
as a square of
Studio 33 (teeth). Ben Mounsey-Wood (illustration). Peter Crowther (film reel). Everflight (droplets). Courtesy brands (products).

dark, as malty
run wild. Reach for a pen instead of a as a slice of
pumpernickel, and as
drink, says Freddie Bennett, a former
smooooooth as Guinness.
drinker who’s now an ultrarunner and a
host of the podcast Over the Influence. GIN, TRY:
“Scribble nonstop for ten minutes. Monday Zero
You’ll get all that random shit out of Alcohol Gin
As with a
your head and maybe discover why you
were anxious in the first place.” journal Emotion found, traditional
London dry gin,
and the feeling made you’ll still taste
the juniper,
participants perceive air botanicals, and
spices. You just
Cook Some temperatures as warmer
7 Different Meals and more comfortable.
won’t taste the booze—and
will be surprised that you
don’t miss it.
Rewatching favorite movies BOURBON,
If you’ve ever felt satisfied by pulling
off a new recipe, researchers get also provides “emotional TRY:
Spiritless
you. A study in The Journal of Positive regulation,” according to Kentucky 74
Psychology found that people who Yes, nonalco-
frequently take on small, creative research out of American holic bourbon—
challenges—like cooking a meal they University. When was the in all its oaky,
caramelly,
haven’t before—report feeling content
and relaxed. Check out 31 ways to stir
last time you watched the smoky glory.
Put it in (what else?) a
up some contentment on page 86. Rocky collection? Kentucky mule.

MEN’S HEALTH | JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 53

 JACOB ELOR DI, the 24-year-old Euphoria actor,
has a hot show, a new film, and a string of
supermodel and movie-star exes. He’s on the rise,
and he’s glad. Kind of. Maybe.

BY LAUR EN LA RS ON

PHOTOGRAPHS BY BE AU GR EA LY

54 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 |

MEN’S HEALTH
 SOME GUYS ARE
METHOD ACTORS. JACOB ELORDI
IS A METHOD LIFTER.
TO PREPARE FOR the upcoming second season
of HBO’s Euphoria, on which he plays an amoral
high school quarterback, Elordi, 24, headed to a
gym he prefers not to name, an exclusive luxury
ab bunker in Los Angeles popular among You-
Tubers, TikTok teens, and other wretches of the
hype milieu who, invariably, train shirtless.
“I would never train shirtless,” Elordi
says in his thick Australian accent, “but
from day dot, I would just rip my shirt off
and have, like, headphones on, playing
Rage Against the Machine. I was trying to
understand this mentality of what it is to
be in the gym and look at yourself in the
mirror and be like, Faaaack, I look good.”
This is not Elordi’s typical vibe. When
we meet at a Blue Bottle Coffee in Malibu,
he seems to be trying very hard not to be
seen. He’s tied an expensive-looking floral
scarf around the lower half of his face, and
he is wearing large black sunglasses. His
pants and jacket are loose and Carhartt-y.
Between his height—he’s six-foot-five—his
partly obscured face, and his baggy clothes,
he gives the impression of several children
stacked on one another’s shoulders,
disguised as a grown man. It is immediately
clear to all in this Blue Bottle that he is an
incognito famous person.
The Malibuans who do recognize him,
by his thick brows, maybe, would likely
be surprised that he does not often think,
Faaaack, I look good—that Jacob Elordi is
not as obsessed with Jacob Elordi’s body as
everyone else is.
Right now he’s more preoccupied with
being noticed for something besides his
pecs, his height, his out-of-this-world jaw-
line, and his dating life (until recently he
was with Kaia Gerber—yes, Cindy Craw-
ford’s daughter). He’d like to be noticed for
his work, for instance. Beyond starring in
Euphoria’s second season, premiering on
January 9, Elordi will appear alongside Ben
Affleck and Ana de Armas in Deep Water
(out January 14), a film based on the novel
by Patricia Highsmith and coadapted by
Euphoria creator Sam Levinson.
56 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH
But Elordi gets it: He stands out. He tow-
ers over everyone in Blue Bottle. He’s espe-
cially tall for the film industry, in which
actors are often much shorter than they
appear onscreen—a holdover from when
leading ladies and leading men had to be
close in height, Elordi speculates. He is
tall enough that petite costars sometimes
need to stand on a box to be squarely in the
shot, or he must split his legs into a V to
mitigate the vertical differential.
Everybody has something to say about
Elordi’s height. When his mother urged
him to try modeling when he was 15, he was
told he was too tall for the sample sizes.
(“I’m very grateful,” he says of his aborted
modeling career. “I truly think I would’ve
been miserable if I had to do that.”)
He’s been told he’s too tall to be an
actor, too. But how, he asks, does height
affect someone’s empathy or emotional
availability? “I guess tall people don’t
experience things,” he jokes. One could
make the argument that they don’t—that,
per the memes, a tall man occupies such a
privileged position, à la Jon Hamm in the
hot-guy bubble on 30 Rock, that his empa-
thy is limited. But one does not make this
argument to Jacob Elordi at this time.
Besides, he explains, he’s not actually
that tall. “The trick is they just always
cast me with girls who are five-foot-two.
Everyone’s like, ‘You’re so big!’ Yeah, but
they’re also not big, not even average-sized
women. They’re quite small.”
Indeed, in several scenes in Netflix’s The
Kissing Booth, now a three-part franchise,
Elordi’s costar Joey King is barely level
with his torso, craning her head to speak
to him. And Euphoria deploys Elordi’s
height strategically: In many scenes, his
character, Nate, looms over his on-and-off
girlfriend Maddy, sometimes protectively
and sometimes threateningly.
On Euphoria, Elordi’s body becomes a
dark symbol of a young man’s inner tur-
moil—over the pressure to be strong and
stoic, even sociopathic; over his attrac-
tions; over his dad’s porn collection. His
character is the epitome of white-male
privilege. He lives in an imagined honor
culture, weaponizing his strength and
untouchability. He does a lot of pullups.
Nate’s more brutal moments are accom-
panied by a moody track by the rapper
Labrinth. His theme song, “Nate Grow-
ing Up,” has a thumping beat punctuated
by a pained, primal male “Uaaahhh!”
Elordi has the song on his phone and plays
it when he’s working to get in the lunatic-
asshole spirit.
Before I watched it, Euphoria was
described to me as “dark Degrassi.” In the
first season, Nate chokes Maddy, severely
bruising her neck. When her parents learn
of the assault and move to press charges,
Nate creates a web of manipulation: He con-
vinces her to say another man choked her,
he intimidates that man into confessing to
the crime, and he blackmails a character
into claiming she witnessed the other man
committing the assault. Uaaahhh!
It’s a brave performance for an actor
who is relatively new on the scene, in part
because Nate is so hateable. (Elordi, for
what it’s worth, thinks we throw around
the word brave too liberally, especially
when it pertains to celebrities taking risks
from the safe perch of being a celebrity—
he has an idea for a film that plays with that
notion, but he won’t share it on the record.)
His behavior in season one inspired think
pieces and Twitter rage: Nate was a totem
for very, very toxic masculinity.
But at least people weren’t just talking
about Elordi’s body anymore.
THE OTHER CUSTOMERS
in line for coffee seem more interested
in the guard dog at Elordi’s feet, Layla.
Before anyone can stare at the actor too
long, Layla peers up with her warm eyes
and the moment is over, the potential

interloper distracted. Layla is ten months
old, and she is one of those golden retriev-
ers—the runt of a friend’s litter, Elordi
says—who appear to be smiling at all
times. She is sweet and soft and good, and
she goes everywhere with him. She guards
Elordi in the metaphorical sense, absorb-
ing attention and giving him something to
talk about and fidget with.
At the register, Elordi orders an oat-
milk latte. The cashier rings him up and
then peers at Layla. “I have to ask: That’s
a service dog, right?” “She is,” Elordi
answers pleasantly. Layla, who is wearing a
which hasn’t been particu-
larly bright anyway thanks
to a robust mist, is setting.
He starts our conversa-
tion sitting rigidly. Some-
times he looks down at the
table’s chessboard surface,
but mostly he stares straight
ahead, his gaze unnerving
through the dark sunglasses,
unreadable, like an FBI
agent’s. But soon he begins
to move more. He leans in
and out, hunching over and
twisting to the right, peering
at me with his left eye. He says
he typically gesticulates and
fidgets a lot in conversation,
so I take it as a good sign.
Soon he takes off his shades
and appears friendlier.
The shyness is endearing,
and a little unexpected from
someone so Abercrombie
looking. The attention on
his body—which was full-
on after The Kissing Booth,
for which he trained twice a
day, seven days a week—has
unsettled him. The mov-
ie features a scene where
Page 55: Vintage a foam football bounces
tank, available at the sat i sf y i ng ly of f h i s
Society Archive;
sweatpants by True
taut biceps like a grape
Classic; sneakers off a firm mattress. “You
by Salomon; socks learn quickly that what
by Nike. This page:
T-shirt by Hiro people take away from
Clark; sweatpants those movies is your stat-
by Cotton Citizen; ure and your figure,” he
sneakers by Salomon;
socks by Nike. says. “You have all sorts
of aged people around
the world only talking about
what you look like.”
Women might eye-roll at a
man apparently discovering
global objectification, and
utilitarian-style harness that could rea- Elordi’s fandom may be more benign than
sonably mark a service dog in training, the kind experienced by female actors, but
gazes up at Elordi adoringly. “Great,” the there are also fewer structures in place to
cashier says, looking relieved. insulate young men from that attention.
When Elordi has taken a seat outside at a Whereas sensitivity in how we talk about
stone table, I ask him whether Layla is actu- and write about women is on the rise, objec-
ally a service dog. “Yeah,” he says, but then tification of men is often met with a “Must
qualifies: Well, he’s done the service-dog be nice!” dismissal. “I don’t think it’s really
paperwork. “She makes me happy, which a conversation that people have in regards
is a service.” Layla curls up on the ground, to men,” Elordi says. “It doesn’t keep me
unaware that she is living in sin. Elordi up at night, but it’s definitely frustrating.
removes his face covering—pow, that sharp You’ll go to a shoot and you’ll be getting
jaw!—but leaves his sunglasses on, even changed or something, and someone’s
though it’s late afternoon and the sun, like, ‘Oooaaah, would you look?’ Can you
MEN’S HEALTH | JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 57

imagine if I said to a woman, ‘Daaaaamn,
look at your waist!’? Like, see you later. I
would never do that, but I think people see
it on their screens, so they think it’s okay.”
His is not a serious grievance, he under-
cuts, but he’s concerned about how the focus
on his body might influence audiences’
perception of him. And he’s worried about
how it could affect his self-perception. “It’s
a slippery slope to put all your value into
the vanity of what your body looks like,” he
says. “Your body is going to deteriorate.”
Elordi’s may deteriorate less. Objecti-
fication was an unsavory by-product of
his training for The Kissing Booth, but he
enjoyed the training itself. His mother used
to be a personal trainer—he grew up in a
“very, very fit family” in Australia—and he
was an athlete in high school, so exercising
and eating well have always been big prior-
ities. And when he’s not motivated by aes-
thetics, like when he’s training for a role,
he exercises because he wants to feel good,
now and when he’s 80 years old.
Elordi seems preoccupied with not being
too inextricably tied to his fitness, and with
the perceived binary between being extra
fit and being a serious creator. His ambi-
tions suggest that he’s much better aligned
with Deep Water than, say, The Kissing
Booth—more Ben Mendelsohn than Chris
Hemsworth. (The Aussie actor he really
looks up to, though, is Margot Robbie. Out-
side of her work, he says admiringly, “you
Styling: Ted Stafford. Grooming: David Cox/Art Dept. Set design: Danielle von Braun/Art Dept. Production: Crawford & Co Productions.
don’t hear much about her.”)
His role in Euphoria, too, suits him, even
if neither the HBO series nor The Kissing
Booth was true to Elordi’s own high school
experience. This is partly because, he
explains, Australian schools look very dif-
ferent from American ones. “They feel kind
of communist here or something. There’s
barbed-wire fences and, like, lockers. Ours
are much more like a community.”
Elordi also wasn’t a sociopath in high
school, so when he’s acting on Euphoria,
he typically just does the opposite of what
he would have done as a teenager. But he
did go to a “pretty insane” private all-boys
Catholic school in a wealthy part of Mel-
bourne, he says, “and that was not sort of
like my position in the world, but it was
definitely an eye-opening experience.”
Opposite, top left and right: Tank by Calvin
Klein; sweatpants by Russell Athletic, available
at Macy’s; sneakers by Salomon. Bottom right:
Tank by Hanes; shorts by Hiro Clark; sneakers
by Salomon; socks by Nike. Bottom left:
Vintage tank, available at the Society Archive;
sweatpants by True Classic.
“IT’S A SLIPPERY SLOPE
TO PUT ALL YOUR VALUE
INTO THE VANITY OF
WHAT YOUR BODY LOOKS
LIKE. YOUR BODY IS GOING
TO DETERIORATE.”
Elordi pauses often during our conver-
sation, peppering his sentences with cool-
guy ums and likes. Yet when he begins to
describe the culture of the school, his syntax
falls apart completely. “Um, looking back at
some of the . . . that happens there, it’s like,
absolutely not like, uh, they say that, you
know, to build young men. . . . Um, but no, I
don’t think that the structure of that school
did anything for building young men at all.”
There were no girls to balance out the
vibe, either, Elordi says, apart from at
dances with a sister school. He has three
sisters, and he’s very close to his mother (“I
have a brother and a dad as well, but I grew
up in a house of women, you know?”), so he
sometimes felt like an outsider in conver-
sations with his classmates. “Seeing the
way they spoke about things at the school, I
was like, This doesn’t make any sense. How
could you speak like that?”
He further attributes the school’s cul-
ture to its emphasis on athletics, pointing
to a “win-or-lose mentality” and a bigger-
better-stronger mindset. But Elordi was
cut loose from the glory of manly sport by
a twist of fate—and bone.
He played r ugby throughout high
school, and he was pretty good at it—right
up until the day he went in for a tackle and
collapsed on the ground. He’d broken a
bone in his back. He had to lie on the floor
during school for a year and still feels the
injury every day, but he’s glad it happened
regardless. He had arrived at a crossroads:
He knew he wanted to be an actor, but in
such a sports-driven environment, he
felt pressure to focus on athletics. “I was
at a point where I wasn’t enjoying playing
sports anymore and it let me just be like”—
he shrugs—“and just fade away, onto the
stage. Which was really, really rewarding.”
Many Aussie actors now popular in
the U. S. have salmon-swum up Austra-
lia’s soap-opera pipeline, scoring roles
on Home and Away (Chris Hemsworth,
MEN’S HEALTH
Isla Fisher, Heath Ledger) and Neighbors
(Margot Robbie, Liam Hemsworth, Rus-
sell Crowe). Elordi auditioned many times
for both shows but was never cast. “I dunno,
I wasn’t very good,” he says, laughing. “I
was pretty bad.”
He went to acting school in Mel-
bourne and got better, then burst from
the Hollywood womb with an ease and
alacrity suggestive of someone with a
Hollywood-adjacent producer relative,
which, as far as I know, he does not have.
Now here he is, an ocean away from home.
WHEN IT’S ALMOST DARK
and Elordi seems to have relaxed, I risk
asking a question that alludes to his
relationship with Kaia Gerber, which,
according to scores of news outlets, ended
shortly after our meeting. I wonder
whether the attention he received when
spotted with her was more overwhelm-
ing. Elordi straightens up from the table,
slackening his face and deadening his
eyes, looking away before saying anything.
(Uaaahhh!) He answers the question
politely, but he speaks coolly—I’ve pried/
overstepped/intruded.
“She handles herself wonderfully
publicly,” he says of Gerber, “and I’ve
learned so much from her about how to
handle it, how to deal with it and just kind of
be whatever about it, you know?”
“Handling it” is relative when you’re the
sort of actor who attracts tabloid clicks and,
often, acerbic speculation about your rela-
tionships. In September 2020, for instance,
a Twitter user shared three photos of Elordi
with three different women—Joey King,
Zendaya, and Gerber—at the same out-
door market. Ultimately, in a response to
the national outburst, he shared a photo of
himself video-chatting with his parents on
Instagram. “This is a reminder that I am a
human being,” Elordi wrote.
| JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 59
 FIRE
But generally Elordi just FRENEMY EXERCISE “The principle of it is again, that he’s not com- Opposite: Tank
blinders himself and tries “Legs. Sucks. All of it. nice,” he says. “It helps plaining, “just observing by Hiro Clark;
sweatpants by
to ignore the attention. Especially lunges.” me check myself a lot and evaluating.” Cotton Citizen.
Layla, beyond providing WORKOUT ANTHEM of the time and make Our formal interview
the joy a puppy inherently “Any Eminem song.” sure that my head is not, over, we walk to the park-
does, seems to help him you know, the size of an ing lot, Elordi hollering “thank you” into
engage with his surround- CHEAT MEAL air balloon. But at the the Blue Bottle as he passes. Layla coquett-
“A Slurpee and popcorn. I
ings while still keeping same time, sometimes ishly waits to be hoisted into the back of
have to have that when I go
himself at a remove. A lit- to the movies.” it can be quite crippling, his black Range Rover, where she instantly
tle boy wearing cool blue because you don’t want to curls up on a blanket.
elastic-band kid glasses BOOK YOU RECOMMEND accept any of the praise Before he can get in, the actor is hailed
passes by several times “Bewilderment, by or good things that come by four young women, one with her phone
Richard Powers.”
on his tricycle, hoping from the work.” out, and gamely chats with them for five
to get her attention. The YOUR GO-TO WHEN His family still lives minutes. His publicist is very protective
actress Jennifer Coolidge, YOU’RE COOKING FOR in Australia, which has of him and his time, he explains, but the
or a strong look-alike, SOMEONE become more difficult day has been long.
“Chicken burgers.”
emerges from a nearby to visit due to Covid. He Then he climbs into the car, and as he
parking lot and drifts by, THE MOVIE YOU SAY IS speaks to his mother pulls out of the parking lot, his mother calls
looking warmly at the dog. YOUR FAVORITE TO often, pretty much when- him on Bluetooth—he promises to call her
Elordi leans down and pets IMPRESS SOMEONE ever he’s driving, but he back. As he drives, he leans back in his seat
Layla absently. “I just “8½.” wishes he could visit on and brings one long leg almost up to his
want to be a part of the YOUR ACTUAL weekends at least. chin. He is the opposite of a white-knuckle
world,” he says. “I want to FAVORITE MOVIE He moved to America driver. When he misses an exit, he
have a life. I want to have “The Dark Knight.” when he was 19, and he exclaims, “Damn, missed the tin-off!” But
the same 80-, 85-year— barely knew anybody. “It’s he doesn’t seem overly stressed about it.
more or less—experience EUPHEMISM FOR SEX kind of stayed that way,” There’s an Australianism that Elordi
“Coitus. What a
that everyone has. I don’t strange word.” he says, five years later. “I particularly likes: She’ll be right, mate. I
want to miss anything by know a few people. I have ask him to use it in a sentence. He demon-
sitting on some overly sour a few friends. But I’m not strates with dialogue.
pile of candy.” mad about it. I’m here to “Oh, how are you feeling?”
Elordi is suspicious of his fandom in work, and then I’ll get home when I can.” “I’m upset.”
part because Australia is a country that, You have to do those first few years in “Ah, she’ll be right, mate.”
he explains, fosters a kind of militant Los Angeles, he continues, when you He whooshes down the Pacific Coast
humility in its citizens. It’s “tall-poppy don’t have much money or a real home Highway toward the city he currently calls
syndrome,” he says: You can be success- and you’re still finding your footing. Not home, the ocean dark beyond the road.
ful, but you shouldn’t be too success- that he’s complaining, he adds, because He’s young and talented and he’s figuring
ful or do too much to put yourself in the he’s had a lot of fun: “Some people work it out. She’ll be right, mate.
public eye. When he goes out in Austra- for decades trying to crack it, so I’m defi-
lia, he’s likely to be heckled, warmly— nitely aware, definitely gracious, for the L AUREN L A RSON is a writer living in
“all right, Mr. Hollywood”—or not. luck that I’ve had.” Later, he brings it up Austin, Texas.

ELORDI 40:20
WHEN IT COMES TO TRAINING, Jacob Elordi moves fast. He works out five days a week, doing
full-body sessions that give him that ripped core and lean physique. This is one of his favorites.
DIRECTIONS: Do each move for 40 seconds, then rest for 20 seconds. Do 4 rounds. Ben Mounsey-Wood (illustrations)

BATTLE-ROPE JUMPING JACK BALL SLAM

Squat in front of a tire and,
keeping your core tight, ex-
plosively lift the tire and push
it over. Run to the other side
of it and repeat. No tire? Do
kettlebell swings instead.
Holding a battle rope in each
hand, begin to do jumping jacks.
Instead of clapping your hands
above your head, though, raise
your arms so they’re just higher
than parallel to the floor.
Hold a med ball at your chest,
then raise it overhead, arching
your back and rising onto your
tiptoes. Slam it down, bending
your knees and pushing your butt
back. Grab the ball and repeat.
Start in an elbow plank, abs
and glutes tight. Place your right
hand on the floor and press up;
do the same on the left. Lower
to your elbows. Do another rep,
this time leading with the left.

60 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH

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IF YOU’VE never seen Zion Clark wres-
tling, there comes a moment in nearly
every one of his matches when he looks

“I HAD TO GET
just like every other competitor: in the
down position, flexing his broad chest,
massive arms, and sculpted back as he
fights to escape his opponent’s hold and

CREATIVE TO
gain the advantage. But once he does, it
becomes clear how he’s different: Clark,
24, has no legs, due to a rare condition
called caudal regression syndrome. The
Ohio native is well aware that this makes

REINVENT MYSELF”
ZION CLARK MAY SOON BE THE FIRST PERSON
TO COMPETE IN THE OLYMPICS AND THE
PARALYMPICS IN TWO DIFFERENT SPORTS. BUT
HE REFUSES TO BE DEFINED BY THAT GOAL
ALONE—HE’S GOT A GREATER PHILOSOPHY
ABOUT SUCCESS. BY JULIAN KIMBLE
him unique, but he’s adamant about not
being treated differently because of it.
“What I’m doing blows most people’s
minds,” says Clark, who now lives and
trains in San Diego, on a Zoom call in
October. “The first thing they’re thinking
is: Holy crap, he doesn’t have legs. And then
next, it’s: Holy crap, he’s actually beating
this dude up.” But in Clark’s eyes, he’s sup-
posed to do that. He’s developed the life
philosophy of “Be greater than”—as in be
greater than whoever you are today, or your
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From left: Clark prac-

ticing wheelchair rac-
ing and cross-training
in San Diego in 2021.
Below: The wrestler in
high school in 2016.

last accomplishment, or your self-doubt. 88 pounds, wrestled opponents who

It may sound clichéd, but that mentality
has kept him grounded and motivated
as he works toward the Paris 2024 Olym-
pic Games, where he hopes to become the
first American to make both the Olympic
and the Paralympic teams in two separate
sports—wrestling in the former, wheel-
chair racing in the latter.
In the meantime, there are plenty of ways
to see Clark’s indomitable spirit in action.
You can watch him in the 2018 Emmy-
winning Netflix documentary Zion, which
chronicles his life and his high school
wrestling career at Massillon High School
in Ohio. There, Clark, at three feet tall and
towered over and outweighed him, yet
as a senior, he was one point away from
making it to the state championship.
You can tune in to his YouTube channel,
where he provides a carefully curated
look at his world, in which he dives
into a pool, expertly plays the drums,
crushes battle-rope workouts and box
jumps, and even skateboards, all while
offering more inspirational maxims
similar to what you might hear during his
motivational-speaking gigs. And just a few
months ago, Clark set the Guinness World
Record for the fastest 20-meter dash on two
hands, with an impressive 4.78 seconds. In
the video he shared, you can see that his
first time was actually faster, but he had to
run the event again because he accidentally
ducked beneath the sensor at the finish line.
Clark’s other motto—“No excuses”—is
tattooed across his back. And while he
might lean on platitudes, his authenticity
and depth surface when he talks about past
experiences and future goals. He grew up
in Ohio’s foster-care system after being
put up for adoption as an infant. Ohio is
a wrestling state, so Clark began compet-
ing in second grade, in part to channel his
energy and aggression. He lost nearly all
of his wrestling matches until 2015, when,
during his senior year of high school, he
grew strong enough to compensate for his
lack of leverage and started to pin oppo-
nents. That same year, Clark was adopted
by Kimberly Hawkins, his foster mother,
and her advice—“If they are going to look
at you, make sure they remember your
name”—helped motivate him even more.
(It’s also featured in his new photo book,
Zion Unmatched.) Clark ended the year
with a 33–15 record and continued wres-
tling while pursuing a business degree at
Kent State University at Tuscarawas.
By the spring of 2020, he had bulked up
to 121 pounds and was preparing to wres-
tle in the U. S. Olympic team trials ahead
of the Tokyo Games when he tweaked his
shoulder, which he has to be very careful
with because he walks using his arms. That
along with Covid-19 regulations prevented
him from staying in wrestling shape, since
he couldn’t train with others, so he decided
to focus on wheelchair racing, something

he’d excelled at in high school. “I had to
get creative to reinvent myself,” he says. “I
wasn’t competing, but I was advancing my
skills behind closed doors.”
He began a cross-training regimen that
he maintains today. “All of his sports rely
on explosive athletic movement, so [his
training] involves replicating a lot of
that,” says Craig Levinson, a former pro-
fessional basketball player who’s Clark’s
manager and trainer. For example, Levin-
Courtesy subject (Clark, 2016; Paralympic training). Miranda Adejare (Hurd).
son will drop a medicine ball over Clark’s
chest and have him catch it, then jump into
an upright position. “We’ll do dumbbell
presses on the floor, which don’t require
as much core instability. It’s upper-body
plyometrics, almost: a lot of box jumps
that involve exploding with his hands.”  great things, but at the same time, I’d like to
In June, Clark competed in the U. S.
Paralympic track-and-field team trials for
the Tokyo Games, but he might have pushed
himself too hard, aggravating his shoulder
and back just before the event. Despite hav-
ing the fourth-best time in the country, he
was one spot short of making the team. In
response, he opted to change his approach
to establishing and reestab-
lishing goals: He’s stopped
viewing success and failure
as black and white. Instead,
he looks for lessons from
each experience. “Next
race, let’s try to get faster
with the hand speed and
more accurate strikes on
the wheel,” he says. “A lot
of people will just think,
Ah, I failed and feel sorry
for themselves. I think,
Ah, I failed—but I’m going
to do this better next time.”
Today, Clark says he
feels healthier than ever.
“In wrestling, I’m faster
and quicker in general, my
hand speed is faster, and
the execution of my take-
downs and submissions is
faster,” he says. “At the end of the day,
my technique is nothing if I’m not fast.”
He continues to rely on certain affirma-
tions to keep himself going. “‘I’m going
to get up today. I’m going to be strong.
I’m going after what I believe in—even if
I fail,’” he says. “Once you get the ‘I am’
mindset, nothing can break that.” But
he bristles at the idea that his story fits
the kind of archetypal motivational-
porn narrative of adversity overcome
that’s attached to so many Black ath-
letes. He wants to make clear that he’s
far more than the sum of his traumas or
whatever exceptionalism surrounds his
achievements. “When some people see my
story, it’s almost like, ‘Oh, I feel bad for
you and I’m sorry those things happened
to you.’ And I understand that, but at the
same time, I’m not that kid. I really want to
be known for what I’m doing and who I am.”
So he is looking forward, not backward.
In recent months, that’s meant training for
javelin throwing—another potential Olym-
pic sport for him—and sparring with some
MMA athletes. And he remains clearheaded
about the fine line between Zion Clark the
person and Zion Clark the athlete. “I might
be a wrestler, a track athlete, and all these
say that I’m a decent drummer—or just an
all-around decent musician,” says Clark,
who also plays the piano and trumpet. And
he believes he can still be greater than all
that. “The people in my circle expect me to
win,” he says. “They expect me to be suc-
cessful all the time because they’re right
there working with me.”
MEN’S HEALTH
CHANGE AGENTS
Hurd at his wedding
in September.
Below: In 2019.
“I lost 405 pounds with
portion control and a lot
of discipline” 
JORDON HURD, 48
BEFORE
660
CURRENT
255
LOST
405
AT MY HEAVIEST, I was 660
pounds. I loved going to the
shooting range with my friends, but
in January 2019, I remember thinking
that I never wanted to do that again
because of how much pain I was in.
My first step, and probably the
most helpful, was buying a food
scale. I had no idea what a portion
looked like. By measuring foods,
counting macros, emphasizing
protein and limiting carbs, and
reducing daily calories to 2,000 and
eventually 1,200, I lost a total of 160
pounds in 12 months prior to having
gastric-sleeve surgery.
It seems a lot of people go into
surgery with the mindset that it
will solve their problems. It will
not. All their eating issues will still be
there. I think that changing my diet
ahead of it made things much easier
for me. I also started working out a
few minutes every couple days
before surgery; now I work out for
30 minutes six days a week.
Discipline is very important. On
days I don’t want to work out or track
macros, I tell myself, “Don’t let your
weaker self win. Get up. Do the
work.” I’m 255 pounds now, and the
daily pain and struggles from being
morbidly obese have gone away.
—As told to Marty Munson
| JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 65
 CHANGE AGENTS

“A therapy app
changed my life” “I’LL DEFINITELY BE THE
FITTEST GUY
KAIF NASIR, 20

IN 2017, it felt like my whole

life had fallen apart. My partner

IN COUNTRY MUSIC”
dumped me at the same time
that my family was having
some financial problems. My
focus was wrecked. My
so-called friends started

T
cyberbullying me—they
thought I was being “weird” in
front of them when in reality I
was just trying to hide the
mental-health problems I was
dealing with.
At night I wanted to cry, but
I’d been taught to never do
that. “Man up” was what I’d
hear. From holding back my
tears, I’d have panic attacks at
2:00 or 3:00 in the morning.
I didn’t tell anyone about it,
thinking they’d judge me. But
when the panic attacks kept
coming, I knew I had to make
a change. I searched online
for resources where I could
talk to someone and found
the website 7 Cups (7cups
.com). You talk to a “listener”
who helps support you by
hearing what your problem is.
To be honest, I was scared
at first and feared being
judged about my problem
not being a big deal. But that
vanished within ten minutes
of talking to a listener. They
made me feel that my issue
was genuine, and I was pour-
KANE BROWN ALREADY HAS A STOCKPILE
OF NUMBER-ONE HITS. HIS NEXT GOAL: BECOME
THE STRONGEST MAN IN THE INDUSTRY.
BY MARIA SHERMAN
THE TRANSFORMATION began like a
song. It was the Fourth of July—a warm,
sticky day in Nashville. Country-music star
Kane Brown was on his back porch with his
wife, Katelyn Jae, and some close friends.
The conversation shifted to Granger
Smith, Brown’s latest opening act, a guy
who takes off his shirt after the last song
and throws it into the crowd. “He was just
so shredded,” Brown remembers saying.
That’s when singer-songwriter RaeLynn, a
friend of his, says Brown lifted up his shirt,
too. And they giggled. Not a hot-damn! gig-
gle. A that’s-silly-because-you-don’t-have-
Granger’s-body giggle. “So I told them,
from then on, ‘Just wait. I’m going to get
ripped,’ ” says Brown. “And every day since
athlete or enlisting in the Army, but he
stuck with music. His career took off after
he bailed on The X Factor USA. (The show
wanted the baritone to join a boy band;
he had other plans.) And the lifestyle of a
touring musician soon took hold.
“You’re having drinks before you go
onstage, and you’re eating whatever you
can get your hands on, sitting on the couch
all day, watching football, whatever—it
starts to hit you. I’m not 21 anymore,” says
the singer, now 28. “A lot of people think
that it is gonna hit you in your 30s; it’s like,
Nah, it hits you in your 20s—if you quit.”
And so, on July 4, 2020, after a good-
natured jab from a close friend, Brown
decided not to quit anymore. He and his
Grooming: Cindy Rich. Courtesy subject (Nasir).

ing out my emotions and I no

longer felt burdened. I felt at
ease. I decided to volunteer
and become a listener, too. If
you’re going through some-
thing, acknowledge it and
don’t hesitate to get profes-
sional help if needed. Be real
to yourself and talk about it.
—As told to Gina Loveless
then, I’ve started working out.”
Before the platinum records and the
CMT Awards, Brown was fit. At Chatta-
nooga High School, he was the quarter-
back of the football team, the captain of
the basketball team, a pitcher on the base-
ball team, and a member of the track team.
After graduation, Brown says, he con-
sidered trying to become a professional
security guard began exercising together
from 9:30 to 11:00 A.M. every day. “I’ll
usually take Sunday off, kind of like
Chick-fil-A,” Brown says. “Whenever I’m
in town, [it’s] Monday: weightlifting, like
chest and biceps. And then Tuesday would
be boxing, which works your legs, cardio,
and abs. And then Wednesday, back and
triceps. Thursday, back to boxing. And

66 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH BROWN PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHN SHEARER


then Friday, we would do shoulders. And
then probably biceps again.”
Yes, Brown looks fitter, but he says he’s
feeling the deeper benefits, too. It’s eas-
ier to pick up and hold his two-year-old
daughter, Kingsley Rose Brown. He has
more energy—a lot more. “Ask anyone who
has seen my show recently: I’m literally
sprinting across the stage.”
Brown says his progress hasn’t been lin-
ear, though. “I remember I [worked out] for
a couple weeks and then I stopped,” he says.
“Now that I’ve been boxing and doing car-
dio, I feel like my younger self again. I could
actually run two miles without collapsing.”
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STRONG
On tour, Brown has
embraced bodyweight
training, relying on sim-
ple exercises done for
high reps. Try his hotel
routine when you’re
tight on time and gear.
PUSHUP
Brown does 5 sets of 30.
Can’t get to 30 all at once?
Do as many good-form reps
as you can, rest 10 seconds,
then do more reps; repeat
this until you’ve done 30 reps
PLANK
Brown says he’s a SHOULDER-TAP
huge fan of lifting Start in pushup position,
weights, especially hands directly below your
the bench press, shoulders, feet shoulder
but knows that width apart, core and glutes
cardio (like boxing) tight. Without letting your
helps him stay lean.
hips move, lift your right
hand and touch it to your
left shoulder. Hold for a split
The trick to keeping up with second, then return it to the
it, he says, is pushing past the floor; repeat on the other
letdown when the results don’t side. Do reps for 30 seconds;
appear immediately. “I think it do 5 sets.
takes four to six weeks for you to
see progress.” AIR SQUAT
He’s easy-does-it with his diet Start standing, feet shoulder
and the rest of his lifestyle, too, width apart, abs and glutes
choosing to take small steps and tight. Push your butt back
work them into his life. and bend at the knees,
“I also knocked out Gatorade lowering your torso until
because of the sugar. I knocked your thighs are parallel to the
floor. Stand back up, squeez-
out fast food as much as possi-
ing your glutes. That’s 1 rep;
ble,” he says. “I get the chicken and rice.”
do 5 sets of 15.
He still won’t eat broccoli, though, and is
working on sticking to his sleep schedule.
“I’m a huge video gamer,” he says of his
BOXING
Whenever Brown can find
vice. “When my wife goes to sleep, that’s
a boxing gym, he makes a
when I play.” point to log some bag time.
So is Brown the most shredded guy in “It’s such a mental and
country music now? “Not yet,” he admits. physical workout,” he says.
His transformation is ongoing, but the Sneak heavy-bag time or
gains are evident. “I’ve actually gained shadowboxing into your
weight, in a good way. I started out at 170 routine once or twice a week
and I’m at 198. I’m trying to get to at least for a cardio workout that
210 or 215. If I get there, I’ll definitely be challenges your abs to boot.
the fittest guy in country music.”
You hear that, Granger Smith?
MEN’S HEALTH | JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 67
 Batalon crushing
it at a photo
shoot he wasn’t
quite sure he

T
would ever crush.

THE B E AUTIFUL PEOPLE are every-

where. They are on the movie posters, the
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vel actor Jacob Batalon—who was cast at

S

20 22
19 to play Spider-Man’s best friend, Ned
TRA

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NS Leeds, and later became one of Spider-

FORMATI
Man portrayer Tom Holland’s actual best
friends—says he’s not one of them. Not
during photo shoots with his Adonis-like
castmates. Not when he watches himself on
Jimmy Kimmel. Not when he and Tom are
filming a car commercial and FaceTiming
Robert Downey Jr., who is on a yacht, and
RDJ says, “Bro, Jacob, what the fuck’s up,
man? Everyone knows your fucking name

“YOU WANT TO
now.” Not even then.
And especially not now, a day before
his photo shoot for this magazine—even
though the 25-year-old is 50 pounds lighter

TREAT YOUR BODY

than he was when he joined the Marvel Cin-
ematic Universe.
“I’m honestly pretty nervous,” Batalon

LIKE YOU LOVE IT”

says. “I feel like every time I watch a
Men’s Health video, everyone in the video
Grooming: Mika Shimoda/Art Department

is already pretty jacked. I wish this was

SPIDER-MAN AND REGINALD THE VAMPIRE ACTOR
JACOB BATALON LOST MORE THAN 110 POUNDS—AND
THAT PART IS UNDER HIS CONTROL. EVERYTHING ELSE?
WELL, HE’S WORKING ON IT. BY JOSHUA ST. CLAIR
right at the peak of when I was working
out super-duper hard, because I looked
way better.” He says he’s anxious about
the Men’s Health photo shoot because he’s
always hated photo shoots. He was in L. A.
in early 2020, shooting a cover for Teen
Vogue. Beforehand, he looked in the mir-

68 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH BATALON PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHAD GRIFFITH

 ror and thought, This is not good. When
his picture from the shoot came out, he
says he felt embarrassed by his weight.
Batalon adds that he was damaging his
health for years. “As a kid, you don’t really
know how to process,” he says, explain-
ing how food became a remedy for private
stressors within his family. “I never really
fixed that trauma. Until now, food was that
[fix] for me.” That is, until Batalon started
to exercise. Now his workouts have turned
into his therapy, he says.
The actor’s weight-loss journey con-
tains all the familiar aspects. He stopped
eating junk. He started eating fewer,
smaller meals and focused on lean pro-
tein and vegetables. He exercised six days
a week, sometimes doing nontraditional
workouts in his backyard, with a medi-
cine ball and a bench, that “looked like
I was humping the ground.” He dropped
five pounds, and then he thought, Why
not another five? So he did that until it
was another ten, and then fifteen, and
sciously tell people to not be healthy.” In
an ironic twist, Batalon recently scored
his first lead role, in a TV adaptation of
the Fat Vampire novel series. So he had
to gain some weight back. And fans who
once thought he was too heavy to play a
Marvel sidekick now wrote, Hey, you’re
too skinny to play a fat vampire.
Batalon says he’s returned to his diet
after wrapping Reginald the Vampire, but
keeping the weight off will be his ongoing
struggle—physically and mentally.
“You want to love yourself, love your
body,” he says. “But you also want to treat
Batalon’s Ned (left) offering moral
support to Peter Parker in 2017’s
Spider-Man: Homecoming.
your body like you love it. And
feeding it shit—that’s not lov-
ing your body. That’s not lov-
ing yourself.”
At the end of the day, Bat-
alon says, as much as you
want to love yourself, it’s hard to face
cameras for photo shoots and actually
feel worthy. And so he is nervous for his
photo shoot—and not just because it’s
for a brand whose videos he watched
while trying to lose weight. He says he
knows the journey isn’t over yet. He’s still
reevaluating his relationship with food.
But he has a response for whoever wants
to guess just why he did what he did: Ulti-
mately, he did it for himself—no one else.
“Yeah, I lost a fucking shit ton of weight,”
he says with a Tony Stark–confident grin,
“because I’m a fucking G.”

JACOB BATALON’S
you get it.
But what’s different about Batalon’s story BREAKFAST: LUNCH: SNACK:
Two pieces of Lean protein Protein bar,
is how the Internet responded. “Being
multigrain toast, like chicken or fruit.

MEAL
a fat person, you’re only ever the butt of three hard- fish with a cup DINNER:
the joke,” he says. “You can never win boiled eggs. of white rice Lean protein like
everyone’s love.” He says he’s tried hard and a cup of

PLAN
SNACK: chicken or fish
to represent every community to which Fruit, rice vegetables. with rice and
he belongs, but “I don’t want to get back crackers with vegetables.
peanut butter.
to where I was. And I literally cannot con-

CHANGE AGENTS
BEFORE that works. Initially, I tried to
187 run at lunch because I was
not a morning person. But my
runs would get thrown off by
CURRENT work, so I began running early
153 in the morning. That means
Courtesy Marvel Studios (Spider-Man: Homecoming). Courtesy subject (Aboelnaga).

getting up between 3:30 and

AFTER AN ANNUAL
physical in January 2016,
I received my usual bad
results: I was overweight by
more than 30 pounds, and
my cholesterol was high. I
had a six-month-old daughter
“Running got my and realized I needed to do
weight and cholesterol something about my health if
I wanted to see her grow up.
under control” I’d been doing the
SHARIF ABOELNAGA, 48 occasional 5K and half
marathon, and I had been
telling myself for ten years
LOST
34
that I needed to run more
consistently but never
really managed to do it.
That year, I made a
resolution and started
running five or six days a
week, about four miles a
day. I slowly built up to five
miles, then six. Once I got
going, the weight started
coming off and I started
feeling and sleeping better.
The key to staying with it is
finding a time to work out
4:00, but it works. I can count
on one hand the number of
runs I have missed in the
past few years. I now do
marathons and ran my first
ultra in November 2020. Not
only does it help me stick to a
schedule, but it gives me time
alone to think about things,
like how to be a better person,
husband, and father.
I’ve lost almost 35 pounds,
and my cholesterol is back to
a healthy range. The key to
being consistent isn’t doing a
massive number of miles at
first; it’s about getting out
there frequently. —As told to
Emily Shiffer

MEN’S HEALTH | JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 69

Right: Beltran
tackling the first
workout of the
day in Miami.
Above right: The
chef in 2017, near
his peak weight of
365 pounds.

“BOXING CHALLENGED
just five years ago, he hit 365 pounds. Now
that he’s cut out junk food and started work-
ing out five or six days a week, his tattooed
arms ripple with muscle and his shoulders

ME TO DO SOMETHING
stretch his hoodie. By losing more than 170
pounds, he gained a new appreciation for
how working out and stress relief are a pow-
erful one-two combination. “What it really

I NEVER THOUGHT I COULD DO”

boils down to is: If you yourself are better
as a human, you can lead people better,” he
says. “I’m a much more confident leader and
have a far better understanding of the shit I

T
can do right and wrong.”
CHEF MICHAEL “CHUG” BELTRAN SHED AN ENTIRE Growing up in Little Havana, Beltran was
PERSON’S WORTH OF WEIGHT TO BECOME always the chubby kid, never saying no to his
A STRONGER VERSION OF HIMSELF. BY ERIC BARTON mom’s rich cooking. On the fifth day of high
school, he showed up late to class holding a
chocolate Chug and his teacher said, “Hey,
TE N H O U R S B E FO R E chef Michael Beltran a one-minute break, the chef says, chug-a-lug, you want to tell everyone why
Beltran, 36, begins an all-night shift at his “Thank fucking God.” you’re late?” The nickname stuck: Chug
acclaimed Miami seafood restaurant Navé, The pace keeps up for an hour. And it’s went on to play defensive tackle in high
he backs his ’61 Cadillac out of the garage just the first of three workouts Beltran will school and at Averett University in Virginia,
and then slips on a pair of boxing gloves to face on this day. In the afternoon, a second where he hit 280 pounds.
start his day off right. Soon he’s striking his trainer will guide him through an hour- In college, Beltran got his first job,
gloved fists into mitts held by trainer Jacob long core workout before he finally begins at Applebee’s. Once he began cooking
Hasbrouck as they spin on a concrete floor the kitchen work, an endurance event that in increasingly esteemed kitchens, he
that’s stained with motor oil. Hasbrouck he sees as both exhausting and energizing. adopted the hard-partying lifestyle that
calls out punches—jab, cross, uppercut, Today, Beltran stands five-foot-ten and often accompanies restaurant work. He
jab, jab, jab—and when he eventually gives weighs in at 195 pounds. But at his heaviest, smoked a pack and a half a day, and he’d

BELTRAN PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRYAN CEREIJO


drown post-shift adrenaline with Jameson
and Guinness, topped off with burgers or a
big breakfast at dawn.
By January 2016, he had achieved the
dream of every chef: opening his own restau-
rant, the Cuban American fine-dining spot
Ariete in Coconut Grove, Florida. But after
six months, he looked out from the kitchen
to see the place largely empty. He was
stressed, burned out, and temperamental.
One day, on his drive to work, Beltran was
about to open a brand-new pack of smokes
when he realized he resented just how much
he craved them. He tossed the pack out the
window and quit cold turkey. A few weeks
later, he cut back on booze to regain more
control of his life. Two months after that,
he headed to a boxing gym for the first time.
He met Hasbrouck during that first
Monday-morning boxing class at a Miami
gym called Punch. “That first time working
out, he’s not going to have much in the gas
tank,” the trainer remembers thinking. “So
I had to work him out just enough to where
he’ll burn calories but also come back.”
The new Beltran relies on double espres-
sos to perk up and eats in a way anyone can
copy: In the morning, he slathers a protein
Linette Cairo (Beltran, 2017). Courtesy subject (Oza).
waffle with peanut butter. After his work-
out, he downs a protein shake, followed
by a lunch of a simple protein like chicken
breast. If he’s doing a two-a-day workout,
he’ll have protein cookies for quick energy,
and after dinner service ends, he’ll reward
himself with a salad and another simple
protein. If he’s sampling new menu items,
he exercises extra hard the day before.
CHANGE AGENTS
As he started getting healthy, “my con-
fidence in myself and my food changed,”
he says. By 2018, Beltran was earning rave
reviews from local critics, and two years later
the James Beard Foundation chose him
as a semifinalist for its regional best-chef
award. He’s since expanded his empire,
opening Navé and a Cuban American
diner he named Chug’s. During the lock-
down, he decided to prioritize his health
even more by jumping into the ring. Learn-
ing how to avoid a jab and, when that fails,
“Reaching out helped
take the punch has taught him as much as me stop drinking”
anything about surviving different obsta- JAY OZA, 34
cles in life. “Boxing challenged me to do
something I never thought I could do. For my BEFORE
mental health, it’s incredibly important.” 185
When Beltran finally arrives at Navé CURRENT
for his shift, he moves briskly around the 165
restaurant. “Hey, this looks like fucking
good food,” he shouts back to the kitchen LOST
20
as plates head toward the crowded dining
room. “Just like that the rest of the night.”
O R M AT I
NSF
ON
TRA
S
20 22 IN COLLEGE, I drank at parties.
When I graduated into adult life,
TRA
S
ON
NS
FORMATI I didn’t stop drinking, and it crept
in during the week. I was groggy
and less efficient at work. My
father had traveled a similar path,
dying of complications of
cirrhosis. I was also overweight,
so I started intermittent fasting
and saw results. I wondered how
much better I could do by
cutting calories from alcohol.
After a couple months of
trying to stop drinking, I realized
that I would need some sort of
help. I got a referral to a men’s
recovery group and joined the
StopDrinking subreddit. I got
support from my wife, who was
also quitting. It helps a lot to
know you’re not the only one
out there trying to quit.
To manage cravings, I’d drink
seltzer, and I discovered that little
things like chewing gum,
sunflower seeds, and decaf
coffee would go a long way.
Left: Beltran goes Breathing exercises worked if
hard during a work- I was out and about. Sometimes
out with one of his I’d consciously remind myself of
trainers at his home all the progress I’d made. I’ve
in October. Above: been sober for three years, and
His routine includes I feel like I have constant mental
both boxing and clarity. Staying sober has also
core-strengthening allowed me to eat a proper diet,
exercises, plus a and once I stopped drinking,
healthy diet to stay I pledged to work out every day.
lean and driven. Breaking any bad habit is hard; it
helped that I didn’t have to do it
alone. —As told to Jesse Hicks 
MEN’S HEALTH | JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 71
 T is everywhere,
and it’s not just for swole
guys desperate to get
huuuge. New clinics and
digital purveyors want
you, me, dad bods, and
anyone feeling meh to
take small doses to help
with everything from
quelling anxiety to losing
ten pounds to feeling
more manly. There’s
plenty of science-backed
promise to those prom-
ises—and not a little
bit of peril. Here’s how
to make sense of both.
BY BILL GIFFORD

72 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH

NE

PHOTOGRAPHS BY C. J. BURTON
 Nope. The diagnosis: Alam was suffering from “existential MILLENNIAL GUYS are hardly the first generation to wish
millennial angst.” Frustrated, he went on to see a dozen more spe- they had a little more sauce on their McNuggets. In the late 19th
cialists before one finally deduced, via a blood test, that his testos- century, a brilliant but bonkers French scientist, Charles Brown-
terone level was very low. Endocrinology experts say that a healthy Séquard, injected himself with an extract of mashed-up dog and
man’s testosterone should range from about 264 to 916 nanograms guinea pig balls. Then in his 70s, he reported an immediate surge
per deciliter. Alam scored a 187. “The doctor said, ‘You’ve got the in energy and strength, as well as a wickedly improved pee stream.
testosterone levels of an 80-year-old man,’ ” he recalls. The male sex hormone testosterone was identified in the early
If the diagnosis was alarming, the fix was relatively simple. The 1930s, and decades’ worth of studies have confirmed what we all
doc prescribed hormone therapy, and within three months, Alam know: Testosterone helps men (and women) grow and maintain
says, he felt like his old self again. But the story does not end there. muscle mass, it heightens competitiveness, and, most of all, it
Four years after he walked out of that first doctor’s office, Alam is makes you want to go out and have sex—a seductive allure.
the founder and CEO of a telehealth startup called Hone that offers But the benefits aren’t just physical. “Testosterone signifies
“hormone optimization” to men in the throes of middle age. masculinity, and masculinity is power in a lot of ways,” says
Launched in April 2020, the company has a sleek website that Carole Hooven, Ph.D., an evolutionary biologist at Harvard and
promises “More energy. More confidence. More drive. Delivered to author of T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone That Dom-
your doorstep.” Hone resembles other players in the online men’s inates and Divides Us. “It’s dominance, it’s powerful, it’s sexy,
health space, such as Roman and Hims, which provide meds for and who doesn’t want more of that?”
erectile dysfunction and hair loss without
the need for awkward conversations with
your doctor. But Hone also represents a new
phase in the way men view, and use, hormone- OPTIMIZE YOUR T: STEP 2
replacement therapy. Once the favored elixir
of aging boomers and cheating athletes, tes-
tosterone is now being embraced by younger
generations, who find its promised benefits
CHECK IF 8–60:
Normal T
count

YOUR T
(adult woman) 157
enticing, especially because new science re-
veals there’s also a lower risk of dangerous 80–89

IS NORMAL
side effects than previously believed.
Companies like Hone are bringing T out 70–79
of the world of sketchy hormone clinics and
extreme-bodybuilding websites and making 60–69
it available to stressed-out millennials try- “NORMAL T” isn’t a single number.
Age

ing to kill their dad bods. The median age of a
man filling a testosterone prescription in the
U. S. is 53. The average age of Hone’s nearly
7,000 members is 39—just old enough to feel
the pangs of middle age. “The way I look at it,”
Alam says, “is I feel like I’m 25 with the expe-
rience of a 40-year-old.” But is testosterone
really, as Hone’s website claims, “One solu-
tion to many of life’s problems”?
74 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH
At every age, the range of normal is
50–59
huge—and the drop with age isn’t
always as dramatic (or present) as
40–49
people pushing T might make it
out to be. The range is a guideline.
Regardless of your number, no phy- 19–39
sician would diagnose you with low
T if you didn’t also have a symptom
like low libido or fatigue. —K. D. T count <150 ng/dL: Severe low T
(adult man)
 OPTIMIZE YOUR T: STEP 1
FEELING SLUGGISH, MEH IN BED, NOT YOURSELF?
The trouble is, many men see their T level begin
to decline to varying degrees after about age 35, GET YOUR T LEVEL TESTED.
slipping slowly as we ease into midlife. It becomes
You’ve got a bunch of testing options, but a few rules apply to all:
harder to keep (or get) muscle and far easier to ac-
Get two tests on two different days to arrive at an average, and aim
cumulate fat, and perhaps as a result, we end up
to get the test in the morning, when your T level is highest. (Levels can
feeling a bit blah in various areas of our lives—like
fluctuate up to 40 percent during the day.) —Kevin Dupzyk
Alam. Officially, he was diagnosed with hypo-
gonadism, which basically means “no balls.” It BASIC
wasn’t that he lacked testicles; it’s just that they
were failing to produce a normal amount of testos- THE HOME TEST
terone. #DeezNuts had checked out. You’ve seen the ads—Everlywell, MyLabBox, LetsGetChecked.
You take a blood or saliva sample, then mail it to a lab. Blood
His situation was not unique: With a little
is better because it allows for total-T measurement (and docs
digging, Alam discovered that an estimated 20
use total T to diagnose low T).
percent of his fellow under-40 men have a low tes-
tosterone level, defined as below 264. More alarm-
ing, testosterone levels in younger American men
appear to have fallen across the board. A study pub-
THE WALK-IN LAB TEST
Some labs, like Quest Diagnostics and Labcorp, let you or-
lished in 2020 found that the average testosterone
der a T test yourself, sometimes for as low as $70. You get
level in men 15 to 39 years old had dropped from
the benefit of having a pro draw the blood; that’s key since
605 in 1999–2000 to 451 in 2015–16—a 25 percent sloppy technique can contaminate a sample taken at home.
decrease in just 15 years. American men’s sperm
counts, which are related to testosterone, have
been plummeting for several decades. THE DOCTOR’S TEST
Odds are, your own body has been naturally Your doctor has access to a wider battery of tests than walk-in
suppressing your T for the past year or two. It’s an labs do, which may reveal more nuanced issues in your T level.
evolutionary imperative in times of crisis: Why
BEST
make babies if the world’s a dumpster fire? Joseph
Alukal, M.D., head of NewYork-Presbyterian’s new
men’s health program, has been telling patients
for years that if the Bronx Zoo tested the T level of
any social animal that’s newly confined, underfed, and agitated— about their changes with age and feeling like they’re losing a bit
even an alpha male—it will have crashed, because the body curbs of their edge, especially in the workplace,” says Peter Gray, Ph.D.,
the sex drive in times of stress. “In the last year, the universe ran a professor of anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Ve-
this experiment on all of us,” he says.  gas. “Someone in their 40s might think: I still need to go prove
Covid-related mind-body traumas and weight gain may be my worth in society. I’m too young to give up. But now I fall asleep
accelerating the low-T spiral, particularly for guys in their 40s early on a Friday night—what’s going on? And is there something
struggling with other societal stressors, too. “Men are thinking that I can take that can help address this?”

2.5 percentile 25 percentile 50 percentile 75 percentile 97.5 percentile

362 476 604 913

218 372 477 604 926

218 374 477 604 929

219 374 477 605 929

235 386 481 608 929

267 424 531 643 929

150–263 ng/dL: Low T 264–916 ng/dL: Normal T 1,000 ng/dL

(adult man) (adult man)

Source: The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

 OPTIMIZE YOUR T: STEP 3

KNOW YOUR BOOSTING OPTIONS

Indeed there is: Thanks to the wonders of modern DOCTORS LIKE OPTIONS, because every patient is different, says
pharma, testosterone is now available in a cornuco- UCLA’s Jesse Mills, M.D., author of A Field Guide to Men’s Health. Each
pia of forms, from creams to gels to patches to pills has trade-offs. Here’s what to expect. —K. D.
to shots to dissolvable lozenges—almost everything
short of testosterone-infused underwear. And it’s not
hard to get. While mainstream physicians may hew
to official prescribing guidelines, pretty much anyone
with a computer or smartphone can get some extra T
into their system with the right website.
Safety concerns about possible increased risk of
prostate cancer and cardiovascular disease, which NASAL PILL BUCCAL
prompted dire warnings for decades, have faded in GEL SYSTEM
the face of more substantial evidence linking low
Extremely con- Not crazy about nee- Comfortable with
testosterone levels to greater risk for all kinds of bad YOU ARE: cerned about your dles and have good the mechanism of
stuff, up to and including early death. One large study ability to make Rx coverage (or deep chewing tobacco. Or
out of Canada found that men who had undergone babies. Like, actually pockets). a Hone customer—
testosterone-replacement therapy for more than 16 make them, not the service offers
months actually had less chance of prostate cancer, just go through this delivery device.
the motions.
cardiac events, and death than men who’d had it for
shorter periods (or not at all).
YOUR Natesto, a fast- A new testosterone A rarely used tablet
Doctors are also discovering that the benefits of tes-
PRESCRIPTION: absorbing intranasal pill, Jatenzo, the first called a “buccal sys-
tosterone—helping men build muscle and lose fat— gel that preliminary one approved by the tem” (brand name:
could help treat other problems. In a recent clinical research suggests FDA in more than Striant) that sticks to
trial in overweight men with metabolic syndrome (a may not suppress 40 years. (Another, your gum like a plug
sperm production, Tlando, is getting of chaw and slowly
cluster of symptoms related to metabolic health, in-
as some other forms close.) The catches: dissolves over time.
cluding obesity and poor cholesterol), testosterone of T therapy do. Jatenzo is expensive, And like chewing
was found to help prevent them from slipping into and you’ll need a se- tobacco, it can even-
diabetes, says study coauthor Gary Wittert, M.D., a ries of doctor visits to tually damage your
professor of medicine at the University of Adelaide in dial in your dosage. gums and cheek.
Australia who has studied hormones for decades.
In a 2016 study, researchers conducted a series of
HOW OFTEN 3 times per day. 2 times per day. 2 times per day.
clinical trials in a group of 790 older men with very low
YOU’LL TAKE IT:
T levels. Testosterone supplementation was shown
to increase bone density and strength, and subjects
reported improved sexual function in the first year.
They also didn’t exhibit increased cardiovascular
risk, although the number of subjects was too low and
the study too short to draw any firm conclusions. All
in all: some pretty amazing findings. This trial—like most research into testosterone for antiaging
But that same 2016 study also revealed some of the ways that purposes—was done in a population of older men (all over 65) with
testosterone falls short in the miracle-drug department: The men very low testosterone. Those men benefit in specific ways that
on testosterone did not perform significantly better on most tests might be different from a younger guy’s experience. So where are
of physical function; they also did not see much improvement in the studies in younger and middle-aged guys? The 39-year-olds
their mood or cognition—two of the oft-cited benefits of testos- who are signing up for testosterone treatment online? “We’re do-
terone therapy. ing that experiment in the wild right now,” says Carole Hooven of
Harvard, “whether we admit it or not.”
Alam saw a way to turn his diagnosis into
WHEN I TOOK T... IN MY EARLY 40s, before I left the Navy SEALs , I noticed ma- a business: offer hormone therapy, but in a
jor changes, including memory issues and being tired. I was clean, safe, medically responsible way. A few
“I FELT THE told my T numbers—low 200’s—were still good. Another clicks on Hone’s website and a $45 testos-
CHANGES doctor found my triglycerides were over 1,000. I made a terone test kit will appear on your doorstep.
You consult with a physician, then squeeze
ALMOST decision to get my life under control, and T was a part of that.
a few drops of blood onto a card and send it
I take two small doses every week, some supplements, and
INSTANTLY” DHEA. I felt the changes almost instantly. Social changes back to be tested for eight different hormones
SA N TOS
were the biggest—I felt less cranky and more helpful with and biomarkers (all related to testosterone),
T RUJ I L LO, 4 9
others. My goal is to look for ways to naturally do the things with a follow-up test a couple of weeks later to
I’m replacing with drugs, but for now, this is the next best confirm the results and assess your prostate
thing and my life is back on track. —As told to Maddie Bender and cardiovascular health. Then comes an-
other discussion with a doctor to determine

76 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH

 THE NATURAL WAYS
ALTHOUGH STUDY results vary,
men who are sedentary or overweight
can get a 10 to 30 percent lift in total T by
making lifestyle changes, says Bradley
Anawalt, M.D., an endocrinologist and
professor at the University of Washington
Medical Center in Seattle. Some people
may see even greater gains. Stress is
especially detrimental to T, so emphasize
activities that help you relax. Think med-
itation and yoga. (Both have separately
TOPICAL STANDARD MICRODOSING SUBCUTANEOUS
GEL INJECTION PELLET been shown to boost T in the short term.)
If you exercise to reduce stress, that’s a
Low maintenance, Someone with a A person with a high Transitioning bonus. Working out regularly—combined
with typically mod- serious tolerance for metabolism and a gender, or you’re with eating better, good sleep hygiene,
erate symptoms, and frequent testing. proclivity for experi- busy and need the and losing weight if you need to—almost
probably a bachelor. mentation. convenience. always raises your T level significantly.

A super-easy-to- Regular intramus- Smaller doses that A pellet inserted

DON’T FALL FOR BOGUS SUPPS
EVERY DOCTOR MH talked to
apply gel that you cular injections you you’ll inject more under the skin in
rub in, but it requires can do at home, with often, letting your a minor proce- was skeptical about supplements.
avoiding direct skin- periodic checks body maintain dure. The tablet Sure, “testosterone support” pills are all
to-skin contact with by a urologist or its T level better dissolves very over the shelves. But look at the labels:
women and children endocrinologist to Buthan with big, slowly, keeping Even the companies aren’t sure they work.
at the application adjust the dosage. infrequent doses. your T level high The careful text basically says “none of
site. Also, it’s easy If you have a tough over a long period this has been formally tested and this
for kids to mistake time with needles, an of time. isn’t a treatment.” Dr. Mills is pretty cer-
it for hand sanitizer, auto-injector, called
tain. “We’ve done study after study. All the
now that that stuff Xyosted, makes this
is everywhere. as easy as an Epipen.
usual suspects. All of these have no role
in improving testosterone,” he says. Even
if they did, supplements aren’t regulated.
Once per day. Every 1 to 2 weeks. 3 to 5 times per Every four months. Which is to say that for low T, a supple-
week.
ment shouldn’t be what you turn to.

whether or not you need hormone therapy and, if so, what kind
is best. Alam takes a relatively low dose of 50mg per week split
between two injections (or about half the standard dose used in
testosterone-replacement therapy). In comparison, competitive
bodybuilders might inject between 500 and 2,000mg per week.
All in, a Hone membership costs $120 per month, which cov-
ers quarterly monitoring tests and physician consultations, plus
about $50 for medications. Other sites, like Hims, Vault, Roman,
and Opt Health, offer similar services.
With T so easily available—and seemingly safe to use—the
question then becomes: Why not take it? Answer: Because you
might not even need it.
BESIDES THE FACT that they are about the same age,
Ryan Hall, 39, has almost nothing in common with Saad Alam.
Whereas Alam is an entrepreneur with a master’s in public
health and an M.B.A., Hall is a former world-class runner with
multiple top-ten finishes at major marathons, including the
2008 Olympics in Beijing.
But just like Alam, Hall was battling his own extremely low
testosterone level. This might seem strange for an elite athlete,
but during his career, he regularly tested in the 150 range, well
below the lower end of normal for a man in his 30s. Even though
he was finishing marathons with the lead pack, he felt terrible. “I
felt like a walking dead man, just tired all the time,” he says. “All
I did was sleep, eat, and train.”
Anti-doping rules made testosterone therapy off-limits while
he was competing, but after he retired in 2016, Hall began looking
into it seriously. “I knew I didn’t want to keep living with such low
hormone levels,” he says.
Testosterone replacement seemed like an obvious, easy solu-
tion. But it became less enticing when Hall discovered that taking
extra testosterone has the unfortunate side effect of suppressing
a man’s natural testosterone production—and, not incidentally,
often shrinking the testicles—as the body senses that it has
enough of the hormone already. After a couple of months, testos-
terone and sperm production shut down completely. Hall found
that to be a deal breaker. “I got curious about what was causing
my low testosterone,” he says. “Was it physiological, something
inside of me? Or was it my lifestyle?”
Bingo: Multiple studies have found that high-volume endur-

MEN’S HEALTH | JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 77

 WHEN I TOOK T...

“IT TOOK A WHILE TO

FIND SOMEONE TO HELP
SINCE I’M YOUNG”
COREY MENZINGER, 29 Even as guys look to testosterone to revive
ance training, such as serious running their flagging libido, it turns out that sex it-
and cycling, can depress a man’s testos- WHEN I WAS 23, I had pretty bad self can boost testosterone levels—thinking
terone level, sometimes drastically. Hall depression. After I’d done a couple about it, having it, or even just watching it.
stopped running almost entirely and be- years of serious weightlifting, I In one of the more intrepid hormone studies
gan lifting weights daily. He also worked checked my T. The doctor said my ever done, two female researchers working
on improving his sleep. As a half-starved numbers—about 320—were normal. with Peter Gray at UNLV ventured into a Las
endurance athlete, he’d kept himself In doing my own research, I found Vegas swingers club armed with salivary
very light, a skinny 140 pounds on his that they were roughly the levels of testosterone test kits and, hopefully, latex
five-ten frame. So he allowed himself to a 70-year-old. Finding a doctor to gloves. They found that men who partici-
eat more calories. Between that and the help you when you’re that young is pated in sex acts over the course of the eve-
weightlifting, he bulked up to a muscu- challenging. I finally found some- ning experienced an average testosterone
lar 185 pounds; in Instagram photos now, body, but he picked up his practice boost of 72 percent, while those who merely
he’s almost unrecognizable compared and left. A year ago, I came across watched had an average rise of 11 percent.
with his marathoning days. And slowly Primebody, where I now get every- Food for thought.
but surely, his testosterone climbed from thing—100mg of testosterone cypio- But on the other hand, if you happen to
below 200 up to 600—solidly in the nor- nate, plus 1mg of Arimidex [lowers meet Ms. or Mr. Right and get into a rela-
mal range for the first time in his life. estrogen] and 50mg of clomiphene tionship—well, good for you, but your tes-
“If you start hormone replacement, [Clomid]—delivered to my door. My tosterone will likely begin to decline. Should
you’re in it for the long haul,” he says. “So body composition and muscular you settle down together and have a child,
why not first try to raise it naturally and mass have gotten better, but most it will fall even further; studies have found
get it into a good spot?” importantly, I don’t get anxious over that the more time men spend caring for
things that would have really ham- young children, the lower their testosterone
pered my day before. —M. B. level can drop. It’s evolution’s way of telling
ON HIS OWN, Hall had discovered you to be a good dad, says Gray. “If you’ve got
a crucial fact about testosterone, which a six-month-old that you’re tending to, that
is that it fluctuates—continually—in re- might not be the time to be seeking another
sponse to things that are happening in the body or the environ- mate or getting in other kinds of competitive encounters.”
ment. These changes can occur over months and years, as they did It’s probably also time to drop the swingers club member-
with him, or in mere seconds. Did an attractive female walk by? ship and, say, join a gym. Studies have shown that taking tes-
Your testosterone probably just went up. Are you competing with tosterone can increase muscle size and strength—but other
another guy for a promotion, or even a parking spot? T boost. Did studies have found that strength training itself can boost tes-
you win a tennis match against your best frenemy? T boost. Are tosterone levels, as Hall discovered. “It’s kind of a chicken-
you fighting a cold or the flu? Your T level is likely going to take a and-egg thing,” says Dr. Wittert.
hit. Even the time of day matters: Testosterone is typically high- The equation is reversed for fat. “If you gain weight, it pushes
est in the early morning and then declines steadily throughout testosterone down,” Dr. Wittert says. “If you lose weight, it goes
the day, which is why “evening wood” is not really a thing. up. And if you stay perfectly healthy, testosterone levels stay per-
fect.” Studies in very healthy
older men reveal no age-related
decline in testosterone.
OPTIMIZE YOUR T: STEP 4 Bottom line: Your testoster-
one level could say more about
KNOW THE RISKS OF TAKING T your general health than it
does about your age. Many
1 2 3 4 things can drive down T lev-
INFERTILITY IRREVERSIBILITY GYNECOMASTIA POLYCYTHEMIA els—for example, being forced
Within months, Coming off T can Also known as The opposite of to attend your sister’s baby
T suppresses be rough or im- man boobs. An being anemic: too shower. Poor sleep and lots of
sperm produc- possible. “You enzyme in fatty many red blood chronic stress can also disrupt
tion. In most men, should be thinking tissue converts cells, making the testosterone production long-
it falls very low. In of this as an irre- testosterone to blood thicker and term, adds Peter Attia, M.D.,
about half of men, versible choice,” estrogen, which more prone to a physician focused on longev-
it goes to zero. says Dr. Alukal. He can trigger their clot. If you’re not ity. “Sleep and stress are the
While most re- sees guys who try growth. Even if paying close at-
primary drivers” of low testos-
turn to their pre-T to get off it and your body fat tention to this risk
baseline when feel terrible and is low, juice too with regular blood terone, he says. Deep sleep in
they stop taking test low; they much and you’ll tests, you can in- particular helps recharge the
it, some men will may have lost the have so much T crease your odds body’s hormonal axis, renew-
never produce ability to produce that some winds of a heart attack ing its supply of good things
sperm again. T on their own. up as estrogen. or a stroke. —K. D. like testosterone and human
growth hormone. “I need a reason before I’m going to treat some- eating well—and as a result of those complications, his testos-
one,” says Dr. Attia. “I don’t just treat to the [testosterone] num- terone has plummeted.”
ber. And some people with low testosterone levels might not have
any symptoms. They feel just fine.”
We’ve talked about Covid stress, but
stress in general can knock testosterone
down, through the action of the stress
hormone cortisol—which is also elevated
by poor sleep hygiene. The same goes for
depression, which many men are reluc-
tant to address.
Dr. Wittert argues that it’s important
to take inventory of what else might be
going on before resorting to the quick fix
of a T prescription. “It’s not a substitute
for eating better; it’s not a substitute for
fixing your mood disorder, or finding you
have sleep apnea and getting it treated,
or addressing your dyslipidemia or your
lack of physical activity, or for getting
enough sleep,” he says. “It starts and
ends with lifestyle.”
Other doctors see testosterone as a
potentially useful treatment for these
symptoms, even as a short-term jump-
start. The average Hone patient, says the
company’s medical director, Jim Sta-
heli, D.O., is “a typical young guy who’s
married, he has several children, is over-
weight, he’s stressed out of his gourd be-
cause of his job, he isn’t sleeping, he isn’t
Not surprising. But, Dr. Staheli adds, this guy is not just going
WHEN I TOOK T...
“THE INJECTIONS WERE
THE SCARIEST PART”
J P P I O L , 41
I STARTED TO GAIN WEIGHT as I got
older, I felt like I had depression,
and my sex drive was dwindling.
About four years ago, my doctor
said my levels were fairly low
but that there was nothing he
would do right then. Last year, I
heard about Opt Health and had
my levels tested. I qualified for
testosterone-replacement therapy
because my level was 194. The
injections were the scariest part,
but I decided to try it because it
could be a game changer. I used
to work out twice a day. Now I do
one workout and put on even more
muscle than before. Instead of
spending all this time at the gym, I
can go out and enjoy life. —M. B.
MEN’S HEALTH
to automatically get a vial of testosterone
in the mail next week. His treatment will
depend on his blood-test results—testos-
terone is checked twice—and a follow-up
consult with a physician who asks ques-
tions about all aspects of his life.
“Someone who’s 35 probably isn’t going
to want to be on T for the rest of his life,”
Dr. Staheli says. Rather, such a patient
might start off on a drug called Clomid,
which stimulates the body’s own produc-
tion of testosterone without impairing
fertility; this is what Alam’s doctor first
prescribed him.
“We like to focus on the Clomid ap-
proach first, see if we can get the natu-
ral production up, along with lifestyle
changes: diet-related, sleeping better, and
certainly exercise,” says Dr. Staheli. “And
if we can get their testosterone levels up
enough that they become asymptomatic,
then it’s a win-win.”
Still, it’s definitely worth figuring out
why your testosterone is low before clicking
“checkout” for that online prescription.
BILL GIFFORD is the author of Spring
Chicken: Stay Young Forever (or Die Trying).
| JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 79
SHAQ
VS. THE BIG FIVE-O
SHAQUILLE O’NEAL HAS ACHIEVED A LOT
IN HIS HALF CENTURY ON THIS EARTH.
HE’S STILL HAVING MORE FUN THAN
THE REST OF US, EVEN AS HE
GRAPPLES WITH HIS OWN MORTALITY.

MEN’S HEALTH | JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 81


IT’S THE FIRST WEEK of November, and Shaquille
O’Neal is standing on the front lawn of his 8,600-square-
foot home in McDonough, Georgia. A metro-Atlanta
resident for more than a decade now, Shaq has been in
his current house for about four years. The entrance to
the 30-acre property is a black, iron-clad gate with a
Superman logo, a nod to one of Shaq’s many nicknames.
This logo appears throughout the property, includ-
ing on the front door and outside a detached garage
that has been converted into a gym. A giant gorilla
statue and a large rusted structure fashioned to look
like basketball hoops are both visible from the street.
It’s not exactly a secret who lives here.
Shaq has been known to whisper during interviews when he’s
not interested in talking, but out here his deep voice carries across
the grass as he asks me, again, to confirm how old I am. There’s no
way I can really be 29. I’m used to people fixating on how young
I look, mostly because I’m petite, only four-foot-11. Still, I didn’t
anticipate Shaq being so fascinated by it. Ahead of the interview,
I’d mentioned to my mom where I was going, prompting her to say,
“I know you don’t like taking pictures at work, but please get a photo
of you two standing together.” Before I can ask, Shaq instructs a
member of his team to take a picture of us with his phone. He wants
to look like he is taking his daughter to school, he jokes. Dressed in
a black tank top and matching gym shorts, the seven-foot-one NBA
legend grabs my hand and smiles for the photo. His leg is the size
of my whole body. I didn’t notice it in the moment, but when I look
back at the photo, a school bus drove by just as he said, “Anybody
mess with you, li’l Jewel, I’ll fuck them up.” As we’re walking back
to the house, he’s clearly still thinking about how small I am. “My
record is four-nine,” he says, referring to the height of the shortest
woman he’s dated. Also, anyone who dates me is lucky, he adds,
because when I’m in my 40s, I’ll still look like I’m in my 20s.
82 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH
How I might look in a decade isn’t what I came to Shaq’s man-
sion to discuss, though. I’m walking around his compound—past
the tree house and through the backyard where he hopes to one
day add a path for riding dirt bikes—to see how the former athlete
views himself today. As someone whose body has always been up
for public scrutiny as a result of his profession, what is a going-on-
50-year-old Shaq’s philosophy on health and wellness? How are
his priorities changing? How is someone known for being a big
kid grappling with growing older? As a child, Shaq dreamed about
being a basketball champion, a successful rapper and DJ, and a TV
star. He’s accomplished all this and much more. Today, he isn’t just
an analyst on TNT’s Inside the NBA. He’s also a DJ known as Diesel
(he plays EDM); a sheriff’s deputy hoping to bridge the gap between
law enforcement and the community; a producer of the animated
short film Headnoise, about anxiety; an owner of various fast-food
franchises; and arguably America’s top athlete-turned-pitchman,
hawking everything from insurance and Icy Hot to printers and
Papa John’s. Just how many brands Shaq
is endorsing is hard to keep up with—he’s
constantly unveiling new partnerships
and cashing out old ones. His net worth
is estimated to be around $400 million. 
Shaq has transcended sports fame
and become a beloved public figure even
at a time when America is more divided
than ever. Part of that appeal may have
to do with his authenticity, as Kenny
Smith, a former NBA player and Shaq’s
colleague on Inside the NBA, points out.
“Shaq’s unapologetic about who he is,”
Smith says. “He embraces his greatness,
his faults, and his differences. He’s not
afraid to be like, ‘I’m bigger than most.’
He embraces everything that he is,
which most people don’t do.” Even if you
don’t always agree with all the things
Shaq does or says, you probably would
want to have a drink with him. It would probably have to be non-
alcoholic, though. Shaq has never really enjoyed drinking. When
he was 13, his adoptive father, an Army sergeant, caught him with
a beer and made him chug it. Has barely touched the stuff since.
SHAQ, WHO CAN flip from serious to silly to philo-
sophical to (willfully) oblivious from sentence to sentence, tells
me in serious-ish mode that he has been thinking a lot about
something Deon Cole, a comedian and an actor in The Harder
They Fall, says in his 2019 Netflix special, Cole Hearted. Cole
asks everyone in their 40s to make some noise. Then, as the crowd
begins to settle down, he reminds them of their mortality with
one simple sentence. “You got 30 summers left,” he says, widen-
ing his eyes and cocking his head. Cole later clarified the state-
ment, which he turned into a hashtag on Twitter. “When I say 30
summers left, I don’t mean to die. I mean I have 30 summers left
to do whatever I want in a vibrant, energized manner,” he posted.
This moment stuck with Shaq, although his memory of it is
a little off. He remembers Cole, who turns 50 just a few months
 before Shaq does, saying they had 15 summers left. “For me, trying to eliminate soda from his life. Even on his current health
[in] 15 summers, I’ll be 65,” Shaq says. “I’ll be an old fucking man. kick, Shaq admits he’s not perfect when it comes to his diet. He
I never thought about it until he said it.” Of course, it’s absolutely still dislikes vegetables and enjoys snacking in moderation.
possible to still have a “vibrant, energized” life after 65, although Advertising as a celebrity can be full of pitfalls, and that’s espe-
Shaq’s definitions of vibrant and energized might be more cially true when getting involved with supplement brands, which
intense than yours. can market their products using misleading or inaccurate claims
Speaking of energy, Shaq’s been burning serious calories lately that are not always supported by science. The Mayo Clinic, for
in his home gym. During the pandemic, his weight crept up to example, says that for most people regular water is just as good as,
around 415 pounds. (His playing weight was 325.) He typically or perhaps better than, alkaline water. About supplements that
trains four days a week now for about an hour, blasting through 20 increase human growth hormone (HGH), such as the ones sold
minutes of cardio and banging out 40 minutes of strength work. by Novex, experts at Mayo say that “some dietary supplements
He wants to slim down to 350 pounds and be ripped enough to “go that claim to boost levels of HGH come in pill form, but research
topless” and post an Instagram thirst trap for his 50th birthday in doesn’t show a benefit.”
March. His fitness goal, he elaborates, is to make sure his stomach Shaq says he realizes there’s a perception that he advertises for
doesn’t hang over his belt. He doesn’t want to develop the dreaded a lot of businesses, but he insists they’re all brands he genuinely
“OTBB,” or “over-the-belt Barkley,” as he puts it. (This, of course, believes in (even if the clinical trial the company did was tiny,
is a reference to his friend and Inside the NBA
colleague Charles Barkley. The two regularly LORD OF THE MANOR Shaquille O’Neal photographed in the 30-acre yard of his
riff with each other on many topics, including home near Atlanta in November 2021. (The alligator is fake.)
their weight.)
This, along with protecting his endurance
and vitality, is what Shaq was trying to prevent
when he went to visit a doctor for the first time
in his life about two years ago. When he says
this, I ask him to repeat it to make sure I heard
him correctly. Shaq had never been to a doctor
before? Ever? Correct, he says. Outside of the
medical care he received as a professional ath-
lete, Shaq had only recently taken himself in
for a checkup. He says the doctor had a list of
things he needed to improve. As a man whose
NBA diet consisted of burgers from McDon-
ald’s or “a turkey club sandwich with extra
mayo and two pineapple sodas,” he would need
to limit his snacking. In an attempt to stay
“slim” and “presentable,” Shaq says he began
taking supplements but soon encountered
another problem. “I was taking a competi-
tor’s supplement, and it stopped everything.
I mean everything. . . . Nothing was working,”
he says, growing more and more serious with
each suggestive sentence. 
Ever the businessman, Shaq started to
think about how many other men in their 40s
could probably benefit from a new kind of sup-
plement. This is what inspired him to begin
working with Novex Biotech in early 2021 to
promote the company’s GF-9 diet pill. The
home page for the brand, which features before
and after photos and an endorsement quote
Styling: Renee Brown. Grooming: William Lowry.

from Shaq, says a clinical trial for the sup-

plement showed it “increase[s] mean, serum
(blood) growth hormone levels by 682%.”
Shaq’s health and wellness business endeav-
ors don’t stop there, though. He also began
endorsing Alkaline88, advertised as a per-
fectly pH-balanced alkaline water enhanced
with minerals and electrolytes, while he was
with a sample size of 16). “I can’t and shifting a term that tends
not like a product and then turn to have a sexual connotation
around and make you like it. It’s into something playful. For the
not good business,” he says. “It’s record, he says his “boom boom
unethical, and it’s something room” will be used for napping.
I would never do. I have enough Back in the kitchen, one of the
money where I don’t have to producers from Men’s Health
take your money and then fake who’s prepping for a v ideo
people out.”  interview later asks him what
Nick Woodhouse, the presi- guidance he might have for her
dent and chief marketing offi- 30-something boyfriend, who is
cer of Authentic Brand Groups, feeling stuck. “My advice is you
the company to which Shaq sold have to get him to realize you
the rights to his name brand don’t care. [As] men, we have to
in 2015, says “America’s great- worry about us and then we have
est pitchman” may work with a to worry about y’all. If you let
lot of companies, but he also him know, ‘Baby, I love you and I
turns down a “tremendous” don’t care what you do,’ that will
number of deals. “The demand start to ease the pressure,” he
for Shaquille as a business part- says. “And then, at night when
ner is unprecedented,” he says. he gets home, put it on him.” 
“He’s transitioned from one of Shaq says young people, typi-
the greatest NBA centers of all cally men, ask him for advice all
time to one of the best business- the time. “I’ve made a lot of mis-
men of all time.” takes, so I have the answers,”
he says. Plus, he understands
what it’s like to feel the weight
of providing for an entire fam-
SHAQ, IN silly-ish mode, ily, having been responsible for
is sitting in his “office,” also his six children. When he’s not
known as the island situated dishing out advice, he’s hand-
between his kitchen and living ing out gifts to unsuspecting
room. He’s telling me about his strangers. Early in 2021, a video
plans to go to Michaels, the chain of Shaq paying for an engage-
craft store, after our interview ment ring that a young man had
wraps. He’s in the middle of dec- on layaway went viral. But Shaq
THE SWOLE ARISTOTLE Shaq is training to be lean enough
orating his “boom boom room,” for a shirtless selfie when he turns 50 on March 6.
says this happens more often
a bedroom located just off the than cameras can capture. And
kitchen on the main level of the mansion, and he needs to buy usually it involves a mom and a young child. 
something to add to its one remaining empty wall.  “My mom is my go-to for inspiration,” he says about Lucille
The room is painted black, matching the bed’s headboard, O’Neal, who raised him in Newark, New Jersey, and now lives
which features rhinestones in each of its tufts. Shaq says he bought in Atlanta. “Whenever I go somewhere, I try to look for her and
the bed by accident, but he personally decorated the perimeter of me.” Recently, Shaq was in Best Buy and saw a woman and her
the room and doorframe to include matching individual rhine- son thumbing through coupons to buy a 45-inch television. He
stones. The night before our interview, he went to Walmart and upgraded the TV size for the family and handled the bill. Another
purchased five clocks and five mirrors for the space. When I arrive, time, he saw a woman trying to pay down a $500 layaway debt at
they’re already hung up, although a bit haphazardly. Only four of Walmart around the holiday season. He took care of that, too.
the wooden clocks, set to times in various parts of the world, fit on “That used to be us, and that could still be us,” he says, perhaps giv-
the wall above the headboard. He’s placed the fifth clock above one ing a glimpse into why he continues to work so hard. Even for a man
of the small rectangular mirrors on another wall.  who has been wealthy far longer than he was ever struggling, the
Shaq readily admits he still has plenty to learn about interior trauma of poverty has convinced him that he could still be back to
decoration (“I’m just finding out about modern [versus] tradi- putting things on layaway with just a few business missteps.  
tional,” he says), but he already has an idea for what the finishing Shaq’s upbringing influenced most of his beliefs about life, not
touches will be. He’d like to add a smoke machine and laser lights just his financial and philanthropic outlooks. He has long been
that will bounce off the mirrors so that when he’s lying on the bed, open about the fact that he was raised by a stepfather who was
he can envision a scenario in which he must remain completely a drill sergeant and has other family members who work in law
still or else come into contact with one of the death beams. It’s enforcement. One family friend, Jerome, worked as his body-
another example of Shaq being Shaq, flexing his wild imagination guard throughout his career and still lives with him. Shaq’s own

84 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH

 involvement with law enforcement has been well-documented. Office, there are limits to his law-enforcement goals. He’d pre-
He’s been a reserve officer in Miami, for the Port of Los Angeles, viously planned to run for sheriff in a few years but has since
and elsewhere. He’s also an honorary U. S. deputy marshal. He decided against it. He likes Henry County’s current sheriff,
became a sworn deputy in Georgia’s Clayton County in 2016.  Reginald Scandrett, and wants to support him. Plus, he says, “the
Today, he works for the Henry County Sheriff’s Office as a climate’s too hot right now.”
community-relations director, hosting events such as a “Ride Shaq’s Army-brat upbringing has informed his philosophies
4 Unity” motorcycle gathering this past summer. “I would love on mental health, too. “I’m programmed by my military father.
for the community and law enforcement to get back together,” You don’t worry about the problems; you worry about the solution.
Shaq says. He says he recognizes how controversial his love of law Whatever the problem is, I’ll stay here for a while, and then the solu-
enforcement has become in a time when there is increased aware- tion...” Shaq snaps his finger as if the answer has appeared right in
ness about police brutality against Black Americans. “I under- front of him. “My solution if I can’t figure it out is [telling myself] it
stand both sides, trust me.” Even as a notable figure and a member could be worse. Once I say that, all of my problems are over.”
of law enforcement, Shaq says he’s often pulled over by cops when he It may seem like every issue has an easy solution for Shaq, but
visits places outside metro Atlanta. When he stopped for gas once there are certain occurrences that even the most optimistic per-
in Valdosta, Georgia, more than 200 sonality cannot account for. He
miles away, he says he saw an officer MAN OF THE PEOPLE From top: The new Henry says he’s still having a difficult time
hit a U-turn and drive up behind his County Sheriff’s Office director of community rela- processing the death of his sister to
car to pull him over. He also recalls tions, January 22, 2021; DJ Diesel dropping dance cancer in 2019, three months before
tunes in Miami, January 31, 2021; teaming up with Oreo
a time when an officer pulled him to give away a million Oreo candy bars in 2018.
the death of Lakers teammate Kobe
over with his gun drawn. “I asked Bryant. (An autographed portrait
him, ‘Why you got your gun out?’ He of Bryant jumping into his arms
said, ‘I’m sorry. Last time I stopped a after the pair won their first NBA
big guy, we had to fight.’ That got me championship is one of the first
thinking, you don’t know what these images you see when you walk into
people have been through.”  Shaq’s home.) “When my sister was
Shaq says he knows people don’t here, it was a bunch of ‘I’ll call her
love his point of view on this, and it’s tomorrow. I’ll call her tomorrow.
not an exaggeration to say this kind I’ll call her tomorrow.’ Now I can’t
of thinking can have extremely call her ever again,” he says.
dangerous implications. This type He has similar feelings about
of profiling from officers who are Kobe. “I didn’t see Kobe at all. We
tasked with protecting and serving didn’t call or text,” he continues.
can lead—and has led—to fatal out- “That’s fucking with me. I don’t have
comes for the Black people who are a solution for that. I would never
on the receiving end of such bias. It’s imagine them gone before me.”
sad that these experiences of being A few days before our chat, Snoop
profiled have made him more empa- Dogg announced that his mother
thetic about these officers’ behav- had died. As a friend of the rapper
ior instead of concerned about the and a self-described “mama’s boy,”
potentially deadly impact. Shaq started thinking about his
But as with most things, Shaq’s own mom. In many ways, he’s still
outlook on this can be traced back eager to please her and leave a legacy
to his childhood. In Shaq Uncut, that will make her proud.
his 2011 autobiography, he wrote “I just want people to say Shaq
that he didn’t grow up in a house- was a nice guy,” he says. “I want
hold where race was reg ularly them to see somebody that mostly
discussed. Still, this dark-skinned did the right thing. I don’t promote
Black man has been larger than myself as perfect, but I take care of
average his entire life. When he was my family. I love people. I respect
just ten years old, he was already people. And I love Black women.”
six-foot-four. In a society in which Shaq’s second act is nowhere near
his size can make him a huge tar- over, though. In his mind, he still
get, perhaps Shaq’s perspective and has 15—or 30—Shaqtastic sum-
his efforts to disarm people with a mers to live.
joke and a smile have been his way
of surviving. 
Getty Images (3)

Still, while he continues to work

with the Henry County Sheriff’s

MEN’S HEALTH | JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 85

 Down with diets!

smart nutr ition hack s

BY PAU L K I TA • PHOTO GR A PHS BY H E A MI L EE

1
EAT MORE FRUITS AND VEGETABLES. . .
TURN TO FIBER-RICH
CAULIFLOWER
FOR YOUR
4 . . . EVEN IF YOU think you eat plenty. People who ate the most
plant-based foods had a 9 percent lower risk of getting Covid
than people who ate the least, a 2021 Gut study found. Goal: Add 2
more servings of fruits and vegetables daily. Do this by working more
TACOS. produce into your cooking. Like in the next few tips.

WORKING IN BATCHES, blitz 1 head of

cauliflower florets (chopped) in a food
processor till pebbled. In a large bowl, mix
5
with 3 Tbsp canola oil, 3½ tsp chili powder,
and salt to taste. Divide between 2 baking
sheets. Roast in a 450°F oven till browned,
Onions PACK
20 to 30 minutes, rotating the sheets half- DISEASE-FIGHTING ANTIOXIDANTS.
way. Serve with warmed hard taco shells, IF CHOPPING THEM turns you into a blubbering
shredded lettuce, and grated pepper jack.
—BIG LITTLE RECIPES, BY EMMA LAPERRUQUE mess, close your mouth. If you’re not inhaling
gulps of onion-tinged air, you’ll be fine.
2 Hate salad? Cook it. 6
IN A LARGE, oiled pan on high, add the leaves
of ½ head iceberg. Toss; add 1 garlic clove OR JUST ROAST THOSE ONIONS WHOLE.
(thinly sliced), bird’s-eye chili (minced), a
li’l fish sauce, soy sauce, rice vinegar, black SLICE THE TOP inch off the tips of roast in a 350°F oven till tender,
pepper, and a handful of toasted sesame 4 yellow onions and set on a bak- about 4 hours. Remove, allow to
seeds. Cook till charred. Serve. —COOKING AT ing sheet covered in 2 cups kosher cool, peel away the burned parts,
HOME, BY DAVID CHANG AND PRIYA KRISHNA
salt. Mound the salt around the douse with more olive oil and lemon
base of each onion. Drizzle each juice, and serve. —FOOD IQ, BY
onion with ½ Tbsp olive oil and DANIEL HOLZMAN AND MATT RODBARD
3 LOAD UP ON HEALTHY
GREENS IN ONE SITTING.
Also, upgrade YOUR BLENDER.

7
INTO A LARGE, oiled wok over medium-high
heat, pour a whole bag of spinach.
Cook till wilted, about 2 minutes. Try the new, no-bull Vitamix One, which operates entirely
Season to taste with salt, pepper, and freshly on one dial—and can thresh anything you throw in it.
squeezed lemon juice. Serve as a side. From $250; vitamix.com

MEN’S HEALTH | JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 87


8
SHROOM
10–14
BACK TO FIBER: Only
5 percent of men get their
YOUR MIND. recommended 38 grams of
the gut-filling nutrient daily.
Here are 5 easy snacks that’ll
help you eat at least 5 grams.
PEOPLE WHO regularly ate mush-
rooms were less likely to have 10
depression than those who ate none, Insta Guac
½ avocado + lemon juice +
according to a 2021 study. The key to
sea salt + spoon
cooking any mushroom: In a large, hot,
oiled pan, cook a big handful at a time, 11
stirring only once or twice, till deeply The Nothing Fancy
browned. Add salt at the very end. 1 medium pear, straight up
12
9 Pod Power
GROW YOUR OWN.
⅔ cup edamame + drizzle
of sesame oil + sea salt
REAP THE FLAVOR. 13
IF YOU’RE BORED of the button mush- “Dessert”
rooms at the supermarket, check out 1 large banana + 2 Tbsp
peanut butter + shake
smallhold.com. The company sells kits of cinnamon
for blue oyster and lion’s mane mush-
rooms ($34). Spray the block 2 or 3 times 14
a day and in about 10 days you’ll have a
harvest for mushroom soup or tacos.
The Traditionalist
1 medium apple + small
handful of almonds
88 JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH
15
DON’T FORGET
THE ENTIRE
RAINBOW.
GREENS ARE GREAT, but people who
regularly ate from the full color
spectrum—strawberries, blueberries,
oranges, peppers, apples—had a
20 percent lower risk of cognitive
decline compared with those who ate
fewer, a 2021 Neurology study found.
16 Fruit-ify
your salad.
THIS RECIPE HITS that sweet spot on the color
spectrum. On a rimmed baking sheet, roast 4 oz
Genoa salami (roughly chopped and sliced) in a
400°F oven till crisped, 10 to 20 minutes. In a bowl,
add 1 ripe medium cantaloupe (roughly chopped),
⅔ cup pepperoncini (thinly sliced), ¼ cup of their
brine, and ½ cup pitted oil-cured olives (roughly
chopped). Top with the salami. —Big Little Recipes
17 And rethink
WHAT “COUNTS” AS A SERVING
OF fruits or vegetables.
WORK IN these options, says Chris Mohr, Ph.D., R.D.,
a Men’s Health nutrition advisor.
½ cup olives // ½ cup salsa // ½ cup tomato sauce
// 1 glass vegetable juice // handful of raisins
18 HARNESS PUFA POWER.
A 2019 STUDY found that for every 5 grams of
dietary polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs)
people ate daily, their risk of lung cancer
dropped by 5 percent. Foods high in PUFAs:
sunflower seeds, walnuts, salmon.
IF YOU’RE THINKING. . .
19 . . . SUN- 20 . . .WALNUTS
FLOWER SEEDS? ARE BOOOORING,
Food styling: Pearl Jones. Prop styling: Sophie Strangio.
you’ll be thinking
sunflower seeds!
add a handful to
your morning shake.
after you try a pouch The nuts are heart-
of Chinook Seedery’s healthy but also
tart-and-tangy, contain natural oils
dill-pickle- that make your
flavored seeds. $4; smoothie smoother,
thrivemarket.com says Mohr.
 21
IF YOU’RE THINKING. . .
23
. . .SALMON AGAIN?
TRY salmon porchetta. Season 2 skin-on LIMIT“ultra-processed” FOODS.
salmon fillets with salt. Mix ¼ tsp black
pepper, ¼ tsp fennel seeds (crushed), Americans now get 57 percent of their calories from stuff
1 garlic clove (minced), 1 tsp rosemary like frozen pizza, soda, fast food, sweets, and salty snacks.
(chopped), the zest of 1 lemon, and 2 Tbsp
Because flavor. Fight back with these really tasty ingredients
olive oil. Add the fish, skin side down, to a
large, hot, oiled pan and top with the mix. from Cooking at Home. (They’re all on Amazon.)
Broil till juicy, about 6 minutes. —Food IQ
24 25 26 27 28

22
WHITEFISH IS ALSO Cumin Chaat Asafetida Furikake Sichuan
A GREAT SOURCE seeds masala When cooked It’s a mix pepper-
in fat, it packed with
OF LEAN PROTEIN.
They bring It’s tangy,
adds a dried fish,
corns
smokiness funky, and They’re
and savoriness. fruity. Try pungent, seaweed,
Easy recipe: In a shallow bowl, stir ¼ cup savory taste. sugar, salt, spicy, in a
Bloom seeds it on fruit, numbing way,
white miso, ⅓ cup mirin, ¼ cup sake, and ⅓ A dash and sesame
in hot oil on boiled and fantastic
cup packed light brown sugar. Add 2 (6 oz) as a base for potatoes, or supercharges seeds. Try
the flavor it on top sprinkled
frozen cod fillets; turn to coat. Refrigerate curries and with almond on cubed
chili. butter on of onions of rice.
12 hours. Pop the fish on a parchment-lined cukes.
toast. and garlic.
baking sheet, spoon some marinade on top,
and broil, 5 minutes. —Food IQ

29
AND WHILE YOU’RE AT IT,
sauce.
IT’S ALSO a lower-calorie way to add flavor.
Here’s David Chang’s favorite savory-garlicky-sweet
mix: In a bowl, add a big glug of soy sauce, plus a
sweetener (sugar, agave syrup, honey), a pureed
apple (or a cup of unsweetened pineapple juice), a
drizzle of toasted sesame oil, a few garlic cloves
(minced), some ginger powder, and black pepper.
Add salt if needed, then the meat, and get cooking.
—Cooking at Home

30 POWER UP YOUR MICROWAVE.

BAN “I DON’T have time to cook.” In a large glass
bowl, microwave 1 lb boneless, skinless chicken
thighs, 8 to 10 minutes. In a pan, cook some
onion and garlic in oil, 1 minute. Add 2 strips of
bacon (chopped); cook till crisp, 3 to 5 minutes.
Add a big handful of spinach and the thighs
(cut into pieces) and cook, 5 minutes.
—Cooking at Home

31 Don’t forget
TO E NJ OY FO O D.
FOR MOHR, that means a purposeful weekly trip
to the doughnut shop with his daughters and
homemade pizza every Friday night. “I don’t have
cheat meals—or cheat days. While my diet is
healthy, it isn’t devoid of joy, either.”

PAUL KITA is the author of A Man, a Pan, a Plan and

the food and nutrition editor at Men’s Health.
 FEAR,

From left: Dustin

Stanton takes a
dip; the author and
Ben Harris plow
headfirst through
a set of rapids;
Jeff Shugarts
embraces Harris
during the trip.

90
& MAN C
JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 | MEN’S HEALTH
Joe Hawley quit the NFL to become a spiritual
jock healer and lead America’s toughest athletes
into the wild to confront their fear, shame, and anger.
Here’s what happens to those brave enough
to sign up.

BY JASON ROGERS

LOATHING

AMP PHOTOGRAPHS BY KYLE SAFIEH

WE WERE 24 HOURS INTO
our four-day rafting trip deep within the canyons of Colo-
rado when our wild-eyed leader, Joe Hawley—best known as
the impressively bearded former center of the Atlanta Fal-
cons and Tampa Bay Buccaneers—told us to park our rafts,
make camp, and prepare to head into the mountains.
Hawley, 33, sported a jade pendant
necklace that complemented his turquoise
camping gear. All day, he’d been sharing
vague spiritual maxims like “What I’ve
found is that all of it comes back to pres-
ence. The key thing is to be present with
everything that comes up.” Then he got
specific: “We’re going to be hiking up to a
beautiful waterfall and then dropping into
a workshop that will help us confront our
deepest fears.”
Two hours later, five strangers—all hulk-
ing ex–NFL linemen—and I had ascended
Joe Hawley left the NFL at 29 feeling phys-
ically, mentally, and spiritually broken. He
wants to help more men like him.
rocky terrain to reach a ledge about 500 feet
above the river, which glistened below like
tempered glass. We were sweaty and tired,
but Hawley, who is 60 pounds lighter than
in his playing days, appeared more ener-
gized. He took off his boots and stood bare-
foot to introduce Ben Harris, a blond and
deeply tan “fear alchemist” and podcaster,
who had tagged along to lead this workshop.
We’d all been issued journals, so Har-
ris gave us a writing prompt: If fear didn’t
exist, what would you do?
Hawley seemed to be already living his
answer. “I got this insight to start a com-
munity for former athletes, but it scared the
shit out of me,” he’d told us earlier. “I always
have played kind of small as a leader. One
of my biggest fears was being
seen and stepping up and
having the limelight on me.”
In 2018, at 29, Hawley
exited the NFL , hav ing
earned an estimated $13 mil-
lion over eight grueling sea-
sons. All it cost him was his
body (a reconstructed knee,
torn shoulder cartilage, bone
spurs, and a bulging disk)
and any real identity beyond
the game. So he set out to
find himself and explore the
country in a van with just
his dog. Today he describes
that two-year odyssey as his
“healing path,” which led
him to form the Härt Col-
lective, an exclusive men’s
community that he started
in 2020 to help former
pro athletes become more
“emotionally intelligent
[and] self-aware” through
“heart-centered work.”
A s a for mer Oly mpic
fencer, I’d lived my own version
of his story. After winning a sil-
ver medal at the Beijing Games
in 2008, I ended my career with
all-time-high levels of anxiety
from consistently hiding my
problems, hoping to compen-
sate through my will to succeed.
Even after extensive therapy, I
still struggle, because my per-
fectionism often leads to peri-
ods of emotional withdrawal.
So when I heard about the Col-
lective and its focus on rehabil-
itating that hypermasculine,
win-at-all-costs mentality, I
asked to join one of the trips.
Currently, a total of ten members (all
ex-NFLers, plus one former NHL player)
pay $99 per month for weekly check-in
calls with Hawley and exclusive dispatches
from a rotating cast of ex-athletes, spir-
ituality influencers, and mental-health
experts. They also get access to discounted
retreats like this one, which was billed as
an off-grid self-help gauntlet that cost
$2,200 and would take us through north-
west Colorado into Utah along the Green
River, a 44-mile stretch of water with
about a half dozen class III and IV rapids.
“You say the word vulnerability and auto-
matically walls come up,” Hawley told me.
“The Trojan-horse idea was creating these
retreats around experiences like white-
water rafting.” Along the way, we’d partici-
pate in workshops focused on what seemed
to be four emotional pillars of the male psy-
che: brotherhood, fear, anger, and shame.
Of course, journaling about what you’d
do if fear didn’t exist is an exercise we might
all benefit from—even if you don’t want to
reveal the results. But after ten minutes of
writing time, Harris reminded us that we
could find commonality in our most funda-
mental fears and invited us to share. For a
long moment, the men looked everywhere
except at one another. Nobody volunteered.
THE FEAR EXERCISE was sup-
posed to explore the second of our four
emotional pillars, but judging by the hes-
itation among the group, it was clear our
earlier attempts at brotherhood hadn’t
fully paid off. The day before, in a dirt pas-
ture full of balsamic-scented cottonwoods,
we’d paired off to stare into a partner’s eyes
for five long minutes. Then Hawley told us
to say, “I love you” to each other.
 Above: Dave Stalls has spent years worrying
about head trauma and CTE. Right: Trip partic-
ipants journal about their fears.
My partner, Garrett Reynolds, 34, a
six-foot-seven, 290-pound ex-Ram with a
blond man bun and beard, had gone first.
“I love you . . . man,” he said with a thick
Tennessee twang.
I said, “I love you” back but not without
some effort.
Later, another former player explained
why Reynolds’s slight improvisation
might have been important: “I love you,
man, but I’m not gay,” he said, causing the
whole group to laugh hard—me included.
The moment was funny but made me
feel a bit uneasy. More than a decade ago,
I’d chuckled at hundreds of similar locker-
room jokes while wearing a plastered
smile to hide my discomfort with a culture
that awards status to those who egg each
other on. I worried about fitting in with
seemingly powerful and confident men.
When Harris invited us to share our fears
at the top of the cliff, I saw it as my chance to
be a team player and volunteered to go first.
Harris walked me through a logic exercise
that reminded me of my time spent at Tony
Robbins seminars. First, I read what I’d
written: I would be more openly affection-
ate toward my wife. He asked what stood in
my way. I shared with the group the same
thing I’d shared at many men’s groups
before this: For years, I’d struggled to per-
form in bed because I was so worried about
disappointing my partner—and that had
probably created a strong fear of failure.
“So fear does the exact thing you don’t
want to do, right?” Harris said. “If [you]
truly want to be loved and loving, [you’ve]
got to give love.” I agreed with that idea,
although it seemed pretty obvious, and even
told the group that I felt lighter, in hopes
that others might be inclined to share next.
The other men still hesitated. “This is
a safe space to really look at [your] stories
and shift something within yourself,” Haw-
ley said in a husky but extremely calming
voice. Finally, Dustin Stanton, 27, a thick-
shouldered, scraggly-bearded former mem-
ber of the Cowboys, admitted in a somewhat
businesslike tone that he’d struggled with
the journaling part but feared making
mistakes as an entrepreneur. Shane Hall,
41, a gray-streaked, southern-drawling
ex-Seahawk, offered a vague description of
wanting to “love more.” But he, too, hadn’t
written much down, which he chalked up to
a broader fear of “being seen.”
Next, Jeff Shugarts, 32, an ex-Buccaneer
with a handlebar mustache and a tie-dye
T-shirt, said somewhat cryptically that
he wanted to tell the truth more often but
was afraid of losing the people he loved.
The last two men, my former eye-gazing
partner and Dave Stalls, 66, a wiry-haired
ex-Raider, simply declined to share.
When I looked over, a couple of the guys
who were sitting nearby avoided eye con-
tact. It felt like we weren’t growing closer or
healing together; we were widening the gap.
THE IDEA OF MEN going into
the wild to learn more about themselves
together isn’t new—and nature self-help
retreats exist in plenty of different flavors,
including the ManKind Project, which
focuses on outdoor trips based on the
hero’s journey, and Evryman, which offers
experiences as a sort of emotional Cross-
Fit. During his van years, Hawley attended
an Evryman retreat and later invited the
organization’s cofounder Dan Doty to join
the Härt Collective’s advisory board. He
met his now wife after joining Fit for Ser-
vice, the coed self-development commu-
nity led by Austin-based fitfluencer and
Covid disinformationist Aubrey Marcus
that hosts summits with Burning Man–
style rituals and ecstatic dance. Hawley’s
camp is essentially a mash-up of these
styles. He’s also baked in lessons from his
MEN’S HEALTH
mentor, a shamanic and Jungian-based
experiential psychotherapist named
James Frazier; books like The Monk Who
Sold His Ferrari; and his sessions with
ayahuasca (13 and counting).
It was only after his career ended, Hawley
says, that he realized that his NFL manag-
ers and medical staff had weaponized his
masculinity against him, making him feel
like a “bitch” if he had issues with physical
pain. With his ex-pros, Hawley says, he
hopes to model a healthier kind of mascu-
linity, one that could inspire other athletes
or even fans to rethink how they approach
the world. To stay accessible to everyone, he
maintains an inspirational-quote-heavy
Instagram with nearly 40,000 followers
and a YouTube channel with nearly 10,000
subscribers, plus his Quantum Coffee pod-
cast, dedicated to “curiously exploring
the deeper, unanswerable questions of the
universe.” He continues to work with Fra-
zier and recently enrolled in a three-month
somatic-trauma training course.
There’s always the chance that a retreat
leader without proper training can create an
experience that just isn’t helpful for anyone,
says Keith Russell, Ph.D., a social-sciences
professor who cowrote the academic man-
ual Adventure Therapy. But there’s an easy
way to tell if your group is working. “If the
community clearly means something to
the other men, they’ve learned something
about themselves, and there’s sadness and
hugs and embracing, then I think that the
experience was a success,” he says.
As the trip progressed, I began talking
often with Stalls, the oldest of all the men.
He’d been a kayaker in his earlier years and
was thrilled to reconnect with the river
and powerful rapids. Nearly a decade ago,
Stalls said, he had to step down as CEO
of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Colorado
because he was having trouble expressing
his ideas and was experiencing emotional
| JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 93
volatility. He’d won two Super Bowls, but
it appeared that too many hits to the head
during his career had exacted their toll. He
began extended stints at a Buddhist retreat
center in the Rockies to try to cope.
“I am very aware of what I have progres-
sively been losing as far as cognitive and
brain function,” Stalls said. “In January,
[my doctors] said, Yes, you do have what we
consider early dementia.” He was waiting
on the results of a scan to determine if it
might be Alzheimer’s. His overarching
concern was that his root problem might
be CTE, a condition that can be diagnosed
only after death. Stalls told me that uncer-
tainty about his declining health often led
to terrifying thoughts. That’s something
that Shugarts, the mustachioed tie-dye
fan, also struggled with, having recently
lost college teammates, including one of
his best friends, to suicide and having con-
sidered the act himself. “I wrote a suicide
letter to my brothers, and I don’t remem-
ber writing it,” he’d told us the previous
day after we’d made camp, only to fall
silent during the early workshops.
Stalls remained reluctant to dive in,
too. He told me that he’d actually shared
his fears about CTE with a few members of
our squad at a different Collective retreat
a few months earlier, but the conversation
“kind of died.” He had been eager to talk
more, but the others were not.
AFTER THE BROTHERHOOD
eye-gazing gambit and the fear confes-
sional, Hawley began the next step toward
enlightenment by ripping a giant fart. It was
after sunset on the second day, and he wore a
Navajo-pattern poncho while sitting cross-
legged in front of our propane-fueled artifi-
cial campfire. Once our chuckles died down,
Hawley’s face tightened as he explained
what was essentially the anger-manage-
ment part of the trip. We would begin with
a sharing circle, followed by some catharsis
through a session of ecstatic dance.
“To be totally open and honest, I’ve
been, over the last hour or so, feeling these
old stories and patterns come up with fear
around what I’m going to talk about and
just how it’s all gonna play out,” Hawley
said. Then, looking at each of us closely,
he told us how important it is for athletes,
especially football players, to release the
anger they’d channeled into their sport, or
else it could control their lives.
When it was his turn to share, Stalls said
that, after football, he no longer under-
stood how to uncage his inner animal.
Shugarts instantly related. He lifted trem-
bling hands, noting that just hearing those
words triggered old football conditioning
to funnel his rage and prepare to attack.
“Sometimes over things that don’t matter
at all, my body starts going into this mode
when I’m getting ready to kill somebody,”
he said. In the hazy firelight, I watched
as several of the men sat forward in their
chairs, their bodies tense as they nodded.
I tried to relate as best as I could. “If my
emotions fall out of the optimal zone, it’s
like I don’t want them,” I said, before men-
tioning that I’d actually felt jealous of men
who seemed to knock down their barriers
at other retreats, since they made me feel
like I was a fake somehow. “When’s my
emotional breakthrough?” I asked, imme-
diately regretting it because I sounded
whiny, until I heard murmurs of support.
Hawley stood up and raised his arms in
preparation for the dance while our river
guides began banging on water cans and
bongo drums and someone strummed an
acoustic guitar. Hawley’s advice for this
part was a little lean: “So this is obviously
a vulnerable thing,” he said. “If you’re the
kind of person that’s uncomfortable, and
you don’t usually participate, give it a try.”
At first, I stared down at the sand and
moved my body stiffly from side to side.
When I looked over at Shugarts, he seemed
more uninhibited but had also just
returned from the woods, where he’d been
hitting a weed vape. Hawley began chant-
ing nonsense words—Ayyy-Yaah-Ohhh-
Yaaa—but sounded hesitant until Harris
whooped loudly, breaking the tension.
“I’m here!” Hall yelled into the night.
Then Stalls made a guttural braying
sound, lifting his arm in front of his face
to simulate an elephant trunk.
Soon everyone was making animalis-
tic sounds or shouting their own guttural
battle cries. Possessed by the mood, I tore
off my shirt, crouched to the sand, and
began banging my fists like an ape. Haw-
ley ditched the poncho, and other guys
stripped bare-chested. Suddenly, Stanton
abandoned his businesslike tone and led
the group in a ridiculous chanting refrain—
an homage to our steel-crate campfire:
Fire in a Box!? Fire in a Box!
Fire in a Box!? Fire in a Box!
When I looked around, the mood was
lighter, almost joyful. For the first time all
trip, I felt like I belonged.
“THE TIME OF the lone wolf is over,”
Hawley read dramatically, citing a Hopi
Elder passage to commence what he called
our silent float. The activity—a quiet half
hour of paddling to take in the power of
nature—was a tradition established by
Adrift Dinosaur Adventures, the raft-
ing company that guided our trip. It was
midafternoon on day three, and we still
had 30 miles left. I noticed that the canyon
around us had changed from dark quartz-
ite to chalky sandstone, smoky limestone,
and reddish shale. For me, it was symbolic
of how life can surprise you if you’re will-
ing to look closer, and that led to thoughts
about the previous night’s fire dance.
There I glimpsed the person I want to be:
spontaneous, open, fun. That act of letting
go felt different from the other exercises,
like I was closer to my best self.
Hawley calls his retreats a Trojan horse,
because men lured by adventure can end up
exploring their inner lives at the same time.
 The river widened, and we passed by a
thousand-foot wall of eroded gray rock in
an area called Echo Park. Hawley broke the
silence by inviting us to shout a mantra. It
was three simple statements:
I am here!
I am alive!
I am free!
We shouted them together, and the words
echoed in the void. Looking at the other
guys, I could see in their eyes that they were
energized by the moment.
Later, as the sun slid behind the moun-
tains, we sat in a secluded clearing near
the riverbank. The air turned crisp as we
prepared for our final workshop, on shame.
“Shame doesn’t let love in,” said Hawley,
who has been open about his own struggles
with body image and pornography. “Ninety
percent of [healing] is speaking out loud.”
We spent more time journaling about
the harsh ways we personally judge our-
selves, and then Hawley invited us to share.
This time, Reynolds began confidently:
He described how, when he was young, he
rarely misbehaved to avoid disappointing
his father, a man he deeply respects. He
started to tear up as he talked about his
struggles with dyslexia and how, despite
his size, he’d always had trouble standing
up for himself when others put him down.
When Reynolds got choked up, Hawley
stepped across the circle and knelt beside
him, placing a hand on his chest.
“What could your father say that you
needed to hear?” Hawley asked.
“ ‘I’ll still love you even if you fuck up,’ ”
Reynolds said with tears running down
his face.
He was the first of our group to openly
sob, and both Stalls and Stanton imme-
diately softened their gaze and leaned
toward him, offering visible support. As I
watched Reynolds work through his emo-
tions, I had a jolt of envy, but then it van-
ished. I honestly felt for him.
After a long minute of silence, Reynolds
cut the tension. “That was good shit!” he
said, smiling broadly.
When it was my turn, I decided to just
admit it: Looking down, I told the group
I was worried that I’d been really just cre-
ating a performance out of sharing my
bedroom anxieties rather than actually
processing them.
“Would you like to drop into it?” Hawley
asked in his casual way of suggesting explor-
ing something important even deeper.
I said yes.
“Think back to when [you] started your
sexual escapades,” he said.
I thought of a moment with my first girl-
friend—I was sixteen, sweaty, virginal,
and failing to get hard. When Hawley asked
me what I was feeling in my body as I shared
this, I told him: I had a knot in my stomach
and was having some trouble breathing.
If I could go back, Hawley asked me, what
would I say to her? At first, I totally blanked,
but then, as I stared into the encouraging
faces around me, the words arrived: “I’m
not ready.” I immediately felt more relaxed
and started welling up.
“For what it’s worth,” said one of the
men a few minutes later, “I didn’t detect an
ounce of performance.”
As we closed the exercise, it was clear
that Shugarts was wrestling with his own
thoughts again, and he tried to explain
why he gets so tongue-tied. “I’ve been to
some dark places and spoken at a lot of
funerals . . . and when I start to take on
some of [those feelings], I get scared that
I won’t be able to come back,” he said, his
voice heavy with emotion.
Hawley reminded him that we were
there to support him and, even off the
river, always just a phone call away. “And
don’t worry: The journey is infinite, so no
rush,” he said. “Energy is just going to be
released, and we’re going to be finding new
levels of freedom. . . . I’m really so grateful
for you showing up and being a part of this.”
ON THE FOURTH and final day, we
woke up early for coffee and bagels before
tackling the final 18-mile stretch of river.
Reynolds said he hadn’t expected to share
so much and thanked us for giving him “the
space to kind of work through that.” As we
broke camp, Shugarts said that just pack-
MEN’S HEALTH
Left: On day two, Hawley helps members
examine their anger issues. Above: Garrett
Reynolds takes a moment to reflect by the fire.
ing up to go home gave him a pit in his stom-
ach: “I was, like, holding back tears. They
were happy tears [and] sad tears. And I’ve
never felt more alive in my life.”
Once we got back on the water, Hawley
warned that no matter how openhearted we
felt in that moment, returning to the real
world would pull us back into old patterns.
“The key is, How can I hold that [feeling of
presence]?” he said. “That’s contagious.
That’s the ripples [we can] send out.” After
hitting a few more rapids, we pulled up to
the concrete boat ramp and all jumped into
the water. Then we worked together to lift
each raft and heave it onto a nearby trailer.
When I called Stalls a few weeks later to
check up on his Alzheimer’s test results, he
said things were looking promising, some-
thing he’d shared with other Collective
members during their weekly teleconfer-
ence. “I feel less alone,” he said. “I do not
hang out with other football players, so this
group is unique.” Hawley later told me that
he felt grateful to see how “lit up” Stalls
was and how everyone else was supportive.
“That’s the vision I have for this commu-
nity,” he said. “Even if [the results were] the
other way around.” He added that Shugarts
still had “a lot to process, but I think he’s
showing up and developing the tools and
the connection to move through that.”
Hawley was already planning more ways
to reach anyone who might benefit from this
work. But on the last morning of the retreat,
he had stopped to reflect on his journey:
“Every athlete’s career comes to an end, and
it’s like, Who am I? What’s my purpose? I
feel like I’ve found it,” he said, gripping the
bridge of his nose while crying on the bank.
Instinctively, I joined the sweaty, stinky
group of men who linked arms and sur-
rounded him. It was more than a huddle.
JASON ROGERS is a former Olympian who
writes about modern masculinity.
| JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2022 95
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