Indholdsfortegnelse for Jan/Feb 2026 i Men's Health South Africa

THREE HUNDRED ISSUES. It’s a number that forces you to pause – not look back with nostalgia, but to recognise the sheer evolution of what Men’s Health SA has become since its inception almost three decades ago From the start, our mission has always been to provide men with science-supported, evidence-backed strategies to become the best possible versions of themselves. But the definition of ‘best’ has evolved dramatically through the eras. Once upon a time, greatness meant washboard abs and bulging biceps; now, the changing times (and a new generation of role models) have redefined what exactly it means to be strong. The muscle still matters, but well-being has become an all-encompassing pursuit. Strength is introspection. It’s living with purpose, shifting perspectives, inspiring change and building a life that actually…

1 Do I Have To Count Calories To Lose Weight? Calories always count – but that doesn’t mean you have to count calories. Precision calorie-tracking is the most simple way to ensure you’re in the all-important energy deficit, but there are plenty of methods that promote calorie reduction as a by-product. Reducing portion sizes, sticking to an ‘eating window’ or building meals around satiating high-protein, high-fibre foods are behaviours positively correlated with weight loss. 2 How Many Calories Do I Need? It might sound reductive, but if you’re gaining weight, you’re consuming too many calories for your lifestyle. There could be many reasons for that: genetic predisposition, lack of knowledge or simply because your focus is elsewhere. But, regardless, the only way you’ll truly know if you’re in a caloric…

Where Do I Start? Not by whacking a piece of medical tape over your mouth and expecting dramatic results. It takes time to adjust: “The biggest mistake people make is they get in bed, stick the mouth tape on, lie there and their brain goes, ‘This is weird,’” says master instructor for the Oxygen Advantage programme, David Jackson. Instead, you need to get used to how it feels to have tape over your mouth. So, once you’ve applied it, “do some slow, calming breathing, extending your exhales, to actually let the nervous system calm down”, he says. Will It Help Me Sleep? Mouth breathing is associated with lower sleep quality and a decrease in oxygenation during sleep, found a study published in The Laryngoscope. Taping your mouth can help address…

Drinking is more than just ‘something we do’ in SA. It’s woven into the fabric of our culture, a pastime that pairs well with almost everything from New Year’s celebrations and birthday bashes to weekly – and practically mandatory - braais. ‘Wanna grab drinks?’ is a phrase synonymous with anything social, it’s the icebreaker for dates, catch-ups and everything in between. And our commitment to unbridled boozing has earned us a few unwanted accolades. According to the World Health Organization, our drinkers are the fifth heaviest drinkers in the world with the average drinker downing 28.9 litres of pure alcohol a year. Not exactly a podium finish (phew), but getting close to medal territory (not great). But there’s a shift happening, an unexpected fissure threatening to shake the foundations of…

Your budget is tight, your time is tight and your pants are tight…and no matter how many of these things are stressing you out, your heart is taking a beating. Plenty of studies have found links between stress and heart disease, and some experts even say stress is the leading risk factor for poor cardiovascular health. When we’re overstressed, our body is flooded with adrenaline and cortisol – hormones that, in abundance, raise blood pressure and damage the heart. One report published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine found that job-related chronic stress is associated with a 50% increased risk for cardiovascular disease. (Studies also show this is an excellent statistic to share with your boss…) Doctors are going to tell you to take down your stress level, which, in…

PAGE OVER OUR BEST STRATEGY EVER for massive arms, a chiselled chest, strong back, powerful legs and shredded abs…

Gym bros love hyping Chest Monday, arm-day workouts are the stuff of legend and ‘leg day’ has its own hashtag. But strengthening your pulling muscles (a.k.a, your back) sets you up for success in all those other sessions. Few terms are trendier in trainer-speak these days than ‘posterior chain’. That’s because your posterior chain, which essentially refers to all the muscles on the back side of your body, drives impressive athletic feats – everything from running and sprinting to your personal-best deadlift. In the past, posteriorchain training focused on your glutes and hamstrings, but increasingly, it’s the upper-body posterior-chain muscles that are drawing attention. Your latissimus dorsi – the winglike slabs on the sides of your torso – pull your upper arms towards you from an overhead position, a forward-reaching…

The exercise is all over social media: a trainer will kneel on a bench, then slowly lower himself forwards at the knees until his head and chest are within inches of the floor. Then he’ll somehow power back up, having completed the full ‘Nordic curl’. The popularity of the move has inspired a new class of gym equipment – specialised benches made for Nordic curls – and sparked an exciting new love affair with an often-neglected muscle group: your hamstrings. These are the main muscles worked during the full Nordic. Building them up can help to insulate you against knee injuries, power you to run faster – and complete your physique, too. “Hamstrings are very aesthetic,” says Dr. Israetel. “And they actually require very little volume to train effectively if…

Exercise is good for our mental health. This is not some wishywashy platitude, aimed at motivating people or shaking them out of a rut. It’s a fact, backed by a considerable body of evidence – and one that continues to grow. A systematic review of more than 200 studies, published in The British Medical Journal, concluded that exercise could be more effective than medication for combating mild-to-moderate symptoms of both depression and anxiety. Of course, it’s important to remember that the gym is not a like-for-like replacement for other mental-health interventions. However, movement is a multiplier, and in the studies referenced above, exercise combined with other interventions scored better than any one remedy alone. But is all exercise created equal when it comes to its mental health benefits? And beyond…

Jason Brown IG: @capejason Jason was the third member of MH SA, joining the team in 1998 as Features Editor. He was promoted to Deputy soon after and was appointed Editor in 2001, a role he filled until being lured to Men’s Health US in New York to take up the position of Editorial Director at MH International for two years. In 2007, Jason returned to SA to launch Best Life, the MH-branded mag for 45+ men. He was also on the launch team of Women’s Health in 2009, and appointed Editorial Director for the health brands at Media24. He returned to the MH editor’s desk in 2011 until 2015, working alongside current editor Rob Cilliers. In late 2015, Jason passed the baton to Arthur Jones and took up the…

RUGBY PLAYERS ARE OFTEN measured (and marked) for their performance on the pitch. But that’s a miniscule part of the equation. What that game day really boils down to – outside of the occasional moments of brilliance – is the tough hours you’re logging on the ‘outside’. It’s why Jesse Kriel works hard. Scratch that; he works harder than almost everyone else. And it’s exactly how he approaches his training. He knows that his rival on the field next weekend isn’t kicking up his feet and waiting to lace up his boots. The game has changed – it’s about putting yourself in a position where your physical and mental performance has hit a new peak by the time the whistle blows. That’s how you win games. That’s how you –…

Back in 2016, Manny Almonte joined some friends on a camping trip to Lake George in the Adirondacks of upstate New York. Almonte had grown up in the Dominican Republic, so he’d known nature. But since moving to New York City in the mid-’90s, he hadn’t experienced the powerful restorative benefits bestowed by time in the wild. That camping trip unlocked something for him: nature was a potent mental health tool – one not tapped by many people. Almonte would go on to create Camping to Connect in 2018, a non-profit that runs outdoor trips for young men of colour, and soon he was inviting other city slickers to spend a few nights under the stars. At first, it was a tough sell. “I said, ‘Let’s go into nature and…

KEVIN CARLEY WAS ON THE TREADMILL AND RAMPING UP TO A SEVEN-MINUTE-MILE PACE, BUT SOMETHING FELT OFF. The 42-year-old was slowing down and his heart was pounding. This is maddening, he thought. He’d only done an easy recovery jog the day before – why couldn’t he catch his breath? Carley didn’t think he’d done anything unusual that morning. He felt normal when he woke up. He’d had a coffee and then, before he hit the gym, what he thought was a safe amount of pre-workout, a supplement he’d been taking forever. Back in the 90s and 2000s, when he was in the military and benching 170kg, he tried them all: Yellow Jacket. Jack3d. You name it, he’d tried it. He’d long been a coffee guy, too. Now, at his IT…

Blame the pandemic. The slouch towards athleisure clothing all the time became a sprint during Covid – and it’s not slowing. Many men now expect their work clothes to fit and move in the same way as their gym kit. And that means slim-fitting trousers that put the backside front and centre. While women have historically emphasised glute training more than men, that’s changing, says physique coach Gareth Sapstead (@thefitnessmaverick). “More guys are looking to build the strength and size of their glutes now,” he says. These days, men are increasingly aware that strengthening their glutes can help them crush 5Ks and dominate in multiple sports. Glute strength does offer other benefits, too. “If you suffer from a cranky lower back, then one of the best things you can do…

Rude Awakening If you’re someone who sets their alarm earlier than they really need, safe in the knowledge that you can just hit snooze, consider this a wake-up call. When researchers examined 21 000 people over three million nights, they found snoozers had the crucial, restorative stages of sleep interrupted and only got light sleep during their 20 minutes of dozing*. It can be brutal, but for maximum R&R, set your alarm for when you actually need to wake up. Deep Seek The benefits of learning don’t end at adolescence; they continue well into midlife and beyond. That’s according to a recent PLOS One study of 1 200 people aged 20 to 84, which found that reading, listening to podcasts and learning new hobbies offered neurological advantages, warding off dementia…

Like most of us, Joel Edwards found it tough to carve out time for fitness. With three kids and a busy job as an anaesthetist, the 34-year-old knew he wanted to make some long-term changes. But how and when? “One day I realised that my drive to work took me roughly the same time as it would to cycle to work,” he says. “And then I realised that if I just ran to work, that would be even better, so I made it my New Year’s resolution to do so. I didn’t have any other exercise goals, so I thought this would be a relatively easy place to start from when it came to building back my fitness.” Edwards stayed committed – not by chasing personal bests before demanding shifts…

Icons aren’t made. They’re cultivated by people, by movements. Think of the VW Beetle, the Mini Cooper, and the Ford Mustang. One of them managed to shake off its fascist origin story to be embraced (with great irony) by the free love movement, and along its path became beloved by the likes of Paul Newman, John Lennon and Elizabeth Taylor. Yet, the little lovebug, despite being a movie star in its own right (hello Herbie), couldn’t retain its cool when reimagined in 1997. Yes, it managed to keep going for a few more years and even gained one more iteration but as a retro pastiche, failed to uphold its status as a modern icon. It became sterile, with a profile that no longer made sense – gone was the need…

If you feel like you’re too busy to work out, consider Eric Adjepong. The Top Chef alum just opened Elmina, a West African restaurant, in Washington, D.C. His cookbook, Ghana to the World, released in 2025. And he’s hosting a Food Network show, Wildcard Kitchen, now in its second season. (Oh, he’s also a dad.) Ye t there’s Adjepong, at the gym four days a week, getting in reps precisely because he’s so busy. “I wear many different hats, and no one day is the same,” he says. “So I’ve found that eating as clean and aiming to maintain as much of a routine as possible is imperative for my overall mental health and well-being.” But: “I also love a burger when the moment calls for it,” he says. Like…

You’ve probably done biceps curls and triceps push-downs before. But what if you’ve been doing them all wrong? Those on the quest for bigger biceps and triceps need to ask this question as more and more research surfaces in support of the ‘lengthened partial’. What is a lengthened partial? When you do any standard strength exercise, there’s a point where the muscle fully contracts, where you’re often told to squeeze that muscle extra hard – say, when your biceps are contracted at the top of a dumbbell curl. As you lower the weight, though, the muscle gradually stretches out; it’s this portion of the rep that study after study (including three pretty recent ones) correlates with growth. This part of the rep is the lengthened partial. “These little pulsing reps…

The secret to training your abs is out – and it entails more than just your go-to planks and sit-ups. It also requires more than just targeting your rectus abdominis, the ballyhooed band of muscle between your chest and your hips. If you want true core strength (and, yes, that six-pack), a growing group of experts will tell you that you need to carry heavy weights and walk. This forces your core to constantly micro-correct and rebalance as you move, explains physical therapist Aaron Horschig. You also need to twist and turn, challenging your oblique muscles and back extensors. “While there’s nothing wrong with training the abs for show, training for stability – which encompasses all of the muscles that surround the spine and hips – is essential training for…

Kraemer was eating out or grabbing drinks almost every night. Whether it was with clients or friends, there was always one major point on the agenda: countless calories. At first, he worried about the excess pounds, but wasn’t willing to shift his habits. Concern turned into apathy and, eventually, he was pushing triple digits when he stepped on the scale. At 127kg, he was suffering physically and mentally. The Change When Kraemer developed gout (along with a handful of other minor health issues that tend to follow in the footsteps of rapid weight gain and unhealthy eating habits), it became impossible for him to turn a blind eye. “I ended up on medication to manage my symptoms,” he recalls. One night, he woke up choking on stomach acid – brought…