What’s the best compliment anyone’s ever given you?That’s a tough one! Can we come back to that?What’s the biggest grooming mistake a guy could make?Removing chest hair and hair in general. I think a man is a man, and a man has a hairy chest, so let that be! That’s my take on it.What’s your biggest turn-on in a guy?Their personality, I have to say. They have to be gentle, understanding, honest, and compassionate. Sense of humor, as well, long walks on the beach -- that kind of thing.And your biggest turnoff?Aside from the hair removal, guys assuming that their pickup line is going to work. I remember being at Greenblatt’s on Sunset, and some guy just walked straight up to me, and he had some bling on and whatever, and said something about a party down in Malibu and asked if I would jump in his car and go to the party. All I could think was, "Who are you? I don’t know you, and I don’t care about how good your car is."What jewelry is acceptable for men to wear?I think rings and bracelets and leather bands and necklaces are OK. I’[m] not sure about earrings, but I think the rest is cool.Who should pay on the first date?I guess I am a bit of a traditionalist. I think the guy should pay, even though I’m all for equality, and then once you start dating, it’s OK to switch it up. It’s an initial, traditional gesture that is remembered.Do you prefer when a date is planned out or spontaneous?I like both, but I do like the spontaneity. It’s kind of cool to just go with the flow and be surprised and not really know where you’re going, as long as they warn you about the dress code. That’s important. If someone takes you out, and you’re wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt and they take you to a fancy place and you’re unprepared, that’s bad.One final piece of advice for men in five words or less.Be real; don’t be douche-y. I’m not sure if some people don’t know how to not be douche-y, but we’ll go with it.
Growing up, who didn’t want a teacher as sexy as Cameron Diaz guiding them through seventh grade? While many young guys love the thought of a teacher-student fantasy, a new study suggests that having a female teacher is not so hot after all. We’ve already discovered that schools aren’t built for boys, and now research from the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics finds that female teachers grade male students more strictly than they do female students. They tend to give boys worse marks than they deserve and are harder on them. The study took 1,200 British students aged 12 and 13 and asked them to place bets on how they’d do in an exam. The girls placed bigger bets when they knew that a male teacher was grading them, but they scored lower in that scenario. Meanwhile, the boys bet lower amounts when they knew a female was grading them, but they also scored lower when marked by the opposite sex. Overall, both types of teachers were more lenient with grading their own sexes. And you thought sexism only existed in the workplace.
The Total Rep Method
This training method is based off Chad Waterbury’s ideas, and is the featured subject of his book Huge in a Hurry, which was released late last year.A good part of the book and the methodology focus on lifting heavy weights as quickly as possible, hence the name. By itself, this is worth the price of the book. Many coaches advocate lifting very slowly (as in the previously discussed HIT method), but Waterbury asserts that faster cadences (even faster negatives) are superior for muscle gain.While an in-depth analysis of the fast vs. slow argument is far beyond the scope of this discussion, it is worth mentioning that fast and explosive movements almost always have more carryover to sport, so this type of training is great for athletes who are looking to put on some functional mass. Of greater relevance to this specific writing is the way the Waterbury protocol structures sets and reps. Or rather, doesn’t structure them.Waterbury posits that muscles need to be challenged through a range of motion, and that the more muscle fibers you involve during that lift through that range of motion, the more muscle growth you’ll induce. According to Chad, the time it takes doesn’t matter; what matters is the number of reps and exercises.As an example, most people reading this have probably heard of 5x5 training. (For those who haven't, this is a method where you do 5 sets of 5 reps with heavy weight.) It was developed by Bill Starr, and most people have done either 5x5 or some variation of it. It's very effective. If you were to list other combinations of sets and reps that most coaches agree are effective, you'd see 5x5, 3x10, 8x3, 4x6, 6x4, or even 10x3. The thing they all have in common is the number of reps per exercise -- they are all between 24 and 30. And they all work. Looking at this, Waterbury began to question why a certain number of reps per was so effective. And, of course, there is a reason. There's no magic to it, really. It's simply right in the sweet spot of volume and intensity. Being in this sweet spot means that you can gain size and strength, but you can still recover from one workout to the next. And that seems to apply to everyone who tries it.Having identified this sweet spot, Waterbury went a different way. He's fond of saying, “Count the reps and let the sets take care of themselves.” Instead of choosing a prescribed number of sets and reps, in the Total Rep method, you just (duh) select a total number of reps, anywhere from 24 to 30.According to CW, the number of sets doesn’t really matter; what matters is that you’re using heavy weights and performing a prescribed number of reps. For example, let's say you select 25 reps. Even with the exact same weight on the exact same exercise, you might need 5 sets to get 25 reps one day but just 4 sets a week later. It’s still 25 reps.Of course, this method is doable with other ranges, including ones that are lower. For example, you can use very heavy weights for a 2 or 3 RM, and you might do just 15 reps. That’s probably not enough for hypertrophy, but it’s great for strength, which in the long run will lead to growth.If I have you lifting medium weights (10-12), then you’ll do more reps, somewhere in the area of 32-40. And you’ll still be able to recover enough to do your next workout two days later.To reiterate, with the Total Rep method, you're not picking 4 sets and doing 10 reps to get to 40. You're going for 40 reps, in the fewest number of sets possible.The key to all this: only do perfect reps
You never know in advance how many perfect reps you’re going to do on any given set. In this context, an "imperfect" rep happens when your speed slows down, or when your range of motion shortens, or when you have to change your form to finish a rep.Much like HIT, the Total Rep method terminates a set when you have to cheat or slow down. Any of those are a sign that some of your muscle fibers are exhausted and they’re dropping out.So the takeaway here is to lift heavy weights, fast, for a preset number of reps. By only terminating a set when your form starts to degrade, you ensure that all reps are performed with a maximum number of fibers being recruited for the task at hand. Simply perform as many sets as it takes to complete the prescribed number of reps in perfect form.Although the example CW gives really only talks about a system using 25 reps, this can be applied to nearly any predetermined number of reps within reason.The most difficult part about this program is learning when to terminate sets. It is exceptionally difficult to really know when you are slowing down or your form begins to degrade. I recommend spending a week or so getting into the habit of lifting as quickly as possible and trying to figure out when to stop.Other than that, this is a great training protocol, albeit a difficult one. Very quick, fun and effective, this method is great for gaining muscle and losing fat (as it is very metabolically demanding).For intense growth in a short period of time, this protocol is an excellent option for intermediate to advanced trainees.These are two excellent methods, which, while relatively new to the training world, are so incredibly effective that they have indelibly burned their mark on the fitness landscape.This series has touched on six training protocols for gaining size, each one effective in its own way. While I haven’t given you any specific training program, incorporating these methods into your current workouts will help you put on some of that mass you’ve been working so hard for.Continue to check back. In the future, we’ll feature some lesser-known training programs for mass gain, including those that will absolutely help you become more muscular in less time than you ever thought possible.
As winter continues its icy grip on our roads and our social lives, we're taking a look at some of the snow riders that’ll leave you praying for more -- more snow and more money, that is. Rear-wheel-driven supercars and hot hatches are all well and good, but when the snow hits the fan they’re about as useful as flip-flops on a black run. Enter these all-weather, all-wheel drive vehicles that’ll satisfy your attention-seeking needs in the white hell, without the numbing inevitability of a hapless accident and the ensuing public humiliation caused by the little runt who caught it on camera and posted it on YouTube.Editor's note: This was originally published on our UK site, and thus includes British pricing, but since winter's in full force on our shores, we thought it was worth a second run.
People have attributed a lot of metaphorical significance to zombies since George Romero released his second undead movie, Dawn of the Dead, in 1978. In that movie, the zombies hung around the places they used to lumber through in life, specifically an awesome mall with a fully stocked gun store outside of Pittsburgh. The suggestion there was that these people were already “zombies” before they were dead, but, presumably, with a little more interest in the food court Sbarro (then again, maybe not). Where zombie metaphors aren’t obvious, people tend to use the undead horde as stand-ins for whatever group they currently don’t like. Hate the Tea Party? Zombies. Christian conservatives? Zombies. War protesters? Zombies. Those be-dreadlocked mouthbreathers in a drum circle inside Zuccotti Park? Zombies. Zombies, though, at their best are a natural disaster: a Hurricane Katrina, Haitian earthquake or Japanese tsunami. They are a worldwide extinction-level threat that forces the living characters to be stripped down to what they really are. Watching these plots unfold, you have to ask yourself how you’d handle a similar situation. Are you a leader or a follower? Are you strong or are you weak? Are you a man or are you a member of the indie-folk rock band Modest Mouse? There’s not much call for banjo and ukulele players in the zombie apocalypse is what I’m saying. Pick up a few survival skills, Isaac Brock, if you know what’s good for you.
Zombies, Metaphors And Masculinity
That’s when metaphor gets turned on its head. Where zombies might be used to represent aspects of our culture, the actual survivors represent us as individuals. On AMC’s The Walking Dead, we are presented with two alpha male characters who are vying for group leadership: Rick Grimes and Shane Walsh. One of those guys is the perfect leader: not only can he keep his people alive in a world filled with zombies, but he can actually find a way to make that world a safer, more livable place. The other one is Rick Grimes. I think this speaks to a larger issue with men in the real world. Specifically, how society expects the modern man to be a sweaty, weak-kneed manchild who is overly concerned with ruffling the feathers of people who have no business being covered in feathers in the first place. A mangina who knows in his sensitive, bleeding heart that violence doesn’t solve anything and killing the bad guy, be it serial killer, murdering terrorist or genocidal evil dictator, makes you just as bad as he is. War, man, what is it good for? It would be awesome if that stuff were true, but it’s make believe. Sometimes the bad guys don’t stop being bad until they’re dead. Violence can and has solved lots of problems, and war, I’m sad to say, can serve a purpose -- like freeing an entire society, ending slavery or stopping a holocaust. And if you haven’t ruffled somebody’s feathers with something you’ve said, then you’ve never really said anything worthwhile in your life. Rick Grimes, played by English actor Andrew Lincoln, is supposed to be the hero of The Walking Dead, but why? Because he’s a decent, sensitive man? Every decision Rick makes ends up with another member of their group injured or dead. Here come some spoilers: Merle, Carl, Otis, Sophia, Amy, Jim, Ed, and Jacqui have all died or nearly died as a direct result of actions Rick has taken in the show. Meanwhile, Shane, played by Jon Bernthal, is the guy the show wants you to think is too unstable and violent. But he’s the reason every single character alive on the show is still alive. That includes Rick’s harpy wife, his slackjawed kid and even Rick himself. Shane actually kills Otis so that he can get away from a group of zombies to save Rick’s kid, who got shot in the chest in the first place (by Otis, no less) because Rick was an idiot. The thing, of course, is that it’s a zombie show. People are going to be eaten once in a while, or you don’t have much of a show. Without hordes of cannibalistic zombies, gruesome kills and constant paranoid danger at every turn, you just have a show about a bunch of whiny, insipid white people sitting around on a farm, killing time between pharmacy trips by complaining about one other and shooting cans/logs as target practice. And, I mean, nobody wants that. The problem, I think, is the writers’ societal conditioning. The way they were raised in this man-hating era is causing problems within the story. There’s no question that if there were really a zombie apocalypse (like the one I’ve been planning and preparing for my entire adult life), a Shane will keep you alive and a Rick will have a zombie picking pieces of you out of its teeth. Why should it take an apocalyptic scenario for a man with actual balls to have value? Why should cowardice and conformity be accepted as virtues? Why would a guy who wants to calmly discuss the barn full of hungry zombies as if it’s some sort of zoning problem be a better leader than the guy who wants to kill them all immediately? I guess we’ll have to keep watching The Walking Dead to find out, but right now I’m not convinced.
Is Voyeurism Wrong?
Doc Chaves,I’m a 38-year-old guy with a very, very hot younger girl across my building courtyard who has a habit of leaving the blinds open and walking around naked. I’ve been watching her more and more and noticing it’s getting to the point where I know her schedule and routine. I’m starting to feel guilty, like I’m doing something wrong.- Anonymous There’s about two million guys reading this who are wondering where you live, and that’s a mild estimate. I hate to think of myself as the right-and-wrong police, so let's dissect what you’re experiencing. You masturbate. Fantastic. It’s a healthy, normative activity with a plethora of health, immune and psychological benefits for most. You fantasize. Excellent. Most people who fantasize have imaginative and creative sexual expressions and outlets. You enjoy voyeurism. That's great. Show me a guy who doesn’t get visually excited, whether it's by their partner, erotica, a fetishistic expression, an exotic dancer, or just about anything we can pin our eyeballs on. For the most part, we’re all voyeurs to a certain extent. My only concern is that she’s not a willing participant, and we can’t assume she’s into being watched or is an exhibitionist. Maybe the blinds are open for sunlight and she walks around naked because she’s drying off after a shower. Who knows? The judge may not buy a “She does it every night at 7 p.m.” or a “It’s her fault for leaving the blinds open” defense if the legal system ever got introduced to your situation. My guess is the guilt may be surrounded with this aspect of non-consent. Do you feel the same guilt when you see consensual nudity (exotic dancing, porn, a nude beach, etc.)? The guilt could also be associated with experiencing arousal and its resulting shame. Take a good look at what the roots of your guilt are and see if there are ways to express this arousal in more consenting and equally arousing manners. That may help with the guilty feelings. Check out our article on voyeurism and exhibitionism for more insight and information on consensuality.How Much Does Insecurity Affect Men's Sex Lives?
I’ve read a few times about girls having body-image issues and how it affects them in bed. Does this happen to guys? It’s weird -- I don’t really care about my body, except when I’m about to have sex or am having it. Then it’s a big deal for me.-Anonymous One of the least-discussed aspects of male sexuality is how our negative body image impacts our sexual psyche. I remember being in graduate school and working in clinics where we’d discuss eating disorders, and it seemed mostly contextualized as a female issue. It’s also male issue. The same goes for body-image struggles; they are both human issues. Nod your head, gentlemen, if you ever had thoughts or feelings of shame, judgment or criticism about your body before or during sex. Just about every guy has experienced it. Some look down and reminisce about their washboard abs from college, only to see a current stomach that looks more like a bowl of jello jiggling. Others get down on their penis for it’s extreme small or large size, girth and/or shape, no matter how much lifetime work their penis puts in for arousal, erection and sexy time. Some worry about their chicken legs, acne scars, lack of muscle definition, level of attractiveness, hair loss, stamina, and… Wait a minute -- that was all about me. How narcissistic. You get the idea and surely have your own individual negative body-image thoughts if you’re being honest with yourself. It’s possible you don’t care as much about your body when clothed because, well, you’re clothed. It’s a socially accepted way for us to hide, deflect and avoid facing the discomfort and fears associated with our appearance. I wonder how you feel about going to the beach, swimming or changing in front of others? It may not be entirely about performance anxiety with having sex but more accurately associated with discomfort or erotophobic responses toward self-nudity or being viewed nude. As many suggest, facing and talking about fears is a good start in managing or overcoming them. Some body-image difficulties affect more people than others, and some are fixed (penis size) while others can be altered or improved. Self-help anxiety and body-image books are a great start and help many people. A therapist can also help you work on these anxieties.I know a number of swingers and nudists who I look up to. They walk around comfortable in their own skin, not because they look perfect by society’s standards but because they feel perfect according to their own standards. A nice mindset to strive for.
There is little doubt that taking time to enjoy a decent breakfast is one of the hallmarks of a healthy, civilized life.Unfortunately for many of us in the West, increasingly hectic schedules mean that breakfast has become the forgotten meal, relegated to little more than a snatched cup of coffee gulped before leaving the house or a piece of toast snaffled down on the way to the bus stop.I believe this is a grave error on our part and deprives us of one of the most enjoyable and necessary meals of the day. Thankfully, on my travels, I have found that breakfast still holds a dear place in the hearts of many people in many countries around the world, not least because earning a crust still often involves hard physical labor and the expenditure of many calories.Even if my daily activities require little more effort than is required to ride public transport from one tourist site to the next, I always make sure to indulge in a local breakfast as often as I can. I usually find them to be the most delicious and memorable meals of my visit to a new country.Below are five of the very best breakfasts I have enjoyed in my journeys around the world.
The Full Irish Breakfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland
Although every part of the United Kingdom has its own version of the enormous fried breakfast, none of them really compare to the ones I found during my time in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Here, the usual suspects of bacon, eggs, sausages, fried bread, mushrooms, and beans were complemented by the addition of the Irish trio of white pudding (made with pork meat, fat and oatmeal), potato cakes and thick soda bread “farls.” It takes considerable girding of the loins to finish a “full Irish,” but it’s definitely worth the effort and means that you don’t have to spend any more money on food till at least the following day.Roti Canai, Penang, Malaysia
The street food in Malaysia is, in my opinion, the very best in the world. I found this to be particularly true at breakfast, when I would visit street stalls to purchase roti canai for my morning meal. This dish of flaky griddled flatbread served with a thin savory dal is a reflection of the huge Indian population on the Malay Peninsula, and is both cheap and incredibly nutritious. It is one of the dishes I remember most fondly when I think of my travels.Sinangag, Manila, Philippines
Long before I married a Filipina and acquired a constantly hungry group of Filipino relatives, I had already decided that the Philippines was one of my favorite places to eat on Earth. The breakfasts I enjoyed in Manila went a long way toward helping me reach that decision. One of the main staples of the Filipino morning meal is sinangag, a combination of leftover rice fried with cloves of garlic and served with meat, fish or fried eggs. It’s simple and delicious, and the very mention of it is enough to bring a tear to any Filipino’s eye.Jianbing, Beijing, China
By the time I reached Beijing, I had been on the road for about four months and had already eaten hundreds of meals. My jaded palate perked up immediately when I was introduced to one of the Chinese capital’s finest breakfast street-food offerings. Jianbing is similar to a French crepe and is sold by vendors all over the city. The batter for the pancake is ladled onto a hot plate and then filled with savory items like egg, fried dough, chicken, and hoisin sauce, before being wrapped up into a portable parcel. They are a simple yet incredibly addictive way to satisfy the morning munchies.Idli Sambar, India
Given my heritage, it is unsurprising that India makes an appearance on this list. However, my favorite breakfast in India comes not from my own family homeland of West Bengal but from the Southern part of the country in states like Kerala. Idli are small cakes made from ground rice and fermented black lentils. The cakes are steamed and served with chutney or a vegetable stew called sambar. If curry for breakfast sounds odd, you’ll just have to trust me. It’s actually proof that God exists.
The recession threw American men into free fall, completely altering their career trajectories, household roles and expectations for the future. But they don’t have it so bad. It’s much worse in the eurozone countries, and Greece has sustained the heaviest damages of them all. I’m a Greek man living in Athens, and I think that what we’ve experienced could teach everyone a thing or two about crisis 101. There is a lot we used to take for granted that is suddenly no longer possible -- careers, for example. Americans pursue higher education in order to acquire the knowledge and certification needed to obtain a well-paid job. The reality, as unemployment numbers can attest, is that many of you are not finding jobs in large supply, even after spending thousands on a degree. But think of this: Greece, a much smaller country with roughly the same population as New York City, has to carry a much heavier burden. Officially, 1,000,000 are unemployed, and 4,500,000 are economically inactive, meaning they are neither working nor looking for a job. That is roughly half the total population of the country. Having been born and raised in the capital of Greece, I am facing this crisis situation after four years of working in the private sector. I always thought that by the time I was 30 I would have built a proper foundation for my career. You enter the workforce; you start with little and build up from there, hoping to make a name for yourself. But now many major companies are as broke as we are, as was the company I worked for, an otherwise pretty successful publishing house. Most corporations, due to the crisis, immediately downsized, trying to cover past losses. If you don’t get fired, you will probably be forced to quit, since there is no compensation money left. More and more keep working without having been paid for months, some for a whole year. They do it anyway, because finding a new job is even more difficult. I decided to quit, because working somewhere with no future just did not make sense.Base wage in Greece was around $900 per month until recently. The crisis chopped that down to $750 per month -- and you’re lucky if you actually get it. I wake up every day thinking of the money I owe the state, the extra taxes that are forced on me and are paid automatically through my electricity bill. Living costs have skyrocketed, from basic house utilities to provisions. Gas prices keep going up. Owning a car -- or at least being able to afford to drive it -- is considered a privilege. But the crisis does make all other modes of transportation feel like hell. Strike is a word that easily becomes part of your everyday life. Today there might be a subway strike; tomorrow the taxis won’t be on the streets. I won’t know unless I check a pretty smart website that actually puts all strikes into one simple calendar. Excursions, small escape trips during the weekends and drives by the beach, are a thing of the past. Try explaining that a date. Going out? It still costs $10 for a drink in most places, but now everyone wants to find the places with the cheapest drinks possible, because every euro counts. Unfortunately, enjoyment is something I have not experienced in a long time, because no matter what, bitterness and talks about another friend who just got sacked happen every other minute. This broad-based depression brings a sense of defeat among men here, but also anger. We’re no longer able to make it on our own. It makes you feel incompetent. This anger comes from the fact that most of us have to pay for the government’s mistakes of bad managing and numerous misspent funds. There are basically two options right now for us. The first is to narrow expectations of getting promoted, shut up and keep working, even if that means earning less when the emergency contribution taxes from the state keep asking for more. Hopefully the government will find a solution. Option number two is to jump away from the ship before it sinks; the iceberg has already hit us. Even if you’ve never thought of immigrating, it is now a definite possibility. Look for opportunities elsewhere, maybe gain another university degree or just start over in a different country. Many of my friends have already relocated to London and Amsterdam, but they’re still a long way from stability. Australia and Canada keep coming up in every conversation, but few have the means (and guts) to actually go to the other side of the world. I am hoping to do so. People facing the same problems in the States might find it an extreme step, but it’s a step forward, nonetheless. Hard times mean that you have to make the best out of what you have, even if that means having to endure living with much less money or starting from scratch in a different continent. But you do it anyway, because your future is everything.
There's about as many types of drinking songs as there are reasons to have a drink. Some celebrate a job well done and a drink deserved, while others revel in drunk disorderliness or bemoan a hangover. It's all about intoxication, either in the sense of getting a rush or of getting poisoned.In the process of "researching" this list for you, it soon became clear that, just like there are tons of drinking songs, there are tons of terrible drinking euphemisms, like "imbibe," "quaff" and "tipple." Ugh.In finding these very best drinking songs, we didn't discriminate by alcohol content or drinking context. The only thing that mattered was that they told the truth. When folks get drunk, sh*t can either get real fun, real sad or just real messy.
While the financial planning of Greece, Italy and Spain can be criticized, there’s no questioning the sense behind the diets of their populations. A new study has discovered that following a Mediterranean diet is not only good for your heart but is also good for your brain. Researchers from Columbia University and the University of Miami found that the cuisine of countries like Greece, Italy and Spain leads to less blood-vessel brain damage than does the American diet, which typically involves plenty of saturated fats, red meats and refined grains. The researchers asked 966 people to fill out a questionnaire on their diet and then sorted participants based on what closest resembled the Mediterranean diet, which includes a bigger focus on fresh fruit, vegetables, whole grains, fish, and olive oil, and a lighter focus on red meats, refined sugar and wheat. Then they gave the participants an MRI and found that people with the highest ratio of monounsaturated fats to saturated fats had the lowest amount of blood-vessel damage. In case you thought food only affected your physical health and appearance, now you know just how severely it affects the mind, too.
It's A Man's World" is a column on anything and everything related to the modern man, by Ian Lang. If there are any topics you'd like to see addressed here, send them to us at editorial@askmen.com, or let us know in the comments section.It’s time again for one of those unanswerable rhetorical surveys I like to conduct: How many of you are satisfied with your job? Fortunately, thanks to The Conference Board’s 2010 survey, I know that the answer is roughly less than half of you. Having been involved in human capital consulting for several years now, I know that spells trouble for employers. A dissatisfied worker is an unengaged one, and unengaged workers are less productive and less loyal than those reporting high levels of satisfaction and engagement. In short, more than half of the American workforce is composed of people who are only there because they have to be. Is this the fault of the employers?Maybe a little bit. In an economically efficient world, employees would slot themselves into jobs that best suited them, and vice versa. As the demand for jobs continues to outpace availability, the perceived value of a given job rises. This allows employers to be both more selective and less concerned with their employees’ satisfaction, because there’s really no incentive to be concerned. Yes, the cost to onboard a new employee is high, but at least it can be accounted for. What can’t be as easily accounted for is the more abstract figure of revenue lost due to employee dissatisfaction. Ergo, in a world where there’s an effectively endless supply of asses waiting to fill very few seats, it makes some sense for employers to churn through them until they find the right match.
