driver4t5's Full Review: Muscle & Fitness Magazine
I'm a regular at the gym and as a result I'm always looking for a better training regimen. Many books and periodicals on fitness and bodybuilding abound. One of the more prominent magazines is Joe Weider's Muscle and Fitness, which is the flagship of Weider Publications' spectrum of health related periodicals.
Muscle and Fitness advertises prominently in stores, gyms, and fitness/bodybuilding contests and has successfully marketed itself into its current leadership position. Joe Weider has an extensive fitness history dating back to the 1930s and carries the clout to bring in some of the most prominent writers and bodybuilders to make contributions. This is the prime mover in its category.
But beyond the marketing and the decorations, what lies within? You're displaying big arms and legs, Bubba, but how much weight can you really MOVE? We will therefore cut through the posing and the hype and bring things to the arena.
The bulk of the magazine itself provides a good workout as each monthly issue clocks in at close to 300 pages. Much of this, about 70%, is advertising for various nutritional supplements (including, of course, the entire Weider line), clothing, excercise equipment, and related products. This is entirely too much flab, especially considering the newsstand price is $5.95!
The meat that IS contained within is somewhat useful - usually some high-protein, low fat recipes along with two or three specified training routines, usually done in conjuncion with some national level bodybuilder of fitness competitor. Also, a few of Weider's training principles are thrown in, and though often repeated over the course of several months, are always highly useful and DO help set a good foundation for working out. The routines are realistic and helpful, however they are almost exclusively geared towards bodybuilding, though, and not so much on strength, power, or any other athletic endeavor, so its usefulness in real-life situations (sports, self-defense) is limited.
A few editorials also dot the Muscle and Fitness landscape and they range from informational to thinly-veiled ads for nutritional supplements, not surprisingly with a bent toward the Weider line. Again, it's Joe's World, but with its price and heavy ad composition, we deserve better. A gratuitous pictoral section with a generally unknown model (male or female) also comes with the freight and further serves to bulk up the number of pages although it adds no contentual value (or entertainment value) whatsoever.
The photography is very high quality and does justice to the featured lifters. The perspective of beginner and intermediate lifters is covered slightly in text, but never in the pictures. The images of steroid-fed, silicone-enhanced, airbrush-altered models that permeate between the covers can be highly intimidating to a beginner and to an intermediate level reader. While these models have to be admired for their dedication to their task - and even airbrushing and chemical enhancements can only do so much as the user STILL must work out heavily to reach the levels shown - one has to remember that these models and competitors have made honing their bodies a way of life, just as we have made our schooling, work, or parental tasks and that such levels are not going to be attainable for a less professional level of training. Nevertheless, considerable results CAN be achieved with a more realistic regimen of 3-5 gym visits a week.
Several issues of this magazine need to be gathered and read at once to glean enough information for a beginner to get a good start. Beginner lifters are MUCH better off going to the local bookstore and buying two or three quality books on the subject rather than relying on this - or any other - periodical for lifting information. For the more advanced, it's useful from the standpoint of picking on the new routines and incorporating them in their existing regimen, as well as the dietary articles. I'll buy an occasional copy - maybe two a year, but I can't see any reason at the present to be a regular subscriber.
They are also available on the web at www.muscle-fitness.com. I won't go into much detail about the site, but I find it considerably more useful than the magazine as the ad content is MUCH lower and most of the useful articles wind up here, albeit a couple months after print publication. I DO recommend the site.
Final analysis, Bubba is big, but not as strong as he looks. Muscle and Fitness ranges from fair to good, but it's definitely nowhere near buff and could be so much more than it currently is.
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