Nutrition & Health OnLine Magazine: Fitness Magazines: The Good and the Bad

Fitness Magazines: The Good and the Bad

By Davey Dunn

While the winter months may make it difficult to participate in some activities it is an excellent time to catch up on some reading. If you are into health and fitness then chances are you have at least perused one or more of the numerous print publications that offer guidance and information on health and fitness topics. Since there is such a wide variety of publications we thought we would try to narrow the field for you by ranking some of the most popular magazines based upon the quality of information that each contains. The greater the number of Red Stars means that the magazine will provide the greatest amount of legitimate information for improving your performance and physique.

MUSCULAR DEVELOPMENT may look similar to the other magazines on the outside but the inside is where it counts and MD is definitely the best of the print publications. They actually use real sport scientists to write most of their articles and while some of them can be a little dry to read at times the information they convey is always top notch. Their quality and quantity of latest research pertaining to health and fitness is always very informative. If you are a competitive athlete trying to become a champion then MD will offer you plenty of valuable information that will help you improve. Even if you are just training for you own benefit it still makes sense to use the same principles that professional athletes use. The bottom line on MD is that they base their information on the science of sport and human performance, which is always the most accurate and will give you the best chance to succeed regardless of what your individual goal may be.

MEN'S HEALTH is a good publication because it provides basic straightforward information that will help the average man improve his body and his life. You will not become a linebacker in the NFL from reading Men's Health but then how many people really have that ambition. Men's Health is great at providing basic information on training and nutrition and if you have read any of our own articles you know how important we feel the basics are in relation to making improvements in your body. Unfortunately Men's Health is as it's name says and is mainly for men so if your are looking for some female specific information you will have to look elsewhere. Overall though, if you are the average guy who works out with the goal of staying healthy and looking fit then you will get a lot out of Men's Health.

MUSCLE & FITNESS has the widest circulation of any of the magazines and has always been a fairly good publication because it usually contains at least a few articles that are based on sport science. Muscle & Fitness also has some nice recurring articles like "Sports Research Update" and "Ask Arnold" that are very informative and make you look forward to the next issue. The downside to M & F is that they still include pictures of big steroided out guys and try to make it look like the training and nutrition routines presented in the magazine are the reason they look as they do. We feel this is exactly the wrong message to send especially in the present time when natural supplements can help you to make incredible gains. Muscle & Fitness can help you to improve but take care not to believe everything you see otherwise you will be disappointed with your own progress.

SHAPE is another publication put out by Weider, the parent company of Muscle & Fitness, and is somewhat like Muscle & Fitness except that it is geared toward women and is not near as in-depth on training and nutrition. It provides enough basic information that it will help you to make some progress but if you are at all serious about exercising you will probably be disappointed. It does provide some female oriented information that may not be available elsewhere but most women will probably get a lot more out of reading Muscular Development or Muscle & Fitness as long as you can stomach a few pictures of semi-nude women and a steroided out guys.

IRONMAN is a fairly hard-core magazine that provides some decent information from time to time and has plenty of bodybuilding contest coverage if that is your particular interest. One thing that Ironman has going for it is that at present it does not appear to have any affiliation with a particular supplement company such as: EAS and Muscle Media; MucleTech and MuscleMag; Muscle & Fitness and Weider Nutrition; Twinlab and Muscular Development. What this hopefully means is that if they recommend a supplement it will truly be because of the merits of the product and not because of the profits of the sale. On the downside, Ironman is heavily intertwined with the drug subculture that surrounds bodybuilding and therefore much of what you read has to be taken with a grain of salt since many training regimes that work under the influence of drugs will only lead to overtraning without the help of drugs.

FITNESS is another magazine that is directed at women. While I did see a few decent tips on training and nutrition most of the magazine reminded me of a fashion publication. As with Shape, the other women's fitness magazine we rated, the average women who is at all serious about improving their physique will get a lot more from Muscular Development or Muscle & Fitness. What I don't understand is why magazines that are supposed to be dedicated to fitness contain so little serious information that will help a woman improve their fitness. At a time when competitive women's sports are becoming much more prevalent it seems almost insulting that supposed women's fitness magazines provide such trivial information.

FLEX is definitely a magazine geared toward the hardcore bodybuilding crowd or probably more accurately the hardcore drug induced bodybuilding crowd. If you enjoy looking at pictures of huge freaky looking men, and women who look like men, then you will love Flex magazine. On the positive side, there is some decent information on training and nutrition from time to time but, as with other drug culture bodybuilding magazines, you have to be very careful how you apply some of the information since it may only work if you are using massive doses of performance enhancing drugs.

MUSCLEMAG has always been to me a kind of People Magazine for the bodybuilding subculture. If you want to know the latest gossip surrounding bodybuilding and fitness athletes then MuscleMag is the magazine for you. If, on the other hand, you want information that will help you improve you own body then I would recommend one of the other magazines. Just make sure that if you do read MuscleMag you keep a tight grip on your wallet. Their blatant attempts to get you to purchase an overpriced MuscleTech product seem to be never ending. The most irritating thing are these ads they use that look like real articles until you start reading them and realize it is nothing but BS designed to make you buy a MuscleTech product. I have even seen these ridiculous ads in some of the other publications which really tarnishes the credibility of otherwise decent publications. If anyone knows a way to put MuscleMag out of it's misery please let me know.

MUSCLE MEDIA is at the bottom of the list because it appears to be little more than a product catalog for EAS and the Body for Life Challenge. I know we are not the only ones who feel this way because there used to be hundreds of posts that said the same thing about the Body for Life book as well as Muscle Media at Amazon.com until they started eliminating the negative comments. In the April 2001 edition, out of 145 pages, the only mention of any other product besides EAS is an advertisement for a couple of GNC products. I am willing to bet that the only reason that the GNC products are even in the magazine is because the advertising is part of the deal to keep EAS products in GNC. The basic message of the publication is that if EAS markets the product then it is the greatest thing in the world and conversely if a product does not have the EAS label then it is totally worthless. This message is ludicrous. I guess anybody dumb enough to fall for such garbage deserves the mediocre results they will surely end up with but you cannot say we did not warn you.

You may be wondering why we did not rank Nutrition & Health OnLine Magazine. Obliviously we would be a little biased so we will leave that to you the reader. Our goal is to bring you the best and latest information on both nutrition and training and hopefully we do that better than any of the above magazines. I would love to hear what you think of how we compare so please email me with your comments at:

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