Do you sometimes walk to another room in your house to get something, but then can’t remember what it was you wanted? Do you sometimes forget about an appointment or struggle to remember someone’s name? You may have chalked these lapses in memory up to getting older. And age can indeed play a role in the diminishing power of memory. But as my guest will tell us, there are other factors at play as well. Charan Ranganath is a neuroscientist, a psychologist, and the author of Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold on to What Matters. Today on the show, Charan explains how factors like ..read more

If you read most first aid guides, the last step in treating someone who’s gotten injured or sick is always: get the victim to professional medical help. But what if you found yourself in a situation where hospitals were overcrowded, inaccessible, or non-functional? What if you found yourself in a grid-down, long-term disaster, and you were the highest medical resource available? Dr. Joe Alton is an expert in what would come after the step where most first aid guides leave off. He’s a retired surgeon and the co-author of The Survival Medicine Handbook: The Essential Guide for When Help is NOT ..read more

The overarching principle of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) is that the harder you do an exercise, the more physiological benefits you accrue; thus, by incorporating intervals of higher intensity efforts in your workouts, you can get more fitness bang for your buck in less time.  When we think about HIIT, we tend to think about going absolutely nuts on a fan bike or doing all-out sprints. But as Dr. Martin Gibala explained on the AoM podcast, while high-intensity training rises above the level of the moderate, it doesn’t require a complete max out of your heart rate, nor is it l ..read more

Last month, I talked about how I’ve reincorporated weight machines into my strength-training workouts to good effect. This year, we’ll be doing some articles on how to use various weight machines properly. One of the benefits of using machines is that they have a much easier learning curve than lifting barbells. But there are a few things you should know about using each in order to avoid pain and injury and use them most effectively for building size and strength. First up in these tutorials is the leg extension machine, which targets your quadriceps and your quadriceps alone.  There is ..read more

Every year in the United States alone, nearly a million people have a stroke. Strokes can strike at any age, but the chances of suffering a stroke increase as you get older. The most common age range for strokes is the 70s. A stroke occurs when blood supply to part of the brain is blocked or obstructed. The blockage causes brain cells to die. On average, 1.9 million brain cells die every minute that a stroke goes untreated. That’s why being able to recognize a stroke in someone is such a vital skill to have. The sooner you recognize that someone is having a stroke, the sooner you can get that ..read more

In last month’s AoM podcast episode with Dr. Martin Gibala about high-intensity interval training, he mentioned a high-intensity workout program that was developed by the Royal Canadian Air Force during the late 1950s, took only eleven minutes to perform, and became hugely popular with the civilian population. Duly intrigued, we decided to dig up the program to see what it involved. The 5BX plan (Five Basic Exercises) was born out of a particular need: a third of the RCAF’s pilots were deemed unfit to fly and needed a workout program that 1) could be done without any specialized equipmen ..read more

An important part of manhood has always been about having the competence to be effective in the world — having the breadth of skills, the savoir-faire, to handle any situation you find yourself in. With that in mind, each Sunday we’ll be republishing one of the illustrated guides from our archives, so you can hone your manly know-how week by week. Burns are one of the most painful and most common injuries, from minor burns caused by soaking up a few too many rays on the beach to serious burns caused by close contact with fire. Burn injuries are classified as belonging to one of three cat ..read more

We’re big proponents of getting outdoors here at AoM.  Spending regular time in nature comes with a whole host of benefits. It reduces stress, fights depression, improves focus, and can even speed up recovery from injuries and illness.  Spending time outdoors is also just good for a man’s soul. The wild can induce awe and wonder, which keeps us humble and grounded. So, how much time in nature do you need to get these benefits? In The Comfort Crisis, Michael Easter (check out our podcast interview with him about the book) highlighted research from Dr. Rachel Hopman, a professor ..read more

The fitness industry tends to oscillate between trends.  Some workout program or modality will be all the rage. Then, a new method (or the rediscovery of an old one) comes on the scene. The old modality is denigrated as dumb, outdated, and ineffective, and the new modality is lionized as the One True Way to exercise.  Such was the case with cardio. In the 80s and 90s, slow jogging was popular. Then, in the 2000s, high-intensity interval training became the new cool kid on the fitness block. For the past couple of years, people have been poo-pooing HIIT, and championing&nbs ..read more

You’ve probably heard of HIIT — high intensity interval training. In fact, you may feel so familiar with the idea that you think you understand it. But do you? People often hold some popular misconceptions about HIIT, and today we’ll unpack what some of those are with Dr. Martin Gibala, a foremost researcher of this fitness modality and the author of The One-Minute Workout: Science Shows a Way to Get Fit That’s Smarter, Faster, Shorter. Martin explains the main, underappreciated advantage of HIIT, which revolves around the “intensity-duration trade-off”: the higher intensity you make exercise ..read more