DIGITAL ISSUE

What are ultramarathoners running from?

Participation in ultramarathons is booming. But a growing body of research shows that a startling number of runners who tackle these distances are battling complex psychological issues

By luke benedictus

IT’S AN OVERCAST day in Sydney with the cloud coverage keeping the Spring temperatures unusually cool. “Perfect running conditions,” says Jack Hanley with a grin.

Frankly, it’s hard to imagine what kind of weather could stop him. It’s just past midday but Hanley has already run 65 kilometres and still has a long way to go. After fuelling up on a McChicken Sandwich and a chocolate thick shake, the 28-year-old landscaper is now pacing around Centennial Park as he waits for his stomach to settle enough to pick up the pace.  “I usually eat my lunch and walk 3km to digest,” he explains. “Then I’ll start running again.”

The reality is that Hanley can’t afford to stop for long. The ultrarunner is speaking on day 40 of his ambitious bid to run 10,000km in 100 days, an effort that’s so far taken him in a roundabout route from Cairns down to Sydney. A slightly built figure with a mullet and wispy ‘tache, Hanley concedes he’s already fallen about 870km behind schedule. His original aim was to try and knock off 100km each day, but his battered limbs rebelled at the prospect of tackling that unforgiving mileage over and over again with no respite.

“Nothing has gone too wrong physically so far – just a couple of little niggles here and there – but the hardest thing has been the fatigue,” he says. “I’ll do four days in a row where I manage to run 100km. But on day five my legs just don’t want to move for me, not because they’re stiff but I just have no energy.”

Despite that mounting exhaustion, Hanley is battling on. Each morning, he squeezes his runners onto his swollen feet before coaxing his aching body into a stiff-legged shuffle, hoping that, after a while, his body will eventually find some form of tolerable rhythm. But what also keeps Hanley going is that he’s running for his newly established mental health charity, Miles4Smiles.  He’s aiming to raise $430,000 during his run to reflect the almost 43% of Australians that reportedly struggling with mental health issues.

Hanley is personally invested in the cause as he’s struggled with his own mental health and addiction issues in the past. “Cocaine was the worst,” he admits. “I had no ‘off button’ and would just go until all hours of the morning.”

Going to rehab in 2020, helped Hanley to initially get off the gear, but he credits running with making the real difference to his recovery. “Running has been a great tool and it’s certainly helped my mental health a lot,” he says.

“The feeling that you get after a run is the thing I love about it. If I’m having a bad day now, I’ll drop on my two shoes and go for a run and instantly feel better afterwards. Whereas back in the day I’d just go and get on the beers.  I get the sort of same feeling from going for a long run that I used to get when I was out partying.”

HANLEY IS HARDLY the only person who’s found a form of redemption through long-distance running. There’s a reason why #runningismytherapy has emblazoned more than 1.3 million Instagram posts. For some people though, the slogan is more than a humblebrag and takes on a very literal meaning. A number of endurance athletes have publicly revealed how they use running as a personal tactic to manage some form of mental illness, trauma or addiction.

A library of memoirs explores the way that distance running can help people escape their destructive habits ranging from meth (Reborn on the Run by Catra Corbett) to booze (I Swear I’ll Make It Up To You by Mishka Shubaly) to crack cocaine (Running Man by Charlie Engle).  Then there are the books that hail the healing powers of running for other psychic ailments from mental distress and anxiety (Depression Hates a Moving Target by Nita Sweeney) to deep-seated grief (The Long Run by Catriona Menzies-Pike).

The latter book distils how, if you’re struggling in some area of your life, running can conjure a valuable sense of order and control. “It’s my guess that the structure of training programs is what leads so many avowed non-runners to attempt marathons when their lives fall apart,” writes Menzies-Pike, a Sydney writer who discovered the benefits of running after her parents were killed in a plane crash.

These books reflect our growing fascination with ultra-endurance sport – classified as running any distance over 42 km or tackling any other distance event that lasts for six hours or more. A 2021 report revealed a 1676% increase in ultramarathons since 1996. Back then, there were 34,401 participations, a figure that by 2021 had rise to 611,098 worldwide.

You don’t have to have attempted the Marathon des Sables to appreciate how running can offer a practical form of mental salve. Set out on any reasonable length run and, at some point, your mind will start to unspool amid the rhythmic patter of your footsteps.  Running can induce a form of mindfulness in motion as you’re compelled to engage in the present moment as you navigate the changing terrain. There’s also a heavy-handed symbolism inherent in the activity. Inclines may steepen, the rain may hammer down, but running teaches you to keep pushing forwards even when the going gets tough. That sense of positive momentum can take on an oversized power when you’re stuck in an emotional rut. In this way, running presents the chance to demonstrate your self-mastery and prove you’ve got the power to triumph over hard things. 

The mood-boosting properties of the action are not imaginary. Running releases feel-good endorphins in the brain including dopamine and serotonin that act as natural painkillers during physical discomfort and which – if you’re lucky – can lead to the fabled runner’s high. Whether you’re pounding the pavement or dodging tree roots on a trail, running also helps to regulate your body’s release of the stress hormone cortisol and is proven to lead to improved sleep quality. One small study even claims that running can be as effective as antidepressants on improving depression and anxiety symptoms.

If running is beneficial for both mind and body, you might assume that doing more of it is a good thing. But a new wave of research is now questioning that perceived logic. When it comes to endurance sports, it argues, you really can go too far.

“Exercise can be really, really good for mental health and can be used to manage low level depression,” says Suzi Cosh, associate professor in clinical psychology at the University of New England in NSW. But she also stresses that there are limits to its power and efficacy.

Last year, Cosh published research on the relationship between mental health and compulsive exercise  – a condition defined as a craving to train where people feel distress or guilt if they’re unable to get their fix. Interviewing more than a 1000 people, the study found that compulsive exercisers were more likely to have clinical levels of depression, anxiety and stress.

“Some people, I think, use exercise as a way of coping that’s more about avoidance,” Cosh suggests. “It’s avoiding thinking about the problem, avoiding those feelings, and channeling that into the running or into whatever their activity is… Running might help your mood feel a bit better right now, but it’s probably not going to resolve the actual issues that have got you to where you’re at. If people do have clinical symptoms, then running is not going to be enough on its own.”

SPEAKING TO MEN’S HEALTH over Zoom from her home in Italy, Jill Colangelo still has the lithe but steely frame of a triathlete and ultrarunner. She’s now retired from such pursuits, but is using her accrued wisdom in her role as a researcher in the Department of Forensic Psychiatry at Switzerland’s University of Bern specialising in the relationship between mental health and ultra endurance sport.

Last year, she wrote a narrative review paper that analysed data on the prevalence of mental health disorders in ultra endurance athletes. The results showed this was an underrepresented topic in sports medicine, identifying 25 papers that showed evidence of psychiatric issues and vulnerabilities in competitors. Eating disorders were evident in 15, depression in nine, anxiety in five, alcohol use disorder in two, psychosis in one and ADHD in one. “There is evidence of increased psychiatric disorders in the ultra-endurance-athlete (UEA) population, despite the known mental-health benefits of exercise,” the study explained. “Anecdotally, it could be argued that mental illness is a commonly recognised feature of the UEA community.”

There’s no denying that physical activity is largely a force for good, Colangelo admits. “But there is a place after which that U-shaped curve starts to turn down again, and we start to see that physical activity can have a detrimental effect, not only physically – we know you can literally run yourself into the ground – but that the mental health benefits also have a point after which we’re doing more harm than good.”

How then do we explain the dramatic number of mental-health difficulties in this super-fit demographic? Are people susceptible to these issues more likely to seek out ultra-endurance pursuits as a way to cope? Or do these wildly strenuous activities contribute or even provoke the conditions? The truth, Colangelo says, is that more research is needed. “As a scientist, I will tell you that there is evidence that both options are a possibility.”

Yet drawing on her personal insights as a former athlete who ended up with overtraining syndrome and who now mentors others suffering from the condition, Colangelo suspects that certain types of personality do gravitate towards these extreme pursuits. “

“Quite honestly, I think the sport scratches an itch. I really do,” she says. “That itch may take on different forms in different people, but I do think that there is something about ultra endurance sports that is compelling for a certain population of people because it does a number of things which, at first glance can appear to be healthy, but that can also substitute or compensate for other bad habits.”

The nature of that specific itch can massively vary, Colangelo says. Some people use ultramarathons to hide their eating disorders. Others come to the sport to manage substance abuse habits. Neurodivergent people can be drawn to the intense routine and level of preparation that endurance sport requires.  Then there are those, she continues, who’ve suffered a situational trauma whether it’s recovering from a divorce or bereavement and seek the distraction of a long-term goal.

Yet whether running ultramarathons constitutes a healthy coping mechanism depends entirely on the individual and the specific nature of the issue they’re trying to deal with. Complex issues, Colangelo insists, require multi-faceted solutions and ultra-endurance sport is unlikely to work as a magic fix-all.

“If you are hoping that you can rest your mental health protocol on just running or just triathlon or whatever your ultra-endurance flavour is, you are asking that sport to do a lot of work,” she says. “One thing cannot be everything, by definition. The amount of pressure that you’re putting on that one thing to hold everything up, even just by physics, is unlikely to work.

“I advise people that our mental health approach needs to be multifactorial. It needs to have, yes, some physical activity, but also some social interaction, good nutrition, sleep, maybe a therapist, hey, how about some meditation too…  In today’s complex world, we are all in need of a grab-bag of options rather than just focusing on one thing.”

CORY REESE IS unusually qualified to comment on this subject from both a personal and professional perspective. Having worked as a therapist for more than 20 years, he’s deeply familiar with treating mental-health problems. The 46-year-old is also a veteran runner having completed dozens of notorious ultras including Badwater, the 217-kilometre run across Death Valley commonly known as the world’s toughest foot race.

Yet what sharpens Reese’s insight is that he’s wrestled with depression himself, a condition that began five years ago following two life-changing events.

Living in Utah, he was brought up in the tight-knit Mormon community, so when he and his wife decided to leave the church it had severe repercussions on his relationships with family and friends. “I had to rebuild my whole identity and peer group. It was a really big life adjustment.” Reese says.  While still trying to process this transition, he was then diagnosed with a chronic health condition called common variable immunodeficiency disorder (CVID), a genetic disease where your immune cells don’t make antibodies. Rocked by these challenges, his mental health began to fray.

 “I had no idea what depression really was until I really experienced it myself,” he says. “Just that suffocating, smothering darkness where you feel like it’s hard to see a light at the other end of the tunnel.”

Does Reese believe his running habit was a positive force in helping him to cope? The answer, he says is “complicated” and it’s a subject that he explores at length in his memoir, Stronger Than the Dark: Exploring the Intimate Relationship Between Running and Depression.

 On one level, Reese acknowledges that running was good for his mental health due to its physiological benefits. He was grateful, too, for the camaraderie of the ultra-running community that’s famously tight-knit and supportive. “The downside is that your identity can get tied to running,” he says. “And if that’s your primary source of coping with difficult things, then what do you do when that gets taken away? Suddenly you’re left with no coping skills.”

In the process of learning to manage his CIVD – a condition that requires weekly blood infusions to boost his immune system – there were periods when Reese was unable to run. “That highlighted the importance of having other coping strategies,” he says.

But he also believes one of the fundamental tenets of the ultrarunning ethos may have compromised the way he initially dealt with his depression. If you’re preparing to tackle a multi-day trail race, Reese explains, you need to foster a level of self-sufficiency and inner grit. Shoelaces will break, water bottles will leak, injuries will occur miles away from an aid station. Successful endurance athletes therefore have to be good problem solvers, too, in order to handle such challenges when they’re sleep-deprived and physically broken. That battling spirit is, understandably, venerated in the ultra-running world. Yet that same attitude can be problematic elsewhere.   

“You end up kind of defaulting to self-reliance, because in a race you’re the only one who’s able to put one foot in front of the other, for mile after mile after mile. No one else can do it for you,” Reese admits. “But that mindset can then get instilled and show up in other areas of your life, and that can get you in trouble when you’re so self-reliant that you’re unwilling to ask for help.”

When his depression took hold, Reese thought that, given his professional experience as a therapist, he should be able to “fix it” on his own. He didn’t want to worry his wife or his friends with his troubles and so wound up silently languishing in his distress. “For a long time I didn’t tell anyone.”

Suffice to say, this is not the recommended course of action. Left untreated, depression is unlikely to go away on its own and seeking timely professional help can provide the emotional support and expert guidance to stop things getting worse. Instead, drawing on the hardy independence that had enabled him to conquer ultras like the Western States Endurance Run and the Wasatch 100, Reese tried to battle on single-handedly. “I didn’t want to be a burden,” he says. “But when you’re struggling with mental health stuff, it’s not a good attribute to be so self-reliant that you’re unwilling to ask for help.”

What eventually changed Reese’s mindset was an epiphany trigged by a multi-day ultra-marathon. It happened at kilometre 439 on day seven of the Vol State – a 500 kilometre race that travels from Kentucky to Georgia in the brutal heat of midsummer.

Reese was running with two friends, Jeff and Carol. But after an entire week of back-to-back exertion, Reece knew he was in trouble. The oppressive humidity coupled with the constant friction from days on the road had wrecked his feet. The throbbing pain from multiple blisters intensified until his soles felt like an “angry nest of murder hornets”.

Stopping at the small town of Monteagle in Tennessee, Carol noticed Reece’s distress and offered to try and help by straining his blisters and taping up his hotspots. Instinctively, he declined. He knew it’d be a revolting task that he didn’t want to saddle his friend with. But when Reece became aware he could no long walk, he reluctantly agreed.

Sitting down outside on some concrete stairs, he removed his sweat-sodden socks to allow Carol to begin stoically popping and patching each blister in turn.  As she worked away, Reece was suddenly overcome with emotion. “I just broke down sobbing. It was such a raw, vulnerable moment for me to finally accept help that I’ve been so resistant to. Then I looked down and Carol was crying too. It was just such a connecting experience.

“In that moment, I realised that vulnerability is really what connects us with each other. I realised that we don’t have to do this all on our own. That it’s okay to ask for help. And so when I came home from the race after we finished, that’s when I opened up to my wife about my depression.”

To complete an ultramarathon you have to dig deep and keep going, no matter how hard it gets. Everyday life can sometimes require similar perseverance. The big difference, Reece insists, is that when it comes to the latter, you don’t have to struggle on alone. “My whole healing process really started when I finally got that realisation.”

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Alone was ideal pandemic viewing because it showed people navigating some of the issues we were experiencing at home, albeit with far less visceral intensity. During those weeks of social isolation, it was somehow reassuring to see these plucky contestants finding ways to navigate the loneliness and hardship. Watching from the sofa, I was just trying to stay afloat through home-schooling, rather than being forced to live off tree bark and squirrel meat. Nonetheless, the program still resonated thanks to its inspiring moments of optimism and fortitude in the bleakest conditions.

The show also presented self-reliance in a heroic light, a quality that, in recent years, seems to have become increasingly unfashionable. Today, solitary life is rarely viewed in a positive manner, with many studies proving that our social bonds are closely linked to longevity and that living alone is often associated with poor mental health. In fact, we’ve long been conditioned to think of isolation as a bad thing – children are sent to their rooms as a form of punishment, while exile was once considered a penalty worse than death. Yet this one-eyed take on individualism may be depriving us of a host of unexpected benefits. 

That, at least, is the view of Chris Bakon, a contestant in the new Australian series of Alone that’s set in the wilds of Tasmania. “Being alone can be great,” he insists. “It can serve a very good purpose, and we should all have a part of that in our lives. But I think so many of us live surrounded by people, we just don’t know what it’s like.”

Bakon first discovered the benefits of solitude while learning to deal with his post-traumatic stress disorder. The 40-year-old served in the Australian army from 1999 to 2006, a stint that included repeated tours of Iraq. After returning to civilian life in his native Tasmania, he found himself haunted by his war-time experiences and tried to block them out with the distractions of work and booze. “During the day, I’d just be working as hard and as long as I could,” he says. “And then after work, I’d be hitting the bottle, drinking until I passed out. When I wasn’t working, I’d basically be drinking or sleeping. That was a big revolving pattern and obviously not a healthy one.”

It was only after his PTSD was diagnosed that Bakon began looking for more constructive ways to manage his condition. An avid fisherman and crayfish free diver, he found being alone with nature on the Tassie coast incredibly restorative.

Grounding, he explains, is a mental-health technique that can help people to calm themselves and detach from flashbacks or challenging emotions by focusing on their immediate surroundings. Bakon discovered that he could intensify its effect by immersing himself alone in nature. “You can sit at a table with your hands on your knees with your eyes closed to ground yourself,” he says. “But if you get out there into the bush, and just remove yourself from everything that’s artificial in this world – the bricks, the steel, the plumbing, the power lines – if you get rid of it all and just strip everything back to just you and nature, that can be intimidating but also very humbling. It’s like having a cold shower for your mind.”

Bakon is hardly the first person to recognise the pyschotherapeutic benefits of solo time. The British psychiatrist Anthony Storr was convinced that man’s capacity to be alone was a sign of emotional maturity and an overlooked tool for personal growth.  In his book, Solitude: A Return to the Self, he wrote: “In a culture in which interpersonal relationships are generally considered to provide the answer to every form of distress, it is sometimes difficult to persuade well-meaning helpers that solitude can be as therapeutic as emotional support.”  

Bakon agrees that devoting time for self-reflection is hugely worthwhile. “If you’re never alone and you’re always with a partner or friends, at what point do you get in touch with just the essence of nature and yourself?”

Carving out such moments of quiet is harder than ever in our hyper-connected world. You text a mate while walking down the street, browse your emails as you queue for coffee, or take a work call as you drive on your daily commute. Meanwhile the relentless jibber-jabber of social media never stops. As a result, we’ve become less mentally attuned to spending time alone in our heads.

Bakon was more ready than most for confronting the wilderness single-handed. A seasoned outdoorsman, his social media feed @tassieadventureman is full of pictures of the giant crayfish, abalone and flathead that he pulls from the ocean’s depths. But even with all his bushcraft and practical familiarity with solitary life, his time on Alone still proved to be a profound experience. The weeks of isolation served to make him more appreciative of his friends and family, while he also gained a welcome sense of perspective that made him less judgmental. “When you’re out there in these big, tall trees, and they’re blowing in a gnarly wind, and Mother Nature’s giving you a bit of a challenge, you realise how inferior you are,” he says. “What happens then is that all your egotistical behaviour goes away. I feel that it’s really opened up my heart a lot more to other people’s views and opinions.”

Spending time alone won’t automatically trigger such epiphanies, but it may at least create the necessary space. There’s a hard-headed reason why, every year, Bill Gates used to spend two “think weeks” alone in a cabin deep in the forest in the Pacific Northwest. Gates made this time to escape distraction and read, giving himself dedicated time for deep, creative thought. 

The Microsoft boss might have embraced solitude as a means to kindle productivity and inspiration. But making time to be alone doesn’t have to be so goal-orientated – just think of it as a life skill. Whether you find yourself having to uproot to a new city or you’re blindsided by the end of a relationship, solitude is something that few of us can avoid forever. When you do find yourself alone on the rocky shoreline of life, the ability to remain comfortable in your own skin can prove deeply affirming. Yes, we may be social animals, but it’s called “self-acceptance” for a reason.  

The post In Search of Solitude: The Importance of Spending Time Alone appeared first on Men's Health Magazine Australia.

Due to its rarity value and celebrity provenance, Newman’s Rolex Daytona finally sold under the hammer for $US17.75 million, a sum that was a world record for a watch at the time. This was a truly mind-boggling sale that made headlines around the world, focusing attention on the watch world like never before. In the process, the Daytona sparked a number of knock-on effects. Not only did it fuel the growing demand for steel sports watches, it also stimulated huge interest in the vintage watch market that was previously the realm of watch nerds and collectors (US consulting firm McKinsey estimates the pre-owned luxury watch market will be worth over A$40 billion by 2025.) In addition, Newman’s Daytona also shone the spotlight on a particular style of chronograph that has become commonly known as the “panda dial”.

This specific configuration refers to a black-and-white, high-contrast design that acquired its ursine name due to its resemblance to the face of a panda – the black sub-dials on the white dial evoking the eyes and mouth of the bamboo-munching bear. A variation on this format uses white sub-dials against a black dial and is known as a “reverse panda”, and there are also close cousins, such as TAG Heuer’s black and gold Carrera (pictured). 

The reason for this colour combo isn’t merely decorative.  Chronographs have a stopwatch function that enables them to whittle seconds into ever smaller increments. By the 1960s, the modern chronograph had become the preferred tool watch for rev-heads and weekend racers who wanted to monitor their times at the track. The panda format became popular due to its basic utility. The starkness of the black and white offered high visibility and was easy to read at a glance – a handy feature when you’re in the driver’s seat taking a tight corner at speed. 

This retro spirit of high-octane adventure is still infused in the panda dial. The 1960s were, after all, the stylistic golden age of F1, a time before safety suits and carbon-fibre everything, when the sport’s danger factor and glamour were at their peak. So, panda dials retain a Steve McQueen swagger that few red-blooded men will be able to resist.

Today, pandas may be a zoological species notoriously bad at reproduction. But the same isn’t true for their wrist-bound namesakes. As the Rolex Daytona celebrates its 60th birthday this year, expect the volume of the pandemonium to grow. 

TAG Heuer Carrera Chronograph $31,150, watchesofswitzerland.com

Seiko Prospex Speedtimer, $1100, seikowatches.com

Citizen CA4500-32A, $499, bevilles.com.au

Tudor Black Bay Chrono, $7220, tudorwatch.com

Rolex Cosmograph Daytona, 40mm $20,400, rolex.com

Raymond Weil Freelancer, $6300, raymond-weil.com

Zenith Chronomaster Revival El Primero $12,200, zenith-watches.com

Tissot PRX Automatic Chronograph, $2775, tissotwatches.com

Seiko Prospex Solar Chronograph Speedtimer 41, $1100, gregoryjewellers.com.au

The post Some of the Coolest “Panda” Chronographs On Our Wish List appeared first on Men's Health Magazine Australia.

To a significant extent you can reshape your physique with dedication and hard work. But the dimensions of your frame will set the outer limits of how much muscle you can stack on. The Rock is a man mountain with a 50-inch chest. He can therefore gain significantly more mass than someone like myself – essentially a skinny-fat version of Rove McManus.

Bodybuilders know this. That’s why their gym goals are less focused on size and more on symmetry and proportion. The man who popularised this idea was Steve Reeves, the legendary bodybuilding champion who was crowned Mr Universe in 1950 and famously played Hercules on the big screen. To perfect his formidable physique, Reeves devised a formula to determine the golden ratio for muscle to bone. He believed the simplest way to calculate the maximum potential size of your arms involved measuring your wrist. Your optimal arm size, he suggested, should be 252 per cent (yes, he was that specific) of your wrist size.

Remember that benchmark presents the aspirational parameters of what’s humanly possible and would still be a very ambitious target for even the most singleminded gym junkie. Nevertheless, the basic principle holds: the bigger your wrist, the greater your muscular potential.

The size of your wrist should influence your choice of watch, too. Boasting wrists with the circumference of a modest drainpipe, the Rock can pull off some very big watches indeed. Most of the timepieces that Johnson is spotted wearing tend to be over 43mm in diameter.  Yet if – like most guys – you’re not similarly bestowed, you should probably consider a more diminutive alternative.

“In the early 1990s, a typical size for a men’s watch dial was around 37-39mm,” explains Chris Hall, the senior watch editor for online retailer Mr Porter. “The size went up to 41-44mm since the mid-1990s, and the trend rapidly grew since then. In the mid-2000s, it was common to see 45-48mm watches.”

Hall suspects this spike in growth stemmed from watches becoming more of a visual status symbol in the ’90s. Compounding this was the fact that watch brands began creating more complex case and dial designs that needed larger dimensions to be showcased. “I would credit the IWC Schaffhausen Portugieser, the Panerai Luminor and Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore as the key drivers of the trend,” he says. “With high-profile athletes and celebrities like Michael Schumacher, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwazenegger wearing these watches in the mid-2000s, watch lovers quickly got used to the idea of wearing larger sport watches with bold designs.”

The problem is that beefy watches simply aren’t flattering on wrists that lack similar heft.
If your watch lugs – the bits of metal that attach the strap to the case – overhang your wrist, it’s not a good look.  Watch brands appreciate that, which is why trends have thankfully reverted to smaller, more compact sizes. “Watchmakers paying tribute to their older vintage styles is one of the reasons driving this shift,” Hall suggests.

Ultimately, if you’re looking to buy a new watch, the size you pick is ultimately a matter of personal taste. But if you want a basic guide, you could do a lot worse than heed Hall’s expert advice. 

“I think a 37mm to 41mm dial is the sweet spot for most men’s wrists,” he says. “In this size bracket, you’ll find slender dress watches to sports models alike. However, we should all look beyond the diameter. There is a reason we always list a watch’s height, or thickness, on Mr Porter. It’s a major factor in how it fits.” 

Size: 38mm

Zenith Chronomaster Original 

Size: 38mm $13,600

Size: 38.5mm

Seiko Presage SRPE43J

Size: 38.5mm $695

Size: 39mm

Tudor Pelagos 39

Size: 39mm $6010

Mido Ocean Star Gradient

Size: 39mm $1400

Size: 39.5mm

Glashutte Sea Q  

Size: 39.5mm $18,650

Size: 40mm

Hublot Big Bang Integral Time Only

Size: 40mm $30,700

Citizen AW0100-19A

Size: 40mm $350

The post Which Size Watch Should You Be Wearing? appeared first on Men's Health Magazine Australia.

Not dying, lifting

Look and feel great (in fact, better than ever!) without training yourself into the dirt to be the next fitness  phenomenon. Luke Benedictus tries it out.

Sure, you have to push your limits in your training. But CrossFit – and, more broadly, the fitness dogma of no pain, no gain – has long pushed you well past exhaustion, often leaving you to peel yourself off the ground after every workout. And Marcus Filly has seen what that leads to: it may blast kilojoules and help you build muscle in the short term, but it can lead to diminishing results over the long haul. It usually causes burnout. From running to bodybuilding, too much of the fitness industry pushes you to chase fatigue above all else. “Blow through all your mental, emotional and physical resources in your workouts and you’re not going to have the same capacity for your job, wife, husband or other interests,” says Filly, a California-based coach. You’re seeking better health, but you’re actually robbing yourself of it, he says. 

The solution is what Marcus Filly calls Functional Bodybuilding, and it’s a kinder, gentler version of classic HIIT that still helps you build muscle – but doesn’t leave you feeling (and fearing) every moment of every workout. It’s an approach that’s gaining attention: Filly has nearly 860,000 Instagram followers, and his Persist workout program has about 10,000 subscribers. He even has an exercise, the Filly press, named after him. 

The protocol itself is born of Filly’s own experience. Six years ago, he was one of CrossFit’s strongest, in part because of a regimen of three-a-day workouts. Yes, three a day! Each session was exactly what you’d expect: Filly took on WOD after WOD, lifting heavy and scoring many reps as he carved six-pack abs and forged elite strength, building to a 250-kg deadlift. 

The approach earned results, propelling Marcus Filly to a 12th-place finish at the 2016 CrossFit Games. The downside: his mind and body were wrecked. Days after the Games, he struggled to find a reason to go to the gym. Even worse, all those reps of power cleans, pull-ups and burpees left him battling constant soreness in his shoulders, hips and “places I’d never dealt with in the past”. “I was toast,” he says. “I went from feeling like the fittest to the least-fit person in the room.” 

Marcus Filly wound up quitting the gym entirely for two full months (an eternity for today’s no-days-off runner or strength-training fiend), but his mind was never far from fitness. Done with CrossFit, Filly, who’d majored in molecular and cell biology at UC Berkeley and started med school before turning to the program, rethought his entire training plan, searching for ways to build strength without wearing down his body with heavy weights and huge reps. 

When he returned to the gym, he’d built his own workout style, one that maintains a strong focus
on form during EMOM and AMRAP challenges, increases recovery time, and lets you work with lighter weights. And the three key tenets of his style can be applied to any workout you do – CrossFit
or not:

Rule 1: Technique over Tonnage (and Tons of Reps)

Filly knows all about the classic CrossFit pull-up stereotype, the athlete’s entire body flailing in midair as they rip through reps. He understands it, too. “In competition,” he says, “you’re trying to do the minimum that you can get away with. That means performing each rep in a way that just barely clears the bar for the acceptable standard of execution.”

There’s a good chance you’ve done this in your own workouts, too, rushing through extra reps of biceps curls or push-ups. Those rushed reps with shaky form invite injury. 

Filly’s programs use two tricks to break that habit. The first: strict tempo. During the lowering portion of any exercise, count to three seconds. Pause for one second at the bottom of an exercise. Then aim to lift quickly. This tempo keeps each exercise focused on the muscles you’re training, sparing your joints pain and injury. 

The second: focus on form. One way to do this is by integrating one-and-a-quarter reps, which can be used during most strength-based exercises. Filly does it often in the cyclist squat. You’ll set up in goblet-squat position, your heels on a weight plate, then bend at the knees and hips, lowering slowly into a squat (for three seconds). Instead of standing back up, you’ll go one fourth of the way up, lower back down, then stand up. Try it for three sets of 8-10 reps. 

Rule 2: Get Off-Balance

When you follow Filly’s first rule, you’ll inevitably have to use lighter weights than usual. That doesn’t mean you won’t challenge every muscle. He ensures that your entire body gets a workout by using offset-load moves, which have you lifting weight with one arm or leg at a time. 

And no, that’s not as easy as it sounds, because offset-load moves require your abs and glutes to kick into overdrive to stabilise your body. Don’t believe him? Think back to your last time lifting a heavy suitcase into the overhead locker before a flight. Harder than a lateral raise, right? Filly knows why: “That’s a one-arm lift with a twist and a slight lunge,” he says. “All one-sided moves.” 

Offset-load moves can challenge your whole body even more if you hold weights in both hands while performing reps on only one side. That’s the idea behind the Filly press, a shoulder-press variation named for the coach.

To do it, stand holding a kettlebell in your left hand at your shoulder. Hold a dumbbell at your shoulder in your right hand. Keeping the kettlebell close to your chest, press the dumbbell overhead, then lower. Do three sets of 8-10
reps per side. And expect it to be harder than you think: the mid-back muscles on your left side work overtime to keep the kettlebell stable.

Rule 3: Be an All-Around Star

Yes, it’s tempting to fixate on packing on muscle or getting an exercise (think deadlift or bench press) superstrong or dominating every morning run. After all, most athletes focus on specific traits (endurance, speed, strength). Marcus Filly knows it, too. “That was true of me in my competitive days,” he says. “The marketing message we hear is that if you reach an elite level of fitness, you’ll naturally look and feel healthier. But that’s completely inaccurate.”  

Truth is, overfocusing on a few gym ideas can be antithetical to your health. You may want to build a massive chest, but if you never hone your flexibility or cardio, you’ll struggle to haul a bag of groceries several blocks home or to reach the top shelf at the supermarket pain-free. 

The post Crossfit Veteran Marcus Filly’s Gentler Take On Hiit Can Help You Build Major Muscle And Strength appeared first on Men's Health Magazine Australia.

The American writer John Shirley was grimly familiar with this scenario. “Weekends are a bit like rainbows,” he wrote. “They look good from a distance but disappear when you get up close to them.” Nor is this particularly surprising. Your life responsibilities, after all, do not suddenly vanish away from work. Inevitably, there are still errands to run, lawns to mow, groceries to buy, houses to clean, kids to take to swimming lessons and DIY chores to attempt and disastrously bungle before seeking professional help. 

But these life logistics aren’t the only thing on your weekend agenda. After a long and stressful week, you could probably do with some well-earned rest to recharge. Except that you also want to have some fun – go for a surf, perhaps, or catch up with mates for a beer or a barbie. Faced by so many competing demands, it’s easy to get paralysed by indecision. The next thing you know, you’ve been sucked down a social-media wormhole that spits you out into the familiar dread of the Sunday-night blues.

That risk is graver than ever at a time when weekends are increasingly losing their definition. Many of us now work from home – some of the time at least – so our professional lives have become entangled with our domestic worlds. The ping of work emails never stops, making it harder than ever to switch off.  The onus is on you to erect some boundaries and regain control. But you need all the help you can get. 

Which is why we’re advocating the idea of weekend watches. Essentially, what we’re talking about is a highly visible cue to nudge your head in the right direction and capitalise on your precious time off. You know how you occasionally scrawl a felt-tip note on the back of your hand saying, “FFS, Don’t Forget The Milk”? Well, this is a similar principle. 

As an added bonus, it also tells the time, is strapped to your wrist and will fire you up to seize your weekend. One word of caution: your smartwatch may have the functionality to do dozens of clever-clog things, from tracking your blood-oxygen levels to sharing your photos. But it’s ill-suited to weekend-watch duties due to its endless stream of notifications. You don’t want to be relaxing at the beach and idly glance at the time, only to be greeted by a terse email from your passive-aggressive colleague that yanks your mind back into the very snake pit of office politics that you’re meant to be having a two-day reprieve from. Nope, when it comes to the functionality of weekend watches, less is very much more.

Rather than bringing you back to work, what you want here is a watch that will hammer home to your brain that you are very much off duty. Think of it like a Hawaiian shirt for your wrist. That means a watch that employs a bit of colour and fun, whether that consists of a perkier dial, a bolder bezel or an eye-catching rubber strap. It’s a watch specifically chosen to short-circuit any thoughts of spreadsheets and that tricky client presentation next week that could conceivably derail your career. 

Weekend watches may sound like an extreme measure but, quite frankly, these days you need extra ammo. Recent data harvested from Microsoft 365 users show that, since the pandemic kicked off, after-hours work is up by 28 per cent and weekend working by 14 per cent.

All work and no play, as we all well know, makes Jack a dull boy – and leads to a disgruntled wife and a nervous tic. It’s time to reclaim your weekend.  

Hublot Big Bang Integral Ceramic $33,600

Raymond Weil Freelancer $5695

Swatch MoonSwatch $380

Longines Legend Diver $3825

Rado DiaStar Original $2150

Citizen NJ0170-83Z $550 

Seiko Prospex Speedtimer Solar Chronograph $1110

Mido Ocean Star GMT $2100

Tudor Black Bay GMT S&G $7560

TAG Heuer Formula 1 $2650

The post Weekend Watches: How Your Watch Can Help You Mentally Escape The 9-to-5 Grind appeared first on Men's Health Magazine Australia.

He’s hardly the only one either. From Darth Vader to Karl Lagerfeld, the gangsters of Reservoir Dogs to the members of Kiss, many have gravitated to the dark side of the palette. That’s largely because black is a colour that’s become supercharged with renegade swagger. Traditionally, it has powerful connotations – in Greek legend, the god of the underworld, Hades, ruled from a black ebony throne, while in Renaissance Europe, black was associated with status because achieving a strong version of the dye was so labour-intensive. Black is edged with danger and mystery, too: during the 1000s, black creatures like ravens and cats were seen as evil and credited with supernatural powers. 

Want some of that for your wrist? Of course you do. And, in fact, a black watch makes sense for a bunch of highly practical reasons. Firstly, black is a supremely wearable colour and a watch of this hue will offer the versatility to sync up with practically anything in your wardrobe, from casual wear to something more formal.

Black watches aren’t just playing the tough-guy role either. They have a genuinely rugged lineage to uphold. During World War II, the British Ministry of Defence wanted to place an order for custom-built wristwatches for their soldiers. The watches needed to be accurate, durable, waterproof and shockproof with luminous hands and hour markers, plus a stainless-steel case. The specified dial colour, meanwhile, had to be black, because white text against a black background was deemed to be the most legible. Twelve companies would fulfill the MoD’s brief, with Buren, Cyma, Eterna, Grana, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Lemania, Longines, IWC, Omega, Record, Timor and Vertex combining to produce almost 150,000 watches between them. The 12 watches created for WWII would later become known as “the Dirty Dozen”.

Today, that functional heritage has continued. Many black watches make use of materials like ceramic and carbon fibre to keep them lightweight and resilient, while special finishes like PVD or DLC (diamond-like carbon) are used for both protective and aesthetic reasons. The upshot is that whether you just want a simple black dial or a fully murdered-out watch, your choices are now greater than ever. For watches, it’s not a case of back in black; this is a colour that never went away.  

Mido Ocean Star 600 Chronometer $2900

IWC Big Pilot’s Watch 43 Top Gun $15,400

TAG Heuer Autavia Chronometer Flyback $10,100

Rado Captain Cook High-Tech Ceramic Diver $3500

Hublot Classic Fusion Orlinski Black Magic $19,800

Tudor Black Bay Ceramic $6590

Samsung Galaxy Watch5 Pro Titanium 45mm, $799.00

Casio “Casioak” GA-B2100 $329

Citizen Series 8 model NA1025-10E $3499

Longines Hydro Conquest $2575

The post The Best Black Watches for Men Add a Little Edge to Your Wrist appeared first on Men's Health Magazine Australia.

As a professional cliff diver, you dive into the water from 27 metres. When you get up on the platform there are a lot of things going on in your head. Fear. Tension. Pressure. It’s not a walk in the park. But last year when the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series went to Saint-Raphaël in France, I had an accident.

Leading into that event, I was feeling great. But when I did my first dive in training, something felt a bit weird as I went through the air. So I said to my friend, “I’m going to do one more”. Now that’s something that I never do. I’ll normally do one dive in the build-up to get a feel for the conditions and then, no matter how it goes, just try and improve on it in the competition. But that day I chose to go up again and when I jumped off the platform, everything fell apart. 

My body didn’t connect with my mind and I got ‘lost’ in the air. That’s your absolute worst fear as a cliff diver.

Coming down it’s only about three seconds of free fall, but in that situation, it feels like forever. You know everything has gone wrong, and you’re just waiting for the impact. I was really scared. Really scared.  

I landed on my back from 27 metres. When you hit the water like that, it’s not about the pain; it’s more that you just feel so disorientated, so confused. The next thing I remember were the scuba divers pulling me out and then being taken to hospital. Physically, everything was okay, but mentally I was really struggling.

After that, I tried a couple of times to dive again. The first event of this year’s series was in Boston.

I climbed up the platform, thinking, I’m ready to do this. But once I reached the edge, my mind started overthinking all the worst-case scenarios: It will happen again! I’m going to kill myself! What am I doing here? My mind was so bad, I was like, I can’t do this. I need to wait. It was tough.

A couple of weeks later, the series went to Paris for the first time. I wanted to take some pressure off so I decided I wouldn’t do my most difficult dives in order to regain my confidence, exorcise that bad memory and prove to myself
I could still dive. If I managed to do that, I hoped to be able to start doing my usual dives again in the next competition. The morning before the Paris event I just sat alone on the edge of the diving platform with my legs dangling above the Seine, looking out at the Eiffel Tower. In my head I kept talking to myself: Okay. Jonny, no worries. You chose easy dives. Everything should be okay.

When competition time arrived, I stood on the platform looking down at the crowds. Did I feel scared? You never conquer that fear. If you lose the fear, it’s time to retire. What you do is try and manage it. Okay, I said to myself, I’m scared. I’m diving from 27 metres. But I can control it because I’ve trained for this for so many years.
I focused on blocking everything else out and concentrating on what I had to do. It didn’t matter there were 3000 people watching me. Nothing mattered. The world disappears in that second. It’s just you and the platform and the water. And then you just jump.

That moment in Paris was a huge step for me. Now I want to start competing for the podium again. Whatever you’re attempting in life, it’s okay to feel scared. But you also have to try and stay rational and focus on the elements that you can control. That’s the only way that you can ever manage to do your thing. 

–

Jonathan Paredes is an ambassador for Mido watches. The final of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series takes place in Sydney on October 15.

The post Professional Cliff Diver Jonathan Paredes On Overcoming Fear After Injury appeared first on Men's Health Magazine Australia.