ABOUT THE THEME

On 3rd January 2009 a bloke called Zafar Gill, took a deep breath, braced himself and tried to lift up his head. A few seconds later he had broken a world record by lifting a staggering 73kg with his right ear. That’s like lifting a mate with a good BMI. We don’t know how you train for that, but we do know that the human body is capable of some quite extraordinary feats of endurance and astonishing demonstrations of fitness.

Most of us will never get near to such super human fitness and strength, but despite this we are still a fitness obsessed nation. Men’s Health is by far the biggest selling magazine but at the same time we seem to be getting bigger and heavier!

Fitness however is more than press-ups and ear lobe lifting! What about general health? Blokes do tend to struggle to go to the doctor, preferring it to get pretty bad before they go for help. Why is that?

And what about emotional fitness? There is no doubt that there is a severe amount of angst in men. This is particularly true of younger blokes, with the predominant cause of death for a man under 40 in the UK being suicide. Perhaps this is because we spend more time looking good on the outside rather than investing in staying healthy on the inside? Perhaps we need to learn how to laugh more and take a good look at what life is really all about?