Rodale
Caffeinated Wellness
Starbucks Gets Into the Fitness Biz
You know how Starbucks has free internet now? Well, starting this fall their in-store Wifi will feature six online channels: News, Kids, Business & Careers, Entertainment, My Neighborhood and Starbucks, and Wellness. The Wellness content will be brought to you by Rodale, the peeps behind Men's Health and Women's Health. It would not be unreasonable to accordingly fear an onslaught of "wellness" content on advanced kissing and how to be as hot as a vampire. But maybe it'll be better than that. One wellness feature Starbucks/Rodale is promising: A "Run, Ride, and Walk Finder "with geo-targeted maps of more than 300,000 routes that highlight Starbucks stores along the way." As long as you don't actually stop at every Starbucks along the way, could be cool...
Formulaic
Women's Health: Covers Not Identical, Just Stupider Now
So all Men's Health's covers are the same. Which makes you wonder if the same is true of Women's Health covers. If only. Jezebel took a look at the magazine from 2005 to today, and notes that it's morphed from a "slightly smart-ass" health magazine with a "tomboyish verve" to a fully "lobotomized" women's fitness magazine. So WH isn't copying itself. It's copying Cosmo. Case in point, old Women's Health ran features on how being fat but fit was better than being a couch potato. New Women's Health runs features on eating licorice off your partner's penis. Sigh.
Busted!
Conclusive Proof that All Men's Health Magazines are Actually the Same
A year ago we speculated that Rodale was run by robots. (How else to explain the mind-numbing repetition of articles.) Last week we noted the absurd use of random and recurring numbers as story pegs? Well, Gawker has one-upped us, pointing out in an hilarious series of posts over the last 48 hours that Men's Health is actually just running the exact same cover over and over again. Note similarities between the current Taylor Lautner issue, and the October 2007 issue above. WTF? Caught with his pants down, Men's Health editor Dave Zincenko try to explain the duplication was on purpose:
...it was not inadvertent, and it was part of overall branding strategies that we wouldn't share for magazines, books, international editions, mobile applications or anything else.
As Gawker points out, this is Palin-esque in its illogic and incoherence. We're both amused and horrified. Let the search begin: Could it only be these two issues? (No.) Can Zincenko possibly keep his job? And could Women's Health really be untainted? We're off to look....
Summarizer
The Rodale Index
Pondering just now the relentless use of numbers by the Rodale Corporation on the covers of Men's Health and Women's Health magazines. Begs the question: What comes first, the article or the number? And are these numbers arbitrary, or calculated by highly paid Rodale quant jocks? With all due credit to Harper's, we present a series of cover numbers from the not-quite-comprehensive collection of issues strewn about Social Workout HQ....
- 1 Rank of squash among "Power Foods You Must Put on Your Plate"
- 10 Years that you are going to ace if you learn how to negotiate to win.
- 135,000 Number of Men Who Have Gone Missing on which Men's Health has the real story.
- 100 Number of best new tech toys for men.
- 4 Number of "super-easy" moves to flat abs
- 18 Sizzling beauty steals that will save you money and make you look gorgeous.
- 2,145 Number of Best New Health, Sex, Beauty & Nutrition Tips
- 15 Number of Amazing Sex Secrets
- 25 Number of Red Hot Sex Tips
- 28 Number of Days of Hot Sex You'll Have if You Keep Your Libido Amped
- 30 Number of [other] Red Hot Sex Secrets
- 10 Number of Minutes Required to Get a Tight Butt
- 1 Number of dress sizes you'll drop fast on the Burn More Fat No-Diet Weight Loss Solution
- 1,293 Cool new money, fitness, sex and nutrition tips.
- 102 Number of Fast Health Fixes
- 13 Number of Best Places to Meet Women
- 5 Number of Life Saving Tests for Men
- 2 Number of weeks required to Melt Pounds and Trim Inches
- 8 Days required to Lose Your Belly
- 7 Number of Secrets of a Sexy Marriage
- 7 Number of Fit Moms Including Ashlee Simpson-Wentz with post-pregnancy "Bounce Back Secrets"
RSS Feeds
10 Hot New Headlines from Rodale, Compressed
Wherein, on a whim, we summarize the top headlines from our Google News reader, specifically the very latest headlines from Men's and Women's Health...
GIRLS! Freaked out about swine flu? Get your own custom workout. Also, click through for new sex positions you haven't tried (nevermind the 35 new sex positions we gave you in our last issue.) Also, six ways to avoid E. coli. (Those last stories unrelated, FYI.) Finally, the truth about dieting, and the WH beauty survey. GUYS! Here's how to survive six tricky conversations with that special someone. Also, how to last longer in the sack, pump up with kettlebells, and, failing all that, our list of the 12 best dogs for men...
We'll summarize anything.
Presidential Fitness
Michelle Obama's Arm Workout Revealed
Cornell McClellan, Michelle Obama's trainer for the last twelve years, dishes on her "arm-shaping superset" in October's issue of Women's Health, which hits newsstands next week. Want your very own "first guns"? Here's the low down:
"Perform one set of tricep pushdowns using a straight bar attached to the high pulley of a cable station and then, without resting, follow with a set of hammer curls using dumbbells. Immediately repeat the entire process until two or three sets of both exercises have been completed."
But Women's Health is just the start. The Obamas are hitting Presidential Fitness hard this month. President Obama is gracing the cover of Men's Health (his second time), and Michelle's dominating with both Women's Health and Children's Health. The people at Rodale, the publisher of all three magazines, must be skipping around their cubicles. But why the White House push on the body Obama? Maybe it's stealth lobbying for Obama's new and improved Child Nutrition Act?