New muscle magazine on the horizon
Each month I look at the magazines available at my local 7/11 and think “holy sh!t, this is the same magazine I didn’t buy last month!” but of course it’s a new month and something inside my head tells me “this is a new month, so the magazine is technically different, but yes, it’s got the same stuff in it as last month…” And since there is no dissenting opinions in my own head, I push aside the bodybuilding rags and buy The Economist.
Buy The New Yorker.
Buy Rolling Stone.
Buy anything but the magazines that ostensibly I should be purchasing because I work in that field.
Try to contain your excitement, but the photo on the right/below is of the actual magazines and books I’m reading right now, thrown on the floor next to my bed (except the thing at the top, which is a sneaker). So it appears that my weekly $25 went to Harpers, U.S. News and World Report, GQ, and The New Yorker, magazine-wise. In the center is the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, and because I’m a professional member of the National Strength and Conditioning Association, I get it for free each month. You’ll note the absence of any bodybuilding or fitness magazines.
This is problematic in a lot of ways…In truth I don’t care much about P/RR/S or X-Rep Training, HST-420, or who is blasting their pecs with a new workout designed …to…do ….something-or-other. Screw your article about turning calves into cows or building bowlingball (cannonball, or grapefruit) sized delts. At this point, Flex, Muscle & Fitness, etc…i.e. the American bodybuilding rags - don’t interest me. And Muscle Mag International is like the retarded little brother of the American bodybuilding magazines.
Therefore I have very high hopes Muscle Insider, a new magazine being launched at the Arnold Classic next month. It’s got Scott Welch and company at the helm, and a lot of (you guessed it) industry insiders – guys who have been around in the game for a very long time and want to put out a magazine that doesn’t suck. Scott runs a very unbiased blog, unbeholden to sponsors, and has even lent his expertise to portions of my upcoming book…so this magazine could be THE only alternative to the the major bodybuilding magazines. I’m not 100% sure who all of the contributors are yet, but I do know that they’re limiting advertising space and working to give smaller companies a chance to compete with larger ones. It would be nice to open a magazine and not have to flip through 50 pages before you get past the advertisements and reach the table of contents.
So, that alone is great to hear, and I’ve got a lot of optimism for this magazine to do big things. I’m being told that they’ve booked a nice sized booth at the Arnold Classic where they’ll be giving away 50k free copies, with the rest being available on newsstands and in book stores (and by subscription, of course). Plus, the name of the magazine alone has me curious, because I think these guys can actually do it right….Honestly, I usually don’t care about what passes for “inside” information in current bodybuilding magazines.
Does anybody really care about the candid photos from the Olympia Expo? Seriously, who gives a f*ck? Why don’t they just call that entire section of the magazine “Schmoes, Ho’s, and Bro’s“? 
Why is that garbage even considered “inside 
information”? Why can’t they publish slightly less creepy photos? Why can’t I stop asking rhetorical questions?
Granted, I know that most of the current bodybuilding magazines are for the bodybuilding equivalent of the guy who reads Maxim. This is the guy who plans his outfit for the Arnold Classic and carb depletes for shows he’s not competing in. This is the guy who shaves his forearms year-round and always has a fake tan. This is the guy…you get the idea….
Muscle Insider is making a solid run at raising the bar and catering to a group of readers who are bored with articles being repeated each month by the same boring authors. You’ll note that while I don’t have any bodybuilding magazines in my picture above, I don’t have Maxim either…for roughly the same reasons. I’m not that guy. Don’t be that guy.
I get Muscle Evolution for free every other month (it’s bimonthly and it’s from South Africa), because I write their steroid articles, and I read it cover to cover; more importantly, I enjoy reading it. Clearly I’m not against reading a bodybuilding magazine. The problem, it seems, is that the domestic magazines I’m offered on the newsstand don’t hold my interest (a problem with the writing style) or are not presenting enough worthwhile information (a problem with the content). Individual columns that I may actually like, or a single article that might be interesting, can’t justify the $7 issue price.
So, for what it’s worth, over the next year, I’ll be bringing a copy of Muscle Insider up to the counter at 7/11 whenever I see it, and probably getting a subscription also. It’s not going to replace The New Yorker, but it’s going to be on the floor right next to it, and probably somewhere near an Adidas…
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