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The triumph of natural strength training. The tragedy of the juice.
I have a new hero. His name is Ervin Gainer. He's an insurance claims adjuster
from Rockville, Maryland, a family man with a wife and three kids. Gainer is a
little guy, 5-foot-2 and 114 pounds.
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He's also mild-mannered and fastidious, just
like you'd expect an insurance claims adjuster from Rockville, Maryland, to be.
Gainer replaces a much bigger, more famous person on my list of heroes: Mark McGwire.
As I write this, McGwire's testimony before Congress is less than 24 hours old-and my
anger is just as fresh. What else could I feel but angry? Should I be sympathetic to
a guy who dodged questions about his suspected steroid use when he set the single-season
home run record in Major League Baseball? With his weak, evasive answers, McGwire helped
to taint our national pastime. Not only that, McGwire missed an opportunity to show
leadership and resolve. At a time when steroid use is increasing among teenagers and
young men in America-an in a few recent cases, leading to their deaths by suicide- a
little honesty from McGwire could have sent an important, even life-saving, message.
Like McGwire, Gainer is a record-breaker, too. A six-time world champion power lifter
in the super-flyweight class, Gainer can deadlift five times his weight and bench
press 330 pounds. In "Little Big Man," on page 52, you'll read about Gainer's
remarkable strength and his relentless pursuit of his personal best. And you'll learn
about his chosen sport-powerlifting-and its zero-tolerance policy toward performance-enhancing
drugs. "Officials can roll up to a registered lifters home with a urine sample bottle
at any time, and a positive test for even a common supplement like ephedrine is grounds
for a 3-year ban," journalist Charles Graeber writes.
Ervin Gainer is part of a long tradition of natural strength training, which is the
underpinning of this magazine. The practice dates to ancient times-as you'll discover
in Chris Rodell's story "Strong Advice," on page 66-and is pervasive in our society,
from corner gyms to the hardwood courts of the National Basketball association. In fact,
the league's biggest and best-known player has a new strength and nutrition program
that has put him in the best shape of his life. You can read all about it in Ira
Winderman's eye opening story, "Shaq and Awe," on page 76. More than 200 lbs and 2
feet in height separate Ervin Gainer and Shaquille O'Neal, but they have one thing
in common: they work out to perform well in their chosen sports and to be as fit as
they can possibly be. That' another central them of Men's Health Muscle: Functional
training trumps vanity training every time.
In the end, I hope you'll find Muscle both useful and compelling. It's jam packed with
practical information to improve your workouts, and nutrition advice to pack on muscle.
And it's intended to celebrate the culture and tradition of natural strength training.
We didn't invent the genre, but we're dedicated to the philosophy and practice- and we
hope you are, too. So get fit, and stay off the juice. Who knows? You might end up
being someone's hero.
-Joe Bargmann
Thanks for buying Muscle, and for giving us a chance to change your mind about how you train. And please let us know how we're doing. E-mail us directly at editors@mhmuscle.com.
—The Editors
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