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Julius Thomas Speaks His Mind When It Comes to Peak Performance

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When Julius Thomas hung up his NFL cleats in 2018, he didn’t know he was about to face the hardest, and longest, transition of his life. The tight end who caught touchdowns from Peyton Manning walked into graduate school at 30 with no job, no playbook, and none of the daily wins football used to hand him. “When you have to go from a master to a rookie, you go from winning a lot, knowing what you’re doing and very comfortable with all of it, to then having to rebuild that,” he recalled. “That is extremely challenging, because in the beginning of any journey, it’s losing, doing it wrong, working really hard, struggling through it.” The lessons he learned over the years that followed changed the way he looked at performance. He went back to the classroom, completed a clinical residency and earned his doctorate in clinical psychology in June 2025. In pro sports, the mentality is often to push through and keep going. While Thomas lived that for years, today, as a performance coach and co...
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Brett Wilkin Shares His Challenging Mass-Building Workout Finishers

2024 IFBB Legion Pro winner, and 2025 Mr. Olympia finalist Brett Wilkin is the kind of bodybuilder who leaves it all in the gym. And, in a recent Instagram post, the big man shared the upper and lower body finishers that test his mettle as he looks to pack on even more muscle. Of course, the aim of any competitive bodybuilder is force their muscle fibers to grow back bigger after being put into a state of hypertrophy from an exhaustive workout, and Wilkin thinks he has found two winning finishers for leveling up his upper and lower body—alternating between supersets and dropsets to approach failure. Here’s how to try both sequences for yourself. View this post on Instagram   Bret Wilkin’s Upper-Body Superset Finisher “Some standing cable flys to failure and straight to the landmine presses,” explained Wilkin to his more than 170,000 Instagram followers. “Stretching it out big to start, then pumping out the inner and upper chest for complet...
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Texas A&M Study Shows Creatine Adding Muscle Mass Gains Without Lifting

For better brain cognition through to superior strength and power, creatine is one of those supplements that seems to actually work. Thanks to its cell volumizing and energizing abilities, creatine allows us to lift heavier, recover faster, and focus better under stress. Now, a new study from Texas A&M University is touting that creatine can construct more muscle even without a structured resistance training program. The study , published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, suggests that creatine could help adults to maintain lean tissue and strength, even without regular exercise. Of course, maintaining adequate levels of muscle mass is particularly important as we age because muscle loss, also known as sarcopenia , can begin as early as 35 years, and typically sees lean mass decline at a rate of 1 to 2 percent, per year, for the average person.  In fact, those who fail to engage with regular resistance training could lose as much as 4 to 6 pounds of...
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Common Reasons Diets Stop Working After a While

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Early progress on a weight-loss plan can give way to a stretch where the same effort no longer produces the same results. That shift reflects a set of predictable physiological and behavioral forces that push back against restrictive eating. Below are nine of those forces and how each one slows progress. 1. Metabolism Slows as Weight Comes Off, Burning Fewer Calories for the Same Effort As body weight drops, the body burns fewer calories at rest, partly because it starts conserving energy. Researchers call this adaptive thermogenesis. A 2026 randomized trial published in the Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics detected it within the first week of reduced energy intake. Over time, the same plan produces less progress, even when effort stays consistent. 2. Hunger Rises and Fullness Fades as the Body Sheds Weight Weight loss pushes appetite in the wrong direction. As the body’s energy stores shrink, hunger increases and meals feel less filling. Steeper cuts in food intake in...
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Build Muscle Without Exercise? What Science Says About Using Creatine Without Lifting

Creatine has been around the gym long enough to have survived several generations of invention. And reinvention. And re-re-invention… Let’s just say it’s been a supplement industry staple for decades; it’s cheap, well studied, and, when combined with resistance training, actually useful. Naturally, that wasn’t sexy enough. So, now the Internet has served up a study suggesting you can take creatine, skip the gym, and build muscle anyway. The next sound in my brain after I read it was Ronnie Coleman’s voice in my head sayin’ his famous line: “Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy-ass weights.” But the study is real! Researchers at Texas A&M published it in August in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition , and the results have been making the rounds again this fall. I’m very familiar with the ISSN, I’ve presented at one of its conventions. I know several of the members. The organization is legit. And Texas A&M is no joke ei...
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How Kristoffer Polaha Gained and Lost 25 Pounds for ‘American Hostage’

Kristoffer “Kris” Polaha took on a serious challenge when he agreed to add around 25 pounds of fat to his usually fit frame for his role in American Hostage , only to drop it soon after in order to continue with other filming commitments. And while the chance to say “yes” to every indulgent meal gave the star a sense of freedom, he tells M&F that the side effects had him ready to return to his normal state. Of course, Polaha’s mission to pile on the pounds for American Hostage wasn’t a personal cry for help. The actor had permission to stack up his plates in order to play Dick Hall in the true story of the mortgage broker who was abducted for 63 hours by a disgruntled client in 1977. The crisis soon became a media event as his captor, Tony Kiritsis, courted the press and called into his local radio station, all while holding Hall at gun point. “Dick Hall was a guy who’d reached a point in his life where he’d given up,” explains Polaha. “He stopped caring about what he looked li...
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Five Glute Moves for Making Massive Lower-Body Gains

Australian weightlifter, personal trainer, and busy mom Stephanie Sanzo is known for staying in shape while balancing family life, so when it comes to firming her glutes, the buff beauty finds success in simple workouts that require maximum effort. Recently, Sanzo shared her booty building process on social media, so that others can work towards their own glute gains. The workout, shared with Sanzo’s 3.3 million followers on Instagram, had viewers understandably inspired to replicate her reps. “Steph proving that muscles don’t take away from femininity,” wrote one user. “The best,” added another,” and “Saved” wrote yet another fired-up follower. Here’s how to try it for yourself. Stephanie Sanzo’s Glue Focused Workout Standing Hip Thrust Machine: 3 sets, 20, 15, 10 reps Barbell Hip Thrust: 3 sets, 10 reps Rack-Supported Dumbbell Bulgarian Split Squats: 3 sets, 12 reps Hip Abduction Machine: 3 sets, 15 reps Bench Supported Single Leg Dumbbell RDLs: 3 sets, 20 reps ...
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How the Rotational Medicine Ball Slam Will Help Develop Athletic Speed and Power

We can move in three dimensions, but we often get stuck in two: sagittal (forward/backward) and frontal (lateral). It’s similar to our core training with planks, Pallof, and crunch variations. But it’s time to change that. Think about swinging a golf club, throwing a baseball, or punching a punching bag. None of these movements happen because they’re all lateral, forward, and backward. They start and end with rotational power, and that’s where the Rotational Medicine Ball Slam shines. Unlike planks and Pallof presses, which train your core to resist movement, the Rotational Medicine Ball Slam challenges you to generate, transfer, and control force in the rotational plane. Your obliques, hips, and upper body must work together to rotate and drive the ball into the floor with power. If you’re ready to take your core training to a new dimension, you’re in the right place. I’ll cover: What it is How to do it How to know you’re doing it right Common mistakes & fixes Muscles tr...
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NYU Study Links GLP-1 Weight Loss Drugs to Male Pattern Baldness

With some people who take GLP-1 style drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Zepbound, reporting thinner hair as well as slimmer bodies, experts have theorized that this side effect may be the result of rapid weight loss. However, new research out of NYU Langone Health in New York suggests that GLP-1 treatments could have a more direct link with baldness, increasing the risk of hair loss in susceptible men by 7%. The study , published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, suggests that the risk of hair loss is determined by genetics. Those who are predisposed to androgenetic alopecia, a common type of hair loss, are more likely to drop some hair as they drop pounds of body fat. It’s not just men that are affected but with more studies completed on male hair loss, an abundance of historical data meant this initial study would be focused on the guys. What Did NYU Langone Discover About Ozempic and Male Hair Loss? The research team analyzed a genetic database of more than 200,000, mo...
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Science May Have Identified Pterostilbene as the Fat-Torching Compound in Blueberries

A new study out of Japan appears to have identified how pterostilbene, an enzyme found in fruits like blueberries, bilberries, grapes, and cranberries, could be helping to burn excess fat stored inside the muscles. Experts have long known that pterostilbene is a powerful antioxidant that could offer several benefits including reduced inflammation and even DNA repair but this breakthrough study, led by Shinshu University in Japan, has cast new light on previous theories that suggest this enzyme could also be a vital tool for the war against excess fat. Until now, little was understood about the way that pterostilbene (a naturally occurring polyphenol) might accelerate fat metabolism in skeletal muscle. But among the compounds tested during the study on cultured mouse cells, pterostilbene was hailed as producing the most dramatic reduction of “intracellular lipid accumulation.” And, while pterostilbene was shown to reduce fat within the muscle cells, the enzyme had no detrimental eff...
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