workout seo: You need a challenge this year

Plus: the workout your back demands

12 February 2016

GYM AMMO What sport has the athlete with the highest recorded VO₂ maxes? (Answer at the bottom)

RACES YOU COULD STILL (JUST ABOUT) SIGN UP FOR

So you've missed the sign-up for the London marathon again. Don't fret – do one of these events, which are still taking entrants (and offer more bragging rights anyway)

Toughest
London, 23rd April

Dan from finance still going on about that Tough Mudder he did two years ago? Allow us to present your trump card: Scandinavia's hardest obstacle race is making its debut in Pippingford Park this year, and it's a doozy. Relatively light on running – it's a mere 8km, which you could comfortably mimic in your lunch break – the hard bits are the enormous monkey bar/gymnastic ring sections littering the course, making grip strength more important than simple lung capacity.

Difficulty level Tying a bow-tie in the taxi en route to your own wedding. toughest.se

Urban Attack Sub Zero
Milton Keynes, 18th June

The good news: this is an indoor one. The bad news? It features actual snow. Urban Attack events have ultra-short courses, but the catch is that you'll need to race them up to four times – twice in qualifying laps, then again if you make it to the quarter- and semi-finals. Other events have taken place on BMX tracks but this one's in a snowdome, so you'll be weaving around pine trees while your cheering section swigs schnapps in the Bavarian-themed spectator zone.

Difficulty level Filleting a potentially lethal fish while Gordon Ramsay yells at you. urbanattack.co.uk

The Superhuman Games
Bristol, 28th-29th June

Long distances not your forte? This is your event: a pairs fitness competition where every individual event takes less than 20 minutes. You'll sprint, flip tyres and row with your partner, but the organisers promise that the exercises involved will be "non-technical" – which is essentially code for saying you don't need to worry about CrossFit types dominating with their handstands and high-speed skipping.

Difficulty level Trying to pick an acceptable first-date restaurant for a vegan with a nut allergy. superhumanevents.com

The Unknown
Wales, 9th-11th September

Held in a secret location in Wales, this one lasts 36 hours and is, according to the organisers, "designed to break you mentally and physically". Still in, champ? Slots are limited to 150 and successful entrants are sent an email with a kit list, a meeting point… and that's all they'll tell you in advance. To give you a flavour, though, last year's event made participants do press-ups in the sea, run up Snowdon – and bury all their food in the sand before digging it up to eat ten hours later. We absolutely won't see you there.

Difficulty level Finding yourself on a life-raft with a full-grown lion and surviving by your wits alone. judgement-day.co.uk

THE WORKOUT

YOU'RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BACK

Face it: you probably need to do more pulling during your workouts, both to balance out all the benching and to compensate for the horrible slouch you've cultivated via years of Candy Crush. Andrew Tracey – creator of improvised-workout movement The Nomad Way and proud owner of the sort of beard you probably can't pull off – has the solution, and it only takes 20 minutes.

"Starting with an empty bar you're going to hit start on a stopwatch and perform five deadlifts with good explosive form. As soon as you put the bar down, perform five pull-ups with impeccable form. As soon as your feet hit the ground, add 5kg per side to the bar. Fill your lungs and watch the clock, as soon as it hits a new minute, go again. Repeat this process every minute on the minute, until you can't pull five reps with good form any more – if you have to drop off the bar a few times during the pull-ups then so be it. When you hit your max deadlifts, start going back down… for a total of 20 minutes."

Don't thank us until you've tried it.

THE MAGAZINE

THE MAN OF STEEL

This month in Men's Fitness we've been chatting to Henry Cavill, who's been hitting the gym (and kitchen) hard in preparation for his Batman vs Superman throwdown with Ben Affleck. And FYI, the UK's most handsome man (official results pending) was dubbed "Fat Cavill" at school.

"It could have smashed my confidence, I think, but actually it prepared me for the world. If I'd gone to Hollywood without having been hurt on a daily basis at school, I might have been less ready for it."

Now, of course, he does most of his hurting at the hands of trainer Michael Blevins, who's handily provided us with one of the big man's toughest sessions. Steel yourself: it's on shelves now.

GYM AMMO ANSWER Cycling. The highest on record is Norwegian cyclist Oskar Svendsen, with a VO₂ max of 97.5 ml/kg/min (a "normal" person would be in the 40s).

BURGERS

TO SMASH OR NOT TO SMASH?

With American burger chain Shake Shack continuing its invasion of the UK, an old argument has arisen phoenix-like from the flames of the grill: should you smash your burgers (like Shake Shack does) or not? The pro-smash camp argue that by maximising contact between grill and burger you form a rich, thick brown crust on the meat, while the anti-smashers argue that it squeezes juice out of the patty, making it a dry, joyless experience.

The solution? Smash early. By pressing down on your burger in the first 30 seconds of cooking, argues food scientist J Kenji López-Alt, you'll increase crusting while the saturated fat in the meat's still too solid to drain. After that you can leave your juice-in burger to cook to perfection.

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