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Interview with Men’s Fitness Writer/Editor – Sean Hyson

 

A few months back a the Central Virginia Sports Performance Seminar I met a relatively unassuming guy by the name of Sean Hyson. While you may not be familiar with him by name, as the Group Fitness Director for both Men’s Fitness and Muscle & Fitness magazines, he is one of those behind the scenes guys that has a great deal of influence in what goes on in gyms around the country.

After talking to him, it was obvious that he puts a lot of time and energy into educating himself and is genuinely interested in putting out quality training information rather than just but filler copy between supplement advertisements. I thought readers of the site would enjoy hearing from someone in his position and see what really goes on behind the scenes of two of the bigger fitness magazines. Enjoy.


To start out, can you give us a brief background on your own training history and how you got into becoming a writer/editor for some of the bigger fitness magazines out there?

I was an unathletic, weak, skinny kid growing up. So, naturally, I was fascinated by people who were just the opposite! I practiced martial arts for many years and then got into lifting in college. I was hooked right away, but like every beginner, I had no guidance (except the muscle mags) and I did everything wrong. It’s a funny irony that I now write for some of those same magazines and, through them, I try to help guys avoid the mistakes I made. I started at Men’s Fitness in 2003 as an editorial assistant, taking on any jobs the editors would give me. I set my sights on becoming fitness editor and worked my way up, earning the C.S.C.S. in the process. Somewhere along the way, I learned how to train the right way… Or at least better.

 

What does a typical day at the office look like for you?

I try to read all the best blogs and training sites at some point in the day so I can see what coaches are up to and get ideas for magazine stories.

Elitefts.com, T-Muscle, and, of course, 8weeksout.com are on that list. I send out a bunch of emails to trainers and nutritionists or call them up and ask for workouts/diets for the magazine. More often than not I end up trying them out on myself. It’s the best job a fitness fanatic like me could ask for-I have easy access to the top experts in the field and an unlimited amount of great information at arm’s length.

When the workouts/programs come in, I edit them. This mainly involves making sure they’re suitable for a mass audience who trains in a public gym. I also write up the selling points-the sales pitch of why this routine is effective and worth trying-and I supervise the photo shoots for the exercises. All those half-naked men you see lifting weights in the magazine? I’m the guy who told them where to stand. Not my favorite part of the job, haha!

 

Given the amount of people that read the information that goes into your magazines, you have an opportunity to influence what goes on in gyms and weight rooms around the country. What’s the process involved in determining who and what goes in the magazines and what doesn’t? How do you separate training fact from marketing fiction?

That’s the hardest part of the job. I pride myself on being ethical and trying to harvest only the best information. Unfortunately, I am in the business of selling magazines, not changing the industry for the better, so I often have to make concessions that I’m not entirely comfortable with. The fact is, people (and advertisers) like to see certain kinds of workouts, celebrity trainers, and crazy diet plans that don’t always jibe with what I believe to be true (or what science has shown!) But I think anyone picking up an issue of Men’s Fitness or Muscle&Fitness today will get a lot of top-notch information that will really yield fast results. These magazines are a lot better now than when most guys our age started reading them 10 or 15 years ago.

As for who gets into the mags, I work mainly by referral now. If a guy I know and trust who I’ve worked with for years tells me you’re a solid trainer, I’ll check out your stuff online and then probably reach out to you. If you’re some random trainer out there, I probably won’t make it a priority to get back to you. Maybe that’s my loss. Maybe that means I’m missing out on the next big thing. But I think if you’re ready to give advice to the mass populace, you’re on my radar already.

In other words, if you’re a great trainer, don’t call me. I’ll call you.

Most of the best coaches I ever worked with I had to seek out myself. They weren’t beating down my door because they were too busy training people and making their own success. They didn’t really need me or the magazines.

I’m sure over the years you’ve seen a lot of training fads come and go. In recent years, “functional training” and CrossFit have both become popular buzzwords and influenced how a lot of people train. What is your take on the commercial success of both and do you think either or both are here for the long run or do you think they’ll eventually fade and be replaced with something else?

I think there’s something to be learned from every fad out there, no matter how outrageous. I think if making an effort to be more “functional” with your training means getting off machines and doing more movements in the gym that you actually make in life, it’s fine. If you define it as standing on a ball and using weights that are too light to produce a training effect, you’ve gone too far. I love that Crossfit has made people aware of the Olympic lifts, the power lifts, and various training modalities. People who train like that are doing much better than people at Planet Fitness who are terrified to work hard. But Crossfit done irresponsibly can get people injured. You have to have a certain reverence for those big lifts and shouldn’t just throw them into a circuit, do them for high reps, and neglect rest periods.

I don’t want to generalize, because there are good Crossfit gyms and bad ones. Good “functional” trainers and bad ones. Functional training and Crossfit may well fade, but the principles they’ve awakened people to have always been here and will always remain: exercise that carries over to life, big compound lifts, explosive training, concurrent periodization, etc.

 

Who are some of the more interesting people you’ve had an opportunity to interview or do a story about? Anyone in particular you’d really like to meet or do a story about that you haven’t yet?

I’ve got a long list! I’m fortunate to be able to say I’ve met and interviewed most of my childhood heroes. I spent a long day with Hulk Hogan at his house years ago. He did the whole interview with his shirt off and, at several points during the conversation, I was sure he was going to hit me. I asked him how he thought his fame at the height of his career compared to “Stone Cold” Steve Austin-probably the only other comparable name in wrestling-and he went off.

I’m paraphrasing here, but this is basically what he said. “I was on top for

25 years! He was only on top for four. Anybody can stick their middle finger up and get a reaction. It’s called cheap heat. I could pull my dick out and get that response!”

I’ve met or spoken to Sly Stallone, Carl Weathers, Dolph Lundgren, Lou Ferrigno, “Road Warrior” Animal, Vince McMahon, Grant Hill, Andre Johnson, Wladimir Klitschko, Chuck Zito… And a ton of MMA fighters. Pretty much every UFC champ of the past five years.

I guess the big one left for me would be Arnold.

 

What’s something that would probably surprise most people about your job?

Maybe that there’s a real craft to writing fitness stories. It’s easy to glance at a bodybuilding magazine and think it’s for meatheads and that there’s nothing to the writing. I’m not going to argue that we’re producing Shakespeare over here, but these stories are written with a certain formula that has to be adhered to. There are a lot of coaches out there who are good writers and they get surprised when they see that we’ve changed their story quite a bit from what they handed in. But it always makes it a better read for the mass audience. You might write great on your blog but a magazine is a different animal. With people’s attention spans growing shorter by the moment, we need to grab their attention and sell them on our strategy being the best one they’ll find (this month, anyway) in as little time as possible.

 

What advice can you offer to the personal trainers and strength coaches out there who want to start getting their articles published in the major magazines?

There’s no easy way to do it. First, become a great trainer. As I said before, that will help us find you. Second, work whatever connections you have. If you know a coach who’s in with us, ask him to put in a word for you. But I guess that’s pretty obvious advice. If you’re a good writer who knows the magazine’s style, that will certainly help you get more assignments but I don’t know that it helps you get in the door. I’m used to dealing with guys who give great training information but aren’t particularly smooth writers. That’s ok by me. But I always appreciate a guy who comes to me and says he’s read the magazine for months and he has five ideas for each of the specific sections that I edit. That saves us both a lot of time.

With so much media now available moving online and major book retailers going out of business, how has this affected print magazines like the ones you work for? There are also several popular fitness websites that are not offered in print at all. Where do you see the future of the fitness information business going?

There’s no question magazines are losing ground and the future of the business is online. We have websites for Men’s and Muscle, and I hope we’ll be able to make better use of them going forward. As fast as things are changing however, magazines and books still have what my friend and colleague John Romaniello calls “the thud factor”. They make a noise when you drop them on a coffee table. They look and sound important and professional. Almost every expert I know in the field wants to be in a magazine and author a print book, even if they can make more money just concentrating on Internet ventures. There’s a cache you still get with the printed word that you don’t get online. That said, I think we’re not far away from doing all digital issues at my company. We’re also going to have more experts like yourself making videos for our sites, and, hopefully, raising our brand from being identified as just a print entity to a major source of fitness information in a number of different media.

One thing I will promise readers is that we’ve worked hard to bring the best of what you can find online to one place. As easy as it is to access training info for free online, you often can’t trust what you’re getting.

It’s been misinterpreted and watered down, and most of the “experts” you find peddling it are anything but. We’re not infallible, but the mags I edit use the most credible sources and offer the best methods available. You could search a long time on Google before you find as good a bench press program as I’ll give you in M&F.

I started my own site, seanhyson.com, to have a little more freedom from the magazines and bring you more content, more quickly. If anyone wants to see who I’ve met lately and what I’m learning about now, check it out

Thanks for the great interview Sean! Make sure to check out Sean’s own site, it’s definitely worth a read. Also, while you’re there, don’t miss his recent review of Joe Dowdell’s Program Design Seminar

Joel


Comments

  1. One of the concepts Sean Hyson noted was that for fatloss non competing supersets (upper body movement paired with lower body movement) would be optimal. While Joel mentions that supersets are not ideal for strength development, for general fitness/overall body composition, if one is satisfied with their strength levels, could that strength be maintained while incorporating a noncompeting superset? Part of the reason i ask is non-competing supersets would seem to be more time effective. I’m not so sure if I am a huge believer in PHA (peripheral heart action) but I could very well be wrong about that, but being more efficient in the weight room when strength maintenance and not strength improvement is the goal.

    1. Training for strength and power is a far different goal than simply for body composition and general health/fitness. Wheni t comes to losing fat while maintaining muscle and strength and much as possible, these types of supersets can be used effectively. For the most part, losing fat is about calories and diet much more so than strength training anyway.

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