🚨 Welcome to this week’s issue of Generation Xcellent. I’m Stephen Perrine, New York Times bestselling author and former top editor at Men’s Health and Maxim. And like you, I’m doing all I can to survive the moshpit of midlife. Thanks for joining me on the journey! If you like what you see, send me an email—and share this newsletter with another guy who could use our help.

📩 Thanks for joining the conversation!

- FATHERHOOD -

10 Essential Father/Son Songs for Generation X

If you’re lucky enough to spend this Father’s Day with your son, or your dad—or hopefully, both—here’s the soundtrack.

By Bob Larkin

—Bob Larkin has written for Men’s Health, Esquire, The New York Post, and other outlets.

- FITNESS -

Turbocharge Your Muscle Growth at 45+

With these simple tricks, you can bust through a midlife workout plateau and start building muscle the way you did back in high school

By Myatt Murphy

>If you’re a regular gym-goer, you’ve probably experienced the phenomenon of plateauing: You start a new workout, see some great gains, and then six months later realize that you’re stuck with the same weight level, the same number of reps—and the same level of musculature.

And once we hit our mid-forties, it gets even harder for us to keep building muscle, thanks to changes in our hormone levels and our ability to process protein. To stay lean and strong as you round life’s metaphorical second base, incorporate these three sneaky techniques into your workouts. You’ll be stunned at the results.

Related:  The fast way to a flat belly at 45+

Muscle Maker #1: The Three-Second Pause. This tweak can take the tamest exercise and turn it into a brutal move that pushes your muscles to new limits. This is especially true of exercises in which you might be tempted to use momentum, or to call on secondary muscles, to help you cheat the weight up. This tactic is so effective, in fact, that you should probably drop your weight 20 to 30 percent when using it.

And it’s simple: Instead of immediately raising the weights each time you lower them back down, wait and hold them at the bottom for exactly 3 seconds.

• If it’s an exercise where your arms end up down at your sides (such as biceps curls or side raises), keep the weights about an inch away from your legs so there’s tension on your muscles continuously.

• If it’s an exercise where your arms end up directly beneath you—bent-over rows, for example—then stop about an inch away from the bottom of the movement to keep tension on the muscles.

• If it’s a leg exercise—squat, lunge, etc.—stop at the bottom of the move. This can be extremely challenging to perform because it requires balance and strength, so ease into it by pausing for just 1 second to start, then work your way up to 3 seconds over time..

Muscle Maker #2: The Heel Raise. Use this technique as an add-on to any upper-body exercise you’re doing while standing straight. It will improve your balance, while also building killer calves.

Instead of keeping both feet flat on the floor, try raising both heels just off the floor, so your weight in on the balls of your feet. You can use this trick for the entire set, or intermittently throughout.

Muscle Maker #3: The Angle Reset. Whenever you’re using an incline or decline bench, don’t keep the backrest at the same angle for the entire series of exercises. Try raising or lowering it between each set, which will train your muscles from different angles, instead of just one.

For example, instead of setting an incline bench at the standard 45-degree angle, set it lower than than—a few inches from being completely flat. Do one set of whatever exercise you’re performing, then raise the backrest a notch before performing your next set. If the backrest winds up near perpendicular to the floor before you’re done, start lowering it back down between sets.

—Myatt Murphy, CSCS, former Fitness Director for Men’s Health, is the author of Ultimate Dumbbell Guide and more than a dozen other health and fitness books.

Battle of the ‘90s Crushes: The Semifinals
Courteney Cox vs. Susanna Hoffs

>We’ve entered the semifinals, with four Gen X crushes still haunting our dreams. This week, our favorite Friend, Courteney Cox, who triumphed easily over Molly Ringwald, takes on Bangles lead vocalist and Prince muse Susanna Hoffs, who championed over Shania Twain. Which of these crushes will move on to the final round? Only YOU can decide! 

We’ll have a new showdown every week, with more Gen X goddesses competing for your vote. And check out our social pages (we’re on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads) for updates and a full rundown of the winners.

- GEN X CULTURE -

How Seeing Jaws as a Child Taught Me How to Be a Better Dad

Sometimes, enlightenment comes from within a darkened theater

By Jeff Stevenson

>Fifty years ago this summer, I convinced my dad to take me to my first grown-up, PG movie.

My father didn’t really go in for pop culture stuff—we never went to the movies, or to concerts, or to shows or sporting events. I’d never been more than a few hours away from home, never been on a plane or a train. My dad didn’t really like to leave the house, unless it was to go hunting or trout fishing, which were his other two comfort zones. But this film at least had a fish in it, and I credit that as the critical factor that got him to cave.

We were late to the theater, the last two ticket holders in line, and there were only two seats left. One was off to the side, in the back. That’s where my dad sat. The other was third row, center. That’s where he placed me.

I was 10 years old. I’d never seen an ocean beach. Or human blood. Or a boob. But within the first 10 minutes of Jaws, I’d been confronted by all three, in the most disturbing combination imaginable.

Related:   The Movies that Defined Generation X

I remember audibly screaming when the shark came up on Roy Scheider as he was chumming the waters, which caused the adults on either side of me to look over and check that I was alright. I remember not really talking about how either of us felt about the experience on the way home. I was too shaken up, and anyways talking about how either of us felt was not something my dad and I did.

But somewhere in the two hours of panicked beachgoers and squirting blood and that gnarly fleshy stuff hanging from the shark’s teeth, everything changed. The culture changed: There were plenty of terrific movies before 1975, but were any fifth graders clamoring to see The French Connection II? After Jaws, a film wasn’t a big film unless it appealed to both dads and prepubescent boys; every Marvel movie we ever took our kids to see was a descendent of Steven Spielberg.

And I had changed, too: Sitting alone in that movie, untethered from my father, was as important a rite of passage as that afternoon 7 years later in the backseat of my girlfriend’s Mustang. Jaws showed me that there was something out there, beyond my family’s comfort zone. I had a lot of exploring to do. And I’d have to seek out those adventures on my own.

During the Pandemic summer, I sat down to watch Jaws with my then-12-year-old daughter. She stuck with it for a bit, wavering between the television and her phone for the first half of the movie, but at the point when Quint started to recount the fatal mission of the USS Indianapolis, she stood up, announced “This is boring,” and headed to her room.

I was disappointed at first. But on second thought, it was good that a creaky motorized shark chewing up some old sailors wasn’t a shock to my daughter. She had, after all, seen dozens of action, horror and adventure movies with me. She’d not just been to the ocean, she’d SCUBA dived it, surfed it, snorkled it—not just on Long Island, but in Italy and Ecuador, in Portugal and Costa Rica.

I had learned my lesson that summer of 1975; I had expanded my world far beyond what had felt comfortable to my dad. And as a result, my own child’s world was so much bigger than mine could have ever been. Thank you, Mr. Spielberg. Thank you, Brodie, Hooper, Quint. And thank you too, you clunky old mechanical shark.

—Jeff Stevenson has written for Men’s Health, Maxim, and other classic men’s magazines.

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