Here is a fun fact that you probably didn’t know: MuscleMag, IronMan, Flex, Muscular Development, Muscle & Fitness, and the rest of the mainstream bodybuilding magazines are owned by supplement companies and are used simply as mouthpieces for their products. MuscleMag is controlled by MuscleTech; IronMan is controlled by MuscleLink; Muscular Development is Twinlab’s shill piece; Muscle & Fitness and Flex are owned by Joe Weider and are thus promotion catalogues for his companies, such as Weider, Metaform and several others; and MuscleMedia is the EAS cheerleader.
The primary goal of these magazines is to sell supplements for the companies controlling them, and they work damn well. The magazines push products in various ways. They have pretty advertisements all over the place, they regularly run “advertorials” and they balance the lot of sales pitches with some actual articles that provide workout and nutrition advice (which also, in many cases, end with product recommendations of some kind).
So, this is the first blow that magazines deal to you: They give you a lot of “advice” that is geared first and foremost to selling you products, not helping you achieve your goals.
