What you’re looking at is the digital remains of Australian Men’s Fitness magazine, a once popular 132-page monthly print title in Australia. It ran from 2008 to 2021 but died a premature death when COVID, poor financial management, and COVID conspired to end its good run. I was the founding editor of the magazine and generated a significant amount of content over the years, with a lot of it aggregating here.
Right now, it’s under my company, Contact Media, and is a mash of stories, some paid content, some written by me, and others by a generation of writers; some I’ve found are reprints. I’m working my way through this, post by post.
Copyright
We didn’t write everything here. Some posts were generated in-house, some were paid content, and others came from other Men’s Fitness magazines around the world. If you see something on here that you own or wrote, I’ll happily take it down or attribute it to you with a link/s. I’m leaving stuff up because the content was either generated in-house, by me, or for a client, or the content has valuable backlinks, to commercial organisations, photographers, academics, writers..you name it. These are valuable and I’m assuming the owners would want to leave it up to increase traffic. If not, contact me and I’ll rectify the situation. I’m trying to refurbish a site, not steal anything.
Guest Posts
Yes, I’ll accept guest posts from lifestyle writers (fitness, nutrition, travel, health, etc) for a nominal fee. Contact me for costs
Press Releases
I am not averse to helping fitness brands, runs, events, days — ANZAC, etc — or charities for a good cause. Send me the press release and image link.
About Me
My name is Todd. I’m an editor, writer, content creator, and entrepreneur. I started my working life as a Clearance Diver in the RAN, finished my service, and launched into a career in porn magazines, writing for and editing the sticky pages of the P mags: Penthouse, Playboy, et al. I wrote all the boys own stuff, crime, cars and, thanks to my recent career, a fair bit of military stuff. After a few debauched years, and in need of a healthy outlet, I become the founding editor of Men’s Health for the Murdoch family. Despite Men’s Health being ridiculed at the time — gay, for women, etc. — it was gaining traction in the marketplace, quickly. The winds of change were blowing through the manosphere and suddenly every 18-35 year old wanted defined abs and moisturizer. Beer guts, an inalienable right of manhood for their fathers, was now something SNAGS (memba them?) Sensitive New-age Guys, abhorred. Anything less than a washboard for a midsection was a fail. The lad mags, with a nudity spectrum ranging from SBS-level to gynecological, were losing popularity with the rise of Internet porn, but they still held on. What did I do? Start a competitor to Men’s Health, before it got too much traction.
I launched Men’s Fitness, a competitor to the nascent Men’s Health, securing a contract with the American Licensor over beers in Singapore. I partnered up with an accountant I occasionally raced with, sold my house for working capital and away we went. It was successful, lasting 13 years. We charted the rise of social media, picking up a sizable audience on the way. We created huge events like the Fit Bloke Challenge and, saw the rise of UFC, CrossFit, Biggest Loser, Bear Grylls, and Connor McGregor, to name only some.
If I’m that interesting, here’s me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddfcole/
My email is todd@contactmedia.com.au