I just saw that. I never knew what the holdup was. We decided on the cover image and design months ago.
The model, Michelle, is definitely in shape. She's a trainer at Parisi Speed School in Connecticut, and looks like an athlete.
We made sure she used weights that were realistic for the exercises we were shooting. It's always a balancing act. You want the model to use weights that look right for her build, but that won't be intimidating to readers. You also have to manage the model's level of fatigue, which comes into play when you're shooting for 8+ hours on back to back days. The models don't actually lift weights in shoots like this; they hold weights, and sometimes they have to hold for a long time.
What we do is the opposite of what they do in bodybuilding magazines. At the old Weider studio in California, where they did shoots for M&F and Flex, they had hollow aluminum weights painted to look like regular 45-pound plates or triple-digit dumbbells. A bodybuilder who's just starved himself into contest condition for a shoot is probably weaker than any of us. But to look at the photos, you'd never guess he couldn't really do 1-arm rows with 100-pound DBs at 3 percent body fat.
I've seen this on my own magazine shoots. There's nothing weirder than seeing a model who looks like an NFL running back struggle to hold a squat with 135 pounds.
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