● Hot shot
16 MEN’S FITNESS APRIL 2017No need to look twice — Alex Megos’s gnarled fingers are not araldited
to a rocky snag, nor does he have a broomstick stuck up his backside
to hold his sinewy body in place. No, the German climber is using every
muscle fibre to defy spoil-sport gravity and perform a super-human flag
hold off the Buttermilk Boulders in California’s Owens Valley. Skeletally
lean, his rawboned frame measures 170cm and 57kg, Megos, 23, trains
“antagonistic” or opposing muscles in order to firm up power grips and
clenches, so that he won’t kiss the rocky carpet below any time soon. And
although you may not guess it by that strained, almost hypnotic expression
on his face, he is having a cracker of a time. “I have learnt in my climbing years...
the most important thing is fun,” he says. “It’s not worth it if you lose it.”Rock star