Men's Health and the like have to come up with new content to fill a magazine every month. Fitness isn't complicated; sound fundamental principles have been known for decades. There's a lot of money in making people think it's complicated though, so we have exercise fads and fancy/expensive weight machines. Look up the Starting Strength program to learn the basic building blocks of lifting.
This is very, very true. I started doing the Stronglifts routine about 5 months ago, which is very similar to Starting Strength, and I'm amazed the progress I've made. The routine only contains simple, full-body exercises like squats, deadlifts, bench presses and pull-ups.
Eating healthy and making sure you get a decent amount of protein along with full-body exercises with heavy weights beats that new fad from Men's Health every time.
