About FORGE
Built for men who train
FORGE exists because most men's fitness media is either a supplement catalogue or a recycled press release. We are a small editorial team with a lab, a strict no-sponsorship rule and a simple brief: publish the coaching and the evidence that survive contact with a job, a family and a 6am alarm.
Our mission is to make evidence-based training legible to normal men at every age — from the 24-year-old adding his first 20 kg to the 54-year-old rebuilding a back that has spent a decade in a chair.
4.8M
Monthly readers
across 14 countries
1,240
Products tested
bought at retail
9,600
Lab hours logged
in 2024 alone
27
Coaches on staff
CSCS certified
The masthead
The people behind the pages
6 named writers, editors and coaches. Every byline on the site maps to one of these faces, and every one of them can tell you where the data came from.
Marcus Reid
Fitness Director
Austin, TX
CSCS, 14 years coaching everyone from D3 linebackers to 46-year-old dads chasing a first pull-up. Runs FORGE’s strength testing lab.
Dr. Elena Vasquez
Chief Health Editor
Boston, MA
Sports cardiologist and exercise physiologist. Translates the journals so you can act on them by Monday.
Dev Sharma
Nutrition Editor
Chicago, IL
Registered dietitian who spent six years in professional rugby kitchens. Allergic to fad diets and to under-seasoned chicken.
Alexis Brooks
Senior Gear Editor
Portland, OR
Has logged 4,000+ miles in test shoes and destroyed 63 pairs of earbuds so you do not have to.
Tom Okafor
Features Writer
Brooklyn, NY
Long-form reporter covering the business and culture of fitness. Former collegiate sprinter, current mediocre golfer.
Nina Park
Mind & Performance Editor
Boulder, CO
Sport psychologist working with Olympic programs on focus, arousal control and burnout prevention.
Editorial standards
Six principles we do not bend
These are not aspirations. They are the rules a story has to pass before it is published, and the reason we can afford to say a popular product is not worth your money.
- 01
Independence is the product
We buy every product we review at retail with subscriber money. No sponsored reviews, no paid placements, no affiliate-first picks. Advertisers never see editorial before publication.
- 02
Primary sources or nothing
Every claim links to the study, dataset or named expert behind it — never to a press release. If the best available evidence is a single small trial, we say so in the sentence, not in a footnote.
- 03
Publish the raw data
The lab numbers behind each review — durometer readings, weights, battery curves, bloodwork panels — are published alongside the verdict so you can disagree with our interpretation.
- 04
Correct in public, on the record
When we get something wrong we fix it and date-stamp the correction at the top of the piece. We do not silently edit, and we do not delete a review because a brand is unhappy.
- 05
Written by named humans
Every byline is a real writer or coach with a real specialism. No anonymous copy, no AI-generated articles, no ghost-written expertise. You can always see who is accountable for a claim.
- 06
Label opinion and commerce
Analysis is labelled analysis, opinion is labelled opinion, and anything commercial is separated from editorial structurally — not just with a small-print disclaimer.
Testing methodology
Inside the FORGE Lab
Six instruments do most of the hard arguing. Together they turn “feels fast” into a number another lab could reproduce.
Instrumented treadmill
Gait, cadence and ground-contact time at fixed paces, so shoe comparisons are run on the same belt with the same runner and the same warm-up.
Force plates
Vertical and braking forces at 1,000 Hz to test stability claims, landing asymmetry and how a shoe or insert behaves when a lifter is genuinely tired.
DEXA scanning
Body-composition change across our twelve-week programmes — lean mass, fat mass and regional distribution — rather than trusting a bathroom scale.
Metabolic cart
Resting metabolic rate and substrate use under a mask, used to check the calorie and macro maths we publish and to validate our calculator.
Durometer and calipers
Midsole hardness, actual stack height, weight to the gram and knurl depth under a profilometer — the measurements marketing copy tends to round up.
200-mile durability
Nothing passes as a daily trainer until it has covered at least 200 road, trail or track miles, then been cut in half to inspect the foam and outsole.
Corrections policy
We will get things wrong. What matters is that the record is fixed quickly, publicly and without being asked twice.
Report a correctionHow it works
- 1
Email corrections@forge-magazine.pages.dev with the article URL and the specific claim you are challenging.
- 2
A section editor checks the original source material and records the outcome within two working days.
- 3
Substantive errors get a dated correction note at the top of the article; typos are fixed silently.
- 4
If the error changes a verdict, we re-run the test where possible and update the score with a revision date.
- 5
We publish an annual corrections log every January, including the mistakes we fixed quietly during the year.
Every correction is logged, even the quiet typo fixes. The annual log is published each January and linked from this page.
Get in touch
Talk to the desk
Tips, corrections, testing enquiries or a story you think we are missing — all of it reaches a real editor.
Editorial
editors@forge-magazine.pages.dev
Story tips, corrections and pitches from working coaches.
Gear Lab
lab@forge-magazine.pages.dev
Review requests, product samples and testing enquiries.
Advertising
partners@forge-magazine.pages.dev
Fully separated from editorial. No review guarantees, ever.
The office
Unit 4, Forge Works, London E2
Visits by appointment — the lab is usually mid-test.
Read the masthead, then come and train with us.