After looking at a few photos of the author via Google I am unimpressed by their physique.
This article could've been written by ChatGPT. I would advise anyone reading it to heed the warning at the bottom:
> You are not on the website of a medical doctor, nutritionist, or registered dietitian.
Importantly, they also are not a certified trainer. You don't need to be one, but if you aren't one I'd expect you to at least look the part. I'm not one either, but based on a lot of the information being far too surface level to be useful this is a cleverly disguised ad-rev cash grab.
I especially enjoyed this note:
> But here's the tricky part: “Natural” doesn’t always mean you can’t take other substances like HGH and insulin
I know of no standard body (USADA, etc) that allows these. Some may allow it with a Therapeutic Use Exemption. You are not natural if you take exogenous hormones. A diabetic taking insulin will not realize the same effects as a person without diabetes when doped with insulin. The amount of insulin bodybuilders and athletes take is insane. You can tell the author has never taken part in a sport where this is wildly common. I competed with a few people who doped insulin so heavy they nearly were hospitalized.
Call it ad hominem but I'm not going to take advice from someone who does not appear to take part in any fitness whatsoever. Put it into practice, set some decent PRs, and then talk about it. Otherwise this is no different than any one of 1,000 fitness spam sites talking about the same information.
The author is a venture capitalist. This may explain why he feels qualified to offer advice on anything and everything to people who are actually doing the thing he's not.
Indeed, and the only one of the “example” photos he provided that looks like they’ve ever touched a weight in their life is the one that he claims is only possible with steroids. The rest of them just look like regular skinny guys.
I once had a remote coworker who looked very similar in Zoom calls, and I'd subconsciously assumed he was probably kind of small and skinny.
When we met in person for the first time the guy was shredded and really bulky, he could probably bench press me. You can't guess someone's physique by their head!
Then it goes on solely discussing male muscles, attracting women, and basically no mentions of women specificities after that. Welp.
> It's primarily for beginners, but there's plenty of science-backed advice for intermediates too.
More and more "science-backed" feels like a dirty word, mostly used in grifting and fad movements. I wonder if we shouldn't get back to something more simple like "factual" or "experience-based" when referring to research results, as that's probably the meaning that we want to convey.
Would "peer-reviewed" be a useful one to throw on the pile, or do we run the risk of those "peers" also being grifters who want to push (e.g.) homeopathy or bogus herbal supplements?
Bodybuilding often feels like a dark art. There are thousands of clickbait articles out there promising the routine to give you the physique of a classical statue, but almost nothing seems proven. Perhaps it's because, ultimately we each have a unique biological makeup.
I've been in the gym consistently for the better part of 12 years now. Bodybuilding was never a goal of mine, so I don't have the physique but over time my experience in the gym has shown me a few things:
1. If you really want to be a bodybuilder the best investment is a notebook. The people in the gym that I've seen that have the actual competition aesthetic pretty much always have one and track all of their workouts, meals, etc. Bodybuilding is for really disciplined, rigid structure loving people that can commit to a consistent routine and identify how to gradually, incrementally increase intensities over time.
2. Cardio matters too. Warming up with cardio generally doesn't seem to be a bad idea no matter what it is you're doing.
3. If you're like me and mostly just care about being fit and strong and less about the specific bodybuilding aesthetic, start doing a sport. I started bouldering at a climbing gym about 3 years ago, continuing to mix it in with the weight training I've always done and I've never been stronger. Seriously, it was like an extreme force multiplier. I highly recommend picking up a sport if you don't plan on competing in bodybuilding and just want to maintain a healthy body. It's fun too!
> If you really want to be a bodybuilder the best investment is a notebook
This can’t be emphasized enough. Exercise, which you do because it feels good, doesn’t really require all that much attention to detail. Training, which you do to systematically improve your performance in some way, very much does.
You want to record your intended program and actual movements performed at the very minimum, with notes on perceived effort and areas for improvement like form issues. It’s also important to track recovery, including sleep, since thats when adaptation actually happens. On the dietary side you need to rigorously track your macronutrients, especially dietary protein. Assuming you don’t have kidney disease, you want at least one gram of dietary protein per pound of body weight every day and more won’t hurt. That is a considerable amount of food to eat day in and day out. Eating becomes something of a chore.
I believe it’s Dwayne Johnson who is famous for eating several pounds of cod a day. A while back some normalish guy publicly did a Rock diet challenge. Johnson poo-pooed it a bit, but the guy stuck with it and got far better results than anyone expected[1]. My takeaway is that many if not most people with a solid training regimen aren’t getting enough protein to fully realize their potential strength and mass gains.
> I believe it’s Dwayne Johnson who is famous for eating several pounds of cod a day. A while back some normalish guy publicly did a Rock diet challenge. Johnson poo-pooed it a bit, but the guy stuck with it and got far better results than anyone expected[1]
Yikes, are people risking mercury poisoning by eating this much fish?
Not only does it say barely nothing, this is a surface-level misinformed take with no references for most of the claims and references to maybe 5 studies. Reading a handful of studies in this field is completely meaningless. If you want to actually learn how to build muscle you can consume say Mike Israetel's content.
As for "good genetics" in the article; Top bodybuilders generally mean with "good genetics" that your body's response to steroids is good. It does not mean that you naturally are an average person and by some magical reason respond incredibly well to training and eating because your genetics are "good".
> Top bodybuilders generally mean with "good genetics" that your body's response to steroids is good.
1. There are both tested and untested competitions.
2. Because bodybuilding is an aesthetic discipline, part of "good genetics" is not just the ability to grow lots of muscle, but where the muscle attaches to the bone.
This article could've been written by ChatGPT. I would advise anyone reading it to heed the warning at the bottom:
> You are not on the website of a medical doctor, nutritionist, or registered dietitian.
Importantly, they also are not a certified trainer. You don't need to be one, but if you aren't one I'd expect you to at least look the part. I'm not one either, but based on a lot of the information being far too surface level to be useful this is a cleverly disguised ad-rev cash grab.
I especially enjoyed this note:
> But here's the tricky part: “Natural” doesn’t always mean you can’t take other substances like HGH and insulin
I know of no standard body (USADA, etc) that allows these. Some may allow it with a Therapeutic Use Exemption. You are not natural if you take exogenous hormones. A diabetic taking insulin will not realize the same effects as a person without diabetes when doped with insulin. The amount of insulin bodybuilders and athletes take is insane. You can tell the author has never taken part in a sport where this is wildly common. I competed with a few people who doped insulin so heavy they nearly were hospitalized.
Call it ad hominem but I'm not going to take advice from someone who does not appear to take part in any fitness whatsoever. Put it into practice, set some decent PRs, and then talk about it. Otherwise this is no different than any one of 1,000 fitness spam sites talking about the same information.