Peters - No-Nonsense Bodybuilding: A Scientific Guide for Normal People

Noah Peters

First printing, March 2020

Copyright 2020 Noah Peters

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission.

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Dedicated to my parents

There is probably no topic where it is so common that people overcomplicate things to profit like bodybuilding.

• Magazines want to convince you that you need to try this brand new exercise if you want to maximize your gains,

• Youtube and Instagram influencers regularly come up with new premium workout plans that, they promise, will finally help you look like them, and

• professional bodybuilders repeat over and over again that you absolute need this special Supplement if you want to have a realistic chance to reach your goals.

The fitness industry is full of charlatans and overcomplicators.

Even most well-meaning advice is highly misleading. If someone lifts weights for years, its quite likely that hell make some gains. But this doesnt mean that his approach is optimal. Taking 4 years to get where you should have been in 1 year is not a good place to be sharing advice from. Similarly, someone who takes steroids can do almost anything wrong and will still make greater gains than all natural lifters. And even if a steroid user trains optimally, they usually dont realize that their recommendations are only maximally effective for other steroid users.

Recommendations based on personal experiences and anecdotal evidence should always be taken with a grain of salt.

A much smarter approach is to have a look at the actual scientific evidence. While this approach isnt perfect its certainly better than the alternative of just making stuff up.

The main reason why a scientific approach to weightlifting isnt more widely adopted is that usually the only people who talk about scientific evidence are experts. While this may sound like a good thing it usually isnt. Experts often have a hard time seeing the forest for the trees and suffer from the curse of knowledge. They usually cant remember what its like to be a beginner and endlessly discuss nuances that arent really relevant for beginners.

So heres some good news. This book was not written by a professional bodybuilder, influencer or leading expert. Im an average guy and I dont make my living in the fitness industry.

This is a huge advantage for several reasons.

• Theres no reason why I should overcomplicate things and purposefully confuse you to make you dependent. This book will teach you everything I know since I have nothing else to sell. Theres no premium video course, private coaching, or other upsells.

• Im not sponsored by any company in the fitness industry and thus Ive no reason to promote useless supplements or equipment.

• Since I dont have any expert status that I could lose, I can afford to be non-dogmatic, to discuss topics in simple and understandable terms, and to sometimes say "I dont know". In contrast, experts (and academics in particular) usually write terribly because they write for an audience out to destroy them. They are terrified to make a mistake. And texts that are 100% bulletproof are in most cases unreadable.

With that said, I should clarify a few points.

First of all, Im not claiming any originality. Everything discussed in the following chapters is well known to experts in the field. Instead, my value proposition is distillation, organization and synthesis.

Secondly, even though the recommendations in this book largely follow the general consensus in the scientific community, you shouldnt trust them blindly. Its always a smart idea to be skeptical of arguments from authority. Thus whenever a claim is made in the following chapters, Ive always included direct references to the relevant studies so that you can check the data yourself. Moreover, to help you with this Ive included a chapter on common fallacies that are often made by people who try to evaluate scientific evidence.

Thirdly and most importantly, this book is certainty not a good fit for everyone. It focuses solely on the fundamentals of weightlifting that are important if your primary goal is to build bigger muscles and if you are currently a novice or at an intermediate level. Im convinced that a narrow focus is important because even most great books try to do too much at once. They discuss beginner, intermediate, and advanced strategies and evaluate various options depending on different primary goals (muscle gains, strength gains, etc.). This makes it hard to find those lessons that are directly relevant for you.

So, if after all these disclaimers, you still think that this book might be a good fit for you, without any further ado, lets dive in. I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

February 2020 Noah Peters

PS: I update this book regularly based on reader feedback. So if you find an error or have any other kind of feedback just send a short email to noahpetersauthor@gmail.com.

Before we discuss any details, we need to talk about three things. First, a crucial question:

Probably you have already good reason for being interested in bodybuilding. Otherwise you wouldnt be reading this book. And if I had to guess I would say that you simply want to look better and want to get more confident.

These are great reasons. However, your priorities in life will change over time. Thus to stay motivated in the long run its immensely helpful to have a whole arsenal of arguments at your disposal. Here are some I personally find compelling:

• Weightlifting is good for your health (Liu et al. 2019) that is unless you take steroids.

• Weightlifting is a great way to learn about important developments long before they trickle down to the mainstream decades later. There are many important lessons we can learn about normal physiology by focusing on perfect physiology. This is analogous to how improvements on Formula 1 cars eventually become standard in regular road cars.

• Weightlifting allows you to understand which lifestyle factors have a positive or negative impact on your health. Your performance in the gym is a perfect benchmark for your health. For example, youll quickly notice how many hours of sleep you really need since your performance will suffer significantly if you sleep too little. Similarly, youll be able to measure how much damage alcohol does to your body. Even two or three days after a night of heavy drinking, your performance will be noticeable worse.

• Weightlifting keeps you grounded. 100 kilograms are always 100 kilograms irrespective of what else is going on in your live.

• Weightlifting makes you more productive. This may sound paradoxical since every hour you spend in the gym is an hour youre not working on other projects. However, youll quickly notice that an hour at the gym nets you more than an hour of productivity throughout the rest of your day.

• Weightlifting is a great way to connect with others. There is certainly nothing wrong with lifting alone, but if you want to make friends youll find that most regular gym-goers are extremely friendly and always happy to help a beginner. In addition, going to the gym together is an amazing way to deepen friendships.