More On Scientific Bodybuilding Contest Preparation for Men and Women by Jerry Brainum

 

I've written several articles about bodybuilding contest preparation in past issues of Applied Metabolics. These articles have included information about preparing for natural bodybuilding events; professional bodybuilding contests; Men's physique events; and Women's fitness and bikini contests. One reason I continue to do this is related to my past work as a writer for bodybuilding magazines, which I did for over 30 years. I followed a personal policy of always telling the truth when I wrote articles for the magazines. I have had occasions where when I was interviewing a bodybuilder, they would tell me something that I knew was an obvious lie. This is often related to their dietary and training methods. Some would greatly exaggerate their total caloric intake or the amount of time they trained each day. When that happened, I would politely ask them if that is what they wanted to appear in the article. The implication without my saying so was that their statements were so unbelievable that no one would believe them and they would come off as dishonest. When I did that, the bodybuilder usually changed their "facts." While my personal opinion was that there was no place in magazines for "alternative truths," this wasn't the general policy of the magazines. In short, nearly everything that appeared in the bodybuilding magazines was not true, and it just got worse with the passing years. Indeed, when I first began writing for the magazines, most of the articles did reflect the truth. But as the publications became increasingly commercialized, the scenario changed from facts to mostly fiction. That negative change happened because the goals of the magazines changed from being a source of information to that of a selling organ for food supplement companies. By the time I retired from magazine writing five years ago, the magazines had converted into largely sales catalogs for supplement companies. Indeed, when those same food supplement companies began to remove their advertising from the magazines in favor of the Internet, the fate of the print magazines was sealed. Advertisements were the lifeblood of the magazines and without them, the magazines simply couldn't exist.

But that left a truth gap. Where could a person interested in bodybuilding get accurate information?  The Internet appeared to be the logical choice, but while there is a good amount of accurate information available on various websites and blogs, there is unfortunately also a plethora of nonsensical 'Bro science produced in epidemic proportions that only serves to mislead and confuse the unwary. The good news is that in recent years many of the scientists conducting and publishing research were either amateur bodybuilders themselves or had a keen interest in the scientific aspects of bodybuilding. As such, this new generation of scientists began to conduct and publish studies about various bodybuilding techniques. While science is not infallible, in that today's scientific fact could well turn out to be tomorrow's falsehood . . .