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Comment by the-smug-one | Hacker News Reader

This is pretty weird. Most sources that he uses for what BB:ers think are threads from bodybuilding.com (not a lot of pros spend a lot of time writing posts on there) and some place called outlift.com (never heard of that in my lifting life). This is like listening in on 1st year CS students to figure out what professional software engineers think.

If you really wanted to know what BB:ers think about rest time, why not see what they've said themselves? It's not like BB:ers don't talk about what they do and why they do it.

Just as an aside: strongerbyscience.com has pretty good articles (owner has MSc in exercise science and at least one guy has a Phd in this stuff, sources are extensively cited).

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Well, the pros historically tend to leave out the, ah, pharmaceutical side of the equation when they write about "what they do".

That's changing quite a bit, but agreed.

The talking yes but not the pharmaceutical side.

worse than that the stuff in magazines and such is often entirely fabricated

> Well, the pros historically tend to leave out the, ah, pharmaceutical side of the equation when they write about "what they do".

There are tested competitions.

I'll admit that that doesn't guarantee that no one uses banned substances there, but the finalists are generally quite a bit smaller than those in the untested competitions, so at the very least they're substantially cutting back.

the sentiment regarding steroid use is becoming less negative and stigmatic. A lot of older pros talk about it openly now (ex Dorian Yates) and a lot of current modern pros are openly disclosing their routines. Sponsors are becoming more tolerant of this as it's now as the honesty is now seen as cool and attracts an audience.

> This is pretty weird. Most sources that he uses for what BB:ers think are threads from bodybuilding.com

Agreed. This article feels a bit like a strawman: They picked the worst possible sources to use for what bodybuilders think.

Bodybuilding.com is a joke even in the fitness communities. It's an easy target, but no one should be using it as a canonical source for anything.

I think the author is assessing what the average bodybuilder (i.e. not a pro, someone interested in lifting weights to look good) thinks about rest times. And on this question, it seems like the average belief has caught up (or agrees with) what the most recent scientific studies are showing.

The author has no idea what the average bodybuilder thinks. How laughable would it be if I, as a bodybuilder, grabbed a handful of comments from assorted /r/cscareerquestions threads to demonstrate what the average programmer thinks about some topic in software engineering?

Even worse, BB.com is a traditional forum with no voting system; there's no way to validate whether the opinions expressed are held by most bodybuilders or just the musings of a slightly-informed bro.

With programming, the average programmer is a paid professional. With weightlifting, even specialized to bodybuilding, the average participant is lifting for recreational reasons. I imagine the fraction of people who've competed at the amateur level in bodybuilding is a minority of the total people discussing the subject. So it depends on whether the author is interested in gauging opinion among the minority of competitive bodybuilders or among people just a little more dedicated to lifting weights than usual. The article reads as if the author wants to somehow survey opinions among the "bros."

There have been more local bodybuilding sites and magazines since the 90s where professionals post too. It's more of a cargo cult mentality. Sample size of one genetic freak on steroids and growth hormones got huge on this program so it must be generally applicable.

There's a definitional problem here too. Unless you are actively competing you are a lifter, or something else. You only get to call yourself a bodybuilder if you go on stage.

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