Thanks to the internet, the science of bro has started to shoot its way into skinny virgins bookmarks on Google Chrome everywhere throughout the nation. While the general concept is good, and some of the statements are coincidentally factual, there are a lot of dangers out there as well.
As far as the good, the basics come down to common knowledge being displayed in plain English. Basic exercise routines being readily available for free. And there are reviews on almost anything related to being a bro out there.
As far as the bad, well there’s many more.
Bad workout advice
This is pretty much self explanatory. With the surge of internet usage and the ability to get followers for doing practically nothing, there has accidentally been a channel created to allow people who know absolutely nothing about fitness to preach to others about fitness. On top of the terrible advice comes the contradictory information. While anyone who is experienced in fitness can easily tell the bullshit from the facts, it makes it damn near impossible for any new person. What’s even worse for the new people is the impossibility to distinguish the credible from the morons which in the end leaves a whole generation of fuck ups on display (like the guy below).
Pointless nutrition advice
If you haven’t already, then I suggest you watch the pre-workout video above. Yes it’s 3 minutes but it’ll both make you laugh and point out the entire flaws with nutrition. That flaw is the fact that no one has any clue what the hell they are talking about. I’ll be honest, I can give you my nutritional advice but my metabolism is going to be different than yours. So while some people paleo works great, others don’t need it, same with 2 meals versus 8 meals.
It’s not a definitive science
The beauty of bro-science is that it’s science in the making. Men experiment with themselves and then tell others what has worked and what hasn’t. The problem is that what works for one man will not necessarily work for another. While this general concept is great, many men will get frustrated with the fact that bro-science isn’t a definitive science like the kind taught in school, and therefore it’s lack of foundation hints at a lack of credibility.
Is it even worthwhile?
Despite several large flaws, bro-science is still something that should garner respect, especially as an offshoot of the manosphere. While perfection may not be a definitive quality of bro-science yet, the discoveries for men are just and useful. The key is to take anything from bro-science with a grain of salt. The knowledge present is enough to boost your quality of physical fitness to an extreme rather quickly, but if you’re not careful you can wreck it just as quickly. Think of it as an apprenticeship rather than college. If you find a decent teacher, you’ll be good.
Read Next: One Lift To Rule Them All
This can be applied to bros interested in becoming entrepreneurs, too.
I can add this key takeaway:
Indeed, what works for one guy won’t necessarily work for all. There are many factors that one has to take into account, and YMMV. Experimentation is, for my money, the best way. Beware of those that are trying to sell you snake oil. And, please, if starting your own business, don’t be one of these assholes trying to sell snake oil, either. The downside of the Net is that hucksterism has been on the rise for the past ten years or so.
Oh wow… that bench press was awful. I was actually scared for the dude doing it. Man, people are going to hurt themselves playing around with weights when they have no idea what they are doing.
As far as men testing on themselves and sharing the results with fellow men – I have no problem with it. If you try something that worked for somebody else and it doesn’t work for you – and you get frustrated at the other guy because of it, then you’re just being a sour puss. You can learn from anybody’s journey – there will still be takeaways and you can learn a lot by testing what works for others, yourself. Just do it with the right amount of personal testing and reflection. Don’t take anybody’s word as gold. Take it as insight. There’s a big difference.
That guy pretty much was using too much weight. He should start with dumbells with a lighter weight than the barbell he was using.
He should also get some instriction from a qualified trainer on form.
The real meaningful contribution of broscience was to get guys to be male again and stop putting up with snowflake’s [email protected]
And thank god it happened.
If we could just get them to shut up and stop giving me advice on _everything_ that I do when I ask a “bro” to spot me, I’d probably appreciate it more.
The Bro Science movies are fuckin’ hilarious. NOTHING home boy says should be taken seriously. I’ve seen and shot shit with every stereotypical dude these clips embody in the military. It’s iron-pumping humor for iron-pumpers.
Bench press vid. I can totally tell what hand he masturbates with.
I do like the social aspect of bro science, but I think one of the best things to do is just grab Arnold’s big fucking book and start reading. I was really surprised how concise his material is, especially when it comes to areas where you are lacking in strength development (forearms and calves for instance).
The mentality that I have always adopted with any faucet of life is to simply mimic what the pros do. Generally they are better at explaining themselves, and they have a better understanding of form/technique.
All training is scalable, you tailor the poundage and volume to your ability.
You can do the pros’ routines, you just have to scale the poundage and volume to what you are able to handle.
Injuries will always set you back.
Funny as fuck videos. Well done, good article.
I think I about lost it on that bench press video. I’m not sure what’s worse his form or that he continued to bench so gawd awfully for so many reps. SMH.
That’s right, taking advice whole-hog is folly. Learn about your own body, experiment with fasting, experiment with frequency of consumption, experiment with diets, and always be ready to adapt your workout routine (ROK has helped me a lot with expanding and modifying my workouts and the results are satisfactory).
In college I learned that I only needed to eat once a day at approximately 10:00 pm (no vitamins or supplements); this is something that tends to baffle health-nuts and workout gurus when they ask me how I maintain my high-energy levels and physique (I’ve been told that I have high metabolism because I move so quickly, steadily, and powerfully; I’m dubious of this considering how long I can feed off of a single meal). I am able to control my hunger, satisfy my cravings, get all my nutrition in one shot, save time, prolong my energy expenditure without interruption, save money by forgoing superfluous calories, sleep regular hours and irregular hours whenever I want, and maintain regular bowel movements according to a schedule (two-to-three each morning; no gas or turtle-heads for the rest of the day).
I workout twice a day and have mostly worked in physically demanding trades/jobs (I have only had one job that required me to sit on my ass; I found that I needed to eat more just to stay awake since it was so damn boring). I have a high sex-drive with little-to-no masturbation; hat-tip to Law Dogger for recently pointing out the benefits, although an interesting difference is that my endurance in the sack increases with reductions in the frequency of masturbation. The point is that I would never recommend something like this for someone else; whenever people ask, I tell them the truth about my diet and workout regimen, but judging from their reaction it seems that most people would be plagued by headaches, lethargy, and weight-loss if they pursued some diet and workout routine similar to my own.
I may have to try the 1 meal thing. Could have interesting results.
Wow that’s a horrible form in that video. Has no one taught that guy to lighten the weight and go for lifting form? He could possibly be re-habbing from an injury, but the same principle applies. If you can’t maintain proper posture/form while lifting to lift the weight, then you can’t lift the weight (for the purposes of working out).
interesting article, thanks for sharing.
Though a lot of nutritional advice and workout routines is YMMV territory there are some things that can be said objectively to be better than others.
Lets not lump the shit with the cream and say “i don’t know its all depends on the person” as an answer. I’ve always thought of the manosphere as a meritocracy where we unabashedly judge things by how good they are and not by some equalist ‘everybodies identical’ BS
example: vegan, no two ways about it, its unhealthy. maybe a few people who are vegan happen to look healthy, but the fact they’re neglecting so many nutrients that can only be found in animal products means they’re going to be prone to more problems.
“example: vegan, no two ways about it, its unhealthy. maybe a few people who are vegan happen to look healthy, but the fact they’re neglecting so many nutrients that can only be found in animal products means they’re going to be prone to more problems.”
Bro-science again.
As with any diet, indeed with the most common diets, some will pursue a junk-food filled version and thus not derive health benefits. Ie; a fat chick who discovers that Oreos are vegan and decides to live off of them, Quorn and cola.
Every nutrient a human needs can be found in non-animal sources.
Were it not the case, a number of elite Tennis players, distance runners and MMA fighters would be dropping dead left, right and centre.
Adopting this diet leads a a massively decreased likelihood of heart disease ( 1, 2), stroke (3) and numerous cancers (4, 5). It increases lifespan(6, 7) and most importantly of all, it yields a 7% higher testosterone level than meat-based diets (8).
1-http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2013/130130.html
2-http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2013/02/04/vegetarians-have-lower-heart-disease-risk-study-finds/
3 http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/76/1/93.abstract
4- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8127215.stm
5- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23169929
6- http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1691919
7- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12936945
8- Br J Nutr. 1990 Jul;64(1):111-9
Post a picture of yourself and your non-meat diet big boi
I cannot oblige your request; this is RoK, not a gay dating site.
I know it’s ROK – The Roundtable of Kocks.Post up now plz
Certain advice about nutrition is going to be universal; it’s not a good idea to paint broad brush strokes about “everyone being different;” this “we’re all beautiful snowflakes” crap is a cancer.
Does being masculine have to go hand in hand with sounding fucking retarded?
Bro science is just advice. DO WHATEVER THE FUUUUUCK YOU WANNA DO.
Bro-science is the triumph among prole communities of the anecdotal over the factual.
Undoubtedly the best bench technique ever to be recorded.
” The key is to take anything from bro-science with a grain of salt” So should I add 1000mg of salt to my pre-workout shake?