That's f*cking disrespectful. Diesel went out of his way to spread his workout knowledge on the forum, and he gets slammed for it and gets labeled a dumbass juicehead by some ignorant lifter that was to lazy to do his own research and paid another guy $70.. That's just plain f*cking rude. I'd be pretty pissed off if I went through the trouble of writting a guide only to have that sh!t said about me.
I thought Diesel's guide was great. It helped me get into working out. But there were some issues with it.
1) I have no idea who Diesel is. He is a guy on a message forum. As such, anything said ought to be taken with a grain of salt (as with anyone who puts stuff on a message forum, myself, yourself, everyone included).
2) Most bodybuilders post their actions, not the science that causes the reactions. Saying eat X amount of this and Y amount of that isn't helpful. We need to know how our bodies work and what chemical reactions occur that make us get fat, lose fat, gain muscle, lose muscle, etc. etc.
3) If I need more information, how do I get it? The poster on the forum or the website may or may not give me additional information.
4) What we do biases what we believe.
Number 4 is the important one. Let us say I go crazy and write a book called, "Women Are Evil". The time and actions I put into that book will bias my beliefs. The bias will be that I WILL think 'women are evil' because I spent all that time and action for the book. If someone said, "Women Are Good", I would go, "What! That cannot be!" because if I believed that, my book would be invalidated which means I wasted a lot of time and ego.
Or here is another example. Let us say I am running for office, say, Dogcatcher Pook! I want people to vote for me. After all, there is a oversurplus of dogs running around. So I ask everyone in the town to place a little plastic doggie statue in their windows, to spread the cause of the dog problem. Does it do anything? No. But the action taken to put the dog there and the symbol of it adds bias to my cause.
Or a real life example would be Victory Gardens in World War 2.
Let us say our typical body builder wanders into the forum. He does 18,000,000,000 crunches a day. He blares into the forum: "oMG, MY AbS ArE Da $hIt!!!111" (Your body generates more testosterone to build up the muscle. Testosterone has interesting effects on people, such as jazzing up their written communication as well as the verbal.) The other people on the forum say, "w00t! I want da abs as well. How do I get them?"
Then you will read something like:
DaYY 1!!11:
DRINK: Super Nuper Juice!!!
EAT: GAG WAG's Testosterone Cereal!!
Crunches: 2000
DAY 2!!
Drink!: Pepto Mepto Super Liquid!
EAT: JoLLy RoGGer's ChIPpEr ChUNkS
Crunches: 5000
I could go on but the point should be obvious. First thing to notice is the screaming style. Generally, you want to follow health advice from sources that have the basic english down. Second, you don't get an explanation as how the abs work. You don't even get a selection of different ways to get your abs to be 'super'. You only get ONE WAY which is the body builder posting. If the body builder eats Gag Wag's Testosterone Cereal for breakfast, then golly, you should too!
Now factor in the action bias for thought. This guy goes and does his thing. Great. He thinks it is working for him. The symbol is his 'AwEsOmE' abs and the actions are the million crunches he is taking. This bias masks a correlation weakness:
Six pack abs are not made in the gym, they are made in the kitchen. Focusing on doing a million crunches isn't going to create abs but focusing on a certain diet WILL.
So the conclusion is that the body builder may have all the things going for him but the stuff he vomits on message forums could be entirely incorrect.
Free information is the most expensive information. When you get 'free' legal advice (not going to a lawyer), you'll find your butt in court. When you get 'free' financial information (such as from your friends and family, since why pay for 'that book' or 'seminar'), you will probably lose a lot of money. When you get 'free' advice on women, it costs a lot because you are simply cloning someone else's love life onto yours. And such a clone cannot grow and adapt except by more food given by the one who has a love life.
Sure, you can find *everything* for free now. You can get *free* legal information over the Net, but you would be dumb to go to the courthouse based on that. You can get *free* information over the net on accounting, but if you have lots of assets you would be stupid for not having it examined by an accountant.
Yes, you can find information on bodybuilding for free over the Internet. But there is a cost: time. It will take you time to sort out the good information from the bad information and then from the good information which of it applies to you and of that fitting into a mechanical system that you press 'go' and do and you become what you want.
My Dad thought he was rich by living cheap. At the end of his life, he still had no money and still had to live cheap. He valued money over time which is why he ran out of time before he ever gained money. This is why it is easy to get money from successful people but hard to get their time.
There is no *right* answer. It depends on your choice and which you value more.