As a beginner, when it comes to starting a fitness journey, it is very confusing to look for legit information. The three most prominent sources of information are religion, the visual medium YouTube, and old-school books. This is a comparison between YouTube and books.

You can watch the video version of this article here:

1: Views Dictate Everything

When someone searches the word “fitness”, YouTube shows the videos with millions of views which claim:

Lose 10 pounds in a week.

Build huge muscles in a week.

Burn fat overnight.

Get abs instantly.

Just 10 min workout to burn fat.

All of these videos are pure scams. It is like asking:

How do I get 95% in the MBBS exam by just studying one night before the exam?

Give me 5 simple steps to defeat Usain Bolt, Mike Tyson, Vishawanathan Anand.

How do I get rich like Bill Gates in 2 weeks?

Real-life does not work like that. Has Elon Musk ever said, “get rich overnight in 2 weeks?” A real billionaire knows the hardships behind success and can never make such claims. Then how on earth can such videos be true.

2: Free Will

YouTube and Google are in the user’s control to some extent. If a person searches for easy ways to get fit, YouTube will show you exactly that, even if it is not true. If a person searches for why fitness will ruin his/her life, it will show exactly that. If a person searches for good, in-depth knowledge, he/she will get that. The problem is, beginners have no idea what to search for.

3: Almighty Algorithm

The algorithm does not have moral values. All it knows is more views = better content. YouTube wants people to stay on the platform to earn money by showing them ads. So, it promotes those videos that have higher engagement even if those videos are bad. Get this straight. More views or popularity does not mean better quality. Instead, it is the opposite. More views equal dumb content. If something is popular, then there is a high chance that it is wrong.

Here is an example, what would you want: Lose 40 pounds in 18 days

or

Lose 40 pounds in 18 months.

The realistic answer here is 18 months. That is how long it takes to lose 40 pounds and never gain it back again. But many people will choose to go for 18 days and this is exactly what makes such videos popular, why such scam videos get views. If there is a video titled 40 pounds 18 months, no one will like to wait that long. People want instant results. Here is an in-depth article about how dumber content gets more views with many facts and examples. You can read that if you are interested in philosophy.

4: Positive Side

There are fitness channels creating excellent content on YouTube. But, due to the points mentioned earlier, those channels are buried deep in the search results. There are channels ranging from 500 to 20k subscribers creating 1000 times better content than YouTubers with 20 million subscribers. This is not an exaggeration. But the algorithm does not favor these channels.

5: Unorganized

YouTube contains short videos that are scattered. Fitness is a field with immense, volumes of knowledge that cannot be covered in one video or even a series of videos. YouTube has the playlist feature that allows organizing videos but, most people do not watch all videos from a playlist.

6: Best Part

YouTube is free. Also, the visual medium allows the viewer to see the correct form and technique of exercises. That is the biggest plus point, only if the person finds a good channel.

Books

The prominent authors in fitness are Brad Schoenfeld, Charles Poliquin, Mike Israetel, Michael Matthews, Akshay Chopra, Eric Helms. These guys hold certifications, masters, and Ph.D. in fitness. They have studied and researched for decades in this field. It is very sad that there are people, like Joel Seedman and Jeff Cavalier, defaming degrees by providing misinformation. But, a degree contains correct, well-researched information. These charlatans are using their degrees to scam people. It is not the degree to blame. Also, there are these big colleges, institutes like the American college of sports medicine, the American Council on exercise, National Strength and conditioning association who have got volumes of books, research, and articles. These are the sources that good trainers refer to.

Unlike YouTube, the guys on top in literature are the legit ones. Here research matters. The books contain hundreds of research citations. If the research has limitations then multiple pieces of research are compared to arrive at a conclusion. Here, one needs strong evidence and research to back up the claims made, unlike YouTube where anyone can show up, say anything, scam people and get away with it. There is no algorithm or clickbait here. Quality matters. Yes, there is misinformation here as well but it is much less than YouTube.

Compared to a small video, books contain in-depth, well-planned, properly arranged information. If a person reads Brad Schoenfeld’s science and development of muscle hypertrophy, he/she is well equipped for at least a couple of years of workout. The book will provide you with all resources. On YouTube, you will have to watch many videos and combine them to get something beneficial. Many people do not know what to search for. It is highly unlikely that people will search for terms like:

The importance of eccentrics.

Periodization for muscle gain or fat loss.

Importance and function of macros and micros.

Types of fats, mono, polyunsaturated and their impact on health.

Basically, people will not search for jargon that they do not even know in the first place. They will just search, “how to get bigger biceps and how to lose belly fat.” Books provide all-around knowledge. The reader will learn new things that he/she would have never searched for, on YouTube.

Lastly, YouTube is free while books are paid. But, books are worth the money, while many YouTube videos are not even worth watching for free as they are a complete waste of time.

Even with all of these benefits why is it that people do not read books? The reason is simple, a video gets over. When you watch a video you know that it will get over in 10 mins. But, you have no idea when a book will get over. People just keep reading and reading and never finish reading the book.

The solution is to practice fast reading. There are simple ways with which you can read a thousand words per minute. Here is a video in the description by Pawan Bhattad about fast reading techniques. A person can increase his/her reading speed within an hour with the help of this video. He/she can finish reading a book within 2 hours. With some calculations, if a person reads for just 30 mins a day, he/she can finish reading a book in 4 days.

Here are the books that are great for beginners:

Brad Schoenfeld’s Science and development of muscle hypertrophy. The first two chapters contain information about human anatomy which can be too difficult to understand for average people, so you can skip that.

Diet 2.0 by Renaissance Periodization. This contains general information about nutrition so you need to implement the concepts in your location-specific traditional diet.

SWEAT by Geoffrey Verity Schofield. It contains all the information a person will need to know on his/her fitness journey.

For the people interested in calisthenics and home workouts, check out the books by Red Delta Project. The specialty of the Red Delta Project is that it has simple and practical information without much research jargon.

Akshay Chopra’s website We R Stupid is also worth checking out. It has books on a wide variety of topics and they are very cheap.

Finally, you can click here to grab a copy my eBook, Reincarnation. You are getting 90,000 words packed with knowledge and unlisted videos.

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