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Running Head: TASK 4

Task 4: Research Essay

Zain Mukati

University of Central Florida

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Zain Mukati
Caitlin Pierson
ENC 1102
20 April 2018
Introduction

Bodybuilding.com is a large community which focuses on quite a few different literary

activities. These literary activities are used to join and progress within the community. The

literate activities within the community include logging calories, creating workout programs, and

documenting progress in terms of strength, weight, and body fat percent. Each of these literate

activities contributes to most if not all members of the bodybuildin.com forum and their level of

assimilation. These activities are essential to the assimilation process for new members and thus

are relevant to my research question. Since these can make the difference between the failure of

new members to assimilate and success of new members in assimilating, they will be an area of

focus. The research question I seek to answer is “How can the assimilation process be improved

in the bodybuilding.com community?

The bodybuilding.com community is made up of mostly men, all of which want to

improve in some way, shape, or form. This website has a multitude of research, articles, and

forums which attracts members who seek to improve themselves. These members of the

community perform a multitude of literate activities on the forum, from asking and answering

questions, to commenting on the authenticity of written article

Currently within the community, it seems to be a struggle to get new members to join due

to the difficult environment and mass amounts of experienced members creating a rather

intimidating environment. Articles and research within the bodybuilding community generally

just focus on how to improve once you're already assimilated into the community, not how to

assimilate into the community in the first place. There has been a multitude of studies of studies
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conducted in relation to bodybuilding and muscle gain. These studies are central in the

bodybuilding community because a lot of the time they provide useful information that

completely changes the direction that people following their training and diets to be more in line

with the studies. Articles and research relating to this subject area discuss a variety of different

topics. Within these articles they discuss the hierarchy within these communities (Girvan et. al,

2002.), they discuss the phases of assimilation (Kramer, 2011), they discuss different approaches

to be used on members (Garton, 1997), they compare different levels of memberships (Jacoby et.

al, 1999.), they discuss why people enjoy being a part of a community (Ridings et. al, 2017), and

they discuss the cycles that most communities go through (Backstrom et. al, 2006).

Within the bodybuilding community, there are also quite a few misconceptions. “Bro-

science” is essentially all misconceptions or assumptions made by people in the bodybuilding

community that is generally false. An example of bro-science is the idea of muscle confusion,

which supposedly prevents your muscles from adapting to a stimulus and thus should promote

growth. It simply doesn't, what promotes muscle growth is getting stronger, not switching

exercises and “confusing “them. Bro-science is important because it can skew the direction of

new members attempting to assimilate into the bodybuilding community and cause them to start

following ineffective training methods and diets. These ineffective methods can cause some

members to leave the community because they don't get results from them.

Overall, the bodybuilding community has a diverse range of different members which

have different and varying goals. As the paper progresses, different methodologies will be used

to look at the community and its colorful members. My thesis for this topic is: The assimilation

process can be greatly improved when the members who are trying to assimilate are willing to
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learn and understand that sometimes they will find information contradicting what they know

and must be willing to accept or deny this information based on their own conclusions.

Methods

Throughout the course of this paper, two primary methods will be used to obtain data.

These methods are text interviews and having participants answer a general set of two questions

to get a decent understanding of the perceptions within the bodybuilding.com community. I was

originally planning on utilizing in-person interviews, but upon two of my appointments failing, I

switched my method of research to the text interviews and the small set of questions. These

methods were significantly more effective because the participants did not have to put in any

effort for me to be able to conduct my interviews and thus I was able to get data essential for my

research without my participants ghosting me. The data that was gathered from members of the

bodybuilding community was analyzed using “interview analysis”. I essentially just read

through the responses given to me by participants and coded through the data.

The interviews and questions will be analyzed through two different analytics. The first

of these analytics is finding recurring patterns. Patterns is the method of choice for this research

simply because getting a testament from more people on one idea is more likely to apply to new

members attempting to assimilate into the bodybuilding community. The second analytic that

will be utilized for the analysis of data is personal struggle. Typically, when people are

discussing issues or complications they have had in the past, they tend to be more emotional and

passionate when there is a major complication that takes a toll on them. I also chose this analytic

because struggle can signal difficulty in the process of enculturation, which helps to understand

the membership process. Finding these complications will help my research significantly and

will allow for a better understanding in what can be used to answer the research question.
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To get a set of claims along with relevant information, I compiled interview questions

which I either emailed to different members of the community, interviewed members in person,

or simply gave them my laptop and had them type out the answers to my questions in a word

document. Both questions were specifically tailored to getting claims for the research question

that would aid in understanding how the assimilation process in the bodybuilding community

could be improved. Upon conducting the interviews, I was able to successfully formulate a set of

three mini claims which I could now apply to my research questions and data. Theses mini

claims were found while coding through the data given by the bodybuilding.com participants.

The bodybuilding.com community was studied and as a researcher, I hold a place in this

community. I am an experienced member who has been a part of the community for 5 years. At

first, I was just interested in the idea of bodybuilding and I enjoyed hearing about people's goals

in the community, but as time went on, I became progressively more interested until 2016 when I

decided to join the community because I wanted to lose weight (I was slightly overweight at the

time). Now in 2018, I am experienced enough to help other members in the community and have

a bit of respect there too because I've built up an alright physique. I am a mentor within the

community and I hope to continue to assimilate further into the community.

Results/Analysis

Within this paper, activities within the bodybuilding community will be assessed and

related to relevant claims and data from members of the bodybuilding.com community.

Throughout the course of this paper, two primary methods will be used to obtain data. These

methods are text interviews and having participants answer a general set of two questions to get a

decent understanding of the perceptions within the bodybuilding.com community. The data
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being gathered from members of the bodybuilding community will be analyzed using “interview

analysis”.

The interviews and questions will be analyzed through two different analytics. The first

of these analytics is finding recurring patterns. Patterns is the method of choice for this research

simply because getting a testament from more people on one idea is more likely to apply to new

members attempting to assimilate into the bodybuilding community. The second analytic that

will be utilized for the analysis of data is emotional passion. Typically, when people are

discussing issues or complications they have had in the past, they tend to be more emotional and

passionate when there is a major complication that takes a toll on them. I also chose this analytic

because struggle can signal difficulty in the process of enculturation, which helps to understand

the membership process. Finding these complications will help my research significantly and

will allow for a better understanding in what can be used to answer the research question.

To get a set of claims along with relevant information, I compiled interview questions

which I either emailed to different members of the community, interviewed members in person,

or simply gave them my laptop and had them type out the answers to my questions in a word

document. Both questions were specifically tailored to getting claims for the research question

that would aid in understanding how the assimilation process in the bodybuilding community

could be improved. Upon conducting the interviews, I was able to successfully formulate a set of

three mini claims which I could now apply to my research questions and data. Theses mini

claims were found while coding through the data given by the bodybuilding.com participants.

Claim 1

While sorting through the research data, I found that both participants seemed quite

passionate when talking about the amount of misconceptions in the bodybuilding community.
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Thomas stated that it set back his progress by 2-3 years an example of one of these

misconceptions that set him back was the trend of eating six meals a day. Most people don’t have

the appetite nor the patience to deal with eating six meals a day and thus it causes quite a bit of

difficulties for new members trying to assimilate such a Thomas. Because of this pattern, it can

be concluded that misconceptions run rampant and greatly affect those attempting to assimilate

into the bodybuilding.com community. Thomas believed that if misconceptions in the

community were not so prevalent when conducting research, he would have had a much easier

time. activities such as looking up workout routines and diets, he would have made significantly

more progress in terms of assimilation into the bodybuilding.com community. I can relate to

Thomas because, I have personal experience with this problem in relation to my community. The

first year I barely knew what I was doing and thus I could not successfully assimilate. When

looking at the fact that misconceptions set Thomas back 2-3 years, the analytic of “emotional

passion” is clear which leads me to my first mini claim which is: Superstitions within the

bodybuilding.com community can greatly amplify the difficulty of the assimilation process.

Claim 2

The next pattern I found in my data is that when members were asked about the steps that

could be taken to simplify the assimilation process, all participants surveyed had different ideas

on how the assimilation process into the bodybuilding community could be made easier. But

both members believed that self-education is a key part of assimilating into the bodybuilding

community. Self-education, in- terms of the bodybuilding community is understanding the best

way to train, the safest way to train, and the best way to eat. If these three things aren’t

understood, then the member has failed at assimilating through self-education. I can personally

vouch for the fact that self-education is essential to successfully assimilating into the
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bodybuilding.com community. Between December 2016 and December 2017, I added about 30

lbs. onto my bench press strength, which is incredibly slow. But between December 2017 and

March 2018 I added 35 lbs. on to my Bench press. My progress in the community had multiplied

because I understood how to center my workouts significantly better now, thus, I can back the

fact that self-education is essential within the bodybuilding.com community. The participants of

my study also stated that if they did not self-educate, their assimilation process would be greatly

slowed down or even potentially brought to a halt, simply because their self-education through

the literate activities of research and programming lead to their future progress and success

within the bodybuilding community. These statements make clear that my second claim should

be: Self-education is essential to the assimilation process.

While both members have their own ideas on how the assimilation process can be

improved and sped up, it's quite clear that without any attempt from the new member to attempt

and learn some of the literate activities in the bodybuilding.com community, they will fail to

assimilate. After these interviews were conducted, I emailed both participants of the study a few

more questions which they agreed to. The first of these questions relates to my mini-claim that

Self-education is essential to the assimilation process.

Claim 3

I asked both participants about the kind of research that new members should be

conducting to enhance the assimilation process. Both participants referred directly to different

online forums which they considered credible. Ivan believed that asking questions on

bodybuilding.com yielded good answers to him and stated that members of that community are

generally good-natured. But he said that lot of the time when he was using this literate activity to

improve his understanding of the community he was overwhelmed amount of new information
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that was given to him which often frustrated him. This is a pattern that recurred during my email

interview with Thomas in which he stated that sometimes when he was “googling” online, he

found a ton of information related to the topic to point where he “didn’t know where to start”. If

Thomas and Ivan were not so greatly intimidated by the mass amount of information given to

them by different forums, they would have found the assimilation process to be significantly less

intimidating. These interview answers led me to my third mini claim: If new members are

overwhelmed with a large amount of information, the assimilation process will slow, even if the

information is beneficial. This claim is supported simply by the previous pattern found during

the interviews. It is also supported by the analytic of emotional passion due to Ivan stating that

he was “often frustrated” by the amount of information members of different forums gave him

when he asked questions. When I first joined the bodybuilding.com community, I was

dumbfounded by the amount of contrasting points of view in terms of how things should be done

within the community. I can testify from my personal experience that overwhelming new

members with mass amounts of information causes nothing but pain for all parties involved.

Throughout the course of my research with my two participants, I have gathered much data in

relation to my research question. This data relates to the assimilation process and how it can be

improved in the bodybuilding.com community. There are a few different things that could have

improved the accuracy of my data such as incorporating more people within my study. While I

was able to gain quite a bit of insight into the assimilation process, I also realized that I only have

two case studies and there's always a chance that both case studies are highly unusual members

of the bodybuilding.com community. Here are the findings of my research:

New members of the bodybuilding community tend to be quite intimidated by the

environment upon joining for a multitude of different reasons. One of these reasons was overall
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just being confused on what kind of direction they should go towards to achieve successful

assimilation into the community. This “not knowing what direction to go towards” is extremely

common within both participants and was easily the biggest issue mentioned by both. As a result,

both participants attempted to research online and ended up even worse than they begun due to

too much information which gave me my claim: If new members are overwhelmed with a large

amount of information, the assimilation process will slow, even if the information is beneficial.

Both participants upon encountering the community had a strong desire to have a path These

findings are also seen in other studies such as that of (Kramer, 2011). “Within the encountering

phase, members looked towards supervisors and former members for assistance and directions

for tasks essential to assimilating within the community” (Kramer, 2011). Just like those

participants in Kramer’s study, my participants also seemed guidance to aid in their assimilation.

In Kramer’s study, the members gravitated more towards mentorship to achieve their

assimilation while in my research, participants took more of the online guidance route to achieve

successful assimilation.

During my research I found that my participants believed that superstitions amplified the

difficulty of their assimilation process, thus I go the claim: Superstitions within the

bodybuilding.com community can greatly amplify the difficulty of the assimilation process.

Thomas mentioned that superstations set his progress back 2-3 years and almost caused him to

quit the bodybuilding.com community. Within the bodybuilding.com community, situations like

Thomas’s are quite common due to the amount of misconceptions that go around the community.

In (Ridings et al, 2017), problems within a community were shown to reach every branch that

existed within the community, thus as a result, misconception tend to damage members on all
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levels, but especially those who are poorly/barely assimilated because they do not have their own

mindset developed in terms of their beliefs.

My claim that Self-education is essential to the assimilation process is supported by both

my data and that of (Backstrom et al, 2006). Within my study, I found that those members of the

bodybuilding.com community who gave high amounts of effort to assimilate tended to be more

successful in the assimilation process while those who didn’t give as much were much less likely

to assimilate. Both participants of my study attested to this and claimed that self-education was

an important part of development. In (Backstrom et al, 2006), this claim is supported because it

was found that those members who were a part of a community longer and had more standing

tended to also be significantly more knowledgeable in all matter relating to the community. This

research along with my own makes it clear how essential self-education is.

Discussion

“How can the assimilation process be improved in the bodybuilding.com community?”.

Throughout the course of my research, I have seemed to answer this questions and have come up

with this thesis as a result: The assimilation process can be greatly improved when the members

who are trying to assimilate are willing to learn, and understand that sometimes they will find

information contradicting what they know and must be willing to accept or deny this information

based on their own conclusions. This thesis is based off my research which I conducted first

hand, through primary sources, and secondary sources. The combination of all this information

has brought me to my current thesis.

My minicams are based off my first-hand research and support my thesis. My first mini-

claim is that “Superstitions within the bodybuilding.com community can greatly amplify the

difficulty of assimilation”. This mini-claim supports the second part of my thesis because of the
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fact that members of the bodybuilding.com community must be able to reject misinformation

such as superstitions or their assimilation process will be greatly slowed. My evidence to back

this is the fact that both of my research participants stated that superstitions either slowed their

progress greatly (Thomas) or caused them much difficulty while assimilating (Ivan). This

evidence shows that members of the bodybuilding.com community must be able to reject some

of the information they come across because not everything in the community is true.

My second mini-claim is that “Self-education is essential to the assimilation process”.

This minicam supports the first part of my thesis simply because when conducting my research

on primary sources, I have found that those who are most willing to learn and educate

themselves within the bodybuilding community, are the same people who are most likely to

succeed within it. I can attest to this first hand as well. Between December 2016 and December

2017, I added about 30 lbs. onto my bench press strength, which is incredibly slow. But between

December 2017 and March 2018 I added 35 lbs. on to my Bench press. My progress in the

community had multiplied because I understood how to center my workouts significantly better

now, thus, I can back the fact that self-education is essential within the bodybuilding.com

community.

The third mini-claim that I have is “If new members are overwhelmed with information,

they are likely to have a slower assimilation”. This is based off the both personal experience and

accounts from my participants. When I first joined the bodybuilding.com community, I was

excited because I thought the process was simple, you lift weights and you become stronger.

This was not the whole case, about 1 month into my journey, I quickly realized that there are a

multitude of different factors that are essential to having success within the community. Ranging

from diet selection to managing recovery and working certain muscle groups with each other etc.
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Knowing that all of this came into play when trying to assimilate, I quit the community for about

6 months simply because it seemed like “too much”. Both of my research subjects had the same

problem because when they were doing research, they found a multitude of viewpoints that

seemed right and simultaneously contradicted themselves. These viewpoints also slowed their

assimilation process because of intimidation. These results are evidence for the fact that

members trying to assimilate into the bodybuilding.com community must know what

information to accept.

Most people I’ve ran into agree with the claims I make, and generally from my primary

sources, I have found these viewpoints to be correct. But if someone contradicted either points

found in my thesis, they would simply be defying logic. If someone said that “having willingness

to learn does not speed up assimilation”. I would simply tell them that almost all successfully

assimilated members in the bodybuilding.com community have a strong knowledge base and a

functional understanding but, this understanding does not come from anywhere unless they were

willing to learn when they first started as well. If they disagreed with my second point and said

that “they will find information contradicting what they know and must be willing to accept or

deny this information based on their own conclusions.”. I would explain to them how much

learning occurs simply because of people making their own conclusions upon seeing facts. I

would tell the “contradictor” that it simply makes no sense for a new member of the community

to not come up with his own conclusion based on data because of how much faulty data exists.

The newfound knowledge that occurred because of this study is that factors that slowed

the assimilation process and sped the assimilation process were found and singled out. Knowing

these factors will help attract more members in the bodybuilding.com community and other

communities which will allow membership to flourish to new levels that were not present
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previously. These factors include the importance of self-education, importance of mentorship,

and the importance of knowing how to filter information.

With this newfound knowledge, we can greatly increase the efficiency of our

communities everywhere and see more success in the communities that these members join

because of their successful assimilation. We need to spread these techniques to new members of

every community so that they end up with more long-term success than otherwise possible.

This connects to the outside world to almost any single community that is struggling with

the assimilation process, if a mentor is assigned to a struggling member and these strategies are

used, then the community will be flourishing again.

Works Cited

-Jim Brewster (2017) “Beginning Bodybuilding: A Comprehensive Guide!” Bodybuilding.com,

Bodybuiding,Com, 11 Dec. 2017, www.bodybuilding.com/fun/beginning_training_guide.htm.

-Smith, A. C., & Stewart, B. (2012). Body Perceptions and Health Behaviors in an Online

Bodybuilding Community. Qualitative Health Research, 22(7), 971-985.

doi:10.1177/1049732312443425

-Kramer, M. W.,(2011) A Study of Voluntary Organizational Membership: The Assimilation

Process in a Community Choir. Western Journal of Communication, 75(01), 52-55

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-Haywood, B., Black, K., Baker, D., McGarvey, J., Healey, P., & Brown, R. (2014). Probiotic

supplementation reduces the duration and incidence of infections but not severity in elite rugby

union players. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 17(4), 356-60

-Girvan, M., & Newman, M. E. (2002, June 11). Community structure in social and biological

networks. Retrieved February 16, 2018, from http://www.pnas.org/content/99/12/7821.short