I'd had the outline of a book on bodybuilding scribbled in a notebook for several years. The catalyst for finally getting it published was being told, just before Christmas  2014, that I had prostate cancer. Being confronted by my own mortality shocked me into completing it. Furthermore, having to sit around the house for three months to convalesce after surgery in February 2015 gave me plenty of time to do it. I wanted to write a truly distinctive, innovative book, one that would stand out from all the other 'reps and sets' bodybuilding books, and so I developed the idea of taking some of the knowledge that I had acquired from my PhD and MBA and applying it to bodybuilding. However, I wanted to make sure that the end result wasn't some sort of  academic treatise, but rather that it must be interesting to read, and of practical use to both novice and experienced bodybuilders.

I did this by taking five outstanding concepts/quantitative techniques (the Law of the Limiting Factor, Benchmarking, Force Field Analysis, Gap Analysis, and the Theory of Constraints) and applying them creatively to bodybuilding.   

The flow of the book is:

• How good is your current physique?
• What has caused the gap between your current physique and the one you want?
• What do you need to do to bridge that gap?
• How should you measure your progress in achieving it?

I begin by using my physique as an example, but then I introduce an imaginary bodybuilder called Jack, and we use him as a case study in the chapters that follow. However, both myself and Jack are only there to explain how you can use these techniques to improve your physique, so throughout the book I keep asking you to think “OK, but what does this mean for me?”

In 2025 I decided that the book needed revising and refreshing. So, in this second edition, I have simplified the chapter on the Theory of Constraints and added a new chapter showing how the Balanced Scorecard can help you to prepare for a bodybuilding competition.

You will find it on Amazon world-wide in both paperback and ebook versions.