Violence Prevention through Bodybuilding: How Bodybuilding Can Lead to Peace

By Dimitri Goudkov ’03. Independently published, February 2018. Available on Amazon. This book focuses on young men around the world in their teens and twenties who are considered at risk—that is, those young men who have no access to education and economic opportunities and who have no stabilizing social anchors, such as family, teachers, coaches, church, and friends. These men are at risk of feeling less masculine. Their emasculation then leads to low self-esteem, and it is the fundamental assumption of this study that such young men with low self-esteem see violence as their last resort to regain their self-esteem and self-respect at the expense of their own or other people’s lives. Bodybuilding offers an alternative route to higher self-esteem.