Tuesday 30 June 2015

Lisa G Is...

Ms VASCULARITY

I never knew there were that many veins in a leg.
Lisa fan, forum post

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Nobody did! They really are an eye-opener, aren't they?

Another fan, writing about the same image, concludes that shaving those legs must be out of the question. [It would] probably cut too many veins. She must wax. HA!

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I doubt she has a similar problem with that rope of a vein that runs along her bicep, but you never know. Impressive as that is, fans, film-makers, and Lisa herself all tend to focus on the mighty rivers and minor tributaries that traverse those legs.

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From Muscle Angels

And her most recent work with Female Muscle Clips (filmed after last year's Toronto Pro) is no exception. She's vascular all over, but it's those legs, and in particular her freakily vascular calves, that get most of the attention. Jaw-dropping stuff.

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From Female Muscle Clips

Brace yourself for the 10-second mark as you check out the FMC preview...



Enjoy!

Monday 29 June 2015

Lisa G Is...

A CHAMP

CBBF Canadian Nationals 2011 - Masters Heavyweight & Overall Winner

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Lisa won her pro card at he age of 43, seven years after she'd started lifting. As well as winning the Masters title, she finished 4th in the Open Heavyweight class, behind Joanne Williams, Tara Silzer, and the Overall champion Fabiola Boulanger.

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Does anyone else think it looks as though Lisa was the model for the trophy itself?!


IFBB Toronto Pro Supershow 2012 - Winner

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After a brief flirtation with the WPD at the 2012 Governor's Pro Cup in California, Lisa's first pro show as a Bodybuilder came just nine weeks later in Toronto. She received universal raves for her overall look, according to Steve Wennerstrom in his report from the show, standing out from the first comparison of pre-judging.

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The judges agreed, placing Lisa ahead of Britain's Wendy McCready and runner-up Kim Buck. She had qualified for the Ms Olympia at her very first attempt.

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Here is an understandably ecstatic post-win Lisa.

With little Nancy DiNino there for perspective next to her, Lisa looks (and sounds - that voice alone is enough to get me swooning) AMAZING.



Enjoy!

Sunday 28 June 2015

Lisa G Is...

STOPPING TRAFFIC

Check out this SHMOE doing a U-TURN... reads the caption added by whoever edited this Lisa G Her Biceps classic. Shmoe (or isn't it usually "schmoe"?) he may be to some, but I can't help admiring him. Here's a man who's not going to let the single greatest female muscle spot of his life go by, who's not going to be satisfied with just one look. This man isn't going to spend the rest of his life wondering if he really did see Lisa Giesbrecht by the side of the road or whether it was just a mirage.



And what's more, despite receiving the biggest dose of The Madness he's ever likely to get, he can still drive. I wonder if he comes back round again and again and again...

Enjoy!

Saturday 27 June 2015

Lisa G Is...

NOT THE ONLY WOMAN IN THIS PICTURE

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But it took me a good five minutes to realise it!

Of course, I'm exaggerating (it was more like three minutes) but if you could do an experiment where you showed this picture to 100 men (and/or women, I doubt the result would be any different) and could somehow track where their eyes were looking, I'd bet that pretty much every eye would be drawn to the complete package of muscular beauty on the right. I mean, where did you look? If the picture flashed up for, say, three or four seconds, and then disappeared, would you have been able to describe the other women in the picture - hair colour, clothing etc. - in any detail?

It's been a while since we devoted a full week to a single female bodybuilder (Iris Kyle was the last, in case you're interested) but this week Lisa G Is... our only theme.

And you can let Lisa dominate your eyes with a few more pictures from the same backstage area if you download this little rar file from the FMS archive.

Enjoy! More Lisa tomorrow.

Friday 26 June 2015

FBBUK: Spartan Conquests & the IBFA

The state of female bodybuilding in the UK has been a cause for concern for some time. Not the bodybuilders themselves - as we saw recently with Tamazine Danks on FMS - who remain as top quality as ever, but rather the lack of opportunity. Since neither NABBA UK nor the IFBB-affiliated UKBFF have had a class for FBBs for a few years now, the problem for a British FBB has been finding a competition that will have her.

There is, however, hope. The International Bodybuilding & Fitness Association (IBFA) is a non-profit organisation based in Italy, the brainchild of a Professor Biagio Filizola. His, and the federation's ethos, is for promoters to hook up with the IBFA but run their own shows independently, without what they call "political" interference. The IBFA takes no fees. Nor do they have their own judges imposing their own "standards". What the federation does provide, however, is the umbrella under which local competitions become national qualifiers and in turn these national championships produce teams which attend international IBFA competitions held in Italy.

And it's at these local IBFA qualifiers that British FBBs have been competing, and on June 14th an all-Britain finals show was held up in Northumberland. There was a Women's Bodybuilding class, and there were female bodybuilders. Details are proving hard to come by - a results page I've found lists two names, but anecdotal reports say there were five. So, let's say there were between two and five British FBBs on show...

That may not sound like much of a reason to get all happy-clappy about the future, but that is two to five more women than the total number of FBBs who you will see competing at the NABBA Britain finals and the UKBFF Championships combined.

And what's even more pleasing was that the winner, the new IBFA British Champion, was a woman who is undeniably worthy of the title - the gorgeous and very VERY muscle sexy FMS fave and self-styled "Spartan", Christal Cornick.

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She qualified for the IBFA British by winning the South Coast Classic qualifier in May, and whether she beat one, two, three or four women to the British title, no one can claim she doesn't deserve her moment in the British female bodybuilding spotlight. Christal has been around the top of the UK female muscle tree for some time now. She was 3rd the last time Women's Bodybuilding was held at the UKBFF British in 2013, and she has no fewer than seven regional titles to her name now.

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It always seems that images of female bodybuilders at UK shows are "rarer than truffles" as one fan has succinctly put it. Sadly, this competition was no different, and there are very few pictures of Christal's triumph knocking around.

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But, as we've noted before in our pieces featuring Christal on FMS passim, there is always plenty of fun to be had following Christal on Twitter, on Facebook and now on Instagram as well. Sexy, flirtatious, prime female muscle fun. My kind of fun!

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Tricep & forearm veins, she wrote about the above picture a few days before her IBFA regional. Turning inside out is fun! There's a back and glutes selfie of a naked Christal dedicated to "those who missed the total eclipse", there is Christal in some very naughty looking heels, her swole calves bulging. She gives you a morning abs flex, and her pumped up pecs close-up in the gym... Like I said, my kind of fun!

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I'm not alone in my enjoyment. Christal seems to have a loyal - and growing - following. I saw on Twitter [that she had won] and was so happy, wrote one fan after the event. I was actually nervous for her on the day of the competition because I wanted her to win. And our very own FMS Head of Research, JT, calls her "really sweet", and confesses she is quickly becoming "a hot favourite" of his.

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According to their website, at least one of the IBFA's international events that take place in the Prof's hometown takes place on the beach at night, and attracts hundreds of spectators from among the locals and tourists. With her Roman goddess looks, I can just see Christal there, the Mediterranean dark below a blood red sunset framing her in silhouette as she flexes to the astonished gasps of the audience...

Yes, I can see our British champ doing very nicely representing the UK.

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Congratulations to Christal. Long may her Spartan conquests continue!

And well done to the Professor, the IBFA, and to the promoters in the UK, both local and national, who are keeping British female bodybuilding alive, and giving Christal et al the opportunity to compete and progress to international contests.

Thursday 25 June 2015

More Muscle?

In Dallas last weekend, a blast from the past took her first pro title in the Women's Physique division. She competed in NPC Bodybuilding until about 2009, and, as far as I know, has always been known by just the one name: Yasha.

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The thing that struck me as I checked out the pics from the contest is that Yasha has got a lot of muscle going on right there. And as I checked out the women who finished in 2nd, 3rd, and so on, it became clear that the judges had given the title to the most muscular woman on stage. The woman who most resembled a "bodybuilder".

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Have you just spat your breakfast cereal all over yourself? Are you about to send me a picture of Anne, Christine or Mmmmmonique with the subject line "This Is a Bodybuilder Fool!"? I have been spending a fair bit of time in the FMS archive recently with the so-called "old school" bodybuilders of yore, so I am prepared to accept that I may just be comparing Yasha to a somewhat outdated idea of a "bodybuilder", but I am not alone in having noticed the muscle and making that comparison.

I am so CONFUSED!!! wrote FMS fave (and Hot and Hard 100 #26) Valerie Garcia Giovanoli after the Dallas show. Congratulations to Andrea Calhoun (left, below) who just won 1st in Figure in Dallas and to Yasha who won 1st in Physique at the same show. I think both women are incredible, BUT, am I the only one confused as shit about what the IFBB wants from physique?!? Yasha would have won a pro Women's Bodybuilding competition any other year. This is not what we have come to expect from the new Women's Physique category. Am I the only one who switched over and has been pounding away at the weights without restraint, finally happy I can train the way I want without worrying I'll be 'too muscular' for Figure?

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None of my training is going to allow me to compete with a female bodybuilder's physique! I am happy to see more muscle being rewarded in figure... But then that crap confuses me too!!! I am currently prepping for the Wings of Strength show in August, and now I don't even know where I fit in: Figure or Physique?

I read Valerie's rant and I thought back to last year's NPC Nationals when Valerie won her class and her pro card and how she compared with another pro card winner that day, Marcie Simmons, who had been awarded the overall title as well.

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Marcie was easily more muscular than Valerie at that show, but she was also the most muscular woman in any class on that stage. She had the biggest muscles and the best conditioning, so those big muscles were also the most defined. In short, she was the most like a "bodybuilder", and this was noted at the time, both by FMS and by commentators who know much more about these things than I do.

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And it's not just in the Stateside pro shows this seems to be happening. Meanwhile, as we saw yesterday, over here in Europe Cristina Goy Arellano has been packing on more muscle for this contest season. And the judges have rewarded her.

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Cris wasn't the only lady at the Europeans who was displaying some serious muscle. Running her a very close second in the taller class was a woman completely new to me - the arrestingly pectacular Liudmila Goshko from Russia.

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Before anyone else gets in with it, I'll say it myself: Oh my Goshko!

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I often describe freakishly ripped muscle women - probabaly so often it's boring - as being all skin and muscle or some such. Well, with Liudmila, I'll take that description even further because it looks to me as if she's dispensed with the skin on those glorious pecs altogether, like she's had it surgically removed or something. So insane is the amount of detail that it's like the pro tan is applied directly onto the muscle!

Of course, it isn't all medals and wins for the more muscular Physique competitor. Though she and Liudmila muscled up the taller class, Cris ultimately lost out in the overall posedown to the less muscular (although probably better-conditioned and balanced blah blah) package of Lithuania's Alina Cepurniene.

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And a random selection of some of this year's pro Physique winners on the IFBB circuit also demonstrates that while one show might throw up a winner who is more at the "bodybuilding" end of the Physique spectrum, on a different weekend in a different place, a Physique look that leans more towards Figure will get the judges' nod.

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Top left is the less muscular look of Toronto Pro winner Ceaanna Kerr, and next to her we have ex-bodybuilder and new New York Pro winner Michelle Cummings. And you can check out Michelle's last outing in Women's Bodybuilding from Tampa in 2013 and see for yourself how little difference there is in her look. Then bottom left is the Orlando champion Ayanna Carroll, muscular for sure, but smoother and not as muscular as the bigger and more defined Puerto Rico Pro winner Gloria Faulls.

It's easy to see why Valerie is confused. All this inconsistent judging. Competitors not knowing what kind of package the judges at the next show will decide to give the top places to. Hang on! That sounds just like the situation in Women's Bodybuilding!!!

But there was no confusion at all at the recent NABBA Worlds because...

Drum roll...

The big girls were back!

After a one-year hiatus when it seemed NABBA had gone the way of most federations and jettisoned Women's Bodybuilding (which in NABBA-speak is Physique) at its premier event outside the UK, true bodybuilders returned to flex their muscles in those beloved NABBA-style thong posing suits in Malta last weekend.

The winner was the Czech Karolina Borkovcova (who is probably more familiar to readers under her previous guise of Karolina Holubcova). Sit back and dig the muscle as you watch Karolina's utterly glute-tasic - and winning - routine.



You can see much much more of the contest on the NABBA YouTube channel.

Enjoy!