Due to some work commitments and Mr and Mrs Swell's now annual sojourn to the South of France (not the bit that was recently on fire, thankfully), the FMS offices are going to be closed this week, next week and the week after. Nevertheless, as always, we don't want to leave you totally FMS-less, so we've lined up 21 Reasons, one daily picture (or two or three), plus one reason why we love doing what we do, as if we were explaining it to one not so convinced of the glory of the muscular female.
Enjoy!
#13 HER ABS
So appealing, so aesthetically-pleasing. Evidence of lots of hard training, yes, but also of the discipline it takes to strip away the body fat and reveal them in all their (even better if veiny/ridged) glory. Amateur or Pro; Bikini, Fitness, Figure, Physique or Bodybuilding - if she's got the abs, then you can bet ol' Swell here has got the swoons.
Abs are also a way in to the mind of the female muscle denier, I reckon. Plenty of non-FBB related forum content on the subject out there: Do you like women with sexy abs? questions (as if there were un-sexy ones!), more often then not qualified with "I'm not talking bulky, bodybuilder abs" or some such nonsense. Start them out gently...
Anita Herbert, or a Figure phenom like Cydney Gillon, for example. They'll be telling you she's "too much" and right-clicking and saving-as at the same time.
News that IFBB Figure stunner Cydney Gillon, a two-time Chicago Pro champ and two-time Olympia contestant (at the time that is, she had a great year in 2016, capped with 3rd place at the Olympia), is one of the castaways in the new series of the US version of Survivor kicks off a whole week dedicated to FBBTV on FMS.
The show started with posing, and then lift and carry, a wrestling demo, push-ups, and more posing. The women performed for the fans for three hours, and at the end, the girls danced. It was amazing, simply the best thing we had ever seen!
For those that have been asking what I want for my birthday, here you go.
All your gift cards and best wishes have been amazing! Thank you so much! However, what I truly need most right now is a little help funding my journey to Puerto Rico for my first event in my comeback. Donations of any size will be most appreciated.
In the end, this great and great beauty of the sport never made it to Puerto Rico, but Cathy did return to the stage in 2016. At the start of June in Toronto she placed 3rd.
The exciting news that a respected French production company had recruited two award-winning actors to star in a story centred on a British female bodybuilder named Lea Pearl got gradually less exciting as the year wore on and absolutely zero further news about the film emerged. Shooting was supposed to have started in September, and clearly didn't, but for a while at the end of February and into the first week of March, FMS wondered just who might be chosen to portray the "uncommon woman who’s sacrificed everything to master her body to the extreme..."
P.E.A.R.L. potential? Rosanna Harte, Linda Gartside, Louise Rogers, Lisa Cross, Jody Shuttleworth, Carly Thornton, Christal Cornick...
Tomorrow, it's March. Hot and Hard 100 voting and all...
They call it Figure in the US and Canada, and Bodyfitness in Europe and (most of) the rest of the world, but whatever your name for it, FMS is going to spend this week with a selection of some of the finest ladies from the division. Women like Zsuzsanna Toldi, Tina Nguyen, Diana Schnaidt and Shanique Jones have drawn us into the world of Figure, and though the final two on that list are now Physique competitors, Maria Luisa Baeza Diaz and Natalia Coelho (to name but two) are keeping us there.
And we begin our Figure journey today at the very top.
There were 30 competitors at this year's Figure Olympia, the finest Figure line-up ever, according to many commentators - which is, I suppose, the way it should always be, better every year, but this year people were saying it a lot, so maybe the difference between 2015 and 2016 was more marked than usual. Anyway, by common consent on the live play-by-plays I was following at the time and also in the post-contest reports I have read, it was as though there were two competitions that day, one among the top 3 for the title, and another for the other 27 for the placings below them.
Whether that is entirely accurate or not (former Ms Figure Olympia Nicole Wilkins, who came 4th, was only three points out of 3rd place, but there was a big drop to 5th place after her), these three women are now at the pinnacle of their division. They are currently the paragons of the Figure division, their shape and muscularity for many women representing an inspiration, and for some, the ultimate goal.
The Freaky 3 (+1) at the 2016 Figure Olympia
And with their copious genetic gifts in mind, I've christened them "The Freaky 3".
CYDNEY GILLON
After a slightly disappointing Arnold Classic result earlier in the year, Cydney cut a swathe to her 3rd consecutive Olympia (previously 9th and 8th in 2014 and 2015 respectively) by winning shows in Miami and Pittsburgh relatively early in the season. Then she got to work refining a body that has been good enough to win four pro shows in all and get a top 10 Olympia look into one that would challenge for the title.
She actually began her competitive life as a champion junior bodybuilder, so she knows what it's like to do a close-fisted double biceps on stage. Maybe that's why she always seems to manage some kind of cheeky flex into her presentations - previously FMS has spotted a deliberate tricep pop in Miami, for example.
Perhaps it was her former life as an athlete that honed her "ridiculously narrow" waist, but it's her ever expanding width at the top, and the quality of the what's below that waist that have kept her Figure career on an upward trajectory since she turned pro in 2012. Her secret? Any improvement is an improvement and a step towards your goals, she says. Make moves and never settle. And she's still only 23!
Ten years older than Cydney, Candice has been at the Figure peak for a few years now. This was her third consecutive top 3 Olympia placing but her first time as runner-up.
But even before she was one of the faces and physiques of the Figure division, Candice had plenty of experience of being looked up to, and revels in the role. As the oldest of ten sisters and brothers, I was pushed into being a role model at a very young age, and this taught me to lead by example, she says. I’m dedicated to improving women’s lifestyles and empowering them with strength and confidence to be their very best physically and mentally. And she does it with considerable grace as far as I can tell, always coming across in interviews as a most intelligent, eloquent and classy woman.
The kind of woman who warms up for the Olympia by competing at the Arizona Pro and supporting Wings of Strength and their five division all-female extravaganza.
Candice may credit the improvements she's made in the leg department for her elevation to #2. I'm no expert, but they do look absolutely sensational in the contest photos - long, shapely, defined and covered with thick muscle. But those two spectacular assets are far from her only charms. Check out her Instagram for more.
LATORYA WATTS
She turned pro after the NPC USAs in 2013 and the following year won her first pro show. It was the Tampa Pro, no small potatoes. The same year, at her first Olympia, she was 5th in only her 5th pro outing. 2015 started with top 5 finishes at the Arnold Classics in Ohio and Australia and ever since then she's been unbeatable. 2015 Figure Olympia (the first African-American to win it, by the way); 2016 Figure International; 2016 Arnold Classic Australia; and now, for the second time, Ms Figure Olympia.
The greatest Figure phenomenon of them all! It’s pretty unreal, she says. It’s amazing. I’m just so honoured to be acknowledged, that the work I put in is being recognized.
The greatest humility as well, it seems. And unlike some Olympia champions, Latorya isn't one for taking her title home and hiding away until it's time to go back to Vegas again. I want to change all of that, she says. There are women who are so inspired by me, that are motivated, that have hope because of me. So why would I hold myself back, and not let them see me? I love being onstage, I love doing what I do, so I’m not going to let the title of being Ms. Olympia hold me back from competing.
Now I'm never convinced any women read my little blog, but I'll take a punt anyway...
Ladies!
Whether you've recently finished 4th at the Ms Olympia, or you're just starting out on your Figure/Bodyfitness journey. Whether you're a seasoned pro or a wannabe amateur, these are your role models. This is what the top of your sport looks like.
Be inspired. Be very inspired.
The Freaky 3. Movie star quality. Swell's Angels anyone?
What, I wondered as I first thought about this week's selections, are my particular female muscle obsessions? You would think I'd know after roughly 30 years. Two key points were easy to identify. One, "The New", I expanded on on Tuesday, and the other will be dealt with on Saturday. Apart from that, I had a few assumptions.
Abs would surely have to be one, but then a glance at the most numerous labels over the last five years or so revealed that I'd made more posts concerning Biceps.
What goes on backstage would have to be another. As someone who's never been to a show, let alone been granted entry to a pump room (aka the holiest of holies), I guess it could be something about the attraction of the forbidden. Perhaps I'm so obsessed with backstage pics and clips because I know it's the closest I'll ever get. Perhaps it's the knowledge that nowhere on Earth is there a greater density of female muscle.
And it doesn't even have to be the big girls. I can get excited about just about any backstage clip, including Bikini. As long as there's pumping and flexing and tanning and oiling, I'm all over it. Below is a recent example of a fine bit of backstage camera work. Mostly it's the Figure pros. Diana Schnaidt is just one of many highlights.
And while we're on the subject of the Figure ladies, there's a somewhat newer obsession I appear to have developed, regarding their lack of flexing on stage and their obvious desire to flex the hell out of their muscles almost all of the rest of the time. It started a couple of years ago when Alicia Coates flexed her biceps at the Olympia...
Since then I've been monitoring the amount of gratuitous flexing ladies of the Figure division do when their not on stage at contests - in, for example, the pump room. Seems to me it's a lot. As much as possible in fact, but it doesn't end there. What about when they get interviewed after they win? Again, there's a lot. Really.
Take for example the lovely Stephanie Rowe, interviewed below by Ashley Adams for HD Physiques. Now Stephanie, as all women with muscle seem to me to do, gesticulates a lot during the interview. Inadvertent flexing you might call it, just keep your eyes on the arm closest to you. But then, as is customary at the end of these interviews, Stephanie shows us a pose (for the impatient, it's at 2.20). A Figure pose.
Can Stephanie resist giving us another kind of pose as well? Can she f**k?!
So, I obsessively wonder, does this mean that Alicia and Stephanie would like to do a bit more flexing on stage? Are all Figure ladies, or at least the ones who post themselves flexing, fully-pumped on their IG feeds day after day after day, frustrated flexers? Is the only cure a move up to Physique à laShanique Grant?
Shanique, Figure (left), and flexing
Perhaps. But for the classiest competitors, the fact that they don't get to do the double biceps or the side chest or the abs and thigh doesn't stop them sneaking a sneaky flex into their "presentations". And the best example of this I've found this year has got to be the ever-classy Cydney Gillon winning at the Miami Muscle Beach Pro. Check out the cheeky, blink-and-you-miss-it rewind-no-I-didn't-imagine-it tricep flex at 0.24.
Obsessed? Yes I am!
In an effort to bring some sort of sanity to this post, I wondered if the blog labels would reveal obsession with particular women. The top five were both predictable and surprising. Alina has more posts dedicated to her than any other woman - predictable. Lisa Cross comes a close second - also predictable, given that I'm a Brit and am ever so slightly obsessed with Lisa. Shannon in fourth and Marthe and Margie tied for 5th - also predictable. But I was genuinely surprised to find that my third most written about woman was the much-missed Slovenian she-beast Brigita Brezovac.
I don't regret a single post, I just wouldn't have counted Brigita among my top five of the past five years if you'd asked. And I guess that just goes to show how little I know! Possibly though it has something to do with the fact that the tip top number one label is "Muscle", and there can be no doubt at all that Brigita always had plenty of that.
And so, to another of my lasting obsessions. No, it's not the tongue, or the outfit - although in the case of that clip neither of those things hurt - it's the walk.
Honestly, I think if I ever saw a female bodybuilder, a real female bodybuilder, especially one who I recognised, out in public walking along the street, well, I think I would probably just keep on following her until I was either confronted, arrested, or had a door of some sort slammed in my face. I could watch clips of female bodybuilders walking all day. Every day. And I'm so enamoured by them that if a longer clip starts off with a walk before fading into something else, I'm gutted.
As George Harrison sang, something in the way she moves...
Right. Time to get this over with. I've already probably given the impression I am, if not mentally deranged, super-creepy. But if you share any of these obsessions, or indeed others - glutes, Brazilians, Brazilian glutes, Dani Reardon, female muscle hand bras, extreme vascularity, that bulge - then I'm sure we'd have something to talk about if we met at a place that has become another of my obsessions, the Girls with Muscle chat room. Look out for 6ft1swell joining the chat and say hello.
