I have several reasons to smile, says veteran Greek muscle goddess Konstantina.
Now I remember her from the glory days of greekmuscle.net (now sadly no longer with us) as a woman who was never backward in coming forward to show off her own particular brand of ripped WABBA muscularity. Recently though, the addition of some enhancement to her pectoral enhancements has apparently made her even bolder.
And this newly-enhanced boldness reached thrilling freaky peak (so far) in early June. Gosh! exclaimed one forum poster. She's reached a whole new level. Very hot!!!
Don't you find it comforting to know that there are others, like our forum poster, out there who are just as impressed by such gnarly female muscle as you yourself are? We know full well that we could totally explain the attraction of - for example - Cindy Landolt to a non-female muscle head, but not this. Never this. This is just for us.
A lady in the street, a freak in the gym, is the philosophy Konstantina signs up to. I'm sure the first half of that is true, but a (reasonably) thorough search of her IG doesn't show a lot of evidence of it. Plenty of the other though. And not just in the gym.
The start of June saw the second of the new pro shows in Italy. Well, sort of new. The San Marino Pro has been held before, in 2014 - men only - and then last year with the chaps again but also Figure and Bikini classes. This year though, just as with the Galaxy Pro in Bari in May, the only female division missing was Fitness, and amateur contests held on the first day fed the class winners into the pro show the following day.
In Bari, the new Female Bodybuilding pro had been Cristina Maffeis (see FMS passim). In San Marino, another Italian won the right to compete with the pros.
Barbara Carita won both the amateur Physique and FBBing classes. An asterisk by her name on the list of pro card winners revealed a line at the bottom of the list that should warm the cockles of any fan of big time female muscle - "The athlete chose to compete in the pro Female Bodybuilding class". Barbara prefers her double biceps close-fisted. I liked her already. And it was also the smart choice. In Physique she would have competed against Cris Goy Arellano, Paloma Parra, Joanna Romano... The sole entrant in Female Bodybuilding was Cristina Franzoso.
By the end of the weekend, then, Barbara had three first place trophies and an invite to the Rising Phoenix. I won everything! she exclaimed afterwards. I've achieved the biggest goal of my career... and more! I'm finally an IFBB pro and there will be a tricolor [Italian (flag)] flying among all those prestigious athletes [at the RP].
She may not be among the favourites come September, but mio Dio! she does get freaky. And - again, this should warm the cockles - she is by no means backwards in coming forwards to show that freakiness off, testing the limits of Instagram censorship on a regular basis during her San Marino prep, and providing us with (for my money) the most thrillingly repugnant leg vascularity since Lisa Giesbrecht's pomp.
She does the showing off in clip-form too. Here we see the eye-popping state of her legs "the night before the exams" as she put it, one day before she took to the stage.
Delicioso!
And while this veteran Italian was making her dreams come true, in the Figure class, Britain's sole female representative at the event was having her best ever pro day.
It was exactly 10 years ago today that Louise Rogers became British Figure champion. Since then she has turned pro, competed on an (almost) annual basis - in Europe, Australia and the States as well as at home in the UK Bodypower Pro event. Until she placed 2nd in Bari at the Galaxy Pro last month, 3rd at Bodypower (twice) had been her best pro placing. But this win beats everything. I'm so thankful to have these new opportunities for pro athletes in Europe, she said, beaming with her medal after the show. Dreams do come true. We are going to the Olympia!
Louise's long overdue triumph is the latest in an ever-growing list of British IFBB pro wins. Lisa Cross in Bodybuilding, Rosanna Harte in Physique, Emma Paveley and Kate Errington in Fitness, and Nina Ross in Bikini have all won over the last few years. And now Louise, the first British pro Figure winner? I don't have the time to check very thoroughly, but I don't recall a British pro at the Figure Olympia before.
There have been high points in the past, courtesy of Andrulla and Gayle, but those wins, amazing as they were, were few and far between. Are we enjoying the Golden Age of British Female Muscle right now? Hopefully, it's just the beginning.
Emily Schubert competes at the NPC Pittsburgh Championships, winning both the Bodybuilding and Physique titles. Pics of her at the contest go up on NPC News Online, and within hours someone as dedicated/sad as I am has found them, downloaded them, and created a new thread for Emily on the forum whose first rule is...
A new star is born, he proclaims. WOW!
May 7th
The thread is added to. Another poster has found Emily's Instagram and plundered it for material. Emily, both in the final weeks of her prep for Pittsburgh and since, is quite the ripped and vascular freakshow. And she is not shy about showing it off.
May 12th
Agreed, writes a head who has found his way to the thread. A new star is born.
No one was waiting for his official stamp of approval. Since the thread had gone up, Emily and her ripped veiny body had become part of the female muscle lovin' consciousness. Upwards of 30 images of her went up on GwM in a day, and from there she was taken up by some of the (self-proclaimed) "hardcore" female muscle Tumblrs.
Those guys, they just reblog whatever each other has posted. Suddenly Emily and her veins-on-the-outside-is-the-new-veins-on-the-inside body is, as well as being pretty much all of the GwM "Recently Posted" section, in every one of their followers' feeds.
And meanwhile...
May 4th
Kate Hart graduates from Austin Peay State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry. Onto the next chapter, she writes on her Instagram.
It's possible the pics were put up by someone who knows her, but in my head, it plays out something like this... an even more sad/dedicated female muscle head than I (or the dude who found Emily Schubert) is out there, scanning likely hashtags I imagine. Suddenly, there she was. After years of digging he'd finally hit 24-carat female muscle gold. The thud of his jaw hitting the floor must have been considerable.
May 10th
Why it took so long may be down to GwM's often lengthy validation process, or maybe he was simply too busy to get round to it, but 6 days after Kate moved on to the next chapter, her graduation image plus another 10 from her Instagram go up.
Now, on GwM, another section is called "Highest Score Today". Images "score" either by being favourited or given a +1 by users. A typical highly-rated image will have a score of somewhere between 60 and 100 in total. Over 200 is rare image indeed.
Kate currently has three images on her GwM page with a higher rating than that, including the mortarboard double biceps above which was posted just two days ago now. Jaws are thudding to the floor all over the female muscle lovin' world.
May 17th (today)
Both Emily and Kate were unknown just over two weeks ago. By, in Emily's case competing and Kate's graduating, they have entered the collective female muscle lovin' consciousness. Instagram followings are swelling, and - from bitter experience - the attention of the collective "we" is not always a pleasant thing to deal with.
In our Pic of the Month post, we noted that Russian Physique Dream Valentina Mishina is "currently posting at a rate of one Hall of Famer per day" on her social media, and since then - guess what? - she's posted several more winning images.
By the way, voting is still open in our inaugural Pic of the Month poll - it only takes a couple of clicks, just choose your favourite from our shortlist of five and vote.
Part of the reason Valentina's breathtaking body looks quite so breathtaking right now is that she's on a run of competitions that began with the Ultimate Warriors (she was 4th) and Ferrigno Legacy Pro (2nd) late last year. After a short pause, she was back on stage at the Atlantic Coast Pro (another 4th) at the start of March. Then at the beginning of this month - the show we're most concerned with here today - she gained another 2nd place behind Penpraghai Tiangngok in Orlando. She's basically been "on" since last October. It's little wonder she's so into showing off her magnificent muscles - her lower body in particular - right now. She's a walking freakshow.
And she clearly LOVES it.
I love 10-12 reps, she says. I love classic exercises. I love iron... Barbells, dumbbells, hammer machines. I've learned to feel every inch of my body, but I will learn more.
SWOOOOOOOON!!!
Get your breath back, dear reader, because you're going to need it. As with the Figure class in Orlando, Bodybuilding and Beyond were there to record all the competitors in Physique, all 12 of them. They're each on for about a minute, so get yourself comfy, you're about to see, apart from Valentina and Penpraghai, Hot and Hard 100 regular Diana Schanidt; Brazilian St. Louis Pro winner Marjorie Beck; Brittany Watts, one of the few women to have finished above Valentina this season - Brittany was 3rd at the Atlantic Coast; the dreamily gorgeous Sarah Fechter; the pint-sized Lauren Rutan on her pro debut; and the irresistible Katie Lee. And four more! All strutting, flexing, rippling and popping their considerable stuff for your viewing pleasure.
Enjoy!
How's your judging?
3rd - 5th respectively: Rutan - Fechter - Watts
Penpraghai was first, Valentina runner-up - you already knew. Well, Lauren Rutan was 3rd, Sarah Fechter 4th, then in 5th Brittany Watts, and 6th Marjorie Beck. Katie had one of those days and placed down in 7th, and Diana Schnaidt was 8th.
6th - 8th respectively: Beck - Lee - Schnaidt
If you want more you can check out all the results and (as noted re the Figure class the other day) some (unusually) disappointing, blurry images on NPC News Online.
Valentina is, after all this competitive effort, comfortably top of the Olympia qualifying table, and also - given her looks and the freakshow condition she's in - in demand.
Which is very good news.
More seriously - and I'm not saying glamour shots of Valentina are not serious, just not as serious - she's also reached a bit of a personal crossroads. Being based in the US for her competitions has evidently been a great experience. Now, a decision needs to be made - stay or go, although the way she tells it, it may not be the toughest of choices...
Here, I can fly, I feel free, she says (on top of everything, she's rather poetic, isn't she?). Unfortunately, my Motherland doesn’t give me these emotions. I need to decide...
Up? Or down again?
To avoid (unfounded) accusations of an anti-Russian conspiracy and the potentially disastrous hacking of the FMS server, I have been told by editorial not to urge Valentina to go wherever she feels happiest. Instead, we have one last treat for you today (again, courtesy of Bodybuilding and Beyond). Anyone fancy a posedown?
From her earliest public displays of muscle, FMS told the story of Michaela Aycock's career and her (ultimately unsuccessful) attempts to qualify for a second Olympia.
I started following Michaela properly around the beginning of 2016, and my female muscle diary for April tells me she often took my breath away, literally making me gasp. "Absolutely incredible to think she has only just tuned 21," I wrote at the time. "The way her lats bulge over the top of her vest makes me swoon as I dream of squeezing them hard, feeling the hard muscle. No give, like warm steel or rock or something." I was clearly slightly out of my mind for her then. Understandably so.
As Michaela was waiting to board the plane to Las Vegas [for the 2016 Olympia], this is how she passed the time. Not since the vascular pomp of Lisa Giesbrecht maybe five, six years ago have we seen anything quite like this. Jaw to the floor stuff.
"Nothing quite like the thrill of show weekend," she says. "Gosh I love this stuff!" Michaela (left) at the 2017 Tampa Pro, and the 2017 Hurricane Pro. Her best ever package ("product" she calls it) but she just missed out on a Physique Olympia spot.
Having one of my periodic periods of back obsession lately, I wrote by way of introduction to Back Beauty, a week of some of the finest, meatiest backs both past and present. This woman - new IFBB pro Sammica Cash - may be responsible.
They say that bodybuilding shows (female and male) are won "from the back", so it stands to reason that all great champions past and present have, out of necessity, superior back muscle development. Consequently, the conversation about the FBB with the "Best Back Ever" has never proved an easy one for fans to resolve.
After extensive (and for once I am not being ironic when I say that) research, there are some FBBs who always tend to be in the "Best Back Ever" conversation, and so FMS has compiled a sort of poll of polls Top 9 all-time female muscle backs.
Paula Suzuki - hers or Lenda's would be #1 according to our research.
Behind the lectern stage right Lenda Murray looked visibly shocked. I've seen this before but never for first place, announced MC Shannon Dey. We have a tie.
We couldn't have begun our review of this year's Rising Phoenix anywhere else. The epic battle for the title was - on the (free!) live feed - genuinely exciting and, to the very end, impossible to call. They'd been right at the centre of the first callout and both, in their own way, looked as good as they ever have. Sheila, all perfect conditioning, perfect proportions and perfect poses; Helle, bulkier, beefier, less-than-regulation hand gestures inviting the audience (and judges) to eye up her abs and glutes.
The Head Judge - who has the deciding vote when there's a tie - went for Helle. I felt for Sheila (what a way to lose!) but also felt it was the right choice. I remembered Helle's 2005 injury, a herniated disc that left her unable to walk. The medical opinion was she'd never train again, let alone compete, but she wasn't having any of that. Six years later she was winning her first show back, and 8 years after her 2003 Olympia debut she was back there again. It would have been a remarkable story had it ended there, but Helle was coming back for good. So it feels like the right woman won. Again, the Rising Phoenix has given us a champ we can (and should) all be proud of.
After an up and down season for IFBB pro Female Bodybuilding, the 2017 Rising Phoenix was, I think, a pretty much unqualified success. With a line-up of 23 women there were more competitors than ever - you have to go back to the 90s to find a Ms Olympia with that many - and while it's never been easier to qualify for the world's premier professional Female Bodybuilding competition, this didn't mean that the quality of muscle on display was lower than at previous RPs. Quite the opposite.
And, lest we forgot, we paused to remind ourselves the Arizona Pro is more than the Rising Phoenix: the only all-division all-female pro show there is. And this year both the Figure (Cydney Gillon) and Physique (Heather Grace) champions would go on to shine at the Olympia the following week - in Cydney's case, very brightly indeed.
Back at the RP, Aleesha won the "Most Muscular Award" and we paid tribute to "Evergreen" Yaxeni Oriquen, still fabulous at over 50, still stretching that black posing suit to its limits, and Virginia Sanchez, who topped off her best ever year with a top 6 place that guarantees her an automatic invite for next year's event.
For UK fans it was a treat to see, for the first time in 16 years, more than one British female muscle goddess at the sport's premier contest, and for Wendy McCready... This was the best result by a British woman since Andrulla was 2nd in the Lightweight class in 2001. And if you're talking about an Open class, well, Lisa, at last year's Rising Phoenix, and Andrulla, at the Ms Olympia in 1999, were the best ever placed Brits. They both placed 7th. So now the British record belongs to Wendy.
Watching Marthe struggle, and ultimately give in to the inevitable and meet her end with grace has been moving. There was always a part of me thinking that she was such a remarkable woman that she would, in the end, beat it, but it was not to be. I didn't know her - though I did send her some messages of love and support during her illness, and she replied very sweetly to some - but she has touched me as few other muscle women have. Her death was hardly unexpected, but it has hit me hard.
She believed in a lot of things... "I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles..." But she didn't get one.
