Michaela of the Day

FROM ORLANDO TO THE OLYMPIA




Michaela comes 3rd on her pro debut at the end of April 2016. The moment and feeling when they call your number for first callout, she says afterwards. Indescribable emotion. She leaves the contest convinced the pro stage is "right where I belong", but despite her success, what makes Michaela Michaela is her sheer relentlessness. The debut is over, she writes. But the pursuit continues.



She has a month before her next show in Toronto, and almost everything she posts during that month is absolute freaky gold. It's been hard to pick just a few, but I had to include the not-long-after-contest hammies - "pursuing details" is Michaela's only explanation for mooning her entire IG following. The best photo you've ever posted, writes one of them (a bodybuilder chap). I show this to everyone.



All those fish meals have really been paying off... and by fish I mean sushi, says Michaela. Apparently the theory is that sushi thins the skin. Well, based on the evidence we have here, I would have no argument with that theory at all. One of those photos you can't get out of your head long after you have actually stopped looking at it. What must they feel like to touch? What must they feel like to have?



And I also couldn't leave this one out. One of FMS' Images of 2016. We titled this "What the Photographer Saw" when we chose it as one of our "perfect" pictures back in August, we said back before New Year. This photographer/workout buddy of hers must see Michaela pretty much every day, you might expect the shock and awe of Michaela, all muscle and veins, not to be quite so great for her. However...

It was taken about a week before Michaela won her first pro title at the Toronto Pro.




With it came the much-coveted Olympia qualification - at the age of 21. Blessed to be apart of the IFBB and stand amongst the best physiques in the world, she said.



Cue a new slew of new freakery. And zero days off.



First order of business after stepping off stage yesterday, revealed Michaela. Leg training. 15 weeks out. And also while she prepped for the Olympia, Michaela started up her own PT business. I've truly found a liking in helping individuals and seeing their progress, she said. I am very eager to keep this going and help anyone that is willing to put in the effort! Yeah, wondering how Michaela defines "effort"...



Beginning of July, a good 8 weeks out, and Michaela is already looking ridiculous.



Fast forward to the start of September, and despite the picture being about the scales and what they reveal ("for the oh so curious," she says), there's no hiding those quads.



Surely her legs can't look any freakier than that, you might be thinking. A reasonable assumption it is, but as Michaela was waiting to board the plane to Las Vegas, this (above) 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.

And if you are curious about the rest of her legs...



Despite all this freakery though, Michaela failed to make the placings at the Olympia. She was in good company - Anne Freitas, Branka Njegovec, Erica Blockman, and ten more of the finest female physiques on the planet also finished outside the top 15 - but for the first time in her career, a contest didn't go as well as she had hoped.



However, being Michaela, there was no hint of disappointment, rather an embrace of the challenge she now faced. I have a lot to work on from the smallest of details to the biggest, she said afterwards. And I can't wait to show up on a stage next time with a completely renewed physique, performance, and maturity as an athlete.



I love this part, she added.

Michaela of the Day

She had emerged from winter [do they have winter in Florida? - ed.] like this, with the show she had chosen to make her pro debut the Europa Orlando. She was less than six weeks out and she looked ready already to my eyes. But not to Michaela's.



Less than six weeks to continue getting better, striving to bring up weak points, and continue to improve strengths, Michaela wrote in March last year. Details matter. It isn't 70% here, 30% there. It's 100% meticulous effort to every single aspect.



In a field of unusually determined and single-minded individuals, here was a young woman whose peers were impressed by the work she was doing and the obvious progress she was making. And the female muscle lovin' community, if they hadn't noticed her during her 2015 debut season, were certainly noticing her now.



She seemed to revel more and more in her own freakishness as the day of the contest approached, in particular showing off the apparent "weak points" she had been targeting - legs and conditioning. She looked like "the next Rita Bello" as one forum poster put it. I imagine (I hope) they weren't comparing size, but noting the simply breathtaking veins and striations apparent on her legs, glutes, and elsewhere.



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, and, understandably given what she was actually putting her body through at this stage, perhaps so was she - a bit. Her posts certainly become more and more mantra-like - "make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you"; "it's not a matter of how, you just do"- while her usual self-deprication and humour becomes less and less common.



Perhaps Rita Bello was a bad comparison after all. Doesn't this glute-skin pinching classic remind you of Britain's own freakiest female Corinne Ingman? I can't recall actually seeing Corinne pinch that inch, but I imagine it's the sort of thing she does do. Michaela's not shy about it though. Like I said, revelling in her freakishness.



You are going to look insane on stage, wrote one of Michaela's (female) IG fans. She was five days' out when she shared her startlingly vascular thighs. I'm not usually as dry-mouthed with anticipation for Physique shows as I am for those where there are Bodybuilders, but the 2016 Europa Orlando was definitely an exception to that rule.

Tomorrow, how Michaela actaully did look on stage, and much much more freakery!

Michaela of the Day

This freaky young Physique phenom has been on Swell's mind and Swell's screen as much as any other woman over the last year or so. High time we really went into detail about all the detail she has sculpted into her (still only) 22-year-old body.

We start with a countdown to her first show of this year, which was Tampa, August 4th.

Feb 15th


Michaela tells her IG followers she is Working every day towards the goal of just being better. The work is what I love and the product will be a result of that. In this post we'll watch and see as that "product" emerges from its off-season beginnings here.

Although first, perhaps we should go back a little further. Right back to Michaela before any of that work started. I think you will agree the change is quite startling.

Mar 17th, 2012


Compare Michaela then to Michaela just over five years later.

Apr 26th


She has certainly added a bit of meat to those bones! Close to the mirror than the February shot, it's easier to appreciate the thickness of her arms and quads, the muscles spreading outwards as they escape the confines of her clothing. We can't see her smile, but I'm sure it's there. Probably smiling at the fact that there is now so much muscle on her legs that it's far from easy to pinpoint exactly where her knees are.

May 22nd


A little bit of time away from the gym - or at least her home gym - with another rising star. I came to Orlando to help a girl whom I seen portray a lot of the same qualities I have within myself, says Michaela. A determined soul with a relentless pursuit. Words cannot describe the emotion a genuinely passionate individual feels when they reach something they've been striving for, and there is nothing that makes my heart more happy than to feel it with them. Can't stop looking at those arms. Or jawlines.

Double swoon!

Jun 2nd


"Vitamin IV therapy", apparently. Whatever it is, it's working. And giving Michaela a fair old pump on that arm that's being IV-ed! Size of her forearm!!! Under the T-shirt too - traps, delts, amazing. And the spread of her thighs - mightily impressive when you consider how wide that chair is and how little of it her thighs leave revealed.

Jun 14th


Things must be getting serious because Michaela has started rolling her sleeves up over her shoulders - possibly, my overactive female muscle lovin' imagination tells me, because if she didn't and flexed, she'd need to borrow a T-shirt to go home in. Just doing me and minding my own, she says. And doing her and minding her own apparently includes showing off the so-good-it's-ridiculous split bicep peak.

And that.

Jun 25th


Seriouser and seriouser. It must be, because now, no T-shirt required, she's showing even more off. Michaela claims this is about her "first lululemon bra", but she doesn't fool me. This picture is about other things as well, but it's mainly about LATS.

Jul 4th


How come you never reply to people like me who constantly praise and support you? asks one of her followers. Because you comment and DM some really weird stuff, replies Michaela. That's not a smile, it's a smug, self-satisfied smirk, and (please don't think me weird) I love it. Imagine the thud her arm made when she put it down.

So, a month to go before Tampa.

How did Michaela pass the time? Work, of course.

You will want the sound on, trust me.



August 2nd was the very last part of the clip. Training in Tampa, two days out.

More Michaela tomorrow and all week.

21 Reasons (#11)

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!

#11
THE JAW THAT PUTS YOUR JAW TO THE FLOOR

I love a conventionally beautiful face on a muscular woman, but having said that, and I know it's a personal preference, the square jawline to me is a woman who's saying "I'm willing to get huge, no matter what the cost", and that is whole different level of sexy and absolutely the biggest turn on. The squarer the jaw, the better!
["Deeper1234", forum post]



Alyssa Kiessling's jaw situation, June 2017. To be continued...

WATCH THIS FACE!

FREAK! Laura Carolan @IFBB Toronto Pro

I could spend time here today talking about how Laura Carolan had been Canadian champ as long ago as 1992. To put that into context by mentioning that in the years that followed that win she'd shared the stage with such legendary names as Christa Bauch, Tonya Knight, Dorothy Herndon, or Denise Rutkowski at the Jan Tana and the Ms International. I could probably find out why she stopped competing in 1995 and didn't reappear until 2012 and share that knowledge with you. And I could compare her 2012 shape with the package she brought to the stage in Tampa last year.

I'm not going to bother with any of that today.



But I am posting a couple of the images of Laura from her work with Awefilms last year. And that's because it now seems to me these images in many ways prepared me for the Laura Carolan who took the stage and the title in Toronto last weekend.



The reason I'm not going to bother too much is that I'm well aware how you might be feeling right now. Faced with Gene X. Hwang's report on the Toronto Pro - by no means a lengthy read - and Gene X. Hwang's images of Laura at the Toronto Pro, I got as far as "Toronto, ON, Canada..." and then spent the next hour opening tab after tab transfixed, agog, totally and utterly consumed by what I was seeing.



This, it seems to me, is female bodybuilding at its most visceral, its most extreme, its most unapologetic, and in all its freakish glory. Imagine trying to explain what exactly it is that appeals to you about Laura's body to - for example - your best non-female muscle lovin' friend. What could you say? Where would you begin?




After my click fest last night I did actually pay a visit to Laura's Facebook page. Of course there are a lot of posts regarding her win, but her feed is much more about Female Bodybuilding than it is about Laura Carolan. In fact instead of just using her name it would be more appropriate if she retitled it "Laura Carolan's Female Bodybuilding Fan Page" because as well as being a Female Bodybuilder she is quite obviously a seriously devoted fan of Female Bodybuilding and Female Bodybuilders as well. Big fan of Lisa Cross. Big fan of Lenda Murray. Big fan of Denise Masino and her Muscle PinUps. It's a bit like one of our Facebook feeds!



Amid all the female muscle, one post in particular caught my eye.



And thinking about it now, I wonder if this isn't where we should begin our hypothetical explanation to our non-female muscle lovin' friend, because isn't this, after all, what lies at the root of our collective desires? Yes, of course there is the aesthetics of female muscle, the beauty of the curves and so on, but isn't this insane attraction we feel also very much about the uniqueness of the look, the "fuck you I won't do what you tell me" attitude, the very fact that FBBs not only don't look like anybody else, but that they also have no desire to look like anybody else?




And there certainly aren't many FBBs - now or ever - who have cultivated such an extreme female muscle freakiness as Laura. Yes, there were other women on the stage whose glutes were striated (and the judges in Toronto, bless them, rewarded them all), but in my many years of female muscle lovin' I can't ever recall seeing glutes quite as thick and yet forensically detailed as Laura's. And while the rest of her freak physique may have a little catching up to do with these two wonders of the female muscle world, you can help but feel she is working night and day to make that happen.



He missed the show in 2015 (I have read the report now), so we should thank the female muscle gods (goddesses?) that Gene X. Hwang took the trip to Toronto and captured Laura - and her fellow female muscle freaks - in glorious high definition. Other sites have pictures of the show, some of them very good pictures, but only the master's gallery has those finely detailed physiques in all their finely detailed glory.




Next stop Rising Phoenix! exclaimed Laura a few days after her triumph. So proud to represent Canada and stand beside the best of the best, such an honour!



Congratulations to a true fan. And a true, unique, FREAK!