Tampa: [Reader Request] Barbie

I have, my female muscle lovin' friend tells me a couple of weeks before the Tampa Pro, a new crush - Barbie Titus. Do you know her? Well, yes, we do. As my friend was finding out, and many have found out before him, Barbie is not a muscle woman you come across and then forget about, and the fact she's never featured on the blog before today is, according to editorial, nothing less than a crime. Do her justice now, you hear! screamed JJ as I left his office to start work on this, our first Barbie post.

No pressure then.



She first crops up around four years ago as a Figure competitor, winning an NPC Europa show (left) then placing 4th in her class at the Nationals. Even between those two shows she appears to have come a long way, and the (sort of trademark) look - that look that you don't forget - is already established. "Barbie" - must be a fair bit of pressure on women given that name, pressure to conform to it, if you see what I mean.



And in many ways this Barbie does conform - the long blond hair, the spectacular enhancements, the flawless styling and make-up, and so on. But in so many other ways, she is as far from the "ideal" of her plastic namesake as it is possible to get. Big and strong, with that slightly-squarer-than-a-woman-"should"-have jaw (so beloved of female muscle heads). She's so Barbie-like feminine and yet so masculine, it's easy to imagine how many non-heads she has confused the hell out of as they find themselves both deeply repulsed by and deeply attracted to her at the same time.




2015 was a big year for Barbie. After another unsuccessful crack at a pro card in Figure at the Jr. USAs, she decided to switch to Physique. Back at the Nationals it was a case of too soon, but she made an impression - not least in the FMS office. It would be a whole year until we saw her on stage again, but it was well worth the wait. Again she was at the Nationals, but this time she was ready, won her class and turned pro. There's not nearly enough stage shots of her from the show, but she's spectacular in every one.



Interviewed just after she'd left the stage, Barbie already knew when she'd make her pro debut. Don't be fooled by her "I’m the worst decision maker ever, I just keep training..." IG persona. Her career to date would suggest she knows exactly what she's doing.



The pro debut was at the end of August last year at the Hurricane Pro. Barbie arrived among the IFBB pro elite and was good enough - even to my untrained eye obviously superior in every way to her Nationals' winning package - for 4th in a very strong line-up. Beaten only by Olympians Heather Grace, Michaela Aycock and Melissa Pearo, she finished ahead of hardened hard pros like Maria Rita Penteado, Angela Debatin and Olga Belyakova. She promptly disappeared back into her muscle-building bunker, but the female muscle lovin' world had been notified now.



One way of gauging just how taken the collective we are with a competitor is to see how many compilations of their Instagram clips are up on YouTube. Those channels where you find those kinds of clips, they don't - surprise surprise - necessarily do it for love but rather for the advertising possibilities. Many edits of the same woman suggests she's a nice little earner for them. She can be found on numerous such channels, with Fitness Instagram leading the way with six Barbie comps at the time of writing. It's also worth bearing in mind that Fitness Instagram tends towards Bikini and "Fitness models" - more mainstream-y in their appeal, and therefore more likely to get clicks. Barbie is one of their more muscular muses, combining muscle mass and mass appeal.



She "comps" well. She doesn't post that regularly, but when she does it's pretty much always a winner. Her IG has more clips of her training than anything else, and the faces she pulls and the noises she makes should be an editor's dream. Why they insist on putting (generally) crappy soundtracks over her I am at a loss to explain.



I'm also struggling to nail exactly how old Barbie is. Two fairly grown-up children have come out of her beautiful body - this much we know. And we also know that she doesn't, or at least hasn't, competed in a Masters' class when the chance to do so has been there - at the Hurricane Pro last year, for example, which was an over 40 Masters. So, if pressed, we'd have to say Barbie must be in her late-30s. Maturing nicely.




And so to Tampa and her second appearance as a pro. Not the most photographed woman on the stage - I get the feeling she has a limited number of poses, all playing to her strengths of course (again, she knows exactly what she's doing) - either by our hero Mr Rivieccio nor by J.M. Manion for NPC News Online, but every single one is worth a little of your time. And once again, for such a relatively inexperienced competitor, Barbie over-achieved. 6th in a 35-woman line-up, and interestingly the very first Physique routine from the show put up by Maximum Muscle Report - a nod to the broader appeal she has than some of her higher-placing rivals perhaps?

It's not shot from the greatest of angles, but glutemen won't be complaining...



As far as I know my female muscle lovin' friend won't be either. Last I heard he was still on his Barbie exploration trip, and still loving every image and clip of her he was clicking on (no doubt with his left hand). It would hardly be surprising to discover there are heads all over the world doing exactly the same thing, as well as a few non-heads, confused as to why, but finding they can't help themselves nonetheless.



For James

Enjoy!

Tampa: Big

Irene, one week before the Tampa Pro

One of the observations I made when I wrote Monday's post last Friday (confused? read Monday's post!) concerned Irene "Too Big for the World" Andersen. Emerging from the pool, she displayed "incredible muscle mass", and looking again at the picture (below), I'm even more impressed - not least by that big, bulging, beautiful trap.



One of Wings of Strength's innovations - first in effect at last year's Rising Phoenix I believe - is that there should be, on top of the prizes for placings, a "Most Muscular" award as well. Aleesha was the first winner of it at the RP, but this season either I haven't been paying enough attention or they haven't had one at any of the previous shows in 2018. No prizes for guessing who took it home from Tampa though.



You can't please everyone, and the prize - or rather the need for the prize - has had plenty of criticism from fans of the "big is always best" variety. Admirable though there commitment to pure size is, occasions when the biggest FBB in show has been the winner are few and far between in FBBing history - IFBB FBBing history at least.



By introducing the award, WoS have at least acknowledged those FBBs who choose mass over all other considerations have a right to do so, and allowed them to go against current judging trends and still earn some prize money. I'm pretty sure Irene would have preferred the judges to award her a top 6 placing - she was 8th - but at least she was acknowledged with a prize (and she got a little share of that prize pot).



"Too Big for the World" she may be, and she's certainly "too big" for the IFBB judges. But on this occasion, Irene was just big enough to be the "Most Muscular" woman in show.



Size still matters. Especially in such a great posing suit!

Enjoy!

More from Tampa tomorrow.

Tampa: Triggers

Thirty-five beautiful, muscular Physique dreams strutted their stuff in Tampa, and luckily for the armchair fan, legendary lensman (and Annie Rivieccio co-star) James Cook was there. Well over 300 images are now up on FTVideo's free site, which in my experience involves a commitment of three plus hours if you want to check them all.

I think the reason why his work has such enduring appeal is the fact that above all he is a fan. He takes the kind of pictures others don't, capturing transitions as well as poses, for example. He also tends to go in closer than your average contest photographer, allowing us to see more detail. Vascularity lost from a more distant shot, the trickles of sweat, the hard graininess of the muscle. They are images worth taking your time to appreciate, and for the last three plus hours that's exactly what I've been doing.

The result of my efforts are these 20 individual images - my pick of his bunch.



I couldn't help but be transported to the show. I recalled the "front row fantasy" of one of C. Moore's cohorts, detailed in a post last November. A new experience, I thought, for new pros like Alyssa Isley (left) - no naked, gooning female muscle lovers at NPC shows. A veteran like Angela Debatin (right), however, has seen it all before. She might even recognise one or two of her adoring jackers, remember his favourite pose, and eyeball him just as she hits it. BANG! goes her tricep - he shoots, she scores.



I wondered, not whether, but how many involuntary explosions thirty-five Physique dreams can induce in an audience of... And then realised I had no idea. How many people attend a show like Tampa? So I checked. The venue - the Tampa Marriot Waterside claims a maximum seating capacity of 2,500. Assuming they are all sold and - as legend has it - the vast majority of punters are not there to see the women, especially not the ones with proper muscles, then perhaps a conservative estimate would put the number of genuine female muscle heads at somewhere between 5 and 10% of that, or 125 to 250 chaps with the potential for involuntary explosions.



A lone wolf, I "reasoned" (while gooning away to well over 300 images, remember), would perhaps be a bit more self-conscious in the crowd, less likely to properly lose it. A couple of heads who have travelled there together, or come from different places and met up there, however, would have been talking about the moment when the Physique ladies (the FBBs were on the night after) stepped on stage for hours (possibly days) beforehand, working themselves up into a frenzy of anticipation. It wouldn't take much to push them over the edge, I reckoned, and once your female muscle lovin' "bud" has shown his appreciation, it would be harder still to hold back yourself.




And, I continued to "reason" (with at least one hand below the keyboard), with each "bud" you add to the group, the anticipation, the excitement, and therefore the chances they would really let themselves go would increase exponentially. Three heads together would be squirming in their seats. Four would be full-on writhing, and five might find themselves so caught up in the mutual moment that their explosions wouldn't be so involuntary after all. How stringent are the public decency laws in Florida? Were there, I wondered, any heads ejected from the auditorium for showing a bit too much love to the ladies and a bit too much to the rest of their row?



Who would this head travel with? Last year I had an entirely fictional experience (see "Czech Dream") with my best online female muscle lovin' friend, and he's never given me any reason to doubt he would be my first choice. We held hands as we watched, writhed, moaned and yelled out our support of the Physique ladies in that story, and (again) I saw no reason why it would have been any different in Tampa. We'd need a lot more stamina though - there were just six women in that Czechia Pro line-up, to take on thirty-five we'd have had to start training in early February... It had never occurred to me before that a female muscle head would need to do contest prep too!



Do the ladies get as excited as we do (or would, if!)? Well, actually, perhaps even more so. Swell has been taken into the confidence of a number of IFBB pros over the course of the life of this blog, and many of them have confessed to, on occasion, getting rather worked up on stage. Once the floodgates open, apparently, it can all get a bit overwhelming they say. And different women, it seems, have different "trigger" poses. Abs and thigh is probably the most "popular" (for fairly obvious reasons - think about what they are crunching down on!), but side triceps and chest, lat spread ("I just felt so BIG so WIDE!), and - as one would hope - front double biceps have all been mentioned. So you may no longer wonder, the next time you see a competitor half-stumble as they hit a lat spread, or seem to forget their routine halfway through it and just start freestylin', why this strong, graceful woman suddenly got so clumsy.



This knowledge has certainly added an extra dimension to my contest viewing, whether via pictures or video. It makes the "erotic theatre" of a female bodybuilding show even more erotic. Looking at Sammica Cash (above, right), I was at once in awe of her vascular lats (exactly the kind of detail only Cook captures), but soon my attention turned to her eyes. Was she, I wondered, just looking down to where she was going to plant her foot, or was there more? Is the abs and thigh Sammica's "trigger" pose and she's actually bracing herself for the feeling that she knows is about to spread right through her beautiful body? Show me video and I reckon I could tell...



Unfortunately, this isn't something the women discuss much - not even among themselves if what I've been told is to be believed. And I think that's a shame, because we never stop going on about the effect they have on us, it would be nice to hear a bit more about exactly why so many of them can't get enough of being on stage.



And while the credit goes to all the thirty-five women so beautifully shot by James Cook, I leave you with my two triggers during my three-hour plus trawl. The gorgeous Essence Monet, a woman I've been watching out for ever since her Arnold's appearance earlier in the year had Kai Greene screaming "WOW!" on the live feed commentary; and the equally gorgeous Nathalee Thompson, who I'd never even heard of, let alone noticed, before this show. Check out the full 300+ images on FTVideo/Gene X Magazine here. I wonder who your triggers will be, dear reader.

Enjoy!

Tomorrow - Tampa: Biggest

FBBUK: Our Girl

This week's Figure-dominated theme with a bit of a coincidental military presence continues with former British Army corporal and Iraq veteran Melissa Haywood.



Whilst deployed on an exercise, I came across a copy of Muscle & Fitness Hers, she recalls. On the front cover was a curvy, tight and toned woman who looked fit, healthy and strong. Inside, I saw sample weight training programmes and diets that consisted of 6 meals a day and lots of protein. And I just thought "Hey! I can do this!" and started from there! The cover model, she later discovered was Amanda Latona, and Melissa went on to be a major force in (the then-nascent) Bikini division in Britain. She won her first British title in 2012 while still serving in the army, and took runner's-up medals from the Arnold Classic Europe and European Championships back home. Then at the 2014 English Grand Prix, she became one of our very first IFBB Bikini pros.



The following year she travelled to Miami for her first pro Bikini show. Looking a tad on the pasty side, she finished 12th out of 20, and then she pretty much fell off our radar completely. Having left the army, she set up an online training/body transformation business with fellow Bikini babe Jamie Alterton. Was she too focused on helping others achieve their Bikini dreams to compete now? Already married, was she starting a family? Turns out neither were true. Melissa was taking time out to grow.



Some of these Figure pros are absolutely stacked! Melissa exclaimed in a blog post this time last year. They are dry and they are hard and they are grainy and their shoulders... are out here! At this point, Melissa indicates where a huge shoulder would go out to, comfortably twice the size of her own impressively built deltoid. They are MASSIVE! she exclaims breathlessly, and I'm never going to look like that...



Fortunately, however, Melissa also noticed that not all the Figure pros looked so intimidating. Name-checking Stephanie Hammermeister and Chelsea Larson, Melissa talked about a more attainable - and for her more desirable - "lean, athletic" Figure look with "good muscle shape and symmetry". I could tell what was coming - can you? Barely a minute of the blog post later and she's announcing that she would make her pro Figure debut in San Marino that November. And that's exactly what she did.



Up against the cream of European Figure (Adela Ondrejovicova and winner Zulema Duran to name but two) plus Olympians such as Georgina Lona and Jessica Reyes Padilla, Melissa placed 8th out of 22, two places above UKBFF Figure champ Anna Banks. Now she was in arguably the most competitive division, and at such a competitive show, this was most satisfactory as far as debuts go, but there were definitely areas she could sharpen, she felt. Might need to work on my walk, she confessed after seeing the photos. I look like I’m marching to the shop to get milk!



The Melissa that emerged form her winter work was determined she would be better next time. It feels so good to be back! she wrote at the start of May. Eight weeks to get as lean as possible. Her goal was the new Portugal Pro in mid-July, another European event, but one not nearly as subscribed as San Marino. This time Melissa would only be up against European competition - nine women including veteran British division jumper Carmen Knights, and rising star Samantha Forbes. The real competition though was against herself, her San Marino package, and the day before the show she obviously felt she had achieved that. The venue is incredible (our stage rises out of the floor!), she told her Instagram followers. Whatever happens tomorrow is out of my hands so I’m just going to enjoy the whole experience and have fun on stage.



She placed 5th out of 10 - I would have had her 3rd, but then I'm biased and what do I know anyway? The post-show smile as she wielded her medal needed no caption.



And I kind of expected that to be that as far as Melissa was concerned for the year, unless another visit to San Marino before Christmas. Once again, I was completely wrong, in fact I'm not even sure she went home first or just went from Portugal direct. Melissa was going Stateside for her next show, you see. Los Angeles to be precise.



The line-up is stacked with so many amazing and inspiring athletes, she wrote on the day, and she was not wrong. As we've seen already this week on FMS, the (Figure-only) LA show is most definitely the IFBB pro Figure big time. This was easily the best line-up Melissa had ever been part of, many of them, as she was, coming off a show the week or two before. I’m just going to have fun and enjoy every second, she said. Again.



Here at FMS, we thought Melissa looked absolutely sensational. She'd certainly nailed the "lean, athletic" look she wants. Great definition, great muscle shape, great symmetry. We were all very pleased for her, but British Figure in the US historically, and in that line-up... we weren't exactly holding our breath for a top 10 placing.



But what do we know?! Amazing to find myself amongst Olympians in the first call outs! she wrote midway through the contest. And ultimately, Melissa achieved one of the best British Figure results ever. 4th place!!! she gushed afterwards. So happy!



And then it was back to the grind. No rest for Melissa, even when she's had something to celebrate. It's only Wednesday, she wrote, on Wednesday. My first full week of training since before the Portugal Pro and I am literally feeling BATTERED.



I think that really is it now for Melissa this contest year. It's time for what she calls her "reflection" season - looking back at what she's done well, could do better etc. (rather than my initial idea that she would just be spending a lot of time in front of the mirror!). Clearly, and despite all my observations to the contrary earlier in the week, there still is a place in the division for the "lean, athletic" package, and those already taking inspiration from the likes of Stephanie Hammermeister and Chelsea Larson could learn much from what Melissa Haywood has done over the last 36 months.



The rise of UK Figure continues...