FBBUK: Anita Tryc Counts Her Blessings

UK Physique competitor Anita Tryc started her fitness journey back in 2009. Despite having studied at the Academy of Sports Education in her native Poland, she admits she "went downhill". I smoked, and I used to drink too much, as students do, she says. It was after finally giving up cigarettes and gaining 20kg in a month that she decided to get back the fitness she had lost. I was size 16/18, quite a big girl, she remembers. I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror! (She doesn't seem to have that problem now...)



She began running again, and was soon looking to move to England. Beforehand though, a medical check-up revealed a tumour on one of her ovaries. It was borderline, she says. I was told that if it hadn't been found for few more months, it could have turned cancerous. I consider myself a very lucky human being.



Relocation to London complete, Anita set about changing her training as well - I wanted to have muscles and be stronger. Lifting at home progressed to lifting at the gym, and before long she began wondering whether one day she might be able to compete. I wanted to be like Dana Linn Bailey, she says, but when I told people I want to do Women’s Physique one day, they all said I would do OK in Bikini. And, it turns out, nothing could have been more motivating to hear than that. If someone tells me that I can't do something, she says. I will prove to them and myself that I CAN!


Hanging out at the 2016 UKBFF British Championships with her "sweet friend" Linda Gartside

And she did. Her first show was in 2015, a qualifier for the UKBFF where her runner's-up placing took her to the national championships. She's been at those British finals every year since, but last year Anita broke into the top 6 for the very first time.


UKBFF British Championships 2017, 6th place

2018 has seen a new approach from Anita though. A new coach - "much stricter than I am used to" - and a prep that has been harder than she has ever known. This is how the professionals do it, she says, and the results are mind blowing! I don't even recognise myself, my conditioning and posing. I have learnt so much, it's like being at school!



And the first sight we have had of this new, improved Anita was at the PCA contest held during the BodyPower Expo. This was her first ever non-UKBFF show, and also, as she lined-up in the Trained Figure class, the first time she'd ever been on stage in heels.



Anita didn't win the show, but there are ways to judge a performance other than by placing. I loved every minute and I couldn't be prouder, she said after seeing herself up there. My best condition ever, my best posing ever... I actually shocked myself!



Not surprisingly, she can't wait to do it again, but in the meantime, that beautiful smile will be staying put - I'm so blessed that I am able to wake up every single morning to work towards my dreams, she says. I'll be coming back and coming back better.



Follow Anita on Instagram

Goddesses of the Galaxy

The second IFBB pro show with a Female Bodybuilding class this year, and the first to be held in Europe for a very very long time, took place in Bari, Italy last weekend.



First the bad news. Yet again, as it did in Hawaii in March, the FBB class consisted of just three women. Two pro shows into the season, and we've seen a grand total of six Female Bodybuilders on stage. Or rather, and this is the second bit of bad news, we haven't - contest galleries from this show being (as far as I can tell) non-existent.

Social media to the rescue!

THE HISTORY WOMAN



The first lady we should talk about today is Italy's Cristina Maffeis. Not a name familiar to me before this weekend, I must admit, but what she achieved in Bari was - and I don't think I'm exaggerating here - historic. She is the first FBB to gain her pro card at a show outside North America on Wings of Strength's watch, the first to take advantage of the opportunity on offer at the three new 2018 shows in Europe.



Cristina first had to win the amateur FBB class - I don't think she had much competition, and I strongly suspect she had no competition at all, but win it she did. Now pro-carded up, she took her place with the other (two) competitors on stage on Sunday. And very happy she was about it too. I'm an IFBB pro Female Bodybuilder! she gushed the day after the contest. My great dream has become reality!



She got to meet a woman rather big in Italian female muscle as well. "A great honour," said Cristina. Perhaps one day a young Italian FBB (one of many competing in Bari at the long-established Galaxy Pro) will write exactly the same thing beside a picture of her next to Cristina. This is, after all, the long-term goal of these shows. Whatever the numbers on this occasion, the first step has been taken, and (as usual) WoS, Tim Gardener (show promoter), and Cristina herself should all be congratulated for that.

THE SMART MOVE



As well as the FBBs, there was also Bikini, Figure and Physique - almost a full house of the female classes. And with the show being in Europe, the line-ups in all three were almost exclusively made up of European pros. The one exception was Anne Freitas, who took home the winner's cheque and in doing so qualified for her 5th Olympia.



Recently, we saw Anne at the Champions of Power and Grace show, placing 8th in an ultra-competitive line-up. No Olympia qualification for her there - not even so much as a single point. Coming to Bari to flex off against just four other women - none of them with anything like her Olympia pedigree - looks like a very smart move indeed.



It's an 'add to cart' kind of day, Anne said, which if I understand correctly (and I am not at all sure that I do), suggests she was well aware of the purpose of this show for her. And her team. Every time I start a prep I think of the responsibility that I have to everyone around me, she wrote afterwards, her "responsibility" for another Olympia prep assured. I always have to be at the same level of excellence that you are!

MELINDA MERCZ



In Figure, perhaps Maria Garcia or Britain's own Louise Rogers had a similar idea to Anne. Just a budget airline flight away, a smaller show, not a North or South American in sight (not in this class anyway), there won't be a better chance of automatic Olympia qualification this year... The plan was sound but the judges saw it differently. It wasn't Maria (who, in placing 5th, wasn't even the highest placed Spanish woman in Figure), and nor was it Louise (runner-up) who guaranteed their Olympia place here, but the much less well-known Hungarian Melinda Mercz.



Today is a big day, she said beforehand. This has been my toughest prep, and is my third pro Figure competition. I'm going to present my best package so far. The rest is up to the judges! The judges liked what they saw, and so, increasingly, have the female muscle lovin' community, impressed by close-ups of her impressive body in particular. Plenty to massage and worship there, notes one of her newer fans.



Plenty indeed. Join Melinda's ever-growing number of Instagram followers for these kinds of angles and more as she preps for her "dream come true" debut Olympia.

ENFIN!



You have to go back a decade to find Maryse in the top 3 at a pro show - the 2007 Jan Tana, where she was Heavyweight runner-up. Since then, she's competed more regularly than I imagined despite a three-year break before 2012, her best (and only top 10) placing 9th in Toronto in 2013. These are different times though, and here there was really only ever going to be one winner. At 57 (or 58) she may be the oldest ever FBB to win a pro show, and in doing so booked her place at the Rising Phoenix.



This may have been by far the least taxing competition she has ever faced, but - and especially so considering her age - she certainly looks the part. In fact I can't actually recall seeing her ever look very off-season, she always seems to be ready to take the stage. Most recently, she cropped up - looking as big and ripped as ever - at FIBO, adding her own viande musculaire to that already assembled at the WoS stand.



She's never been the prettiest FBB in the world, but from the neck down... there's no denying she won't look out of place among the biggest and best when she takes her place alongside them in Arizona later in the year, a very popular addition to the line-up, not least with the session heads who never seem to give her a bad review.



Book early to avoid disappointment!

Full results of the show here.

Galleries... still nothing.

"The Best Legs in Figure" and Other Figure Phenoms @IFBB Europa Orlando 2018

When three-time IFBB pro winner, top 10 Olympian and FMS heartthrob Jessica Reyes Padilla places 10th, even allowing for judging misdemeanours, it's a fair bet she was part of a quality line-up, and so it was at the 2018 IFBB Europa Orlando.



Canada's Melissa Bumstead, Canada's gorgeous Melissa Bumstead, provided some of it. Just look at the cuts on those legs! Perhaps at some point those legs have been called "the best legs in Figure", but Melissa's were not the legs being most talked about on this occasion. Melissa will doubtless go on to win many pro titles in a long and glittering career, but here she and her legs were not winners - Melissa placed 4th.



Sadly - and this is unusual - the quality of NPC News Online's coverage did not really match the quality of the line-up, not in terms of the pictures anyway. Bit blurry they look to me. Thankfully though, this is not the only coverage of the event we have, and perhaps better still, this other coverage - courtesy of Bodybuilding and Beyond - allows us to watch all 19 women in this obviously quality line-up in motion.

Here they are, from #30 Yordana Alayon to #48 Linda Simnick.

See if you can spot "the best legs in Figure"...



Well?

The correct answer was #40, Felisha Livezey.



Not the most familiar name in the line-up by any means, Felisha hadn't previously competed since the 2016 NPC Universe but "stole the show" on her pro debut. I just decided to do this one and it worked out kinda good, she said afterwards. I'm going to the Olympia, it's so exciting... I never thought in a million years it would happen.



Now, about these "best legs in Figure". Don't be under the impression that anyone of any note was claiming this, it's just the thoughts of some random forum head, and perhaps seems, at first, to be an impossibly bold statement to make. However, what's been interesting is that since that claim was made on her behalf, plenty of other heads have chipped in on Felisha's thread not (as is customary) to mock, but to confirm.




That is an understatement, writes one. If you have an account for HerBiceps, I'd suggest you check out her videos. The way she flexes her quads are unlike anything you've seen out of a Figure competitor. Again, this seems an impossibly bold claim. I mean I've seen a LOT. But he goes on - I kid you not. Her legs are THAT insane.


Felisha in 2016

The clips they are talking about are nearly two years' old now, dating back from that NPC Universe win when she turned pro. New footage will be available on HDPhysiques "in the very near future" apparently. FMS will not be the only ones looking out for it.



You can follow Felisha on Instagram. She isn't planning to do any more shows before the Olympia, but intends to "work on some weak points" over the next few months.



She's probably not talking about those legs.

She's So Shredded: Anna Ferrer Flos

"Wow" reads the first comment, and the second as well. The third is a little more eloquent - "So lovely her eyes her smile, gorgeous!" The eyes, the smile, and her gorgeousness get more mentions, and then the posters start to "scan down". And they see the "bulge" (of her bicep), they see her "amazing chest". "Oh my!" they say. "Beautiful!" they say. "Stunning!" they say. For this single image there's been more comment in less than 24 hours than most GWM posts get in their lifetime.

The female muscle lovin' community has just "discovered" Anna Ferrer Flos.



What FMS has learned about Anna in the last two days since that image burned us too could be summed up as 'not very much'. It's never very easy getting information about athletes who are a) amateurs, and b) not from English-speaking countries, but on top of that, it's not even easy to look for information when you are so distracted by beautiful brown eyes, the loveliest smile and a ripped, vascular body that looks (if not harder) every bit as hard as what's keeping at least one of your hands below keyboard level.


Final preparations for "war", autumn 2017

What we do know is that it is Anna (the double "n" - not as common as "Ana" in Spanish-speaking countries - is correct), and that one reason for the double "n" might be that Anna is Catalan (rather than "Spanish", if that's not too controversial a thing to say). She competes in the Bodyfitness (ie. Figure) division, in the "up to 163cm" class, and she finished 3rd in that class at the Spanish National Championships last year.



Most of her at her most shredded seems to have been from around that contest, even if they weren't posted then - either on GWM, or by Anna herself on her eponymous Instagram. She seems to like looking back at her body then, nostalgic for the look, using the images as motivation for her now as she prepares for another season of competition - "war" as she calls it (or at least that's how guerra literally translates).



There are days when you want to give up, she says, but when I look at these photos I say to myself, "I have achieved that already, and I will become stronger than ever".


With Spanish IFBB pro Noelia Segura
"My sister, helping me from minute zero, supporting me every day," says Anna

Spain (including Catalunya, I really don't know how to express these things and stay on the right side of both sides!) appears to suddenly be enjoying something of a female muscle boom, and women like Anna can't fail to inspire yet more to take up the pesas. Si todo va bien (if all goes well), according to Anna, the next "war" for her won't be until this September. This year though, it seems she will be followed on her journey to even more thrillingly vascular shredz by a whole lot more fans than she was last year.



¡Disfrutar!