Pic of the Week

One more Sochi-related post with this impressively trapalicious bit of physical detail that belongs to Rebekah Wilson, Team GB member for the Women's Bobsleigh.



Enjoy!

And once again, thanks to Aiden

Eve Muirhead Curls for Bronze

The UK has never been so into curling. It all started in 2002 when the British women's team brought home the gold medal from Salt Lake City, and during the recent Winter Olympics in Sochi the nation was once again going ga-ga for the only sport I know of where each of the players needs their own broom. This time around the men won a silver, but FMS was, for some reason, far more interested in the women's team, who are to be congratulated for coming home with bronze medals.



Along with many of my countrymen and women, I've learned the "skipper" of a curling team is its most important member, because it is she who delivers the final two stones in each end, the stones that tend to decide whether you or your opponents will pick up points. [At this point, if you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, watch a little bit of this.] And Team GB's bronze medal-winning women's skipper in Sochi was this (rather beautiful) lady from Stirling in Scotland, Eve Muirhead.



And thanks to Scotland's Daily Record (and the research skills of FMS' Crossfit correspondent), we can report that Eve prepared for Sochi with an altogether different kind of curling, as well as a whole host of other movements.



Scots curling champ Eve Muirhead pushes herself to limit in gym, reads the headline. The article goes on to tell us that the 23-year-old looked in peak shape during a gruelling workout in Stirling, as she prepares to represent Team GB in Sochi next month, before almost exactly repeating itself in the next line: the 23-year-old looked in great shape during a gruelling workout at the Institute of Sport in Stirling.



I shouldn't be too hard on the (unnamed) journalist though. They were no doubt somewhat distracted by the images of Eve that accompany the piece, because whether she's in "top" or "peak" shape, she definitely looks like she's in shape.



Congratulations to Eve and the rest of her team. Now that's curl power...

Dedicated to Aiden, with thanks

Inspired by... Aiden

It's always nice to know that someone is reading my musings, and even nicer when they actually bother to share their thoughts and/or reach out a mutually female muscle appreciating hand. So, this week on FMS, for some of the lovely readers who have been in touch (whether by email or the comment box), a whole post inspired by them as a way of saying thank you for supporting the blog.

I hope they, and you, will enjoy them.

Back in June, Aiden became FMS' first (and so far only) Guest Editor and introduced us to his favourite Crossfit women. His love of muscular women started first emerged when 'finding female athletes beguiling when I was about 10 years old,' he told us, so we'll kick off today with a few 'athletes'...


Britian's Shelley Rudman, Skeleton World Champion


Snow (which clearly does wonders for the legs) and surf


Can Aiden have his bike back, please?

After the athletes came the female bodybuilders, as Aiden, like so many of us, 'plucked up the courage to buy the magazines'. (Read more about the newsagent's here)

So, as another thank you to Aiden for his outstanding contribution to FMS this year, some selections with him in mind...


'Compact and thick'

We certainly haven't forgotten that way back in January, Aiden described the magnificent Jamie Pinder as 'fucking glorious'...






Jamie winning the Physique class at the Chicago Pro this year



And competing at the Olympia (12th, really?!)



Glorious indeed.

But we couldn't do a post for Aiden without his number 1.

'She is a very appealing woman, attractive, amusing, great body and the crowning glory, she knows how good she looks and she likes showing it off.'


Miranda thinks 'that guy who wrote all that cool stuff about me on that blog... I wish there was some way that I could thank him...'

Just another normal night in Miranda's hotel room


Something like Aiden's idea of heaven?

Thanks again Aiden, hope you enjoyed today's post, a Merry Christmas to you, and may all the women you meet in 2014 be 'compact and thick'!

Miranda shows her power (with Emily Friedman)

Enjoy! Another reader inspired post coming tomorrow...

What's (Been) Going On: Samantha Briggs, The Fittest Woman on Earth

Back in June, at the end of CrossFit Week, our guest editor and resident CrossFit authority Aiden wrote in his Games preview that his prediction to win is Britain's own Sam Briggs. Well, I bet you wish you'd listened to him now and put some money on her, because at the end of that month, that is precisely what happened.

After finishing 19th at the Games in Sweden in 2010, when she prepared for the first day of competition by eating and drinking 'a bambi burger and a Carlsberg', Samantha had made the CrossFit world sit up and take notice in 2011 when she was a standout performer despite missing out on the podium and finishing 4th. Due to a knee injury she missed the entire 2012 season. Her comeback has been spectacular. She qualified for the Games by winning the European Regional with performances that must have been truly scary to her fellow competitors and earmarked her as one of the favourites for the whole thing. And then at the Games themselves, she didn't disappoint.



Pleasingly, Sam's incredible achievement did not go unnoticed by the British media, and she appeared on BBC Breakfast, which is about as high profile as it gets at that time in the morning. 'I'm just looking at you absolutely amazed!' female presenter Louise Minchin, who has completed triathlons herself, gushed. Whether Louise was amazed by the typically understated way Sam had just explained what the competition involved, or whether she was amazed by the sight of Sam's shoulders and arms you can decide for yourself by watching a recording of the clip here.



Despite having got the kind of winner's cheque that would be unimaginable in female bodybuilding, she is not about to give up her day job as a firefighter in West Yorkshire. And after the BBC interview she celebrated her success by spending three hours getting a new tattoo. You've got to love her!

And Sam is by no means finished now she has reached the top. Her mantra of 'Lift, run, swing, pull, push, jump, row, throw, swim, hit, cycle, recover & repeat!' still applies.  'It'd be stupid for me to think I could go back to the Games and win being the same athlete then that I am now. I think I need to constantly evolve and there's certain areas we need to work on and hopefully I'll go back a stronger athlete next year,' she has said.



You can follow Sam on Twitter, via the CrossFit Games website, or its youtube channel.
For a much longer interview with Sam post-Games, visit BoxRox.
Or, for the brave only perhaps, the Train Manchester website.

Enjoy!

Wendy Jeal

Personally, although I was an avid athletics-watcher in my youth, I remember very little about her races. My research tells me that her best performance at a major championship came in the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh in 1986, where she won a bronze medal. She represented Great Britain at the Seoul Olympics in 1988, qualified as a fastest loser from her first round heat, but finished sixth in her quarter-final. She was no Jessica Ennis, not even the best British hurdler of her day.

But as this was a time when very few female track athletes had the kind of muscle and definition that is commonplace today - and those that did were East German beasts of a seemingly indeterminate sex - Wendy Jeal was a revelation. She had only a fleeting and not particularly noteworthy career as a 100m hurdler, but among female muscle fans, and especially British female muscle fans of a certain age, Wendy Jeal is (or perhaps, to be more accurate, I should say Wendy Jeal's legs are) legend.

I may not remember her races as such, but I remember as clearly as if it were yesterday how defined and muscular her legs were, and how those muscles would pop as she settled into her blocks.

And I remember Stuart Storey (just imagine the most famous athletics commentator from your country, the guy who's been the voice of athletics on your TV for years and you'll get what I mean) blurting out before one race, 'Just look at the definition on her!', before adding that her nickname in the team was 'Miss Muscles'.

And judging by the kind of things fans say when images of Wendy at her peak are uploaded on the forum boards, I am not alone in having such wonderful memories of her...

Wendy Jeal has perhaps the BEST legs I have ever seen. 

The musculature, definition, and size are simply incredible.

Best legs on the planet.

They are the best legs ever and the greatest thing is they are natural.

The prize for the most interesting comment about Wendy on a forum that I have seen anyway has got to be this one, from a fan who goes by the name of 'THFC' (which suggests he's from the Haringey area of London - trust me on this, it's a football (soccer) thing) - and the club that Wendy used to run for was, indeed, Haringey.

When I was a teenage boy, he says, I used to train with her for the same track team. I could stare at her for hours. I would make any excuse to talk to her. That explains a lot about me.

Also, Wendy was one of only two non-bodybuilders who received votes when FMS invited readers to share their Fantasy Contest line-ups back in May last year.

But there are a limited number of images of Wendy (and Wendy's legs) out there, and a lot has happened since she last competed (as a heptathlete, in 1991 at the age of 31).

However, I was aware there was a video she made with the mighty Steve Wennerstrom at some point after the Seoul Olympics, and though I'd seen snippets of it and visited places where the whole video had been available but I'd arrived too late, I had never seen it in its entirety.

So I was grinning from ear to ear, among other things, when I found it uploaded to Daily Motion recently, on a channel belonging to 'UZI4you'. Good work fella!

Obviously it's not the greatest quality, but bear in mind that it's so old it's a bone fide female muscle artefact, relax, and enjoy the glory of Wendy's legs.

And when you've done that, head over to UZI4you's channel and give the (I assume) man some love for making the previous thirty-nine minutes (or perhaps multiples thereof) of your life so wonderful.




Enjoy!

FBBUK: Donna Hartley-Wass

FMS’ latest irregular and far from comprehensive week-long survey of all things UK femuscle-related begins, I’m afraid, with some not so good news.

Swell was extremely sad to hear of the untimely death of the former British athlete turned female bodybuilder Donna Hartley-Wass at the beginning of June.



As a child I remember cheering Donna on with my family watching the Commonwealth Games in the late 70s, and the Moscow Olympic Games in 1980. I was too young to have had any ‘feelings’ for her at that age, but she was the ‘Golden Girl’ of British athletics at the time, the Jessica Ennis of her era, a natural for the cameras as well as a world-class athlete.

As The Independent puts it in their obituary of Donna, With her long blonde hair and flashing smile, Hartley was an attractive as well as an accomplished performer. At a time when women's sprinting was dominated by runners from the Eastern bloc – many of whom were subsequently implicated in doping regimes – she was a Brit genuinely capable of mixing it.




She was awarded an MBE in 1979, and retired from athletics a year later. but I also remember her being a fixture on Superstars (a British TV show where sports stars would compete against each other in various events – swimming, cycling etc.). It was a huge show in its time, and Donna was still more than famous enough to be among those chosen for the show.

But what really makes Donna worth remembering here is what she decided to do next. In the mid-1980s, Donna Hartley became a bodybuilder, hardly a common career-move (more’s the pity!) for renowned UK female athletes.

Many within athletics were stunned to see pictures of Hartley's changed physique at the time, according to UK athletics historian Stan Greenberg.



And it wasn’t just those within her sport who were stunned. My abiding memory of Donna is an appearance she made on The Last Resort, the chat show that launched Jonathan Ross’ TV career, in the late 1980s.

There I was, mid-teens, as I always was on a Friday night, watching TV. I quite liked this new-style chat show and the irreverent host, and there was nothing better on, so as usual, I’d tuned into Channel 4 that night. Among the guests Jonathan promised us that night in his intro was the familiar name of Donna Hartley, but little did I suspect why exactly she was on the show, little did I suspect one of my formative female muscle experiences was about to unfold.

Out she came in a long black bathrobe that all but covered her entire body. She was a little older (obviously) than I remembered her, but also blonder, more glamorous, more tanned. She had a definite glow about her.

I’d only ever seen one other female bodybuilder actually move at that time, my first, Carolyn Cheshire, also on British TV, so by the time Donna appeared on my TV screen that night, I had already been converted. So the excitement I felt when Donna took off that bathrobe to reveal her muscular physique in all its glory was an excitement I had felt before, an excitement I have become accustomed to.

She proceeded to go through her routine right in front of the (for once) speechless host, even (if memory serves) climbing onto his desk at one point. Every move she made was accompanied by her gleaming smile. She looked so confident, so sexy.

While Jonathan sat there open-mouthed, while the audience gasped, Donna hit pose after pose. I was in teenage female muscle heaven.



After the routine, she sat down, grinning. She teased the obviously stunned Ross, kind of mockingly flirting with him as he recoiled. She enjoyed the shock she had caused. At no point did she seem anything less than totally and utterly comfortable with her own body. It was intoxicating.

All too quickly it was over and the show went to a commercial break. But in those days I recorded everything. And once the rest of my family had gone to bed that night, I watched Donna over and over again, and continued to do so for weeks and months (perhaps years) afterwards, officially retiring that VHS from family circulation and stashing it away with my growing collection of muscle magazines.

And amazingly, footage of her guest posing has survived, and thanks to ‘Vivian Gregson’ on youtube, FMS can share Donna with you as he remembers her from that night in a suburban South London home all those years ago…



Donna competed for only two years, finishing 3rd in the NABBA Britain and Universe contests in 1987, and winning the Britain title and finishing runner-up at the Universe the following year.



With her superior sporting genes and athletics background, she had the potential to be one of the greatest female bodybuilders this country has ever produced, but the sport, it turned out, wasn’t for her. You could only get into terrific shape twice a year because of the dieting and were on stage for 10 minutes, so I didn't think it worth the effort, she said later. But I learned a lot about nutrition.



It was during this time that she met and married her second husband, Bobby Knutt, a comedian and actor from UK TV who was himself quite famous at the time. When they celebrated their 25th anniversary in 2011, Bobby revealed he had been smitten instantly. She had the most beautifully shaped behind I’d ever seen, he recalled. Clearly a man of some taste.

Donna retired from the public eye, settled down with Bobby in the North of England, and went into hotel spa and leisure club management.

She was, by all accounts, a wonderful woman, and FMS’ thoughts go out to her husband, family and her friends.

I'm Confused

She’s loved and admired for her athletic achievements, and her athletic body is envied by women and desired by men. But does Jessica Ennis like what she sees when she looks in the mirror?



Back in January, FMS reported how the pre-Olympic Jessica had issues with her own appearance (see Jessica, You’re Gorgeous). Did our assurances help her overcome these issues? It seems not. And neither has the fact that post-Olympic polls revealed that a majority of women would like a body like hers. And the fact that she has recently been voted 'Best Celebrity Body' in another poll made no difference to her own body image either.

I don’t think I look good and it amazes me when girls write to me and say, ‘Ooh, I wish I had a six-pack like yours’, or ‘You’ve got an amazing figure’. Really? Do they think that?

She says I’ve got way more muscles than I’d ideally like to have, adding that she makes a point of covering up her arms when she goes out because they look ‘butch’.



But on the other hand, Jessica has also said recently that There's a kind of perfect figure that's put out in magazines but it's not realistic. If sportswomen are put out there a bit more, it creates a real healthy body image for young girls to aspire to. Agreed, Jessica, agreed. What’s wrong with your body being that image then?

Clearly athletic women are positive role models, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that these women will feel their own bodies are beautiful.

Now, I’d always thought (or perhaps hoped is a better word) that athletic or muscular women were immune from this kind of issue. This assumption that they were happy with their bodies was a major part of their appeal to me because confidence is sexy. To now discover I was wrong is, quite frankly, a bit of a blow.



And not just to me. The Ennis Effect, which we recently flagged up on this blog, is not going to be helped by the role model herself telling everyone that a body like hers is not something she would aspire to if she’d had the choice. If that isn't a confusing message for women, I don't know what is.

However, help is at hand from another Olympic champion, currently in the news for her appearances on Strictly Come Dancing (the UK equivalent to Dancing with the Stars, as I believe it is called Stateside).

Victoria Pendleton has revealed she hates the fact that she’s lost weight on the show. Despite weight loss being seen by most as a benefit of taking part, the Olympian has admitted she’s gutted that her body is changing.



It’s not just that she’s losing weight, either. It’s what she’s losing as a result of that weight loss that is really bothering Victoria:

The 32-year-old said that she doesn’t like her new thin thighs and disappearing six-pack. I’ve lost a lot of muscle mass. I’ve been going to the gym three times a week for 15 years and lifting heavy weights and now I haven’t got time to do that.



When I look down at my legs now I feel very sad about it. I put in all those hours to get them bigger and now they’re shrinking in front of my eyes. It honestly makes me feel very depressed.



Who would have thought it? All along it was Victoria, not Jessica, who we should have been backing. Both women may be unhappy with their bodies now, but for very different reasons, and for the female muscle head, Victoria’s is most definitely the right reason.



So, what should I do now? Should I vote to keep Victoria on the show so that she continues to get media coverage and the chance to wax lyrical about how much better it was when she had some muscle, or should I not vote for her so she can get back into the gym and get the muscle back?

I'm confused!