10 Years at the Arnold Classic: 2012

NOT DEAD YET



We know now that Female Bodybuilding's days at the Arnolds were very much numbered, but a look at both the Ms International and the two FBB classes at the Arnold Amateur in 2012 doesn't suggest to me that a terminal decline was setting in. Far from it. In the Amateur show, Hong King's Brenda Lo Kit Ming (above) won the Lightweight class - the first woman from Asia to take an Arnold title - with her impressively muscle-packed physique, and would have been a popular choice for the Overall title judging by some of the contemporary fan forum comments. Instead, the judges handed the Overall prize to Russian blonde bombshell Olga Puzanova.



And meanwhile, the Ms International had, as far as Steve Wennerstrom was concerned, "new life breathed into it" two weeks prior tot the show when a leg injury prevented Iris from competing. Suddenly, Yaxeni was the pre-event favourite, it was "her title to lose". She didn't, bringing one of her best ever packages (in my ignorant opinion), and receiving a unanimous thumbs up from the judges for her fifth, final Ms I win.



Yaxeni needed to be at her best. Debi Laszewski - "buffed and shined to perfection" - and Alina Popa, with "all the qualities of a star in the making" were right behind her. Wennerstrom felt Debi was unique in the way that after 16 years as a Female Bodybuilder she was still improving year in year out, while Alina, he said, provided "a beacon of what is in line for the future of women's bodybuilding". His report in general couldn't be more positive and less foreboding. Both in terms of the contest and the 14-woman line-up, this was as good a Ms International as there had been for many a year.



Perennial top six finishers Lisa Aukland, Betty Pariso and Dayana Cadeau were, along with Iris, all absent or had "retired" over the previous couple of years, but the women making their Ms International debuts in 2012 provided further cause for optimism, not least those who were graduates of the Arnold Amateur - Geraldine Morgan (14th, two-time top 3 Amateur Heavyweight), Alevtina Goroshinskaya (7th, 2011 Amateur Overall), Maria Segura (12th, 2008 Amateur Overall), and Rita Bello (8th, 2010 Amateur Overall). It's easy to forget that as recently as 2012 the "system" of having Arnold (and Olympia) Amateur Female Bodybuilding to feed competitors from outside the US into the pro ranks was working so very nicely.




Also lining up for the first time at the Arnolds was Mmmmonique Jones, drawing comparisons with none other than Lenda Murray (but bigger!) and leaving Wennerstrom and "most anyone" at a loss to why she failed to place higher than 10th. Instead, the debutant who made the biggest splash was Kim Buck, whose "streamlined, finely-tuned physique" was well worth the 5th place she was awarded.



Brigita Brezovac was another, more fancied pre-contest, woman making her Arnold debut. Like Yaxeni, she deliberately arrived at the show smaller (ie. at a lower weight) than she had recently competed at in order to boost her definition. Unlike for Yaxeni though, the drop didn't pay off. Having had a meteoric rise in 2010-11 (three pro contest wins plus a 3rd at the 2011 Olympia) Brigita had to settle for 6th here.



Looking back to this contest now, it's clear that there was nothing inevitable about the cancellation of the Ms International the following year (and later the Ms Olympia), and on top of that, one of the justifications trotted out - that the women had got "too big" - is somewhat undermined. Both the 2012 Ms International champion and one of the sports brightest new stars showed that less muscle more defined was not something they were averse to and the judges treated them differently. "Brigita will no doubt have many more invitations to this event in her future," Wennerstrom wrote, clearly believing the future would in no way be as bleak as it actually turned out to be.

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME



In other divisions, however, clearer signposts can be found. In the Amateur show, for example, the Overall title went to future multiple Bikini International and Olympia winner Ashley Kaltwasser, so for the first time I find myself looking at the Arnold Amateur Bikini champ and saying, "Ah yes! That's what Bikini looks like."



And if you've been reading all the Arnold posts since Saturday (thank you), you'll be aware of my pet theory about Figure becoming ever more muscular during the period, and here's the latest update. Nicole Wilkins (winner for the third year in a row in 2012) is still nowhere near as muscular as her 2017 self, but compare her to 2010 (left) I think it's clear that she (and by association the whole division) is growing.



No change in the Fitness champion - Adela Garcia again - but if she was looking over her shoulder, she would have seen the future coming towards her in the shape of the woman who would become the next, even more dominant force in the division. 3rd was by far Oksana Grishina's best Fitness International placing at her 5th attempt - she had never previously finished higher than 5th, and had been a lowly 8th in 2011.



BRITISH INTEREST?



Yes! Also in pro Fitness, where Kizzy Vaines (pretty in pink, 7th) gained her best ever and Britain's best pro result at the Arnolds since the days of Gayle Moher.

Far From Routine: Ozzy's Evening Show

A little while back FMS asked you lovely readers what your "all-time favourite" routines were, and last month we brought you a week of those choices as well as some of our own selections. As noted at the time, it being summer and all, not every reader managed to get their choices to us in time to make the posts, so we promised we'd be revisiting the theme again in the future, and today that's what we're doing.

All selections (and text) are courtesy of Ozzy of Ozzy's Female Muscle fame. Not all of his choices are actual routines, but given the time and effort it must have taken him to put this all together, we've included all of his choices. I think you'll agree it all amounts to quite a fantasy show, and your seat has the best view in the house. Pace yourself!

Ozzy says: When I saw your question about what would be our best routines, I understood that as "What are the routines which I jerked off to the most?" Hard to choose, because I've unloaded a lot of cum watching a lot of competitions!

But these are mine, in no particular order.

COMPULSORIES

SHANNON COURTNEY
2013 NPC USA Championships

Unfortunately for us, there are not a lot of videos of Shannon on stage, so the few I have are like precious diamonds! In this one, as always, Shannon just exudes sex. The way she shows her ass is just totally insane!!! She knows perfectly well that at this moment every man in the room is going crazy watching those two huge pieces of hard meat! Hands just have to be in pockets... I hope they had a few tissues!




BRIGITA BREZOVAC
2011 IFBB Toronto Pro

We all know that Brigita is a cum factory. Her body, swollen with muscles, is a true hymn to masturbation. But when I first saw this routine, I couldn't believe what was in front of my dick! She's SO huge that her bra explodes!!! Boy, it was too much for me, almost like a dream come true... I had to change my pants immediately, and I still think it's one of the most exciting things I have seen on a stage.




ROUTINES

CHRISTINE ENVALL
2001 IFBB Championships (?)

It's just impossible to not have an insane hard-on watching Christine on stage, flexing her huge manly muscles. She just knows that she's a sex object, and she enjoys that! Her most muscular pose is probably the best in all the FBB world. I truly cannot count the times I jerked off watching her meaty pecs.




MARJA LEHTONEN
2001 Jan Tana Pro Classic

I couldn't do a list without putting Marja on it, but it's so hard to choose just one routine of hers! I mean, I've watched all of them, I know all of them, and I jerked off every time I saw a new one. But I finally decided to choose the first one I ever saw, the 2001 Jan Tana, because it was such an unbelievable shock to see this female for the first time. Again, I cannot count the times I've jerked off to this routines since 2001, I know it every detail of her moves, her expressions, and release anytime she flexes her insanely huge biceps!




ANDRULLA BLANCHETTE
1997 Ms Olympia

This was the very first video with muscular women I bought, and I guess you can imagine how many times I watched it! Hard to choose between all those sexy freaks who participated in this competition, because there were a lot of huge and sexy ladies: Kim Chizevsky, Nancy Lewis, Sue Myers... But almost every time it was Andrulla who won. I just know her routines perfectly, her moves to the music, her expressions, even after all these years, releasing after she's on the floor, shaking her huuuge quads, and she hits a double bideps pose... Cum!!!




CINDY PHILLIPS
2006 CBBF Canadian Championships

I remember perfectly the first time I saw this video. I immediately thought: "Wow, that's the most erotic thing I've ever seen!" and, of course, just after, I jerked off like a madman. Cindy has always be one of my faves, and in this routine, I think she's at her best. I dreamed of her so much... I was truly obsessed by her!




GINA DAVIS
2004 NPC Nationals

Another great routine, so much better than any porn, the huuuge and sexy Gina on stage! Her smile, her attitude, her body... All of it just gives me an insane boner! The way she moves, slow and cocky, I guess she can hear the sound of the loads in the room, the moans of pleasure of the lucky bastards who were there at the time! Lucky bastards who will always be able to say "Yes, I was there, and I jerked off!"




I could, Ozzy adds, go on for hours and add Denise Rutkowski, Heather Armbrusst, Yaxeni Oriquen... but I think we are all grateful for his selections as they are, and maybe a little thankful that he didn't go on.

I, for one, need to get some fluids on board.

If you haven't sent your own selections in yet, please don't think you're too late, send them in (with or without text) to the usual email address: 6ft1swell@gmail.com

Thanks to Ozzy for a great show with a great commentary!

All the clips in a rar here.

Obsessions New & Old

What, I wondered as I first thought about this week's selections, are my particular female muscle obsessions? You would think I'd know after roughly 30 years. Two key points were easy to identify. One, "The New", I expanded on on Tuesday, and the other will be dealt with on Saturday. Apart from that, I had a few assumptions.



Abs would surely have to be one, but then a glance at the most numerous labels over the last five years or so revealed that I'd made more posts concerning Biceps.




What goes on backstage would have to be another. As someone who's never been to a show, let alone been granted entry to a pump room (aka the holiest of holies), I guess it could be something about the attraction of the forbidden. Perhaps I'm so obsessed with backstage pics and clips because I know it's the closest I'll ever get. Perhaps it's the knowledge that nowhere on Earth is there a greater density of female muscle.



And it doesn't even have to be the big girls. I can get excited about just about any backstage clip, including Bikini. As long as there's pumping and flexing and tanning and oiling, I'm all over it. Below is a recent example of a fine bit of backstage camera work. Mostly it's the Figure pros. Diana Schnaidt is just one of many highlights.



And while we're on the subject of the Figure ladies, there's a somewhat newer obsession I appear to have developed, regarding their lack of flexing on stage and their obvious desire to flex the hell out of their muscles almost all of the rest of the time. It started a couple of years ago when Alicia Coates flexed her biceps at the Olympia...



Since then I've been monitoring the amount of gratuitous flexing ladies of the Figure division do when their not on stage at contests - in, for example, the pump room. Seems to me it's a lot. As much as possible in fact, but it doesn't end there. What about when they get interviewed after they win? Again, there's a lot. Really.

Take for example the lovely Stephanie Rowe, interviewed below by Ashley Adams for HD Physiques. Now Stephanie, as all women with muscle seem to me to do, gesticulates a lot during the interview. Inadvertent flexing you might call it, just keep your eyes on the arm closest to you. But then, as is customary at the end of these interviews, Stephanie shows us a pose (for the impatient, it's at 2.20). A Figure pose.

Can Stephanie resist giving us another kind of pose as well? Can she f**k?!



So, I obsessively wonder, does this mean that Alicia and Stephanie would like to do a bit more flexing on stage? Are all Figure ladies, or at least the ones who post themselves flexing, fully-pumped on their IG feeds day after day after day, frustrated flexers? Is the only cure a move up to Physique à la Shanique Grant?


Shanique, Figure (left), and flexing

Perhaps. But for the classiest competitors, the fact that they don't get to do the double biceps or the side chest or the abs and thigh doesn't stop them sneaking a sneaky flex into their "presentations". And the best example of this I've found this year has got to be the ever-classy Cydney Gillon winning at the Miami Muscle Beach Pro. Check out the cheeky, blink-and-you-miss-it rewind-no-I-didn't-imagine-it tricep flex at 0.24.



Obsessed? Yes I am!



In an effort to bring some sort of sanity to this post, I wondered if the blog labels would reveal obsession with particular women. The top five were both predictable and surprising. Alina has more posts dedicated to her than any other woman - predictable. Lisa Cross comes a close second - also predictable, given that I'm a Brit and am ever so slightly obsessed with Lisa. Shannon in fourth and Marthe and Margie tied for 5th - also predictable. But I was genuinely surprised to find that my third most written about woman was the much-missed Slovenian she-beast Brigita Brezovac.



I don't regret a single post, I just wouldn't have counted Brigita among my top five of the past five years if you'd asked. And I guess that just goes to show how little I know! Possibly though it has something to do with the fact that the tip top number one label is "Muscle", and there can be no doubt at all that Brigita always had plenty of that.



And so, to another of my lasting obsessions. No, it's not the tongue, or the outfit - although in the case of that clip neither of those things hurt - it's the walk.

Honestly, I think if I ever saw a female bodybuilder, a real female bodybuilder, especially one who I recognised, out in public walking along the street, well, I think I would probably just keep on following her until I was either confronted, arrested, or had a door of some sort slammed in my face. I could watch clips of female bodybuilders walking all day. Every day. And I'm so enamoured by them that if a longer clip starts off with a walk before fading into something else, I'm gutted.



As George Harrison sang, something in the way she moves...

Right. Time to get this over with. I've already probably given the impression I am, if not mentally deranged, super-creepy. But if you share any of these obsessions, or indeed others - glutes, Brazilians, Brazilian glutes, Dani Reardon, female muscle hand bras, extreme vascularity, that bulge - then I'm sure we'd have something to talk about if we met at a place that has become another of my obsessions, the Girls with Muscle chat room. Look out for 6ft1swell joining the chat and say hello.

Or get the hell out of there sharpish. Your call.

Rolling Thunder 075-088

QUEEN OF QUADS



Time to bow down again. The Queen of Quads and the Bringer of Quadgasms dresses up in her "official" costume for our penultimate day of quadtastic Rolling Thunder...

(KNOCKIN' ME OUT WITH THOSE) BRAZILIAN THIGHS



1. LUCIANA ANDRADE



From the archive, Rio's fondly-remembered Luciana Andrade and her Brazilian thunder thighs. It wasn't that long ago that Luciana was on our screens and in our female muscle lovin' heads, but they were very different times - and I'm not talking about download speeds or clip resolutions. In Brazil, Luciana said at the peak of her fame, there is not much opportunity for female bodybuilders to get sponsors. And as a result, like other Brazilian muscle pioneers such as Monica Martin and Larissa Reis, she made her home in the USA. It's indicative of the extent of the rise of Brazilian female muscle that this would cerainly not be a necessary career move these days.

CLOSE-UPs

MARIA LUISA BAEZA DIAZ



Now I'm not the biggest fan of the Figure, but when I get to the time to sit down and watch the best the division has to offer strut their stuff, I'm always impressed by just how much muscle these women actually carry, not least Chile's (as far as I know only) Olympian, Maria Luisa. Watch her in action at this year's Olympia here - she's up first after the black screen at about 1.50. Sadly her walk-on, which is kind of the best bit for appreciating her thighs, is missing, but luckily you can appreciate Maria Luisa (and her thighs) from all kinds of angles in this Violate the Dress Code photo shoot clip.

REMEMBER MY NAME!

VICTORIA QUADROS



Now I did know that there are Iniut tribes who name their children according to their characteristics as an infant, but I didn't know it happened in Brazil too! Quadros. And it's not (as far as I can ascertain) a nom de fer, either, but her real surname. Sticking it through Google Translate, I was disappointed to find that it doesn't actually mean "girl with enormous quadriceps", but "pictures", "paintings", "frames" or "tables" (like cuadros in Spanish). But as languages are constantly evolving, who's to say what quadros might mean when this thigh phenomenon is finished with her evolution?!



Victoria's only 20 now, so there's plenty of evolution to come. And you can follow the most aptly-named woman in Porto Alegre on her Facebook and/or Instagram.

THIGHLIGHT

EMMA SUE



The forgotten beautiful beefcake of British female muscle, Emma Sue only competed twice as a pro after winning the (then) EBBF Championships in 1999. Those were the days! Jaw-droppingly huge women everywhere, and British female bodybuilders could get their pro cards by winning their national title. She was last seen at the NY Pro in 2010 (below), and you can watch her routine from that show with commentary by her sister - who, among other things, puts Emma's funkiness down to the fact that "she goes clubbing with her daughter all the time". Imagine walking into a club and finding Emma throwing shapes on the dancefloor... Maybe I should resurrect my DJing career!



But those gorgeous muscles weren't just for show on the stage and the dance floor though, as this clip of Emma shoulder pressing 100kg on each side demonstrates, she was a seriously super strong British Amazon. And there's quite a bit more of Emma in action on her YouTube page, and she's also on Facebook, updated (for the first time in two years) at the end of September with a request for info as to where she could find "that perfect warehouse" in South London in order to open a gym. Which kind of makes me think I should probably move back to South London with my dusted off decks...

CHLOE SANNITO



Chloe Sannito is going to be a competitor to watch in the NPC Figure Division, Physique Posing reckoned in April 2014. Leg development in any physique sport is the determinant of the best conditioning, the hardest worker, the one paying attention to the details. Chloe Sannito had the best legs I’d seen all summer, they added. And at the time of the show they were talking about, Chloe was just 17! By the end of the night, the buzz was all about Chloe Sannito, "the teen figure girl". Chloe's 19 now, still a teenage Figure phenomemon, and the buzz shows no sign of dying down.

You can read the full piece on Physique Posing and watch Chloe tell her own story at the bottom of that page. Contest galleries of her first competition and her 2014 triumph at the NPC Chicago Ironman are available for your viewing pleasure here and here respectively. And she's on Instagram, and has been filmed by Fit Vids.

Those thighs ain't getting any smaller. And nor is the rest of her!

(KNOCKIN' ME OUT WITH THOSE) BRAZILIAN THIGHS



2. CINARA POLIDO



Who am I? asks Cinara on her latest blog post. She calls herself a "Sports Consultant", an expert in the preparation of athletes for bodybuilding shows and in nutrition and training "for any purpose". She began weight training herself in 2000, and first competed in 2008. After a two-year break she competed again, and the last couple of years have seen her achieve spectacular results. In fact, since winning the NABBA Brazil title in 2013, she hasn't ever finished outside the top 3 in an international NABBA show, and is the reigning NABBA World Trained Figure (ie. Physique) champion.



On FMS passim, we've tended to get hypnotised by another part of Cinara's lower body, her spectacular glutes, but revisiting those clips now, it's hard to believe we missed how equally spectacular her thighs are. Marvel at how they come to life when she flexes down on them, each individual muscle rippling in glorious definition.



Now there might not be any beating "Quadros" as a name for a Brazilian female bodybuilder, but as I had the page open, I couldn't resist running polido through it as well. And the translation (would you believe?) is "polished". She's Ms Polished. Pretty apt as well I think you will agree, because "polished" is exactly how Cinara has looked every single time I've had the fortune to watch one of her NABBA performances.



And I expect we will next see Cinara at the NABBA Universe at the end of October, and I certainly wouldn't bet against Ms Polished adding that title to her World crown.

QUADS IN MOTION

And we leave you today, shakin' all over, with Brigita...

Enjoy!