(More) Summer Lovin': Sizzler

Not an "official" Sunday Sizzler, but it is Sunday and this woman is volcano hot, so...

Kim is one half of "The Dynamic Duo", a couple "working on their fitness" and documenting that work on their shared Instagram. Don't be scared though, I say "shared", but you could count the pics that feature Mike on one hand, while you'll need more than one hand to count the pics of his hot and hard better half posted today.

We're posting just the one.



We think it'll make you want to see more...

Enjoy!

Summer and Summer Lovin' ends here. FMS is back to normal tomorrow.

(More) Summer Lovin': That Intellectual Look

A few years ago an old friend of mine (real not online), very successful in his field of business, decided he was going to get himself some glasses. He didn't need to wear them, there was, and as far as I know still is, absolutely nothing wrong with his vision. He just felt he needed to look a bit more intellectual in meetings, where he was often up against guys who "just looked so f***ing intelligent" with their specs on.



There's quite a lot of him in C. Moore Glootz - the bluster, the sideways point of view, the egocentricity (not that he isn't a lovely guy underneath all that!). Strangely though, some recent research reported in the UK media has suggested that not only was my old friend correct in thinking wearing glasses makes you look smarter, but also that there may actually be a link between having poor eyesight and being intelligent.




Research commissioned by Scrivens Opticians & Hearing Care and carried out by OnePoll.com found one third believe spectacle wearers look more intellectual than those who don't have prescription eyewear. The research also found 32 per cent of glasses wearers think they are perceived 'differently' when they wear glasses.
[The Sun, 31 January 2018]


Built to last: Gaby Quiros is smart enough to find the Corinth Canal

A new study published in the journal Nature Communications has found that needing to wear glasses is associated with higher levels of intelligence. In the study, the largest of its kind ever conducted, researchers from the University of Edinburgh analyzed cognitive and genetic data from over 300,000 people aged between 16 and 102 that had been gathered by the UK Biobank and the Charge and Cogent consortia. Their analysis found “significant genetic overlap between general cognitive function, reaction time, and many health variables including eyesight, hypertension, and longevity”. Specifically, people who were more intelligent were almost 30% more likely to have genes which might indicate they’d need to wear glasses.
[The Guardian, 30 May 2018]



Whether what's brought it on is the (sometime) glasses wearing Swoon of the Year Shannon Seeley, or my recent deep exploration of Amanda Machado's Instagram, or something else entirely, over the last couple of weeks I've been actively searching for and collecting images of bespectacled muscular beauties for FMS.


Jana Beeckman makes sure everything matches

Am I entering some kind of brawn plus brains period?


Rachael Chaskey has read at least one book

Anecdotal evidence on the forums abounds with suggestions that some muscle women are, in fact, just as "meat-headed" as (I imagine all) male BBs (to be). I've never seen FBBs as anything less than brilliantly intelligent simply because they've chosen right, chosen the correct answer if you like - a life devoted to Bodybuilding.



So I dismiss that kind of forum chatter. For one thing, there are the actually academically qualified and professionally high-achieving types (see below), but what about Cory Everson, who plotted a career into the mainstream that remains unrivalled? What about Denise Masino or Lisa Cross or Brandi Mae Akers, who have turned their talents to money-making via muscle erotica? What about Emery Miller, chatting away to her fans on cam and managing to be engaging and apparently knowledgeable across a wide range of subjects? The most popular Female Bodybuilders, more often than not it seems to me, appeal not only to our baser physical instincts, but can also reach the largest of erogenous zones - our brains.


Doctor Alex Mossbarger

In a thread called "Female Bodybuilders with a High IQ", Bettina Kadet (now Salomone) (optometrist), Kathy Connors (well-read, knew "an impressive amount" about a minor African conflict according to a head who met her), Cerra Aredia (lawyer), Dina Al Sabah (polyglot, BSc, MSc, MBA), Dr. Michelle Neil, Dr. Dena Westerfield, Heather Darling ("accomplished" lawyer), the late great Renee O'Neil (BSc, MSc, missile defence program director), Chris Lydon (did Neurobiology and French, then graduated from Yale Medical School before discovering Bodybuilding), and, of course, Kristy Hawkins (chemist) all get shout outs.



None of them - as far as I know - are famous for wearing specs though...




Neither are many of the women we've featured today, and some I was genuinely surprised to find wearing glasses - Cass Martin, for example, Michaela Aycock, Ashlee Potts, and Megan Elizabeth Colvin. Only one or two - Paige Sandgren being the obvious example - are more commonly seen with than without eyewear, and much of Paige's geeky-girl-next-door appeal stems from that very fact.



Do the rest of them know what my old friend worked out and the later research confirmed (sort of) - that glasses really do make you look more intelligent?



It's win-win as far as I can tell. If they really do need to wear the glasses then research shows they are likely to be have clever genes anyway. And even if they are wearing them solely for effect, well that just shows how smart they are too. Either way my suspicions are confirmed. Muscle women are as brainy as they are beautiful.



Enjoy!

(More) Summer Lovin': Summer of Ashley

Last seen on stage at the Tampa Pro, Ashley Hromyak clearly knows how to do summer - between the sets, obviously, her Tampa package probably her best ever.

She rides an inflatable unicorn...



And she LOVES paddleboarding...



I do like the way she grips the shaft of that paddle...




[enough! - ed.]

Killjoy.



Ashley on Instagram

Enjoy!

Woman of the Week: Amanda Machado

Every time I lift it's just as intense and spiritual as the best night of sex I ever had.
Amanda Machado



The first sight of Amanda Machado we can remember was late last year. She wasn't, as you can see above, wearing much more than a coat of Protan. Oh, how we swooned!



Turns out, however, that Amanda doesn't have to wearing nothing to have her effect on us. Fully-clothed will do equally as well. Now perhaps that's because we know, and she knows we know - note the smirk, you'll be seeing a lot of that - what's underneath that classy outfit, but also because of what we she wants us to read while we look at her smirking in her suit: I just love bossy women, she writes. I could be around them all day. To me, "bossy" is not a pejorative term at all. It means somebody's passionate and engaged and ambitious - willing to do all it takes to learn and grow.

We swoon again. She's so ALPHA!



Since trailblazers Larissa Reis and Monica Martin left home and relocated to the US, there's been a steady stream of Brazilian muscle women who have followed in their thundersteps. Amanda has been in the US for seventeen years, and - so far - she's one of the more successful, not just in the sport, but also - unsurprisingly - in life as well.



Having settled in Los Angeles, she's a manager at Otium - a restaurant whose dishes have "elegant rusticity", according to their website. A classy place, worthy of Amanda - until she outgrows it anyway. She reads books like Conscious Capitalism, she goes to the opera, and she's currently developing her own thing - Mind of Athletes, though I have to admit exactly what her mission is with it is ever so slightly beyond me.



AND she has a physique to die for.

To be frank, I've decided that the only thing preventing Amanda from being my perfect woman is her location relative to me, and I'm devising a plan to rectify that by firstly retraining as a chef, opening my own (acclaimed) restaurant, and then moving heaven and earth to tempt her to manage it. (I was joking when I started that sentence but now I've finished it I'm rather curious how feasible that actually is.)



Bodybuilding is not my life, says Amanda. It is part of my life. And as [with] everything I commit to do; it has to be consistent, challenging, rewarding, and fun.



Since she started competing in the US last year, she's done three shows and won three times. She won her class at the NPC Ferrigno Legacy Championships last November, and won again at the MuscleContest Excalibur the following month. Her goal for 2018 was a pro card, though of course - this is Amanda Machado - it went a bit deeper than that: The professional card is symbolic, she explains. The idea here is not only to achieve professional level status, but to take the body and mind to such an extreme of discipline and dedication that I can achieve anything I set my mind on.



As if these Alpha brasileiras needed any help, the NPC are now bringing the pro cards to them! And for her first contest of 2018, Amanda's mind was set on a return to her homeland - check it out, on top of everything else she's the coolest/hottest vaqueira imaginable! - and last weekend's NPC MuscleContest Brazil pro qualifier in São Paulo.




It may not surprise you to hear - given all we've learned about Amanda today - that she is now an IFBB pro. Just another step on her road to total world domination.



Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'm about to swoon all over the place.

Get your own on here and with Amanda's (intense) Instagram. Divertir-se!

Tampa: Tease

I'm writing this last Friday, and the female muscle meat feast that is the Tampa Pro is already under way. As well as a host of other images from in and around the show, photos from the Figure and Physique prejudging are already up on NPC News Online. The line-ups in those divisions are truly immense, 35 Physique Dreams and a mind-boggling 49 Figure Phenoms. We're all going to be busy over the next few days!



I was pleased to notice a good few Figure competitors insisting on putting cheeky and/or downright brazen flexing into their presentations. Julie Mayer, who we enjoyed recently at the LA Pro, went for the cheeky tricep flex while transitioning between front and side-on poses - known in my house as "The Gillon", after Cyd, who was the first competitor I ever noticed doing this. Amber Eutsey, meanwhile, just went ahead and flexed her bicep. Boom! If it was up to me, that would automatically make her the champion. Sadly, or thankfully depending on your viewpoint, it isn't.



In the Physique division, Autumn Swansen didn't just look good after her make-up had been applied by Jamie Pinder - now there's a hotel room this boy would have liked to have been on the inside of. She looked pretty amazing on stage as well.



How the judges decide among so many women is beyond me. My brain, and possibly other parts of my body too, would simply explode under such a female muscle barrage. Would it, I wonder, be helpful to have some sort of pre-prejudging at the check-in? It might encourage fewer baggy, muscle-hiding tops and more beautiful figure-revealing dresses at least. Kendyl Seawright and Maggie Watson would have claimed an early advantage on Swell's (sticky) Figure scorecard if so.



But for all the Figure and Physique fun, Tampa has, in recent years, established itself as the greatest FBB show on earth outside of the Rising Phoenix. I'm not quite sure it's going to have the sort of line-up we've delighted in before - no Sheila Bleck, no Virginia Sanchez, for example. And apparently no Angie Salvagno either.



This was Angie, looking exciting and feeling excited a week and a half ago. Can’t wait to finally compete again after 7 years!!!! she told her IG following. Since then, however, not a peep from the normally hyper-active Angie, and as there's not a single pic of her at the athlete's meeting or check-in or anywhere else I can find, I'm assuming something has happened to stop her being at the show and I'm hoping that she's all OK.



Alina's there though - competing, not just Wings of Strength cheerleading. No doubt who Annie'll be rooting for. It's been a while since she's got her hands on Alina!



And surely the contest will be between the great uncrowned and Britain's finest (and runner-up in 2016 and 2017) Lisa Cross - a woman who never turns up to the check-in in anything less than a beautiful tight dress. It's a measure of Lisa's progress over the last few years and how far Alina's shooting star has fallen since she had her injury worries that I am talking about them as rivals for the same title, and I say that fully aware that by the time you read this it will be apparent if I have got it badly wrong!



So I cunningly distract you from the previous paragraph with the help of Irene Andersen enjoying the Florida sunshine. Such incredible muscle mass - I bet the water level fell quite considerably when Irene hauled herself out of there.

Tampa. It'll already have happened by the time you read this, but as I write it's only just begun. To say I am a little bit excited would be something of an understatement - though even I am not quite as excited as Ashley Hromyak seems to be...



Enjoy!