FMS Hearts the WPD Olympians: Gloria

Relax. Physique is Lightweight, Middleweight and Light-heavyweight Bodybuilding in disguise, or at least that's what it has turned out to be, despite the complaints of some of the (less muscular) Physique women themselves. And until the IFBB/NPC bigwigs do see their plans to "tone it down by 10-15%" come to fruition, that means there's lots and lots of beautiful female muscle in the division, especially when the cream gather as they did in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. Yes of course we miss the Ms O, but that didn't stop us enjoying the Physique Olympia, and all this week on FMS we're going to be paying tribute to these spectacular, muscular women.

So relax, get comfy, and enjoy!

"GLORIAOUS" GLORIA FAULLS


Gloria at the check-in and on stage at her Olympia debut

In any large field it's easy to 'get lost' or 'fall through the cracks' during the judging round, but when you're 5'9" and weigh a beautifully proportioned 150 pounds those chances are greatly diminished. And so it was with Gloria Faulls...
Steve Wennerstrom on the IFBB Puerto Rico Pro, June 2015

GLORIA'S PROGRESS...



top: winning her pro card at the 2011 North Americans (left) and at the Toronto Pro in 2012
bottom: (left) Gloria at the New York Pro 2013, and the Greater Gulf States last year

I'd bet that Gloria Faulls was not the most familiar name in the Olympia line-up to most fans. Her rise to the top of the WPD tree has been slow and steady, her Olympia debut representing the culmination of ten years' worth of hard work and constant incremental improvement. She started out in Bodybuilding - "my passion" as she calls it - five or six years before the Physique division was even created, competing in NABBA shows at first, and trained by the much more familiar name of Vilma Caez.

In 2010 she moved over to the NPC, and won both the Muscle Beach show in 2010 and the New Jersey State in 2011 as a Bodybuilder before switching to Physique to earn her pro card at the IFBB North Americans in the same year and making her pro debut at the 2012 Toronto Pro, where she finished a creditable 8th. For the rest of that year and on into 2013 and 2014, she enjoyed an (almost) unbroken series of top 6 finishes without ever placing higher than 4th. 2015, she decided, would be different. This year I will be bringing a new package and top 5 is no longer the goal, she said. It's WIN!



Gloria on stage in San Juan, Puerto Rico - her first win as a pro

Having come close in New York, where she was runner-up to Michelle Cummings, Gloria didn't have long to wait before she had achieved her stated goal. Faulls was polished, finely conditioned, and with muscle groups that were proportionate and well-shaped throughout her entire structure, Steve Wennerstrom reckoned in his review of the show. Put simply, she made no mistakes in her prep.


Gloria v.2015 - a few weeks out from the New York Pro

Through all those hard years of competition, prepping over and over again was paying off, Gloriaously. And having qualified for what would be her first Olympia as early in the season as May, Gloria had time enough to get her prep spot on once more. Nothing was left to chance. She was even having regular massages to correct small - to these untrained eyes imperceptible - imbalances in her posture. Although I can obviously appreciate the masseur's (enviable) view of her beautifully detailed back (below).


Apparently, NOT perfect - just imagine getting PAID to dig your fingers right into that!

So despite her name perhaps not being on too many radars as a possible high finisher, Gloria arrived at the Olympia with a 2015 contest record few could match. And though she said after arriving in Vegas that it was "the thrill of a lifetime to be here with so many beautiful WPD sisters", with so many years experience behind her, Gloria's was never going to be a nervous, "rabbit in the headlights" kind of debut.



GLORIA'S OLYMPIA...




And so it proved. As gorgeous and well-prepared as ever, Gloria hit her poses with great poise, looked totally comfortable on that big stage, confident in herself that she absolutely belonged among the elite of her sport, and showing the audience and the judges why. She was never going to "fall through the cracks" at the Olympia. Even I could see that, but more importantly the judges saw it too, placing her 7th.




Don't ever think for a second that your dreams can't come true, she effusively told her Facebook followers after the Olympia. No matter how crazy people tell you you are, if you work hard enough and want it bad enough you can do anything. And Gloria would know. She's just a year older than Juliana Malacarne, whose career was much less impressive than Gloria's before it all went boom a few years ago. I certainly wouldn't bet against Gloria's career doing something similar in the very near future.



Oh, and in case you are wondering what motivated Gloria to get fit in the first place, it was the bullying she experienced at school in her hometown of Philadelphia. I very much doubt those same bullies would think about taking her on now...



You can follow Gloria on Facebook and Instagram, and if you like your muscle women with a super East coast accent (as opposed to, for example, Autumn Swansen's Southern fried brogue that we swooned to on Sunday), then I totally recommend you watch (and listen to) Gloria's fifteen-minute "A Day in the Life" clip on YouTube.

The same channel brings us to a close today with Gloria a day and a half before she took to the stage in Las Vegas. Dedication in (seriously hard and vascular) action.



Enjoy!

More Muscle?

In Dallas last weekend, a blast from the past took her first pro title in the Women's Physique division. She competed in NPC Bodybuilding until about 2009, and, as far as I know, has always been known by just the one name: Yasha.



The thing that struck me as I checked out the pics from the contest is that Yasha has got a lot of muscle going on right there. And as I checked out the women who finished in 2nd, 3rd, and so on, it became clear that the judges had given the title to the most muscular woman on stage. The woman who most resembled a "bodybuilder".



Have you just spat your breakfast cereal all over yourself? Are you about to send me a picture of Anne, Christine or Mmmmmonique with the subject line "This Is a Bodybuilder Fool!"? I have been spending a fair bit of time in the FMS archive recently with the so-called "old school" bodybuilders of yore, so I am prepared to accept that I may just be comparing Yasha to a somewhat outdated idea of a "bodybuilder", but I am not alone in having noticed the muscle and making that comparison.

I am so CONFUSED!!! wrote FMS fave (and Hot and Hard 100 #26) Valerie Garcia Giovanoli after the Dallas show. Congratulations to Andrea Calhoun (left, below) who just won 1st in Figure in Dallas and to Yasha who won 1st in Physique at the same show. I think both women are incredible, BUT, am I the only one confused as shit about what the IFBB wants from physique?!? Yasha would have won a pro Women's Bodybuilding competition any other year. This is not what we have come to expect from the new Women's Physique category. Am I the only one who switched over and has been pounding away at the weights without restraint, finally happy I can train the way I want without worrying I'll be 'too muscular' for Figure?



None of my training is going to allow me to compete with a female bodybuilder's physique! I am happy to see more muscle being rewarded in figure... But then that crap confuses me too!!! I am currently prepping for the Wings of Strength show in August, and now I don't even know where I fit in: Figure or Physique?

I read Valerie's rant and I thought back to last year's NPC Nationals when Valerie won her class and her pro card and how she compared with another pro card winner that day, Marcie Simmons, who had been awarded the overall title as well.



Marcie was easily more muscular than Valerie at that show, but she was also the most muscular woman in any class on that stage. She had the biggest muscles and the best conditioning, so those big muscles were also the most defined. In short, she was the most like a "bodybuilder", and this was noted at the time, both by FMS and by commentators who know much more about these things than I do.



And it's not just in the Stateside pro shows this seems to be happening. Meanwhile, as we saw yesterday, over here in Europe Cristina Goy Arellano has been packing on more muscle for this contest season. And the judges have rewarded her.



Cris wasn't the only lady at the Europeans who was displaying some serious muscle. Running her a very close second in the taller class was a woman completely new to me - the arrestingly pectacular Liudmila Goshko from Russia.



Before anyone else gets in with it, I'll say it myself: Oh my Goshko!



I often describe freakishly ripped muscle women - probabaly so often it's boring - as being all skin and muscle or some such. Well, with Liudmila, I'll take that description even further because it looks to me as if she's dispensed with the skin on those glorious pecs altogether, like she's had it surgically removed or something. So insane is the amount of detail that it's like the pro tan is applied directly onto the muscle!

Of course, it isn't all medals and wins for the more muscular Physique competitor. Though she and Liudmila muscled up the taller class, Cris ultimately lost out in the overall posedown to the less muscular (although probably better-conditioned and balanced blah blah) package of Lithuania's Alina Cepurniene.



And a random selection of some of this year's pro Physique winners on the IFBB circuit also demonstrates that while one show might throw up a winner who is more at the "bodybuilding" end of the Physique spectrum, on a different weekend in a different place, a Physique look that leans more towards Figure will get the judges' nod.




Top left is the less muscular look of Toronto Pro winner Ceaanna Kerr, and next to her we have ex-bodybuilder and new New York Pro winner Michelle Cummings. And you can check out Michelle's last outing in Women's Bodybuilding from Tampa in 2013 and see for yourself how little difference there is in her look. Then bottom left is the Orlando champion Ayanna Carroll, muscular for sure, but smoother and not as muscular as the bigger and more defined Puerto Rico Pro winner Gloria Faulls.

It's easy to see why Valerie is confused. All this inconsistent judging. Competitors not knowing what kind of package the judges at the next show will decide to give the top places to. Hang on! That sounds just like the situation in Women's Bodybuilding!!!

But there was no confusion at all at the recent NABBA Worlds because...

Drum roll...

The big girls were back!

After a one-year hiatus when it seemed NABBA had gone the way of most federations and jettisoned Women's Bodybuilding (which in NABBA-speak is Physique) at its premier event outside the UK, true bodybuilders returned to flex their muscles in those beloved NABBA-style thong posing suits in Malta last weekend.

The winner was the Czech Karolina Borkovcova (who is probably more familiar to readers under her previous guise of Karolina Holubcova). Sit back and dig the muscle as you watch Karolina's utterly glute-tasic - and winning - routine.



You can see much much more of the contest on the NABBA YouTube channel.

Enjoy!