Woman of the Week: Slava Galagan

She juxtaposes the seemingly incompatible: she has the shape of a seriously built amazon and the face of the prettiest, most innocent girl. Long shiny dark hair, big eyes with curly lashes and a charming smile somehow go along with the widest shoulders. (Vasilina Pazdnikova, "Vladislava Galagan, the Female Bodybuilder")



Not me gushing, but a female admirer, a would-be journalist and student at the Anglo-American University in Prague, where "Slava" (as she is more commonly known) was enrolled for a while. But it could have been written (though perhaps not so well) by pretty much any of the many female muscle heads who have fallen under her spell.


Young(er) Slava, already "selecting outfits that make sure her achievements don’t go unnoticed"

A teenage athlete, she had first found beauty in female muscle at local meets. There were girls in good shape with beautiful leg muscles, she says. If I saw them now I wouldn't be so impressed, but at that time, at 16, they amazed me. Weight training not only improved her as an athlete, it gradually became her obsession in life.



Slava is, like her Prague-based trainer Olha Zhelamska, originally from Russia. Specifically, she hails from what she calls "a tiny town in the God-forsaken Taman Peninsula" (which, if your Russian geography isn't all that it should be, is about as close as you can get to eastern Crimea without actually being in it), and it was there she first began to dream of becoming a pro FBB. I was on the phone with my ex-boyfriend while scrolling through Bodyfitness models on the Internet, she explains. Suddenly, as though something or someone inside me had put the words there, I thought: 'I know what I want to do with my life'. Item #1 on the agenda was escape from Taman...



Relocating to Prague gave her freedom from a family who failed to understand (and support) her. She became financially independent as well, but the demands of being a student and being a bodybuilder proved incompatible. Happily, she ditched the former. Bodybuilding requires a lot of investment, she says. I had to work and train. Studying was just too much. I loved it, but it stood in the way of my dream.



And one part of that dream was realised last week when she stood on stage for the first time at the IFBB Diamond Cup in Malta. Not as one of those Bodyfitness models she had been scrolling through when she had that epiphany, but in the Physique division. She was the Physique division actually, all of it. Perhaps not quite as she had dreamt it then, but still... Best experience ever! she told her Instagram followers. Even though I was the only one, I still stepped on the stage. It’s always so hard the first time.



Yep, she's already planning to do it again. And that is very good news for the female muscle lovin' community because, although a very select few have had her on their radar since late 2016, it has only been during the prep for her contest debut that Slava has really made a name for herself. And she's really made a name for herself.



On top of all that single-minded dedication (which is always a winner), she's an "Amazonian" 5'9", has the looks of "a buffer Aspen Rae", and has made the kind of progress every head with a 22-year-old skinny but athletic girlfriend dreams of on a nightly basis. To say Slava has slayed us all is (not easy but) no understatement.



We don't seem to be able to decide whether "to look into her eyes or at her pecs" for one thing. She is "huge, but still cute as a button", "growing like a weed", and "her sex appeal is off the charts". It's been said she is "the future of bodybuilding", and "the future sexiest woman on Earth". The reply to which was, predictably: "She already is."



It is, apparently, almost impossible not to get a bit carried away (as you gaze into those big brown eyes or at those beautiful beefy arms). Her student interviewer felt it, FMS is very much feeling it, and her fans, including her 20,000+ Instagram followers (Angelica Enberg and Yeon Woo Jhi among them) are no doubt feeling it too.



I build this dream, she says. I never had a doubt. Good, but by no means 100% perfect English. And that is both something of a relief and perfectly excusable considering just about everything else about Slava Galagan is, apparently, absolutely perfect.



Enjoy!

January Clearance! [V-Z]

"Too many to feature here" is a phrase I seem to have typed a lot over the past year, referring to the vast number of women and/or images the female muscle head is faced with in these instant information times. On the upside, you never go short. The downside for the blogger is there are far too many to feature here - there I go again.

It felt wrong just to forget about the women we intended to feature at some stage during 2017 but didn't. Firstly, the fact they have come to our attention at all is the result of some pretty solid sifting by the FMS research team, and it would just be plain rude to ignore all that hard work. And secondly, it's not the case that we once thought these women were worth posting about and don't anymore - we still do.

The solution we came up with is The FMS January Clearance - we're going to feature all the women who are taking up space in the "TBC" folder on the 2017 planner. And you're getting them all together in a sort of but not really alphabetical order (you'll see what I mean). Further your enjoyment by clicking on the names.

Welcome to our final selection!


VIKA POGRIBNIAK



I do remember Vika almost making it onto the blog last spring, when just before she took 3rd at the European Championships a plethora of pics went up on the forums of her looking very hard and veiny. Throw in a few clips of Vika teasing us with her charms, and the combination of freaky vascularity and "irresistible girliness" was the cue for a mini fan hysteria, which, although brief, was hysteria nonetheless.



Despite appearances to the contrary though, the 2016 Ukrainian Bodyfitness champ is quite a bit more womanly than you might think, and is in fact going to be 30 this year.



Vika certainly seems to love showing it off, and that confidence (/arrogance) is also apparent in her contest shots, I think. She looks very comfortable and very happy up there. You wouldn't know the Europeans was her first international competition.


WENDY GRANADOS



Good Venezuelan news stories have been hard to come by in the last year, but for Wendy Granados, 2017 was as good as it gets. She was South American Bodyfitness champ as long ago as 2014, but in 2017 she added three more titles to her collection, including the Overall titles at the NAC and Amateur Olympia South America.



The above was FMS' introduction to Wendy, and the staff toilet was a tad busy for a while after it did the office rounds. Just another reminder that I will probably get arrested for indecent exposure if I ever get to stroll along a South American beach.



An essential IG follow.


KRISTA WHARTON



Another Figure competitor, and another different look.



Krista actually came pretty close to winning a pro card in 2016 with a 3rd place at the Jr USAs. Despite winning her class at the amateur show that takes place around the Tampa Pro, she only just made the top 6 at the IFBB North Americans in 2017.



Still, when your transformation story is as complete as Krista's, every day must feel like a win. Three years it has taken her to go from the lady on the left to the goddess on the right. And she's not finished yet. I love the sport even more now than I did when it was all brand new and exciting, she says. And my goals are so much bigger now!


YVETTE AGOCS



Another of the seemingly endless supply of muscular Hungarian women who come to our attention through the work of the mighty Zoltan Veigh, Yvette Agocs has only recently started to crop up on the forums, and we know next to nothing about her.




But we do like the direction she's heading in!


OLHA ZHELAMSKA



Our 35th and final never-seen-before-on-FMS tribute is to the Physique dream and EVLS Prague Amateur champ Olha (or Olya or Olga) Zhelamska (or Zhelamskaya) (depending on where you are searching - such confusion is exactly the sort of thing that prevents us bringing you women like Olha/Olya/Olga sooner you know).



She is, we think, originally from Russia but is now pumping away in Czechia (perhaps the name change(s) have something to do with that. Although the EVLS was by far the biggest win of her career to date, she's been competing for at least 8 years, which is not hard to believe looking at her very meaty and well-balanced physique.



A beautiful way to end the week.


And, unfortunately, to end daily posting for a while. Work commitments have been piling up so FMS will be a little irregular for the time being - hopefully not too long.

But that doesn't mean you'll be completely FMS-less. Watch out for the odd post, including a very important one on 1st February which you won't want to miss.

Thank you all for your continuing support!
6ft1swell

The Year in Review: May

TRANSFORMERS



Seems there are two types of people. There are those who prefer the picture on the left, and there are those who prefer the picture on the right, and not only prefer, but also project all kinds of fantasies onto it. I, you can probably guess, am totally, firmly, and deeply committed to the RIGHT on this issue. It's not often I say that.

HELLO JILL DIORIO



At the NPC Team Universe in July she won her class, and pro card. And it was around then that no little chatter about her started up on the forums, much of it about her jaw-dropping calves. They really are glories. And (I've been looking closely) there's also that freaky tendon that has grown into a sort of shin muscle adding even more below-the-knee droolworthiness. And, we might as well throw in, a qualified and working accountant, as thorough with the figures as she is with her Physique.



And she's quite the fox.

A DIFFERENT SPECIES

Muscular woman vs. less muscular/not-at-all muscular women. A good laugh? A major fetish - it must be, Lisa Cross has cashed in on the market. Crushing? Inspiring? Arousing? (For the woman being photographed with the goddess, I mean.) All these issues and more, as FMS spends a day comparing two incomparable things.



I would urge those still prefacing the term Figure competitor with "only a" to look long and hard at Azaria Glaim's upper body and a long hard look at her admirer's, and then have a good, long, hard rethink about their terms of reference.



A decent second best would be hanging out with the woman who had got the photo with the object of our mutual admiration. Tell me again about when you were living down in Fort Worth and Delane Hart was one of the PTs at your gym...

FEMALE MUSCLE TWINS

A week-long tribute to the closest sisters of all.

Starring The Traffords...



And The Longs...



Yes, there's only one woman in that picture. We didn't have a preference for one or other all week, and then Michelle Long pops up with her Blockmanesque looks and those muscles, and we decided that in this case we didn't fancy yours so much.

BEST OF THE BEST



As IFBB pro FBBing in 2017 approached, we decided to spend a bit of time looking back over the recent past. Starting with Sarah Hayes in Tampa in 2012, we saw seven women - all, with one notable exception, no longer competing in Bodybuilding or at all - in what we thought was the shape of their lives, including Skadi Frei-Seifert (Essen, 2011), Rene Marven (Toronto, 2013), and Gillian Kovack (Toronto, 2012).



A good excuse to repost what one reader calls "one of the best posing videos I've seen" from Simone Oliveira (Toronto, 2014), it was second to none. "Anyone who thinks that female bodybuilders aren't sexual needs to take a long, hard look at Simone on stage," our reader continued. I did, and I still don't know how that posing suit stays on.



And thanks to Katka (Madrid, 2011) Swell remembered his first time...



Suddenly I was the teenage boy in his bedroom with his copy of Muscle & Fitness unable to take his eyes off Anja Langer and her beautiful muscular body. Katka thrilled me like the very first time. I just couldn't stop looking at her. Her pecs, her abs, her legs, her arms... a beauty and yet she was just so big and hard, her muscles were so full and defined. Tanned, thrilling. Sexy but beyond sexy. MUSCLE SEXY.

And finally in May...

THAT WAS A GOOD DAY

We've had a mini-heatwave here in the UK over the last few days. Hottest May day ever, apparently. So, bodies on display, and, to my delight, female muscle on display. I saw more of it today in about 30 minutes than I've seen in the preceding six years, more than I ever saw concentrated in one place in all my years in London.

More, in fact, than I've ever seen in such quick succession in my entire life.



I'm wondering if every day is going to be like this now, or have I just used up my allotted number of sightings for the next six years? Is this happening elsewhere? Has the new era finally dawned? Is this what we can expect from now on?

And the link to all the pics 1/5-13/5 plus extras - here.