Marvellous Maria

One of the most pleasing aspects of the Wings of Strength-led mini-resurgence in pro Female Bodybuilding is that women who seemed "retired" for one reason or another feel that the time is now right to compete again. Isabelle Turell is probably the best example in that she had roughly seven years' off before her comeback, but there's also Cathy Lefrançois, Bonnie Switzer (Pappas), and Laura Carolan to name but three. And a few days before the Toronto Pro, I noticed yet another familiar name who I hadn't heard of in a while was there on the competitor's list - Maria Mikola.



As is so often the case, the fact that I hadn't heard anything about her didn't mean she'd not been "active". Far from it, in fact. It's true that she did take 2014 and 2015 off, but having competed every year for the 17(!) years previous to that (at least 17, it may be more but the earliest record I can find of her in a contest is 1997), I reckon she was due a wee break. But she was back on stage last year, competing twice.




When she'd last competed in 2013 it was in the Physique division, winning her pro card at the IFBB North Americans, and it was in that same division that she competed last year. Looking at the images of her from both those shows, but particularly from the Europa Phoenix (above), where she placed 11th, I have to say that 1) I'm sorry I missed them at the time, and 2) that she doesn't exactly look very Physique!


Canadian Natural National Champion - 2009

Previous to 2013 Maria had always been a Bodybuilder, with her career (to date) probably peaking around 2009 when she won the Overall title at the Canadian Natural Championships. By that time she'd been a pro in other natural federations for some years - her IFBB pro card is, I believe, the fifth of her career. She was forum famous for her arms, a killer most muscular (not, apparently frowned upon in natural bodybuilding!) and for looking about 20 years younger than she actually was.



She was also famous for picking up more than her fair share of Best Poser awards. The best part of competing for me is getting on stage and being able to perform my routine, she told Promoting Real Women in 2010. Audiences and judges alike who have seen Maria perform would probably agree it was the best part for them too.



So she arrived in Toronto, "my own backyard", with plenty of pedigree behind her, but absolutely none of it as an IFBB pro Bodybuilder. And proceeded to steal the show.




I'm not saying that the judges' favourite, Kim Buck, wasn't worth the decision, nor that any of the other six women in the line-up were better or worse than Maria. But I am saying that in her pleasingly old-school-style posing suits (not too blingy, and more importantly not covering half of her upper body - what is it with this fashion nowadays for covering up?!) with a physique honed to perfection over a period of twenty years and the knowledge and commitment (still) to make sure that magnificent physique was shown off at its absolute best, Maria was pure class. No contest best abs and thigh in the show. In any division. By some distance. I've checked so you don't have to.



She's pushing 50, you know.




And the best news is she'll be back this weekend at the Omaha Pro, and I have absolutely no doubt she will flex those muscles as marvellously as ever.



Follow her prep on Instagram.

Enjoy!

Sunday Sizzler

This week's sizzler comes to you all the way from New Zealand and the WFF.

BJ Brunton is currently all-conquering down there - New Zealand, Queensland, and most recently Southern Hemisphere WFF Figure champion, and it's not hard to see why she's enjoying such success. She does also take pictures of herself with her muscles and veins ever so slightly more covered up. We prefer these though. Obviously.



Follow BJ on Instagram.

FBBUK @Toronto Pro 2017

Great to see some of the big beasts of Women's Bodybuilding finally unleashed last weekend in Toronto, with Kim Buck taking first prize to book her place at the 2017 Rising Phoenix. Great also to see four British women (in three different divisions) competing in such a big international pro show. It's all about those four today.



BIKINI

Karina Skowronska



Her third show in three weeks, the unplaced Karina neither was, nor felt, at her best. The package you can see on stage is not what I wanted to show, she said afterwards, obviously disappointed. Sometimes we want to do more than our body can handle. With her Scitec UK sponsorship and ambition though, I'm sure Karina will be back, wearing yet another one of her own magnificent Sparkle Bikini creations.

Alla Meijer




Her pro debut and 6th place. I think it's fair to say Russian-born Alla won't need too long to go where only Nina Ross has gone before and represent Britain at the Olympia. UK BB sage John Plummer (who would be the UK's Steve Wennerstrom if he paid less attention to the men) noted Alla's potential a couple of years ago, and she has since gone on to represent the UK at the Arnold Europe Amateur, finishing 2nd in her (tall - she's 1.72m, 5'6") class. I don't follow Bikini but WOW! I wrote at the time. In Toronto she wowed both me, and more importantly the judges, once again.

Strangely, Alla's social media seems presence seems to have all but disappeared - with the exception of a Facebook page which was last updated in 2016. Instagram, her website... gone. Perhaps she was getting a bit too much attention, there's certainly no shortage of men (and women) waxing lyrical about her on their fitness blogs.

FIGURE

Maria Scotland




Celebrating after the show with Karina and Alla was Maria Scotland, who, in an ultra-competitive Figure line-up, was awarded 13th. She's becoming something of a veteran these days is Maria, who won her pro card back in 2014 at the Arnold Amateur. She has good memories of Toronto - in 2015 she placed 4th here, her best ever as a pro. It's the experience and the cameraderie though, rather than the placings, that she seems to cherish most. The best thing about the last 6 years has been meeting so many amazing strong independent women, she says. I'm sure they feel exactly the same.

BODYBUILDING

Wendy McCready




By far the most exciting British result of the show though was Wendy McCready's in the Bodybuilding class. This was her first show for three years, and surrounded by women who looked to be at least three or four times her size, her ultra-conditioned package punched well above her weight and secured her a top three placing.




It was her best result since she placed third in Toronto all the way back in 2012, and the smile as she showed off her medal afterwards says it all. Congratulations Wendy!



Wendy will be competing again in Chicago at the end of the month.

Enjoy!

Fantasy Friday

I AM PALOMA'S MASSEUR

Note that even Buddha is craning his neck for a better view.



Now obviously I am not alone in thinking these thoughts as I gaze at Paloma's shining between contests muscles. I'd rub that down for a month! says one fan. Others suggest different scented oils Paloma might like - jasmine? lavender? If I were so crude, I might suggest an alternative to oil. In which case we would definitely need a bigger towel.



Paloma obviously approves.

Woman of the Week: Alyssa Kiessling

They say Female Bodybuilding is dying, and to be honest, there are times when you have to admit that, despite the best efforts of Wings of Strength and so forth, it ain't looking good. The women competing at the majority of the pro shows, as in Toronto last weekend, are fewer in number and - with the greatest respect and some notable exceptions - not of the quality of the line-ups even just five years ago. Meanwhile, opportunities for FBBs from outside North America have dwindled to the point where only a handful of amateur federations now run their category, none of them within the IFBB umbrella that was once the means by which FBBs could progress to pro status. And even in the US, NPC shows all too rarely feature a Female Bodybuilding category, and when they do there is almost always only one, maybe two competitors.



Meet the good news - 23-year-old Alyssa Kiessling.



Alyssa recently won both the Physique and Bodybuilding titles at the NPC Orlando Europa Games. She didn't have to beat a lot of other women - two in fact, and that's combined for both categories - to do so, so perhaps one shouldn't get too carried away, but the sight Alyssa before, during, and after her triumph has convinced me that perhaps the future of Female Bodybuilding is, after all, really rather bright.




Now I'm not getting over-excited just because of all Alyssa's lovely lovely muscles. A little digging and you will find that she is quite the unique young woman. For one thing, she is a total junkie for the sport, not just its present but also its past. And not just the past of Female Bodybuilding, either, though she takes much inspiration from the likes of Juliette Bergman and Lenda Murray, but also the past greats of the male side of the sport. Her Instagram moniker, The Classical Queen, is perhaps an allusion to her admiration for the bodies and posing styles of a bygone era, the same era that the newest male BBing category - Classic Physique - is attempting to hark back to.



And she uses her research into the sport's past to great effect, using the slow, measured posing style of those women (and men) who had more than sixty seconds to perform their routines in her own, as well as incorporating poses - not just her fantabulous most muscular - previously unknown in Female Bodybuilding, and not common in Men's Bodybuilding since the days of Pumping Iron. Add a truck load of self-assurance to the mix and the overall effect she manages to create is absolutely mesmerising.



If you are going to work so hard on your physique, Alyssa says, you've got to show what you built, bring it on stage. It's art. It certainly is when she does it.



From her pre-contest double biceps with bonus stomach vacuum gym shots to her mouth-wateringly beefy hotel room posing in her suit. From the incredible pump room back footage shot by her friend, mentor and fellow freak of muscle Michaela Ayccok to the way she stands, hands on hips - so manly, so cocksure - throughout most of her NPC News Online interview with Ariel Khadr. And all the rest of it. The way this young woman goes about her bodybuilding business is, I find, quite irresistible.



Next stop, the Jr. Nationals, just under four weeks away.



See more of Alyssa in Orlando on the Bodybuilding and Beyond channel.

And apologies for the tardiness of today's post.

Muscle in a Provincial City

So, yes, those of you who read it as a kind of cryptic version of the truth, the post from Sunday 21st about "the FMS campaign bus" having "a bit of a prang", it was. I really was in a car accident. Not, thankfully, anything too major, but the car I won't see again, I was injured enough to be off work for some days, and, at the time I wrote that 21/5 post, I was a little bit out of my gourd on painkillers. All better now, and back to work today (25th May - this is relevant - not the 31st, the earliest you'll be reading this).



So, although I am originally from London, these days me and the wife live out in the sticks, as they say, though my office is in the nearest city. It's not a big place, one of the smaller cities in Britain. Not a place I expect or see much female muscle. Lived up here for getting on six years now and I can count the sightings on, well, two fingers. Today, however, I've discovered things have changed in the week or so I've been off.



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 have seen in the preceding six years, more than I ever saw concentrated in one place in all my many years in London.

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



Now before you all email me for my postcode and a local estate agent that I would recommend, I should point out that I am not talking about what you or I would call Female Bodybuilders here. I am not talking about female bodybuilders in the wider mainstream media sense of the word either. But I am talking about muscle.



#1 - Not twenty yards from the front of the office, lady in her mid-30s perhaps, bare arms, nice tan, well-defined shoulders and a bicep that just popped up and said hello when she put her phone to her ear. BOOM! #2 - By the big department store in the city centre, I'd just finished chatting with my morning coffee guy and towards me comes a lady either on her way to or from the gym - sports bag, vest, lycra leggings, shoulders, a sensational wide back, and even better, properly big legs. She really did BOOM! as she passed - I could feel her power in the rush of air she left in her wake...



How long have I been off?

Did I die in that car crash and I'm now in some kind of slowly emerging heaven?



#3/#4 - I get lunch from the market and, like many other people, sit on the steps outside the city's signature modern building to enjoy the sun while I munch. I'm still reeling slightly from #2, so I don't even scope out the crowd and position myself accordingly. Within minutes though I realise I couldn't have placed myself better. BOOM! #3 is about five metres away from me, casually chatting with a friend. In shorts, she is, apparently, flexing her thighs as she stretches out her legs. I actually rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn't imagining it (and/or dreaming!). I look her way again, she's leaning back, supporting her weight on her arms. BOOM! Nice shoulders. Visible triceps. Minutes later - I'm still ogling her but don't fail to notice a cyclist in full gear who is chaining up her bike on the racks opposite is a lot more than just her cyclist's legs. BOOM! She can't hide her arms in a cycling top, not this lady.



What is going on?

Legs and triceps gets up and leaves while I'm still sitting there. She's quite a sight standing, tall and lean, my guess would be a runner, possibly a serious, competitive one, but not thick like a sprinter, middle or long distance. Perhaps I'm way off, perhaps she, like the other ladies I saw today, like my wife, are just part of the strong is sexy zeitgeist. I'm already writing this post as I stroll back towards the office, mentally visualising each sighting in detail so I can better describe them. BOOM! #5 - The couple that works out together, well, a couple that works out together, he's big and lean and very impressive in his tight top, but she, she is quite something too. Tanned, short and stocky and quite the little powerhouse with her protein shake in her hand, two steps to every one of his strides. They're in front of me and I am totally not going to pass up the opportunity to perve on her tight, muscular bum a little. So I don't.



I have to wait a few hours and be on my way back to the car when I see #6. Having received all the blessings I could ever want for the day I was not expecting a #6, but there she is, mid-30s probably, tanned in her summer dress, waiting for someone it seems, toned arms. She's been doing some curls over the winter months.



Could those painkillers really be so slow to wear off? I'm still slightly reeling. 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? More seriously, is this happening elsewhere? Has the new era finally dawned? Is this what we can expect from now on?



Enjoy? You bet I will!

Pics just illustrations, no relation to actual sightings.

Tube Watch

FMS picks a few of our favourite YouTube clips for the first time since the start of April as our (pleasingly popular and) irregular muscle in motion fest, Tube Watch, returns.

CANADIAN SPLENDOUR

First up, all 26 minutes of Ripped: Inside Women's Bodybuilding, an independently funded and produced documentary from Canada that follows the fortunes of Physique competitor Krystia Petrossie and Figure "Grandmaster" (ie. over 45) Teresa Popowicz as they prepare for and compete at last year's Canadian Nationals. Bodybuilding demands absolute discipline in every aspect of an athlete’s life, reads the blurb. But when does it go too far? And if that sounds like an all too familair tagline, rest assured this is actually much much better than that. The ladies' motivations, the boyfriend measuring out the meals and being ordered (nicely) to do the washing-up, highs and lows before during and after the Nationals, Helene Bouchard as Krystia's trainer, the concerned friend, and finally the insane quality of the Physique women who compete at the highest amateur level in Canada...



Absolutely fascinating, start to finish.

For Your Consideration

Keeping us busy while we awaited the pro FBBs to start their season last weekend in Toronto, the fine (and seemingly ever-expanding) pro Physique circuit has been well worth paying attention to recently. Head over to the NPC News Online channel for all sorts of treats, including interviews and (smell the ProTan!) pump room footage. Personal favourites include Ivie Rhein (see FMS passim), vascular fantasy Paloma Parra, 2017 Hot and Hard 100 #81 Victoria Flores and many many more pumping up before the Orlando Europa; and Gillian Ward, Margita Zamolova and Yeon Woo-Jhi, among many others pumping up at the NY Pro the same weekend.

GOT HARD (IF YOU WANT IT)

Any clip entitled "Crazy Abdominals" should be treated with caution. It's either going to be disappointing or they really are going to be Hreapca-like ridges of delicious hardness, and a bit of private time is going to be urgent. In the case of Muscle Girl World's offering from May 1st, it's most definitely the latter. And before you get all righteously indignant about me comparing Gülüzar Tüfenk's midsection to that of The Hottest Hard Woman in the World, why not take a good hard look first?



Applications for the post of Gülüzar's personal abs oiler are now closed.

For Your Consideration

In a similar preview-clip vein, HD/Premium Physques have put up some crackers recently, most notably those starring Sheronica Henton and Hanna Hallman, who I freely admit to having a major crush on right now. And there have been a slew of HerBiceps clips from the past couple of years going up recently, catering for all kinds of discerning female muscle heads. Fans of calves will find Tina Chinchic from 2015 hard to resist, if you are more about back control (it's a thing now apparently) you could do worse than watch Virginia Vargo (also from 2015). Abs men should not pass Go but go directly to Shanique Grant's abs control, and everyone should watch Lauren Quinn in contest shape, whatever bit of herself she is rippling.

Find these and many more on the Milly Biceps channel.

DENA'S TRIBUTE

And finally, Dena Westerfield playing Pachelbel's Canon in D.

No, really.



Not going to pretend it's the best rendition I've ever heard, but when you appreciate the sentiment behind it, well, there's not a dry eye in the house, is there? Nor, it seems, is there anything this amazing woman can't do once she puts her mind to it.

Bravo!

Encore!

Strange Fascination

Last week, I mentioned how much I enjoy clips of female bodybuilders walking, and illustrated the point with an FMC preview from 2012 starring Gillian Kovack.



In the clip, as you can see, Gillian is walking from one photo shoot location to another. She's in heels, wearing very little. She's oiled up, and absolutely magnificent, in her peakiest peak condition, so there's much to appreciate - so much in fact that I've found myself watching it over and over again again, just as I did when it first took my breath away five years ago. It never gets dull, and, I imagine, probably never will!

But last week I also found myself glued to a thirty-second clip of Figure phenom Sandra Grajales Romero. No photo shoot scenario, no oil, no bikini. OK, there a fair bit of Sandra's body on show, most notably her sensational back. And what's she doing? Pouring water from a big bottle into a small bottle. And I can't stop watching.

I've looped it a couple of times to allow better appreciation.



How mundane does what she's doing have to be before watching her gets boring?

Next week, Sandra does some dusting, and Lisa Cross adjusts the timer on her boiler to allow for British Summer Time. In her pyjamas. OK, I've made that up. Obviously Lisa would never wear pyjamas, but I am on the lookout for more clips of muscular women doing very mundane tasks. Any reader suggestions would be most welcome.

Enjoy!