Hot and Hard: Joele Smith

2011 saw the debut of the Women’s Physique Division at the NPC Nationals. Far from suffering from interest, 106 competitors entered. Some of them were former bodybuilders, downsized for the new class, while many others were former figure competitors who had added a little more muscle. One of those was Joele Smith from Mississippi, who had been competing in figure for a little over a year.



Joele was into dance, gymnastics and sport in general while growing up, but didn’t begin serious weight training until she was at Nursing School in Mississippi. I had to find something to nourish my need of physical activity, she says. Then I met my husband, Randy, and he introduced me to serious weight training. I loved it! He had a background in bodybuilding and taught me everything I know about weight training.



After a couple of friends from the same gym began to compete, and with Randy’s encouragement, Joele first competed in May 2010 at NPC Steel World (!) and won the overall title in the Figure Division. If she had had doubts about doing more competitions, that first victory wiped them all away: I was hooked!



But Joele’s ride to the pros was not without its bumps. She failed to place at two of her next three contests, and by the time the NPC Nationals came around in 2011, she had been about to give up competing. That she didn’t was thanks partly to her husband and another trainer’s powers of persuasion, and partly to the fact that the new Physique division was being introduced at that show.




Joele was one of 30 (30!) competitors in the tallest of the three height classes. After a patchy Figure career, she was an unlikely winner, but win she did, and although she missed out on the overall title, she’d won her first Physique show, and was now a pro, one of the first six women to be awarded professional status in the division.



And last year she took to the stage in four high-profile pro shows and placed in the top 6 in all of them. And set up Physique Pro Fitness, which she hopes will help other women (and men) reach their fitness targets.



I’m well aware that to many female muscle fans, ‘Physique’ is a dirty word. Many feel it’s introduction was a thinly-disguised attempt to bang another nail into the heart of female bodybuilding, and on that point I quite agree. But intention is one thing and outcome quite another. Have a bit of faith! Female bodybuilding will survive.



Some women, Joele for instance, fit right into the Physique class. She wasn’t a success as a Figure competitor, and is unlikely to ever have the muscularity to succeed in the Bodybuilding division. Physique is where she belongs, and if it hadn’t been brought into existence, she may well have given up competing. Take a good look at Joele. Wouldn’t the sport, in fact, wouldn’t the world be a poorer place if that had happened?

Joele’s website
Physique Pro Fitness website

Enjoy one of Joele's 2012 appearances, the IFBB Europa in Orlando



It's all good. More heat tomorrow!

Hot and Hard: Kettlebelles

Feel the Burn
Unlike dumbbell or barbell exercises, kettlebell movements often involve large numbers of repetitions, and are in their nature holistic. They work several muscles simultaneously and continuously for several minutes, or with short breaks. This combination makes the exercise partially aerobic. In one study, kettlebell enthusiasts performing a 20-minute snatch workout were measured to burn, on average, 13.6 calories per minute aerobically and 6.6 calories anaerobically.






ги́ря
Kettlebells are cast-iron weights made up of a ball and a handle. They come from Russia, where they were first developed in the 1700s. In Russian, they are called ги́ря (‘girya’). The first appearance of the word in a Russian dictionary was in 1704. They were originally used as standard counterweights that bore the Imperial Seal to weigh out dry goods on market scales. People started throwing them around for entertainment, and at some stage after that, they began to be put to use for exercise.




Know your poods
Kettlebells are traditionally measured in units called ‘poods’. A pood is roughly equivalent to 16kg (or 35lbs) and in events sanctioned by the International Union of Kettlebell Lifting and the International Girya Sport Federation, this unit is still used in competition. A 1 pood kettlebell is yellow, if it’s green it’s 1.5 poods, and the red ones are 2 poods.




Back in the USSR
After the Russian Revolution, the use of kettlebells for physical training began to flourish inside the USSR, and was commonplace in the military, among Olympic athletes, and rural workers. In 1948, kettlebell lifting was declared the national sport of the Soviet Union. In 1981, a government commission made it compulsory to train with kettlebells in an attempt to increase productivity and reduce healthcare costs. The Russian army to this day tests the strength of its recruits not with push-ups, but with kettlebell snatches.




From Spetnaz with Love
Although kettlebell training had spread across Eastern Europe during the Cold War, they were still virtually unknown in North America in the late twentieth century. But in 1998, Pavel Tsatouline, former Soviet Special Forces (Spetnaz) physical training instructor, introduced them to American strength athletes in a series of publications. The response was such that he was approached by Dragon Door Publications, who offered to manufacture kettlebells in America, if Tsatouline agreed to teach people how to use them.




Dig the New Thing
By 2001, Dragon Door had published The Russian Kettlebell Challenge and manufactured the first US-made kettlebells. Certification for kettlebell trainers was established, and Rolling Stone voted him the ‘Hot Trainer’ of 2001, and in 2002, the same magazine named kettlebells the ‘Hot Weight’. Within a decade, kettlebells were a worldwide phenomenon.





Apologies for the terrible pun in the title. Hope it didn't spoil your enjoyment!

Kettlebell History (from Kettlebell Science), and more history from Kettlebell USA
Wikipedia on Kettlebells and Pavel_Tsatsouline

Hot and Hard: Cindy Landolt

When I first saw her profile in one of the fitness forums I frequently visit, I thought …wow, this woman’s picture is probably a CGI graphic! Unreal! I was wrong, Cindy is 100% real and aside from being super fit, I think she is super pretty… (Louis M. Sanchez, The Quant Method)




There is definitely a tendency for interviewers, male interviewers anyway, to go a bit mushy when they talk about Cinderella ‘Cindy’ Landolt. Swell may have been guilty of this himself, back at the end of 2011 when Cindy was one of FMS’ Women of the Year I wrote:

Long dark hair, and a set of abs that were made to be massaged and licked all night. Eyes that shine with health and vitality, and then there’s her long shapely legs. And she’s very friendly on the forums…

God, it’s embarrassing to read my old posts sometimes! ‘And she’s very friendly on the forums’! Yuck.



I’ll console myself with the thought that I wasn’t the first, and I won’t be the last, to be made to go all blushing schoolboy as a result of Cindy’s obvious charms.

But there is so much more to this woman than just stunning looks and a perfect body. Try, it’s hard I know, but try, try to look beyond the long, dark hair and the long, shapely legs.



She graduated from Business School. And in 2009 she started to put that theory into practice when she opened her own personal training company, Cindy Training, in Zurich in 2009. Four years later, and she’s one of the highest profile fitness models in Europe, and her business has gone international - she now runs her training programmes in London, Sydney and elsewhere in addition to Switzerland.



It’s a pattern we have noticed here at FMS, the women we adore are not only high-achievers in the field of fitness or bodybuilding, but have also achieved in other areas of their life, be it business, another sport or whatever.



Recently, on one of the major female muscle fan forums, one of those questions us female muscle heads love to ask each other was posed by one of the members. It went something like this:

Let’s say you have a friend that isn’t into female bodybuilding. His reasons are typical (too masculine etc.). If you had to pick one woman to open his mind, even change it and ‘convert’ him to FBBs, who would she be?

There was lots of replies, and lots of suggestions, but few of them took into account anything other than appearance. Choices included Cindy Phillips, Gina Davis, Mavi Giola and so on, chosen because they were ‘more feminine’ or ‘prettier’ or ‘the hottest’.

Granted, bodybuilding and fitness is all about the aesthetic, but not one reply mentioned any of the achievements of the women, either within bodybuilding (titles etc.) or outside it. Not one.

We’re all guilty of this. I’m as guilty as you are (if not more so). Just look at the images I’ve chosen of Cindy today – I didn’t choose them because they show her at her most successful.



But let’s go back to the question posted on the forum, shall we? Let’s say we choose Cindy Landolt as our ‘one woman’ to show our FBB-sceptic friend. She’s conventionally beautiful as well as being muscular (though not muscular enough to be accused of being masculine), so far so good.

Now, wouldn’t it be good if as well as showing him Cindy, we could also tell our friend that she’s a graduate who runs her own successful international business?

Don’t you find beautiful, fit, successful international businesswomen attractive?!

If our aim is to open minds, why not use every means necessary?

So pick your own favourite female. What else has she done? What other achievements has she got outside of having sculpted a magnificent physique for herself (an achievement beyond most people to begin with)? Why not find out? When that conversation with your friend or family member comes, why not give yourself more chance of making them think again?



And while I’m at it, I’d probably also throw in the fact that Cindy is multi-lingual to strengthen my argument with my FBB-sceptic friend. Being Swiss she already has German and French, and the fact that she’s training people in London and Sydney adds English to her skills. If my friend’s dream woman is someone like Cheryl Cole or Tulisa Contostavlos, well, they barely speak English.

Brush up on your own Swiss-German (while admiring Cindy in motion) by watching this interview with her from Swiss TV.



Women like Cindy are incredible and incredible-looking.

Really incredible-looking.




More Cindy? Visit www.cindytraining.com