Abs Week: Thick for Purpose

Crossfit is like a foreign country; they do abs differently there.



The vast majority of the women we feature on FMS, as this week, are in the Bodybuilding (small "b" if you prefer) game. An aesthetic sport (or "sport" if you must), its winners and losers are decided according to supposedly objective criteria by judges - who the fans will tell you (subjectively) hardly ever get it absolutely right.

For the women, even those at the quote unquote top, there's almost no money in it.

And the days before a contest is "peak week", a misleading name if ever there was one. Competitors are at their weakest as they stand on stage, but also their most beautiful. At the point where they compete, their muscles really are just for show.



Crossfit, though, is all about the stats. Everything is measured and documented, and there can be no argument about the winner of a heat, an event, or a competition.

There's money to be made. Lots of it. Mega money at the top, and what's more, it's actually the women who are the star attraction, their fame eclipsing that of their male counterparts by some distance. And no, I didn't just make that last bit up.

Crossit is all about performance. If you are not at your best on the day, you don't win. How many times have we seen FBBing champions not be at their best and still win? Never happens in Crossfit. Never. Every year is a year zero, there is absolutely no competitive advantage whatesoever to having done well the previous season.



As a result, Crossfit muscle serves an entirely different purpose to Bodybuilding muscle simply because it's a by-product of the training, not the end result itself. In Bodybuilding the muscle is the show. In Crossfit it's what that muscle can do.



Crossfit abs don't need to be lean and defined, they just need to be strong.



Witness the thickness necessary to be among the world's elite at in the "constantly varied functional movements performed at high intensity" game (which is, in fact, what Crossfit defines itself as). Note the "functional"; note the "high intensity".



Witness the thickness and be clear about one thing - that despite all that I've said so far, Bodybuilding and Crossfit do have something in common. Both MUSCLE sports.



And you know despite all their "all about the functionality" attitude, the women of Crossfit are (thankfully) by no means averse to a little muscle exhibitionism either. Take, for instance, rising star Amanda Franden's tanned, bikini-clad selfie below. I don't think it wouldn't look out of place on an IFBB Bikini pro's Instagram feed.



Take, for instance, Greek's Crossit twins Thelma (left) and Stella (right, another rising star) Christoforou. Not a whole lot of functionality going on here, is there?



And here's Jennifer Kokk, also apparently indulging in a little navel gazing...



Was never about the bathroom selfie, says (yet another rising star) Jamie Goodwin about an, er, bathroom selfie with prominent abs (here). But hey, there are perks!

And long may she, and other the other beautiful women of Crossfit enjoy showing off those "perks", everywhere from the bathroom to the Crossfit arena. I mean, I'm no ecpert, but I'm pretty sure they don't have to train/compete in those tiny tops that show off their thickly-muscled midsections if they don't want to, do they?



But they do.

And I'm sure it diesn't hurt the women's popularity.



Our Crossfit correspondent had nothing to do with today's post, it's all my own rubbish, but his keyboard is no doubt bracing itself right now because qualifying for the 2017 Games will be coming soon. Follow the leaderboards on the Games' website.

Names in the file names of the images.

Enjoy!

Abs Week: Just Abs (Six-Pack)

The gorgeous midsections of six (no doubt gorgeous but we ain't interested in their faces, not today) women, kicks off with, unfortunately, an "unknown". No less gorgeous for that though. The closer you look, the better (ie. more tempting) they get, and once you've gone all the way down, taking in the individual muscles and the overall effect, to that confluence of emerging veins just above where she's (so modestly - not) holding her orange short shorts, any hands still above the table won't be there for very long.

In my experience at least.



Nuria Ferrero is a Spanish Bodyfitness athlete who likes to show off her veiny abs a lot. She's clearly ambitious for more than just our admiration (and tribute), however. She already runs her own fitness centre - Nufitnesscenter - in Valdemoro, just south of Madrid. And recently she was feliz de haber mostrado mi mejor físico hasta la fecha (happy) as she made the top 6 in both the Open and Junior tall classes at her national championships. Cue lots of Instagram clips and pics of her freaky sexy veiny abs.

Instagram gold.



These are "natural" apparently, and belong to NGA Pro Figure and NPC Figure/ Physique competitor Samantha Feenburg. In March, Samantha truly cleaned up at the (All Natural) NPC Lee Banks Natural Championships, winning the Physique, Figure and Figure Masters classes, although she didn't so much compete as turn up to win the last of those. Watch Samantha preparing for that contest (and flexing her exquisitely sweaty midsection) three weeks before that show on NPC News Online, and Samantha's contest gallery - including an impressive abs and thigh - can be found here.

Also on Instagram - just 302 followers?! Well, 303 now.



No such poxy numbers for IFBB Bikini pro Frida Paulsen Stern. 66,000+ are already glued to this Swedish phenomon on Instagram, and it's not difficult to see why. That sexy tan, every single muscle in her glorious midriff exactly where and as it should be... Hang on! Did I just type "Bikini"?! These perfect abs are Bikini abs?!

I must pay more attention - the kind of attention paid by the mainstream muscle media to Frida. It's her "amazing abs and hypnotic stage presence" that makes her so "exciting", says Mike Carlson, who interviewed Frida for Ironman. Well, I can't say I've much experience of her stage presence, but the abs... See them in motion here.

She's just 22, by the way.



No such tidiness in the abdominal area for the freakishly vascular Vika Pogribnyak, but that certainly hasn't stopped the forums falling for her - it's all hands below all over the place for Ukraine's 2016 Bodyfitness champ. Granted, her midriff isn't always as vascular as shown here (this was after a pre-contest "force feed", apparently) but even so, those are truly impressive tributaries that I can't seem to stop drooling over.

WOW!

Don't bother putting it away before visiting Vika on Instagram.

And finally...



On the off chance that you weren't already nursing a raging Zardon.

You will like this too.

Enjoy!

Abs Week: How Does She Do It?

Today, a very close look at what exactly FMS heartthrob and muscle exhibitionist Claudia Bonavoglia does to make her midriff so damn appealing with an FMS (ie. not very professional!) edit of some of Claudia's (many) Instagram abs work clips.

Feel the rhythm.



Phew! No wonder she loves showing them off so much...

See more still on Claudia's Instagram.

Divertir-se!

Abs Week: 50 Year-Old Abs

For no other reason than we haven't had one for a while...

Welcome to ABS WEEK on FMS

And we begin our look at a few of the more magnificent midsections of the world with one belonging to France's Valerie Texier, who just happens to be 50 this year.



Valerie competes in Bodyfitness, recently at the IFBB French Championships in Biarritz, which is where we see her backstage (above), and posing (and making women considerably younger than her feel wholly inadequate) by the pool (below).



Now I can't say I know much about Valerie other than she's a personal trainer, but I do know that the closer we get to her incroyables abdominales, the better they look.



This black and white gem was taken after a "dure séance d'abdos" apparently, during Valerie's prep for the European Championships, where she represented her country in the 45+ Masters Bodyfitness class. The detail, I think you will agree, is astonishing (among other things). Glistening ridges of muscle, so dure and so so sexy.



We leave you though with those abdos in full colour and tan, another from Valerie's poolside downtime after the French Championships. It's not often we feature French women on the blog - the country, historically, has punched well below its weight in terms of female muscle - but something tells me we may meet Valerie again...

In the meantime, follow her on Instagram.

Abs Week continues demain.

Sunday Sizzler

Just over two years since we last saw her on the blog (she'd just graduated and competed for the first - and so far only- time), and just over a year since her last appointment with the surgeon after a serious knee injury, the beautiful body of brainy Brittni Kent makes a welcome return to FMS, and isn't she looking glorious?!



With extra ink, and now, apparently, an inhabitant of "Dimension C-137", Brittni doesn't seem to be getting all shredded for any reason other than she likes to be the girl with the 8-pack (and the pec veins). And to be honest, I'm not sure where or how FMS got hold of these far-far-too-racy-for Instagram pearls, but I am sure glad that we did.

Enjoy!

From NABBA to the Olympia

It would be easy to forget, given all the judging shenanigans and consequent outcry around the fate of Aleesha Young last weekend in Omaha, that as well as the big (but not too big, eh?) girls, the show boasted a quality Physique line-up too. Among the competitors there was Hot and Hard 100 perennial Zoa Linsey, who put in her usual classy showing; Roxanne Edwards' abs were their normal eye-popping selves; and the increasingly popular Katie Lee made her pro debut, placing 2nd.



The winner, though, was another pro debutant, considerably less heralded that Ms Lee and all the way from Perth, Australia. And while I'm sure our collective teeth will continue to gnash for some time yet at the way the placings went in the Bodybuilding class, we might take some small crumb of comfort from the fact that in Physique at least, first place went to absolutely the most shredded woman on the stage.




Lee-Anne Temnyk may be a name familiar to NABBA aficianados from her 2013 Worlds' appearance, where she won her Trained Figure class and posed down for the Overall title with fellow Aussie and eventual Overall winner Lisa Carrodus.



For her next big contest, however, Lee-Anne stepped away from NABBA and into the world of IFBB Physique. Last March in Melbourne she took first in an all-Australian line-up at the Arnold Amateur, as a result of which she was awarded her pro card.



She plumped for Omaha on the recommendation of Christine Envall, whose supplement company sponsors her, as the place to make her debut, and set about bringing her NABBA-style conditioning in for the show. One 35-hour journey (including transit and delays) later, and a winner's medal around her neck, Lee-Anne was telling Ann Titone it was "a dream come true". I still don't think it has sunk in yet, she says, in her super sexy super husky Aussie brogue. This is just amazing.



I'm very much a newcomer to the Lee-Anne party, but had I been following her Instagram as her pro debut approached, I wouldn't have needed much convincing that she would be a contender. Here was a woman who was bringing NABBA-style uber-conditioning to the IFBB Pro League. Truly she is amazing. As Ann says during the same NPC News Online interview, Lee-Anne's "striations had striations".




Not expecting to have secured her Olympia invite at her first attempt, Lee-Anne had already decided to do two shows while in the US (not really surprising given the 35 hours it took her to get there) so we'll be seeing more of the same this weekend at the Dallas Europa. It's just a shame she doesn't get to wear a thong anymore.



Enjoy!

Fantasy Friday

ON THE ISLAND OF THEMYSCIRA...



Who hasn't had the washed up on an island of Amazons dream?



Well, according to some sections of the media recently, we're all going to (sort of) have that dream come true if we go see Wonder Woman. The film's array of Amazon warriors, behind some of the most intense action sequences in the film, are no ordinary extras, Katie Fustich told us in The Daily Mail a few days ago. Rather, when it came time for director Patty Jenkins to select her cast, she opted to fill the island of Themyscira with real-life wrestlers, trainers, farmers, and even Olympic athletes.



And among them, the familiar face (and body) of Crossfit pin-up Brooke Ence, who plays Penthesilea. I got a call from Warner Bros. asking me if I would come in and read, she told The Huffington Post. I had no idea what it was for. It just seemed like a really great opportunity, and it literally just fell in my lap. I couldn’t say no.



The images of the Amazons in costume at their training camp on the Amalfi coast certainly brought all my teenage Amazon island fantasies rushing back, and not least those featuring the gorgeous Brooke. And her Huffington Post interview about her experience did nothing to curb my enthusiasm to see the film. It was a great realization of all the different types of strength. Everyone that was an Amazon just walked with more power. They walked with this Amazonian vibe.



It was really cool to see this whole training area, and there's not one male figure in sight, she continues. Women wrestling other women, kickboxing, doing pull-ups and practicing with spears... My fantasy's changing just a little bit - now I just want to have been there at the training camp! It sounds, and looks, a little bit like heaven!



Be warned though. The Amazon Army might not actually be in the film for quite as long as all this media attention suggests. Jenavieve Hatch, Huffington Post author, was, for one, as disappointed as any female muscle fan could be. For many viewers, she writes, Wonder Woman should have been set entirely on the women-only Amazon warrior paradise of Themyscira. It felt profoundly satisfying to watch women wield so much physical power on a humongous screen, and as the story went from Themyscira to World War I-era Western Europe, I found myself missing the women warriors...



And as for Brooke, well if you do part with your time and money and head to the local multiplex thinking you might sneak out after the Themyscira scenes, keep a close eye out for her. No one on the forums has reported actually spotting her on screen yet. Is Brooke in it much? asks one forum member. Not even for a second, comes the reply.

Guess we'll have to wait for the Director's Cut DVD.

Thanks to Crossfit correspondent Aiden for the heads-up.

Woman of the Week: Destinee Bruch

When the shirt you want is on sale but they only have smalls, but you have a medium upper body and a small waistline so you just get the small and show the guns - Bam!



Destinee Bruch (pronounced "Broo" as far as I know) pretty much passed the female muscle lovin' world by in her previous incarnation as a Figure competitor a couple of years ago, but with Instagram posts like the one above and a new Physique division body that's heading for the Jr. Nationals this weekend, she's really grabbed our collective attention now. Grabbed it by the throat. The tighter the sleeves, the weaker the knees! as one weak-kneed new member of the Destinee fan club puts it.



Once upon a time not so long ago, however, Destinee was neither Figure or Physique but, in her own words, "a train wreck of a girl". How long her transformation from two packs of hair extensions to six-pack and triceps extensions has taken I'm not completely sure, but she's "very glad to be the woman on the right - she's a beast!"



And this beast muscled her way into first place just over a month ago on her Physique debut at the NPC Mike Francois Classic in Ohio. And this was not one of those two competitors in a line-up, one of them looks like they know that you are supposed to diet and apply tan before a show pushovers. Destinee beat off much more experienced women like Tracy Smith, Michelle Grissom and Lisa Janusz (who has since been an NPC Physique winner herself) to claim the title and book her Jr. Nationals' berth.




And looks as though she enjoyed every second of it. Been here since 8 and I'm just now about to go up! It stinks that Women's Physique is always last... OK, so maybe not every second. But it's been a great show, so many awesome competitors. What an insane feeling being up there, truly life changing. I'm hungry for more.



And that's what we love to hear.



Now thus far I haven't said a damn thing about the tats, partly because so much has already been said. There's a very nice body hidden somewhere under that artwork, and so on. Well, I think if you really can't see Destinee's beautiful muscles because of the "artwork" then you should probably go to Specsavers. Or clean your screen. Or maybe you should just look at one of the other thousands of muscle women on the site where you left your comment and not bother with it next time. And besides, there's no hiding those epic shoulder curves no matter what she covers them with.



I have this insane dream, this dream to get my pro card, she says. My chance is just days away. It seems impossible but I'm going to give it everything I have.



She's going to run into (a previous WoW) Alyssa Kiessling in Chicago. Miss Buff Nugget (as Destinee calls herself) v. The Classical Queen. Print the poster now! More seriously, it's good to know, in a week where we've had a bit of a blow, that - in Women's Physique at least, the future remains bright and will continue to do so as long as there are young beasts like Destinee and Alyssa so committed to being better and bigger.



New fave, great build and beautiful, reads a comment I related to much much more than the twat's I quoted above. Spectacular! Just look at all those muscles!



Oh, I am. I AM!