the rumors are flying..big changes for Womens BBing

[Gaoshang Xiongshou]

I can promise you that if you downsize, you will not be happy. Initially, you may feel okay with it... but shortly afterward...

[fitbody]

Gina rocks!

SHE DOES TRUE
BUT I HAD MORE MUSCLE THAN HER IN HIGH SCHOOL
just doin sports and training horses
now even training with wts or eating bb style lol

[fitbody]

In related news, schmoes the world over react to the news...

i'm gonna save this pic

[fitbody]

I'm with you on most of this Sassy. It's not like I'm going to stop training b/c someone says 'you have to look like this'. In fact, I have admired many of the women across the history of BB, of various sizes and degrees of conditioning. I wouldn't be unhappy as long as the changes didn't involve what I see a lot of my pro figure/amateur friends doing -- NO TRAINING 3/4 of the year in order to compete on the figure stage.
I love to train and train hard and nothing will change that. I do favour the extreme look, but I also don't mind if they say HEY YOU LADIES DON'T HAVE TO BE QUITE AS BIG...in a way it does lower the threshold of difficulty to some extent...but if it means the athletes are healthier and there is a place for more women to compete, then these are not all negatives.
Let's just see what the final announcement will be...do wish they would do more of the height/weight classes to bring more specific guidelines...but don't think this is in the forecast based on what we're hearing.

I can tell you personally, every time I'm out dancing or not covered up, I get more women stopping and telling me how much they love my physique and ask all sorts of health /diet / training questions. Guys always want to have a posedown or arm wrestle I've frankly never gotten a bad response from what I do.

Ditto on this for me sassy, maybe it's our height, our attitude or the ability to smile and appreciate everyone for who they are but most people like what they see, and if they don't 'want to do it for themselves' can respect and admire where I've taken my body. I get many women saying OH GIRL I'D KILL TO LOOK LIKE YOU BUT I JUST DON'T HAVE THE DISCIPLINE!! LOL
They don't even realize the work it takes...and that's ok! I just encourage them to be healthy and eat right and not be afraid of the weights....just do their thing and don't be afraid of the iron
It seems there are fewer 'haters' then we think, that, or they're all concentrated in one location, for example various forums. LOL

thank you guys for this Zoa Sassy
my guts have been in knots from all this
scaling back i can see
abolishing completely so it doesn't resemble anything of what we have today is outrageous

and the same happens to me
when i'm in contest shape i get all sorts of people
old, fat, all ages, all nationalities running outta their way across parking lots, in stores
and even driving down the road which tickles my son to death
i had this older quite fat east indian couple taking to me at a red light in the car beside me not long ago
etc
to come up to me and tell me how great i look
and how much work that must take
and all kinds of cool comments and questions

[fitmomma3]

ADDING yet ANOTHER DIVISION IS the worst news I have heard yet ON THIS. Yes because bikini criteria and figure criteria already overlap and crossover, lets add ANOTHER IN BETWEEN DIVISION (wait till how many times we here HARD like a BB but not too hard). SILLY. FIX the ones they have... make changes to BB, make it a more classic look, or make figure harder again thats a more classic look the bikini girls are starting to look more like figure anyway with vasularity in their abs and shoulder caps and such... just adding another group is crazy! 5 divisions for women... FIVE! Holy long drawn out shows and confusion.

[saiyajinali]

ADDING yet ANOTHER DIVISION IS the worst news I have heard yet ON THIS. Yes because bikini criteria and figure criteria already overlap and crossover, lets add ANOTHER IN BETWEEN DIVISION (wait till how many times we here HARD like a BB but not too hard). SILLY. FIX the ones they have... make changes to BB, make it a more classic look, or make figure harder again thats a more classic look the bikini girls are starting to look more like figure anyway with vasularity in their abs and shoulder caps and such... just adding another group is crazy! 5 divisions for women... FIVE! Holy long drawn out shows and confusion.

five womens divisions?

[fitmomma3]

five womens divisions?

Females have

1.Bikini
2. Fitness
3. Figure
4. The new one
5. Bodybuilding

[sassy69]

I can promise you that if you downsize, you will not be happy. Initially, you may feel okay with it... but shortly afterward...

FWIW, if this thing gets legs and actually is executed w/ clear critieria and consistent judging (will still take a while to get women moved into this category because its not necessarily where most people have been training for - like Tammy said - change like that takes time), what we "like" may become more of a relative thing.

I LOVE the international look of the "figure" girls or whatever you call the category - they do more "feminine" posing and are not mass monsters but are still big and hard as fuck. Its a nice streamlined look. But again if you've spent years building the mass, it is simply going to take time to redefine it.

[R_U_Red_D]

ADDING yet ANOTHER DIVISION IS the worst news I have heard yet ON THIS. Yes because bikini criteria and figure criteria already overlap and crossover, lets add ANOTHER IN BETWEEN DIVISION (wait till how many times we here HARD like a BB but not too hard). SILLY. FIX the ones they have... make changes to BB, make it a more classic look, or make figure harder again thats a more classic look the bikini girls are starting to look more like figure anyway with vasularity in their abs and shoulder caps and such... just adding another group is crazy! 5 divisions for women... FIVE! Holy long drawn out shows and confusion.

I love it when you post! Reps....

[Ibarramedia]

Originally Posted by flexingtonsteele
I went to a local npc show earlier this year where there were about 10 female bodybuilders total!! Then in figure and bikni there were over a hundred women total....

Like Bob said, female bodybuilding is just phasing itself out. Its not the fault of Chic, Betty Pariso, Jim Manion or anyone else. Female bodybuilding makes zero positive cash flow for the npc/ifbb.

How many fbb'ers do u see in magazines? NONE!

How many figure/fitness athletes do u see? Not alot, but theres alot more than fbb'ers.

Female Bodybuilding isnt lucrative whatsoever.

By making this new division ( which is basically a more muscular figure competitor ) the npc/ifbb will be making alot more money, there will be a more appealing look. AND! there wont ever be a special on HBO about drugs in womens bodybuilding like there just was a few months ago on real sports with bryant gumbel.

Believe me, this was going to happen for years now, but the real sports special was the straw that broke the camels back.

And in the end, this will be a much healthier option for women who decide to compete. Which is the most important thing.

10 is a good turnout for a local show. You're talking about getting a geographical concentration of enough women who are committed to and interested in doing the work (not just a season but years) to compete. There are vastly larger numbers of figure & bikini because the barriers to entry are pretty flippin low. Big difference - they are different categories that have very different requirements.

I realize its hard to talk about the numbers of women competing at the local level, but I believe, excluding this year (economy?), the number of FBBs at the national shows has been consistent over the last 5 years. I don't know that I believe that FBB is "dying" - as people have been saying that for years. In fact we're seeing more figure girls starting to cross over to BB.

Just like FBB, you don't see many fitness girls anymore. Fitness has relatively high barriers to entry and also I have yet to see a competition (given I've been watching them since 1999) where there was an appropriately safe floor and area for fitness competitors to execute their routines. IMO this is also a contributing factor.

I frankly don't think the Real Sports thing really did that much for / against FBB. As per usual, the mainstream has very little idea of what FBB is. If they can get past all the stereotypes, how interesting would it be if they did more research into the stacks that figure girls and even bikini girls are using..... Hmmmmmmm. That discussion will come up regardless. If FBB disappears and this physique thing takes over, I guarantee it will still go thru the phases of finding its starting point to see where the judges start rewarding, and then continue to trend towards harder until someone decides its "too hard" and then the backlash in the other direction to where it makes the rest of the world "more comfortable" w/ women look "acceptably fuckable" again, and then you'll end up w/ more wishywashy, watered down competitoins where most of us just sit there and wonder wtf all the girls w/ the squishy asses are doing on stage.

It would be really nice if they stated the judging criteria and committed to it. Then maybe I'd believe all the stuff you say about how great this whole new category is going to be - its going to go thru all the same phases Figured did, we're watching Bikini go thru now, and in fact will add a dimiension of blurring the lines between all these different categories even more if there is crossing over allowed, esp at the local level, and inconsistent judging.

I can tell you personally, every time I'm out dancing or not covered up, I get more women stopping and telling me how much they love my physique and ask all sorts of health /diet / training questions. Guys always want to have a posedown or arm wrestle I've frankly never gotten a bad response from what I do.

Ditto on this for me sassy, maybe it's our height, our attitude or the ability to smile and appreciate everyone for who they are but most people like what they see, and if they don't 'want to do it for themselves' can respect and admire where I've taken my body. I get many women saying OH GIRL I'D KILL TO LOOK LIKE YOU BUT I JUST DON'T HAVE THE DISCIPLINE!! LOL
They don't even realize the work it takes...and that's ok! I just encourage them to be healthy and eat right and not be afraid of the weights....just do their thing and don't be afraid of the iron
It seems there are fewer 'haters' then we think, that, or they're all concentrated in one location, for example various forums. LOL

Correct on 10 being a good number of FBB competitors in local show. As Zoa and Jill have said countless times, it takes years and years of hard work to produce the type of muscularity and definition to compete in FBB competitions. How in the world will we find over 100 FBBs competing in a competition Pro or amateur? That is probably less than the sum total of all FBBs that competed in all the contests this year for both pro and am.

With the lower barriers of entry, it has been easier to fill an auditorium with bikini competitors. The very early ones were literally coming from the various Hawaiian tropic type contests with no physical or even athletic training. A lot of the present bikini competitors have began to train with weights,diet and do cardio. And within a few months they have become competition ready. You cannot do this with FBB. It just takes time. Even if you are a guy that decided to enter a bodybuilding competition, you can't go from being untrained, never lifted a weight in your life in 1 month to entering 3 months later. Simply cannot happen unless you are a freak of human nature even for bodybuilders that you could miraculously totally transform your body in a very short amount of time.

[Swede]

SHE DOES TRUE
BUT I HAD MORE MUSCLE THAN HER IN HIGH SCHOOL
just doin sports and training horses
now even training with wts or eating bb style lol

how about No. Or do you have any photos of you from highschool in contest conditioning?

She is Extremly close to the MAX of muscle a woman could hold without aas. shes probably on small small amounts though at least in contest prep.

But prove me wrong...

[debbiebramwell]

Ditto on this for me sassy, maybe it's our height, our attitude or the ability to smile and appreciate everyone for who they are but most people like what they see, and if they don't 'want to do it for themselves' can respect and admire where I've taken my body. I get many women saying OH GIRL I'D KILL TO LOOK LIKE YOU BUT I JUST DON'T HAVE THE DISCIPLINE!! LOL
They don't even realize the work it takes...and that's ok! I just encourage them to be healthy and eat right and not be afraid of the weights....just do their thing and don't be afraid of the iron
It seems there are fewer 'haters' then we think, that, or they're all concentrated in one location, for example various forums. LOL

x 2 on this post(along with Sassys) The only place I see negative reactions is on forums ( bodybuilding forums ???, makes no sense) or youtube(why are you looking at a bodybuilding video if you dont like it, how did you end up there if you didnt search for it lol)I get sopped all the time by woman saying they wished they looked like me , they appreciate my discipline and hard work. I get more men now that think I am "sexy" then ever.
I planned on downsizing a little next year by personal choice but if I were to enter the new division I would have to stop training altogether. There would be no challange in doing just cardio(although I do love cardio)I love the idea of woman not taking drugs or taking very little but some of us are naturally muscular and where does that leave us?

[debbiebramwell]

how about No. Or do you have any photos of you from highschool in contest conditioning?

She is Extremly close to the MAX of muscle a woman could hold without aas. shes probably on small small amounts though at least in contest prep.

But prove me wrong...

darling thats not true, I wish I was home so I can find pics of myself to download and show you what I looked like when I competed naturally(which I did for many years) I am a bodybuilder because thats where my genetics led me naturally.I know figure girls who take way more then I ever did..

[tammyp]

Females have

1.Bikini
2. Fitness
3. Figure
4. The new one
5. Bodybuilding

there would be 4, when bbing is phase out adter 2011.

[Curt James]

when fbbing is gone

Female Bodybuilding will never be gone.

NPC or IFBB as organizations make absolutely no difference whatsoever.

The top female bodybuilder in the sport goes unrecognized and basically unpaid as well, so I suspect that the hundreds or thousands of women competitors won't suddenly give up their enjoyment of a sport because some "panel of expert accountants" has determined that the sport is no longer viable.

Sure, Iris will be amazing pared down or scaled back, but if it's no longer FBB then there's an asterisk by her name for number of Olympia titles.

Where's the respect for the sport and the athletes? I am looking forward to reading more arguments for this possible change as well as reaction from the women (other than those who have already voiced their opinion) who will feel the impact.

I wonder if Paul Dillett's organization has this on their agenda? The OCB and NABBA organizations? Surely their are other federations which will not limit their female athletes.

And that's my ax. I'm not crying at the thought of what I'll miss but lamenting the loss of freedom of female competitors to simply compete as they see fit. Let them come in as big as they want or as small as they desire, but don't play semantic games by calling it Physique versus BodyBUILDING.

They powers that be didn't have the spines or cajones to put their 20% rule into action, so why should anyone expect that changing the name of the category will make the female side of the sport any better or more appealing to the masses?

Long live FBB!