Lean Bodies Consulting

So it’s Tuesday and I’ve had a day to recover and catch up on my sleep. Here’s a recap of the weekend …

Thursday morning I flew into Atlanta and spent the night at Noel’s house. (had a fun time meeting the rest of the family, particularly their three charming little girls).

Friday morning it was up and off for our five-hour drive to Charleston, SC. We had to make four stops due to all the water being consumed. Late Friday afternoon, we headed over to get Noel checked in, practiced some more posing and then headed off to my favourite restaurant - The Outback. Just a simple steak and vegatables meal for me, but Noel got to enjoy steak, french fries, bread and some cheesecake … which I dipped into.

A few hours later, she was looking full, hard and vascular.

Saturday morning started pretty early as we had to get breakfast and continue fat loading before heading over to the prejudging which started at 9am. I was very pleased with how Noel looked Saturday morning. The final week prep couldn’t have worked out better - full, dry, hard, vascular, etc. She was on.

So, we parted ways at the venue and I went and sat in my seat. Man, this was a long prejudging. All in all it took six hours. Brutal. And there were 135 figure competitors divided into 6 classes.

Anyway, figure is an interesting beast these days. When it first started, it was basically fitness minus the routine round. Meaning, that the physiques rewarded were similar to that of fitness competitors. Now that a few years have passed, the ideal figure physique has moved away from that. It’s continually evolving. I think they just want it to be it’s own category, and not just considered ‘fitness minus the routine round’. The problem is, it seems the criteria is different from show to show. It’s really quite frustrating, both for competitors and even for myself as the one responsible for helping to achieve that ‘ideal’ look that the judges are rewarding. You just never know what’s going to get rewarded on any given day. You can go into one show and be marked down for being too lean or too muscular and then do another show two weeks later and take the whole show under a different judging panel. This simply should not happen.

Anyway, we were very happy with what Noel was going to be presenting for this show. She was the 4th class to come outif I recall correctly, and what I was doing leading up to that, was trying to figure out what exactly the judges were favouring. How? I’d try to pick three or four competitors in each round before initial callouts to see if I was picking the same girls the judges would initlally pick.

I was doing pretty well with my picks so I figured I had an idea of what was being rewarded.

So the Tall class comes out for their individuals and I see Noel, and she looks great. Pretty exciting. I go on to pick my four for the first call out - Noel being one of them.

Next thing I know, I’m sitting there dumbfounded. I still did pretty good - the other three I had picked got called out. Noel didn’t. I was surprised, very surprised. And then the next call out - nothing. And the next - nothing. Wow. I’m sitting there just mind boggled at what was going on. It was a very frustrating afternoon. I felt she got completely overlooked.

After prejudging I was trying to come up with possibilities for why she didn’t get a look. I thought perhaps her legs were too hard for starters. I believe they were the most separated in the show.

And interestingly enough, she was told for the second round (two-piece) that the judges would likely just repeat the callouts from the first round (one-piece). That seems fair doesn’t it? Therefore the one-piece basically determined everything. And why was the one-piece the first round? To remove the element of conditioning (abdominal definition) as they use the one-piece to assess symmetry, proportion, etc. So we can conclude that Noel has poor symmetry. Haha. Sure.

Anyway, as many already likely know from reading Noel’s blog, she didn’t place in the Top 15. I still feel she was overlooked and that she’ll get her due at Nationals.

Some things we determined …

1. Posing issues - the girls were given instruction backstage to make sure that your thumbs can touch your thighs in your front and back relaxed poses. No one seemed to follow these rules … except Noel. (Silly Noel playing by the rules). The problem was that she ended up losing all her back width. If you’ve seen her progress pics, you can see she’s got a wide back. If you look at her contest shots on her blog, you’ll see she’s not flaring.

2. I think due to how wide she is through the clavicles that even though she carries quite a bit of muscle, that she needs more in the upper body to fill out her frame. In a few of the pictures, you can see she is getting out muscled by some of the girls. So, a focus on more shoulders, more back thickness, etc is a priority.

3. And bigger, fuller glutes as well.

Conditioning and the prep week are spot on. We won’t change any of that.

So Sunday it was back to Noel’s place, where we all had a good time with the kids, etc. Charmers I tell ya. Oh and I had pizza for the first time in almost two months. Scott and Noel seemed to be a bit put off by my request to have pineapple and mushrooms on it. Silly Americans.

Here’s some pictures from Saturday morning.

Related posts:

1. 2008 NPC Junior Nationals - Round 1
2. Live from the 2008 NPC Junior USAs
3. 2008 NPC Junior USAs Recap

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 1st, 2007 at 8:50 pm and is filed under Contest Prep , Off Topic . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.