Forum
>
General / Nonfiction
>
Thread
Log in |
Register
Yeah any winners from 10 years ago wouldn't even sniff a procard.
all the divs have changed. Figure is like 2x as big as it used to be. bikini now is closer to figure 10 years ago. Pretty sure wellness is bigger than figure was 15 years ago as well.
aside from the proliferation of implants i think it's a better look for the division.
crazy to me that someone like anna hebert is a BIKINI competitor.
crazy to me that someone like anna hebert is a BIKINI competitor.
Dude, WAT
I mean watch this, unreal she is a bikini division pro.
Oh yes, this one is something else. Remember seeing that video some months ago, I understand that's a post-workout pump but still...
I mean they used to say it was "attainable" for normal women, not that look, but damn its impressive.
Indeed, that has been the marketing spin for a while but bikini, like its other 'soft BB' counterparts has been going through the same evolution over the past new years: denser musculatures and leaner bodies with visible vascularity, this sounds obviously a full-time job. And I confess my interest in bikini has increased over those aforementioned observations.
There seems to be no specific rationale behind it but people want to push their limits and see how far they can get. Also new ways of training, supplementation and PEDs year after year will yield better results and bikini is no exception.
You have now figure girls weighting over 180 lbs in off-season mode or doubling as world-class powerlifters hitting multiple reps at 225 lbs on bench press. Wellness competitors with quads and hams that would make blush a lightweight MBB.
You can tell that Marisa has come a long way, and the effects on her body - positive and negative - are in full display.
yeah some of these women are wildly strong. wpd or figure pros pulling 500+, benching 2 plates for reps (Brooke Walker told me her max was 300), squating a lot of weight if they're powerlifters. heck brianny terry and hunter henderson never competed in their lives, and immediately got their pro cards basically. times are def changing with respect to training and how they get to that pro card goal.
wouldn't be surised to learn a lot of these bikini girls can bench 2 plates.
bikini now is closer to figure 10 years ago.
Oh yes, when I saw the video I thought she looked the close to size of a figure girl from a decade ago.
all the divs have changed. Figure is like 2x as big as it used to be. bikini now is closer to figure 10 years ago.
I agree with this, back then I could easily tell the categories apart, now big figure girls are as big as small physique girls and big physique girls may as well be bodybuilders.
More generally, it's a classic example of an "arms race." Each year, the take-home message is that the biggest, hardest, most shredded competitor wins, and they return the following year with their homework completed.
Going back to the 1980's, the bodybuilding division (which was the only one at the time) was led by the likes of Cory Everson and Rachel McLish. As we go into the 90's and 2000's, the top-ranked competitors got bigger and bigger (e.g. Lenda Murray, Iris Kyle). This left the organizers with two problems: (a) that to compete on the stage you had to compete size-wise with the likes of Murray and Kyle, which is an enormous barrier to entry, and (b) the competition was appealing to a narrower and narrower swath of the population.
Hence the Figure division was born in the early 2000's. And the Figure girls of that time looked quite similar to the bodybuilders of the generation before. Of course, the figure competition is much more boring with posing replaced by quarter turns, but that's another issue.
There was also the Fitness division (introduced, IIRC, around the mid-90's), but that's a little different since it includes a fitness routine and the judging is based in part on athleticism rather than pure aesthetics. Seems like a try to attract a wider audience and a wider range of competitors, but it's sort of a parallel track.
Anyway, as the 2000's go on, the bodybuilders keep getting bigger, and opening up more of a gap with the Figure girls. I recall in the late 2000's there was a period where the BB division was divided between Light- and Heavy-weight, but that seems to ultimately have resulted in the Physique division, kind of intermediate between Figure and Bodybuilding, so that the "larger" figure girls had someplace to go, and could compete in a more authentic "bodybuilding" competition with standard posing.
Meanwhile, the figure girls kept getting bigger and leaner, so there was a need to open up a new division "underneath" Figure, and that is the Bikini division (which, if I recall, came about a couple of years prior to Physique).
The Bodybuilding division was closed down for a couple of years in the late 2010's, but came back in the 2020's.
And now, as the OP states, even the Bikini girls are getting bigger and more defined, to the point that they look like the Figure competitors of a decade ago. Will they have to open up a new division "under" Bikini? We already have the Wellness division, but that's also sort of a parallel track with a different aesthetic; I think of it as sort of Figure for the lower body, Bikini for the upper body.
Who knows what's next? I suspect that the Bodybuilding division is starting to reach the very limits of human physiology. (How much bigger can somebody get than Natalia Trukhina, for example?) So it may be more of a question of how the various divisions evolve. If the Bikini girls keep getting bigger, eventually there won't be much to distinguish them from wellness or figure competitors, while the wellness and figure competitors push against the physique division, and the physique division encroaches upon the bodybuilding division...
Remember the 20 percent rule? I'm thinking Bikini might introduce something like that if the competitors get too yoked.
Indeed, that has been the marketing spin for a while but bikini, like its other 'soft BB' counterparts has been going through the same evolution over the past new years: denser musculatures and leaner bodies with visible vascularity, this sounds obviously a full-time job. And I confess my interest in bikini has increased over those aforementioned observations.
There seems to be no specific rationale behind it but people want to push their limits and see how far they can get. Also new ways of training, supplementation and PEDs year after year will yield better results and bikini is no exception.
You have now figure girls weighting over 180 lbs in off-season mode or doubling as world-class powerlifters hitting multiple reps at 225 lbs on bench press. Wellness competitors with quads and hams that would make blush a lightweight MBB.
You can tell that Marisa has come a long way, and the effects on her body - positive and negative - are in full display.
Marisa who??
It's crazy how shredded and dedicated they are now. Look at how ripped and vieny this one is here. And how she gets her sleep, meals, and even literally pumps up and poses on an airplane while the flight attendants film her.
That's another good example. This kind of physique usually places low at the Olympia; the Pro qualifiers - in the US as in Europe - are better showcases in that judges are more open to award/less reluctant to penalise their hardness.
Ohh daaamn
Ha ha, this is the kind of body that really convinces me to attend some second-tier Pro shows, even with the absence of WPD or FBBing - you're bound to see at least a couple of these type of hardbodies that will catch your attention during the show. Some of these ladies are really yearning for a Ms O qualification.
That's another good example. This kind of physique usually places low at the Olympia; the Pro qualifiers - in the US as in Europe - are better showcases in that judges are more open to award/less reluctant to penalise their hardness.
yea i think they should just come out and say the will reward the most hard shredded look.
It's crazy how much this division has changed in last 10-15 years. The women are so much more muscular and shredded now than they used to be, which I think is amazing.
Also, the posing and posing suits have changed a heck of a lot. I mean look how tiny Ashley's posing bottoms are when she turns around in this video. Pretty amazing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-LspBXovzQ