Hello peeps
Well here's another blog & I am going to touch on a subject that is probably very taboo. It will certainly upset a lot of people. This is no reason to avoid the subject though.
I would however stress that I am NOT having a go at body building as a sport & have the utmost respect for those that compete and go through what I can only describe as torturous dieting and training cycles. I have many friends who compete and have nothing but respect & admiration.
The subject of this blog is not about fact as such but more about impressions.
The thing is Bodybuilding is becoming more mainstream. Its no longer a niche sport. A lot more people are becoming interested. Up until about 8 months ago I had very little knowledge of the sport and in all honesty, very little respect. I stress, this has changed but I want to come at you from a pure lay mans point of view.
So lets start at the beginning
As you fitpros are all aware, the BodyPower expo was on this weekend. I, like many of my colleagues, decided to attend. Its the first time I have and boy was it not, what I expected!
Now don't get me wrong there was a lot of great stuff there but bloody hell did it show the baser side of our industry too. Many sports were represented but the most prominent was bodybuilding.
So now I'm going to come at you from a layman's point of view. Amongst other things there was a Body building show on at BodyPower & I was very much looking forward to seeing the girls & boys who were tweeting about their training & diets, getting up & showing their stuff.
It was a complete shock, not what I was expecting at all!
The standard of condition was so varied it was hard to tell what I was watching. I had no idea if I was watching body fitness, bikini or just a beauty pageant.
Some of the guys & girls had worked their asses off! literally but some of them looked like they had just sauntered off the street.
My heart bled for some of them. The fake boobs, hair & dodgy orange tans were not disguising the lack of conditioning and in some cases, we weren't looking at lean, we were looking at emaciated. How could any self respecting coach let a girl or guy get into that sort of state, where is the love, or is it really just all about the £'s?
I know many will disagree but I urge you to look at it from joe publics point of view not an insider. Think about what impression it would have given them of what body building is about. Girls walking around with their tits and asses hanging out. Heavy makeup & tans. Guys barging through the crowd with their "entourage" just reinforcing the age old cliches that are still associated with the sport. They won't see whether the competition is a nationally recognised show or not. They won't see that there are truly good comps out there. They will only see whats in front of them.
If 40,000 people saw what I saw, then thats 40,000 people walking away with totally the wrong impression about Body building.
For those of you that saw my little mini rants on twitter yesterday, It was this that I was getting at. I felt awful for the sport and really it reinforced in many, the wrong impression
I know the difference, I know that body building is not like that. Joe public doesn't and its body buildings responsibility to clean it up. Be proud enough of your sport that, rather than getting defensive, make a change!.
I apologise in advance for any offence caused to the Body Building community
