Sarah And Me: At Home With Sarah I

What’s day-to-day domestic life like with is a female bodybuilder? I doubt I am the only one here who has spent more time than I probably should have pondering that question. Nowadays, you almost don’t have to imagine. There are millions of images of muscle women just hanging out in their domestic surroundings. The spread of digital photography and the ease with which images can be shared have seen to that. But less than ten years ago, these little peeks into the intimate surroundings of female bodybuilders were (as far as I recall) quite rare.

Maybe Sarah was a pioneer in this field, or maybe I was just paying so much attention to what she was doing that I missed the fact that others were doing it too, but either way, the result was that for me, Sarah became the fantasy FBB girlfriend simply because there was so much material to fuel that fantasy. And given any female muscle lover’s propensity to idealise these magnificent women (you see, there I go again), it won’t be a surprise to learn that my daydreams about being Sarah’s man around the house tended very much towards imagining an ideal world, an ideal life…

I don’t know what you’ve heard about contest dieting making bodybuilders (male and female) difficult to live with, but Sarah was never any problem. Quite the opposite in fact, the fewer carbs she had, the more cut she became, the happier she was, the less she would wear and the more she wanted to pose for me. I always looked forward to leg day in particular.

Sarah rewards me for making her another delicious and nutritious breakfast with a big smile and a little gun show before she goes off to the gym and makes those bad boys grow. In another version of this fantasy, I’ve installed all the workout equipment she could ever want in the basement (and air-con, and a sound system, and, naturally, lots and lots and lots of mirrors) and this is a post-workout flex. AKA foreplay.

But even on her rest days, when we’d take casual walks around the neighbourhood, I was the happiest man in the world. All that barely disguised jealousy on the faces of the guys as we strolled past them did wonders for my self-confidence. She’d look great in anything she threw on, and I always remembered to bring the camera.

Sarah borrows a shirt of mine with hilarious results, then does her best Buster Keaton face for the snap. She spent the rest of the day in this ‘outfit’. When she answered the door to the postman, the look on his face was priceless.

Fresh from the tanning bed, Sarah got me to take this so she could analyse how her back was coming on. I often had trouble holding the camera still when faced with such a task, and it shows here. Her body was just so overwhelming up close. She never got cross with me about the blurry images, though. I think she always rather liked that she could have that effect on me.

So instead of getting uptight about it, she just bought me a tripod. Even when, as here, she was wearing nothing more than her favourite thong, the camera was always as solid as a rock – that is once my shaky hands had managed to fix the damn thing to the tripod.

Sarah moisturises before bedtime. I probably should have done the bathroom up a bit, it was hardly fit for a goddess, was it? She never complained, far from it. I just wish I’d maybe given it a lick of paint. In my defence, female muscle slavedom can be a time-consuming business that doesn’t leave a lot of free-time for DIY. Or perhaps because Sarah was always doing things like moisturising herself naked in the bathroom with the door open, DIY just never sprang to mind.

In fact, thinking back, Sarah would spend most of her time shirtless, something I always made sure she knew I appreciated. After all, what’s the point of all that hard work to build those delicious muscles if you are going to cover them up and hide them away. And furthermore, if you have the legendary sex drive of an FBB, it doesn’t hurt to keep your man titilated and ready to do his duty at a moment’s notice, does it?

And here is Sarah getting ready for a Saturday night out from her older YouTube channel, SarahDunlapInMotion. OK, she may have lost a bit of muscle by this stage, but let’s face it, if any of us went out on a Saturday night and met a woman with Sarah’s muscles here, we wouldn’t be complaining.

[editor’s note: concerned that 6ft1swell has finally lost his already tenuous grip on reality, today’s post was followed by an intervention by the FMS team, and Swell has agreed to undergo psychological evaluation. We await the results.]

Sarah And Me

2013 has so far been memorable for me for a number of reasons, and one of those reasons is definitely that I opened my inbox one morning to find a message there from none other than Sarah Dunlap.

In my head, a hysterical voice started screaming, SARAH DUNLAP!!! A MESSAGE FROM SARAH DUNLAP!!!

Once I’d picked up the mobile device from the floor (and began to control my shakes) I realised it was just a generic ‘Thank you for subscribing to my channel’ message, but nevertheless, getting a message from Sarah Dunlap, any kind of message, was, for me, a moment I won’t forget anytime soon.

You see Sarah and me go way back. Back to the early days of her bodybuilding career, to 2002, when she won both the Junior Nationals and NPC Nationals. In that first experience of unlimited internet access, Sarah burst onto my screen (well, actually, given the speeds in those days, perhaps ‘burst’ is not the right word, but you know what I mean) and blew me away.

2002: Sarah Dunlap wins the Junior Nationals and Nationals

Clicking on a thumbnail of her may have entailed a lengthy wait as the image downloaded step by step (are we spoiled now or what?) but, wow, were those images worth it!

These days, there are more images of up and coming muscle princesses out there than you can shake a shitty stick at. Back then, I had never seen a woman so young who was so big and muscular – through the magazine years I’d just got the impression all female bodybuilders were in their 30s – Sarah was (you’ll have to forgive the biblical connotation in this Easter week) a revelation.

And not only was she big. She was absolutely gorgeous. I was smitten. She had no idea how I felt of course, but then and there the story of Sarah and me began.

My first subscription? Herbiceps. Why? Pictures of Sarah. Next? FemFlex. Because, again, they had Sarah. FTVideo and Awefilms got my money too. Once they had pictures and clips of Sarah of course. They should all give her a bloody big bonus right now in recognition of her services to them. I’m not saying she was the only woman I enjoyed on these sites, but she was the reason I joined every time.

As the years passed, her fame and her muscles continued to grow, as did her internet presence. She set up her own websites. First, if memory serves correctly, SarahDunlapsWorld around 2004 or 2005 (guess who joined that), followed by (or maybe it was concurrent) a site for her clips, SarahInMotion, and, yes, Swell was there too.

For the first time, I could follow the story of a female bodybuilder’s daily life through her website. Her other interests, self-photography (the first time I’d seen it), Sarah at home, Sarah on a bike and so on. She shared. And this fan couldn’t get enough.

2007: The Jan Tana champion at the Olympia

2007: Sarah wins the Jan Tana Pro show on her 27th birthday, looking absolutely sensational. She competes at the Olympia the same year. Then…

Sarah disappeared. Quite honestly, it was like losing a friend. Actually, around the same time a very very good (and real!) friend of mine emigrated. I remember thinking to myself at the time: who else is going to bugger off and leave me now?

A couple of years passed, and Sarah appeared on MySpace, a lot smaller, but still her gorgeous self. And she had a YouTube channel, SarahDunlapInMotion. There she was roller-skating dressed as a rabbit, being licked by a ‘friend’, getting ready for a Saturday night out, and, of course, doing a bit of gym work. She was sharing again. Sarah and me were back on!

And so it continued into 2010, but once again, Sarah disappeared. Rumours began on the forums. She was working as an escort in New York; she had serious health problems as a result of her steroid abuse; she was more or less homeless; she’d gone mad. Slave’s ire was well and truly ignited. How dare they say such things about Sarah! Like the Lion in The Wizard of Oz, I was ready to fight ‘em with one paw tied behind my back, fight ‘em standing on one foot, fight ‘em with my eyes closed, etc. My Sarah! I was ready to duel these malicious muck-spreaders, with pistol or sword, and defend her honour.

But last year, some real news. After 2007, Sarah had simply begun to once again enjoy all the things she had had to give up to devote herself to bodybuilding. Things like roller-skating (dressed as a rabbit) or ice-skating, for example. She had taken up landscape design, something she’d always wanted to do before bodybuilding came along. Sarah had, indeed, had some health problems, but it had nothing to do with steroids. In fact, her right leg had needed realigning, no little operation, but she was on the mend.

2012: Sarah on the mend

Which brings us to this year, her new YouTube channel (simply called SarahDunlap), her ClipsForSale page (more exotically entitled Shedeezl – Sexy Muscle Vixen), and that message.

Of course I replied. And I’m still waiting for her to get back to me. But it’s no big deal if she doesn’t. After all, Sarah and me have survived this long without sending messages to each other!

Get ready for Sarah overload (as if that were possible). I don’t want to offend anybody who literally believes the Easter story, but it seems to me that it’s about time appreciation for this beautiful, charismatic and slightly mad (in a good way) ex-champion was resurrected.

Hot and Hard: Danielle Reardon

The ‘High School Bodybuilder’ at Wesley Chapel High School in Florida

A few years ago, a homemade video appeared on the forums of a ‘High School Bodybuilder’ called Danielle Reardon. The clip (which as far as I can see is no longer available to watch) consisted solely of Danielle talking to camera. She talked, as far as I remember, about her future goals in the sport, her love of the lifestyle and the thrill she got from competing. I remember thinking that she was rather eloquent and came across as being very sure of herself and what she wanted. And I also remember thinking, Hang on! She’s talking about having competed. How can a teenage girl possibly have competed already?

Well, that’s first place, thinks the girl in the glasses. Maybe I can get second.

To Brits like me, the idea that a high school (or secondary school as we say over here) would have a bodybuilding contest is, well, a little far-fetched. As a teenager I might have dreamed that some of the girls from the hockey team, the ones who frequented the weights room anyway, would do a bit of flexing for me, but it never once occurred to my overactive imagination that they would stand on the stage at the school in bikinis as competitors in our school’s bodybuilding show.

Miss Wesley Chapel 2008

It seems high school bodybuilding not only exists, but is well-established in some schools, at least in some parts of the US. The shows are essentially fundraisers for some sporting activity or another at the school, and involve boys and girls. Not surprisingly, perhaps, these shows have attracted rather a large amount of criticism. One member of the American Council on Exercise has said that teenagers experimenting with nutritional supplements, crash dieting or pre-contest dehydration is ‘a recipe for disaster. Emotionally, psychologically, physiologically, their bodies are not ready for it.’

But Danielle didn’t appear to have any of these issues. She seemed well-aware of what she was committing herself to, and did so simply because she had decided that the lifestyle bodybuilding entails was the life that she wanted to lead. And that is exactly what she has done.

Born in 1990 (!), Danielle hails from Florida. She attended Wesley Chapel High School, and competed in their annual bodybuilding show every year she was there, winning it in both her junior and senior years. It was totally energizing, she says, I loved the spotlight.

In 2010, she competed as a Figure competitor at NPC shows, and continued to do so in 2011, winning the short class at the Sunshine Classic and finishing 14th at the Nationals that year. But, now 21, it was becoming apparent that all those years of bodybuilding as a teenager meant that Danielle was simply too muscular to succeed in Figure at the highest level, and right from the get-go she had made it her ambition to be at that level, so she decided to move up to Physique.

Danielle at the 2012 NPC Southern States

The improvement in her results were immediate. She won her class (short) at the Mid-Florida Classic, finished 2nd at the NPC Southern States, and consequently qualified for the Nationals. There, she won her class. At the age of 22, she had her pro card.

Danielle wins her class at the 2012 NPC Nationals, obviously

It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that this young woman is on the verge of becoming a phenomenon. What better advert could there be for the Physique division? And what better way could there be for Hot and Hard Week to end?

Hot and Hard: Larissa and…

Is it me or does everybody want to get a picture with Larissa Reis?

Larissa and… Heather Dees

Larissa and… Ingrid Romero (left) and Laurie Schnelle (right)

Larissa and… Jessica Scofield

Larissa and… Natalia Melo

Larissa and… Maria Luis Baeza

Larissa and… Katka Kyptova (left) and Nanda Croft (right)

Larissa and… Monica Martin

Larissa and… Oksana Grishina

Unfortunately, despite evidence to the contrary, Larissa herself can’t be in every picture. But the good news is you can now take Larissa everywhere you go with this new T-shirt. Never be without Larissa in your photos again! Details on her website.

And if any of you lovely readers can identify any of the women with Larissa that I haven’t been able to, please let me know who they are.

Enjoy! Hot and Hard Week concludes tomorrow.

Hot and Hard: Joele Smith

2011 saw the debut of the Women’s Physique Division at the NPC Nationals. Far from suffering from interest, 106 competitors entered. Some of them were former bodybuilders, downsized for the new class, while many others were former figure competitors who had added a little more muscle. One of those was Joele Smith from Mississippi, who had been competing in figure for a little over a year.

Joele was into dance, gymnastics and sport in general while growing up, but didn’t begin serious weight training until she was at Nursing School in Mississippi. I had to find something to nourish my need of physical activity, she says. Then I met my husband, Randy, and he introduced me to serious weight training. I loved it! He had a background in bodybuilding and taught me everything I know about weight training.

After a couple of friends from the same gym began to compete, and with Randy’s encouragement, Joele first competed in May 2010 at NPC Steel World (!) and won the overall title in the Figure Division. If she had had doubts about doing more competitions, that first victory wiped them all away: I was hooked!

But Joele’s ride to the pros was not without its bumps. She failed to place at two of her next three contests, and by the time the NPC Nationals came around in 2011, she had been about to give up competing. That she didn’t was thanks partly to her husband and another trainer’s powers of persuasion, and partly to the fact that the new Physique division was being introduced at that show.

Joele was one of 30 (30!) competitors in the tallest of the three height classes. After a patchy Figure career, she was an unlikely winner, but win she did, and although she missed out on the overall title, she’d won her first Physique show, and was now a pro, one of the first six women to be awarded professional status in the division.

And last year she took to the stage in four high-profile pro shows and placed in the top 6 in all of them. And set up Physique Pro Fitness, which she hopes will help other women (and men) reach their fitness targets.

I’m well aware that to many female muscle fans, ‘Physique’ is a dirty word. Many feel it’s introduction was a thinly-disguised attempt to bang another nail into the heart of female bodybuilding, and on that point I quite agree. But intention is one thing and outcome quite another. Have a bit of faith! Female bodybuilding will survive.

Some women, Joele for instance, fit right into the Physique class. She wasn’t a success as a Figure competitor, and is unlikely to ever have the muscularity to succeed in the Bodybuilding division. Physique is where she belongs, and if it hadn’t been brought into existence, she may well have given up competing. Take a good look at Joele. Wouldn’t the sport, in fact, wouldn’t the world be a poorer place if that had happened?

Joele’s website
Physique Pro Fitness website

Enjoy one of Joele’s 2012 appearances, the IFBB Europa in Orlando

It’s all good. More heat tomorrow!

Hot and Hard: Kettlebelles

Feel the Burn
Unlike dumbbell or barbell exercises, kettlebell movements often involve large numbers of repetitions, and are in their nature holistic. They work several muscles simultaneously and continuously for several minutes, or with short breaks. This combination makes the exercise partially aerobic. In one study, kettlebell enthusiasts performing a 20-minute snatch workout were measured to burn, on average, 13.6 calories per minute aerobically and 6.6 calories anaerobically.

ги́ря
Kettlebells are cast-iron weights made up of a ball and a handle. They come from Russia, where they were first developed in the 1700s. In Russian, they are called ги́ря (‘girya’). The first appearance of the word in a Russian dictionary was in 1704. They were originally used as standard counterweights that bore the Imperial Seal to weigh out dry goods on market scales. People started throwing them around for entertainment, and at some stage after that, they began to be put to use for exercise.

Know your poods
Kettlebells are traditionally measured in units called ‘poods’. A pood is roughly equivalent to 16kg (or 35lbs) and in events sanctioned by the International Union of Kettlebell Lifting and the International Girya Sport Federation, this unit is still used in competition. A 1 pood kettlebell is yellow, if it’s green it’s 1.5 poods, and the red ones are 2 poods.

Back in the USSR
After the Russian Revolution, the use of kettlebells for physical training began to flourish inside the USSR, and was commonplace in the military, among Olympic athletes, and rural workers. In 1948, kettlebell lifting was declared the national sport of the Soviet Union. In 1981, a government commission made it compulsory to train with kettlebells in an attempt to increase productivity and reduce healthcare costs. The Russian army to this day tests the strength of its recruits not with push-ups, but with kettlebell snatches.

From Spetnaz with Love
Although kettlebell training had spread across Eastern Europe during the Cold War, they were still virtually unknown in North America in the late twentieth century. But in 1998, Pavel Tsatouline, former Soviet Special Forces (Spetnaz) physical training instructor, introduced them to American strength athletes in a series of publications. The response was such that he was approached by Dragon Door Publications, who offered to manufacture kettlebells in America, if Tsatouline agreed to teach people how to use them.

Dig the New Thing
By 2001, Dragon Door had published The Russian Kettlebell Challenge and manufactured the first US-made kettlebells. Certification for kettlebell trainers was established, and Rolling Stone voted him the ‘Hot Trainer’ of 2001, and in 2002, the same magazine named kettlebells the ‘Hot Weight’. Within a decade, kettlebells were a worldwide phenomenon.

Apologies for the terrible pun in the title. Hope it didn’t spoil your enjoyment!

Kettlebell History (from Kettlebell Science), and more history from Kettlebell USA
Wikipedia on Kettlebells and Pavel_Tsatsouline

Hot and Hard: Cindy Landolt

When I first saw her profile in one of the fitness forums I frequently visit, I thought …wow, this woman’s picture is probably a CGI graphic! Unreal! I was wrong, Cindy is 100% real and aside from being super fit, I think she is super pretty… (Louis M. Sanchez, The Quant Method)

There is definitely a tendency for interviewers, male interviewers anyway, to go a bit mushy when they talk about Cinderella ‘Cindy’ Landolt. Swell may have been guilty of this himself, back at the end of 2011 when Cindy was one of FMS’ Women of the Year I wrote:

Long dark hair, and a set of abs that were made to be massaged and licked all night. Eyes that shine with health and vitality, and then there’s her long shapely legs. And she’s very friendly on the forums…

God, it’s embarrassing to read my old posts sometimes! ‘And she’s very friendly on the forums’! Yuck.

I’ll console myself with the thought that I wasn’t the first, and I won’t be the last, to be made to go all blushing schoolboy as a result of Cindy’s obvious charms.

But there is so much more to this woman than just stunning looks and a perfect body. Try, it’s hard I know, but try, try to look beyond the long, dark hair and the long, shapely legs.

She graduated from Business School. And in 2009 she started to put that theory into practice when she opened her own personal training company, Cindy Training, in Zurich in 2009. Four years later, and she’s one of the highest profile fitness models in Europe, and her business has gone international – she now runs her training programmes in London, Sydney and elsewhere in addition to Switzerland.

It’s a pattern we have noticed here at FMS, the women we adore are not only high-achievers in the field of fitness or bodybuilding, but have also achieved in other areas of their life, be it business, another sport or whatever.

Recently, on one of the major female muscle fan forums, one of those questions us female muscle heads love to ask each other was posed by one of the members. It went something like this:

Let’s say you have a friend that isn’t into female bodybuilding. His reasons are typical (too masculine etc.). If you had to pick one woman to open his mind, even change it and ‘convert’ him to FBBs, who would she be?

There was lots of replies, and lots of suggestions, but few of them took into account anything other than appearance. Choices included Cindy Phillips, Gina Davis, Mavi Giola and so on, chosen because they were ‘more feminine’ or ‘prettier’ or ‘the hottest’.

Granted, bodybuilding and fitness is all about the aesthetic, but not one reply mentioned any of the achievements of the women, either within bodybuilding (titles etc.) or outside it. Not one.

We’re all guilty of this. I’m as guilty as you are (if not more so). Just look at the images I’ve chosen of Cindy today – I didn’t choose them because they show her at her most successful.

But let’s go back to the question posted on the forum, shall we? Let’s say we choose Cindy Landolt as our ‘one woman’ to show our FBB-sceptic friend. She’s conventionally beautiful as well as being muscular (though not muscular enough to be accused of being masculine), so far so good.

Now, wouldn’t it be good if as well as showing him Cindy, we could also tell our friend that she’s a graduate who runs her own successful international business?

Don’t you find beautiful, fit, successful international businesswomen attractive?!

If our aim is to open minds, why not use every means necessary?

So pick your own favourite female. What else has she done? What other achievements has she got outside of having sculpted a magnificent physique for herself (an achievement beyond most people to begin with)? Why not find out? When that conversation with your friend or family member comes, why not give yourself more chance of making them think again?

And while I’m at it, I’d probably also throw in the fact that Cindy is multi-lingual to strengthen my argument with my FBB-sceptic friend. Being Swiss she already has German and French, and the fact that she’s training people in London and Sydney adds English to her skills. If my friend’s dream woman is someone like Cheryl Cole or Tulisa Contostavlos, well, they barely speak English.

Brush up on your own Swiss-German (while admiring Cindy in motion) by watching this interview with her from Swiss TV.

Women like Cindy are incredible and incredible-looking.

Really incredible-looking.

More Cindy? Visit www.cindytraining.com

Hot and Hard: Don’t Try This at Home

We really don’t want you to end up as a comedy gif on Tumblr, so don’t be trying this. Your man-sized ego might be telling you that anything she can do, you can do better, but admit it, you can’t. Don’t even try to copy any of these moves. Even if you manage it without causing yourself serious bodily injury (and that in itself is extremely unlikely), you’d never be able to pull it off as gracefully as these beautiful, strong, gymnastic fantastic ladies.

LEGS AKIMBO

Swann Cardot is a case in point. On a piece of equipment designed by groin surgeons to increase their workload, she’s as serene and graceful as a, well, as a swan.

Things You Wish Your Girlfriend Could Do I & II

Hands on the floor, feet in the air, gloves on the feet?!

My kind of street art

Things You Wish Your Girlfriend Could Do III

UPSIDE DOWN

Power, balance, grace

Sometimes it’s just not enough to get to the top of the mountain

Roof gymnastics

ONE-HANDED

OK, the first two are cheating a little by actually using something else for support, but even so, I couldn’t manage any of these positions even if there was a team of little people holding my limbs in position. The picture immediately above is particularly breathtaking. And brave.

AND FOR HER NEXT TRICK

Would you be ready to stand there with the apple on your head for the kind of girl who can fire an arrow with her feet while supporting herself with her arms? Are you wondering what else she can do? Me, too.

Enjoy! More heat and hardness tomorrow.

Hot and Hard

I don’t know what the weather is like where you are, but here in the UK it is beginning to seem like this winter will never end. Snow and freezing temperatures have given way to rain that comes at you horizontally in howling winds and temperatures that are, well, just a little above zero. And now the snow’s back again.

It’s all rather depressing.

Meanwhile, as always, FMS has been collecting images from around the internet for the occasional Hot and Hard series of posts, gorgeous women, leaner than full-on bodybuilders, who have nevertheless got more than enough muscle to satisfy.

So, we’re freezing cold, we need cheering up, and we have a folder overflowing with images of hot and hard women. Can you tell where this is leading?

Welcome to Hot and Hard Week!

What makes this XXL winter XXL annoying for me is that as spring approaches I always wonder whether this will be the breakthrough year, the year when British womanhood shed the winter layers of jackets and jumpers to reveal they have spent the entire winter pumping iron and eating right. The year when a toned female arm on the streets of the UK will become an everyday sight, rather than a rarity.

Every year I’m equally optimistic, despite all past experience telling me it’ll never happen. Imagine a man who’s never won a penny on the lottery, but keeps buying his ticket. It’s not because he’s convinced he’ll win, but until he’s found out the dream hasn’t come true, he enjoys the possibility that it might.

But our man would soon lose interest if the lottery draw never happened, and that’s how I’m starting to feel about the spring layer-shedding. You can’t enjoy the anticipation forever. And this winter seems to have gone on forever.

What came first – the hot women or the hot climate? Are hot women drawn to places with hot climates, or are hot climates the result of concentrations of hot women? There certainly seem to be more of them in places like California and Florida, not to mention Brazil, but if I take that logic to its conclusion, the hottest women in the world would be in Saudi Arabia or thereabouts, and we’re never going to find out if that’s true, are we?

Nevertheless, could a critical mass of these Hot and Hard women serve to change the weather? Perhaps if all of the women we’re posting today stood in the middle of Britain (which is around a village in Lancashire called Dunsop Bridge, by the way) the temperature might rise. Call me mad if you like, but the temperature of the men of Dunsop Bridge would certainly rise. It might be worth a try.

Of course it’s climate change that’s responsible for the colder winters the UK is experiencing, and more generally it’s responsible for more extreme weather across he globe. Unless you’re a Chinese industrialist, you probably try to do your bit to make sure your carbon footprint isn’t doing more damage than necessary.

Hot and hard women are no exception. A number of bigger and more environmentally-conscious gyms are already harnessing the incredible energy these women have, recycling it through the exercise equipment they use back into the gym’s power supply.

It’s very simple really, explains John Smith of The Big Green Gym in Brighton. Every rep on a cable machine, for example, produces a small amount of power through the friction created when the weights rise and fall. Enough people doing enough reps on enough machines and you can basically save enough power to light the gym, so you’re not taking any electricity from the grid.

So, the members get a workout, the gym saves on energy bills, and less power is consumed and wasted. Everybody wins. And according to Smith, it’s the higher-rep workouts that do the most good. The big boys tend to lift big, heavy free weights, and we haven’t worked out how to harness that energy yet. The women tend to use the machines more, and while they may lift less weight, they do so for a greater number of reps, he says. So they’re the ones doing the most good for the environment.

Perhaps, then, hot and hard women really can help us to control the weather, if only by doing their bit to ensure we don’t do more damage to the environment than we already have. They might not be able to improve the weather, but they are assisting in the fight against it getting even more extreme than it is already.

And anyway, no matter where you are and no matter what the weather is like there, haven’t these images of gorgeous muscular women raised your temperature? Isn’t it a little bit higher than when you were at the top of the page?

The temperature will continue to rise tomorrow. Get your Hawaiian shirts ready.

Thighs of the Day: Legendary II

I do like to save the best for last. So to end our week of thighs here at FMS, the best pair of thighs ever. That’s just my opinion, but I doubt I’m alone in that opinion. These thighs belong, of course, to Heather Policky.

[Regular readers will know how I feel about my favourite female bodybuilders getting married. Happy for them, of course, (he said through gritted teeth) but I’m not about to start using her married name. It not only screws up my filing system, it also means I have to change it back when the marriage (sadly) doesn’t work out.]

Anyway, back to the point. Heather was never all about the legs. She may have been good enough to win the Olympia (and may be good enough yet), an overall package combining beauty, muscular development, charisma and that little bit of je ne sais quoi, but those legs were other-wordly. I’m not just talking about their size, but their perfect shape too. Mass and aesthetics. The holy grail. Heavenly. Legendary.

Like I said, with Heather it’s never just about the legs. Those lips, that look of confidence. See how her lats balloon outwards. There’s pecs and abs to admire as well. But in the end you just have to look down. On tiptoe, her thighs explode out of her tight black shorts.

On stage, how many hearts have skipped a beat as hands on hips she extends one leg? She’s going to shake it… she’s going to shake it! Then she does, and then bam! It’s flexed and those beautiful cuts and striations take your breath away.

Now that is a woman! I’ve always wondered just how on earth she got those trousers on. Must have had help. Must have had a queue of helpers. Still it must have taken a while. Off was probably easier. Each pair strictly a one-time deal. Pull them on, wear them, then let those muscles do the ripping when it’s time to get undressed.

And when she’s changed into something more comfortable, there are those thighs in all their glory. No curves on muscular women, he said. Oh really! Dude, look again and tell me just where the straight lines are.

I think this is just about my favourite set of Heather (until I change my mind again). There are muscles everywhere, and delicious tanned, rippling, defined muscles at that. Frankly, she looks bullet-proof. A super-heroine made flesh. And she knows it, doesn’t she? Check out that smile.

Her incredible body outdoors in the wet, in heels and lingerie. Sounds like a recipe for a good set of images, and surprise surprise, it totally works, and in no small part because she is really giving it the full foxiness. Again, no curves?! Are you blind?!

I remember seeing an interview with her where she claimed not to train her legs. Hard to believe now, especially rediscovering this photo. Maybe she meant she wasn’t training legs at that time, but she clearly was when this snap was taken. Possibly the juiciest-looking things you will ever see.

Is it the natural sunlight, a bit of photomanipulation? Or was her body really this shredded when this image and its accompanying set were taken? I like to believe the latter, naturally. I like to believe that once upon a time, for a few hours at least, her thighs really did look like this. Truly legendary.

And in case you didn’t know, Heather Policky is on the comeback trail. And there can be little doubt that for now at least, she’s training those bad boys…

If you want her life story, she has a fairly long entry (for a female bodybuilder) at Wikipedia. There are a couple of interviews you might like: one on Bodybuilding.com fairly early in her career, and another at Muscleweek.com from last year that will bring you pretty much up-to-date with all things Heather. And there’s her blog, which, despite not being updated since last August (and updated only irregularly before that), is still well-worth a read. She’s not a woman to mince her words or pretend she isn’t a sexual being.

Hope you have enjoyed this week’s posts as much as I’ve enjoyed putting them together. Female Muscle Slave will be on sabbatical for the next week (unfortunately not with Heather), but will return on 23rd March.

And talking of legendary, FMS recommends PumpItUp for your daily muscle fix, a blog that has been going since 2006. So he must be doing something right!

See you in a week!