À la recherche du chaude et dure perdu: Michelle Neil

REMEMBRANCE OF HOT AND HARD PAST

5. Dr. Feelgood

In a short, and sadly long lost, clip from around 2006, a Femflex (I think) crew is shooting contestants back stage. A vision of incredible, heart-stopping size and conditioning, her hair as golden as her tan, starts flexing for the camera. They ask her her name. Without skipping a pose, she tells them. Then, there’s a fairly long pause (these clips were generally quite chatty affairs). Off camera, a kind of awed silence for this amazing specimen, punctuated by assorted gasps and wows while she just keeps flexing, her muscles rippling, bulging, exploding. Finally, one of the crew speaks.

You sure are gonna be hard to keep out of the top three.

She looks over a thick, shredded shoulder at the offending crew member.

I’m gonna be hard to keep out of the top ONE, she says.

That was my introduction to the wondrous Dr. Michelle Neil, one of those women, one of those bodies, that seemed to arrive fully-formed. Even when she was still competing at regional level she had the ability to make experienced female muscle watchers turn to jelly – as this clip where Dave Palumbo claims to be interviewing her but just kind of drools intead will testify (scroll down a bit, it’s there).

Michelle seemed to know she was special, and that confidence – I don’t think it counts as arrogance if you really are the best – combined with her spectacular physique to make treasures of each and every one of her photo sets and video clips. I could have chosen one of her posing clips from her 2007 Nationals triumph, or some of her work with Awefilms. There’s that Femflex “Mini-Movie”, six minutes of Michelle’s muscles close-up and bulging out of a tight black dress, or an FTVideo webcam clip where she displays muscle control (pecs, abs, glutes) that still moves me to this day.

In the end, I plumped for a photo set by the often forgotten (and now gone) bodyelite.net with Michelle’s aptly elite body, you might say, packed into a little black dress – probably not so little on your average woman, but if ever there was a woman who was not average (and not just physically), Michelle was she.

Sadly, as I’m sure many of you already know, the light that burned twice as brightly burned only half as long, and Michelle gave up competing soon after she had won her pro card. She was the victim of massateric hypertrophy as (apparently) that freakishly overgrown jaw thing is known in medical circles, which is where, incidentally, you will find her now, still practising at her clinic in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Perhaps the secret of her enduring appeal (apart from the presence, the confidence, the body, the insane muscle control etc.) is that her brief career keeps us ever keen. As one forum poster and Michelle devotee gushes, Michelle, you should be among the stars with your heavenly muscular body, especially that back, that face, those eyes of blue and golden hair! And then adds, there are two things I wish I had: photos of her workout routine and some topless shots! See? She left us wanting more.

Lawdy I am enjoying these posts even if no one else is!

Another day, another memory tomorrow…

THREE DAYS OF HOT and HARD VOTING LEFT!

Review last year’s list: 100 to 81, 80-61, 60-41, 40-21, 20-11 and the top 10 on FMS passim, or download PumpItUp’s Hot and Hard 100 2014 pdf.

Rules and how to vote here.

À la recherche du chaude et dure perdu: Zuzana Korinkova

REMEMBRANCE OF HOT AND HARD PAST

2. Oh Zuzana

I’d scan the shelves for new issues then take my chance to furtively leaf through the pages when there was no one else near me, no one who could see what I was looking at, because if anyone did, they’d see what a weirdo I was. Waiting, again, until there was no one at the cash register, unable to look the shop owner in the eye, I’d pay (my hands trembling with excitement) and stuff the magazine into my bag as fast as I could. Relief! The hard part over, my heart pounding inside my chest, I’d rush back home to secretly enjoy the pictures of the amazing women within my precious cargo.

It’s a scenario apparently familiar to countless fans of female muscle who grew up at the time when a trip to the newsagent’s was the only way to get your fix.

I would have been in my late teens when I saw these images of Zuzana. They’re images I spent hour upon hour with. So much muscle, so much detail to enjoy. Her meaty, booming bicep; her freaky, granite glutes; triceps whose striations have striations…

Many years later the internet allowed me to enjoy Zuzana in motion, both on and off stage, and the excitement was barely less intense. Whether it was the younger, leaner Zuzana or the later jaw-droppingly huge Zuzana of so many WPW clips, she was a fascinating, beguiling combination of muscle and beauty. Little wonder she is one of very few women who almost every female muscle lover has on their all-time list.

See another UK female muscle fan’s recollection of these Zuzana images on FMS’ Shared History of Female Muscle Fandom page in the piece entitled The Newsagent’s.

And we leave you today with an edited clip of Zuzana’s legendary white lingerie shoot.

Enjoy!

Another trip down female muscle memory lane tomorrow…

Swell Digs: Passion FBB

If you are looking for the big girls, and I mean the really big girls on Tumblr these days, there’s only really one place where you’ll find them – with regular updates and without self-reverential snide comments anyway. Pdgde, or, as the homepage is entitled, Passion FBB, has just a single word in its description: Bodies.

It’s a description you can’t fault. Bodies is most certainly what you get. There are old school bodies (fans of Laura Binetti, for instance, should definitely explore the blog). There are bodies in the gym, veins popping, muscles pumped and swollen to their limits. There’s glamour, candids, comparisons, contests, selfies, scans… And a lot of it is stuff I haven’t seen elsewhere. Original stuff, rare stuff.

Recently, the blog has also featured the author’s own edited clips. Ten or twenty seconds edited out of a longer clip, they are sort of extended gifs. Super gifs, if you like. Examples: Sheila Bleck – here – and an unknown pair of thighs (huge) – here.

And the title, Passion FBB, too, is thoroughly appropriate. You can sense (well, I can sense it anyway) the author’s passion for these incredible specimens in the sheer variety and scope of big, bold and beautiful female muscle on display. I can’t get enough of it. It’s a wondrous collection he’s putting together. And, it’s also relatively recent (beginning last August) and a work in progress that, like the women it features, gets bigger and better with every passing day. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Go explore. Go follow.

Pdgde “Passion FBB”

Swell Digs: Those Abs Selfies

Not the most specific title, but I think the illustrations speak for themselves.

They’re a niche genre so niche I’m not even sure what you call them – Abs POV selfies? Lying/Reclining Abs Selfies? – but I am, however, sure about what I like. So, whatever the agreed terminology, whatever you call them, Swell most definitely digs them.

She’s in her yoga pants, her sweats, her posing suit backstage (and when she is she is ripped for his pleasure), she’s home – in her pjs, she’s in her panties, she’s barely covered by a sheet… And she really really wants everyone to see her abs. So much so, in fact, that she just has to take a picture of herself and share it with the world (or, possibly, share it with her boyfriend who then shares it with the world!)

A few favourites (and believe me, picking just five with more WOW than most has taken no little time and effort on my part, I have been thorough) beginning with what I can only describe as a sub-niche of the niche – the Skin Pull (Isn’t My Skin Thin) POV/Lying/Reclining Selfie [this is getting ridiculous – ed.]

At four, cetainly not the clearest picture – downright blurry in fact – and certainly not the most cut or best-developed set of abs, but the more I look at it, the more I like it. Why? Well… it’s the pjs. The wife has some like them. Very like them. The more I look at this, the more attainable this actual scenario becomes. Abs like these are certainly not beyond the bounds of the (still gym-regular) wife. And she’s already got the pjs.

I don’t know the identity of the majority of the magnificent women featured today, and time for researching things like that is somewhat limited these days, but I do know the abs, the tan and the belly button decoration below belong to Serina Branch. Can’t say I can tell you much about the lovely Serina (limited time, you see), but I very much doubt that will dampen your enjoyment of those abs, that tan etc.

Ultimate POV? That’s quite a valley there, and I do like where it leads…

And finally, Sarah Varno. So tantalising, so very very sexy, so hard to type and look at the pic at the same time! And she’s put her stamp over whatever it is exactly that’s preventing this from being unable to feature on her Instagram, which saves me time because I don’t have to do an image search to identify her. What a good girl!

Happy Monday!

Peaks of the Day: Judy Moshkosky

When The History of Female Bodybuilding is written (if there are any would-be publishers out there, just pop the advance in the post and I’ll be on it), it’s unlikely that female bodybuilders with contest records like Judy Moshkosky‘s will get much written about them. Three times she competed at national level in the very early 1990s, with 7th in the middleweight class at the IFBB North Americans her best result.

But I’ll bet there are more readers of “a certain age” who can remember Judy than there are those who remember Deborah Cameron, or Celina Martins, or Judy Batcher (all of whom placed higher than her at those national level shows). And I would imagine that Judy’s left and right biceps are the reasons why that is so.

Quite apart from the fact that these days it’s highly unlikely that more than a few middleweights will take the stage at the NPC Nationals, it seems almost unbelievable now that once upon a time a body like Judy’s was unable to break into the top six in her class. Were the very same biceps that have ensured her name remains in the consciousness of the female muscle lovin’ brethren responsible for her lowly placings, deemed by the the judges to be “too big” and making her physique lack balance?

Judge for yourself in this excerpt from Judy’s work with Women’s Physique World. Pleasingly it’s almost 7 minutes long, and though not exclusively an arm clip, it – quite rightly – focuses more attention on those biceps than it does on the rest of her.

Enjoy!

Peak of the Day

BAM! Amanda Aivaliotis makes a muscle around the time of her Masters win at the 2014 North Americans. And, yes, that means that beautiful bicep and its 45-year-old owner will be competing as a pro this year. It’s hard to build the perfect physique, says Amanda, and as a sculptor of my own body, will it ever be perfect in my eyes? Probably not, but it is fun trying to achieve it and seeing it change year to year. Seems to me she’s getting close to perfect in one department at least – that vein, OMG!

Watch the taller but considerably smaller IFBB Bikini Pro Ashley Kaltwasser interview the shredded Amanda after her 2014 triumph here. Sadly there’s no flexing during the interview, but on the page there is a link to Amanda’s contest gallery.

Enjoy!

Svensk Muskel: Retro Muskel

EWA ERIKSSON, 1995

From back when you merely had to switch on Eurosport on a Friday evening to have a reasonable chance of seeing some female muscle on your telly, today’s svensk muskel kvinna is one of the best the country has ever had: the great Ewa Eriksson.

At 1.76m (5’9″) and with her amazing muscles, she is one of the few real heavyweights we’ve had, says her profile on Body.se. She should have turned pro.

Today’s gem is from Ewa’s first international competition, the 1995 IFBB Europeans. She finished 5th in her class, which kind of makes me want to check out the top 4 – because they must have had something special going on to place higher than Ewa!

You might also like to check out another clip starring a positively Amazonian-looking off-season Ewa. She gets measured at a furniture store (really!) before we watch her stroll up and down the street in heels… Guess you are already there!

Njut!

Hot and Hard: Marcie Simmons IFBB Pro

Preparing for the recent NPC Nationals in Miami, Marcie Simmons had a plan. I did my research, she told RxMuscle. I looked at the people who were in the Olympia… If I come into this show looking similar, then I should be on point. It was a plan that worked. Conditioned to bits with every beautiful muscle full and defined, Marcie won both her class and the overall title, and with that, of course, her pro card.

But it’s one thing to have a plan to “look similar” to the top Physique Olympians, and quite another to actually pull it off. I mean, if it were that simple, every amateur would end up looking like Dana Linn and Juliana clones, wouldn’t they?

I think I’m a genetic freak. I gain muscle easy. I can eat candy and gain muscle! Marcie says, probably joking about that last bit. Or perhaps not. Her triumph at the Nationals came at only her third ever show, following a qualifier the month before and a single show in 2010 at which she was the only female competitor.

It all seems a bit too easy, but then again she does have fifteen years of powerlifting under her (weight) belt. She is as strong as she is sexy. She can squat an eye-watering 435lbs (197kg), and for her next trick is planning a deadlift of 500lbs (227kg) in order to break a state record in her Illinois home. I gain strength easy, she says. No surprise there, then. Suddenly her Instagram monniker “shehulk” makes perfect sense.

But if you spend a little time with Marcie on said Instagram, you may start to suspect that perhaps all that muscle and that crazy conditioning isn’t just for the benefit of the judges, or at least, it’s not only the judges who like that sort of thing. This year, if you’ve discovered a woman who revels in her muscularity more than Marcie seems to do then I would love to hear who it is, because if there is one thing guaranteed to get FMS‘ juices flowing faster than a sexy muscular woman, it’s a sexy muscular woman who wants you to know how sexy she feels with all that muscle. Just like Marcie.

Whether on stage or backstage, at the gym, at home (or indeed just about anywhere she can find a mirror to admire herself in), whether she’s in her posing suit, in her (revealing) gym togs, or getting glammed up for a night out (and when she does glam up, she makes damn sure there’s muscle on display), Marcie’s smile and Marcie’s eyes don’t lie. Doesn’t she look like she is digging the hell out of herself? Or is it just me?

I, for one, can’t wait to see Marcie presenting an even more muscular package to go with the unreal conditioning when she mixes it with the pros in 2015. Although I seriously doubt I will be enjoying it as much as Marcie will!

Next week: FBBUK on FMS

Hot and Hard: Abs: 6×6

De La Soul taught us that 3 is The Magic Number, and far be it from me to contradict that, but for an old abs fan like me, 3 just won’t cut it (get it?). I need 6. At least!

And thankfully, there are more than a few wonderful women out there who agree, and who absolutely will not stop until they have achieved that perfect number.

Today, FMS brings you just 6 of those many wonderful women.

ANDREA CALHOUN

And we start today’s look at some of the most perfect abs you’ll ever see with the perfect abs of Texan Figure pro Andrea Calhoun. Hard to believe that a little over seven years ago her weight problems had become so bad they had brought on a depression. All I ate was fried food, McDonalds, and my favorite Shipley donuts, she says. I was obese. Her journey to perfect abs began when she walked into a gym and got a personal trainer, and took her to Las Vegas and her first Olympia this year.

Andrea has her own website, and you can follow her on Facebook

KRISTYN KELLI

Meet Kristyn Kelli, two times MABBA Figure champion. That’s right, MABBA. It’s not a typo, it’s the Manitoba Amateur Bodybuilding Association. She’s from Winnipeg, you see, and Winnipeg, it turns out, is in Manitoba (I guess Canadian readers and readers with a better grasp of Canadian geography than I already knew that but I’m assuming some of you didn’t). She will be defending her provincial title on May 23rd 2015 if you’re in Manitoba and want to see Kristyn and her perfect abs in action.

She’s on Instagram and Facebook

JILL DUNN

As far as I know, this is a REAL picture. This kind of abdominal perfection is, it seems, actually attainable. Such low body fat and this kind of definition is really achievable. Such bounteous ridges of perfect muscle are possible. But don’t ask me how.
Ask the owner of this jaw-dropping, groin-activating midsection. Ask Jill Dunn.

Jill Dunn IFBB Figure Pro: website, Facebook, Instagram

MARCIA FEIJO

If you were waiting for a Brazilian, your wait is over. Say Bom dia to Marcia Feijo and her perfect abs (not to mention the pretty much perfect rest of her). Like most of the women today, Marcia is a Figure competitor, which is making me wonder whether Figure competitors packing this much ripped muscle is a relatively new phenomenon or whether I just haven’t paid enough attention to the division before now. And Marcia is still an amateur, would you believe? I’ll say it again: that body you are looking at is the body of an AMATEUR FIGURE competitor. Marcia is a P.E. (Gym) teacher by day. I bet very very few boys (or girls for that matter) skip Ms Feijo’s classes.

The teacher is on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube

GRACIELLA CARVALHO

And we stay in Brazil (why leave?) with Graciella Siqueira de Carvalho (to give her her full name), a businesswoman and fitness model who, in 2011, was runner-up in the inaugural Miss Bumbum Brazil (called by some The Greatest Pageant of All Time).

Shhhh! she seems to be saying. Shut your mouth and start worshipping me!

For more, check her website and Instagram

VALERIE GARCIA

And last, but certainly not least, heartfelt congratulations to FMS fave Valerie Garcia Giovanoli, who was awarded her pro card after finishing 2nd in her Physique class at last month’s NPC Nationals. [My abs have] more nooks and crannies than an English muffin, she captioned the above photo on her Instagram one day before the contest.

Once she’d had the pro tan and the oil smeared all over them like, well, like butter on a hot crumpet (as we call those ‘English muffins’), they looked even better. And now we’ve had the ‘Before’ and the ‘During’, let’s finish with the ‘After’ – Valerie showing off (and still unable to take her eyes off) that sexy (and still utterly shredded) midriff of hers during a post-contest photo shoot for her sponsor, the one and only Hardfitness.

Enjoy!

Hot and Hard

First up, I’d like to thank all you lovely readers for continuing to support and visit the blog while we were away. It’s extremely gratifying (though perhaps ever so slightly worrying) that FMS has continued to receive so many visitors from all over the world while posting absolutely nothing new at all. THANK YOU!

Obviously we wanted to return and wow you, to come back with a bang as it were. But the problem with being on a break for so long is that as time passes it becomes harder and harder to begin again! After much discussion, the always popular Hot and Hard theme was decided upon, which just left us to make a selection from the many many wonderful images in the FMS “Hot and Hard” folder…

Being as she is very very hot and (in the picture below left for example) unbelievably hard, Jacklyn Abrams certainly had her champions around the FMS editorial table. Readers may recognise “Jack the Ripped” – the name she goes by on her website, Instagram and Facebook – from this year’s Ms O, where she came in 12th in the Physique division (looking, yes, you guessed it) both very hot and very hard.

Some felt that these days “Hot and Hard” was best defined by Crossfitters doing what they do – as in the stunning demonstration of balance, flexibility and controlled muscle power seen here (above right). Others associated the phrase not with an activity, but a country – Brazil. And to represent, Raira França (below) working on her Brazilian body in her (very Brazilian) gym wear received more than a few votes from the team.

For more of this beauty from Bahia, visit her Facebook page.

The so-called “universal” two-fingered salute is not quite as “universal” as some might imagine. Certainly the more upright style of the unknown muscle babe above means something quite different here in the British Isles, although the horizontal version demonstrated by Madrid’s Patricia Alamo (below left) might just about be acceptable. Still, the (surely) unintentional invitation to British readers to f*** off doesn’t detract from either the heat or hardness on show here. Mouth-watering abs on the lovely lady above, and the things we’d like to do with (or on) Patricia’s thighs…

And speaking of things we’d like to do, Katelyn “Smash” Aseltine (above right), a powerlifter, artist, writer, kinesiologist, tattoo designer and undeniable purveyor of hot hot muscle heat. I’m almost ashamed to say what those little white panties are making me dream of, but it would most certainly involve my teeth and would ultimately necessitate buying her a pack of identical ones as replacements.

Get your own filthy fantasies at Katelyn’s Instagram or Facebook – just be sure to keep them to yourself though! And when you’ve had your fill of that kind of entertainment, you might like to sober up and read an interview with her at Cut And Jacked.

Meanwhile, back at the ever stickier FMS round table [easy! – ed.], the discussion turned towards heat, hardness and attitude. As with Katelyn, Italian muscle maiden Antonella Lella Val (above, all power and pride) brings big time double-barrelled heat. And no, it isn’t a morph – unless ALL the pictures on her Instagram are!

But the round table felt that size isn’t everything and that (above) Brazilian (again!) physique star Isadora Castro‘s attitude would, perhaps, make her just as (if not more) hot than the considerably bigger Antonella. And, of course, she is Brazilian.

But it doesn’t always take a big hard flex to melt the screen. Some uber muscle babes need only their thumbs and a six-pack that could make you go blind. See (MAJOR Swell crush) Sheronica Henton (above). The hot hard heat seems effortless (in terms of what she’s doing for the camera, I’m not suggesting for a moment a Vesuvial body like Sheronica’s is effortless). Some women, as we all know, just have “it”. And then there are other women, e.g. the sizzling Sheronica, who have “it” in spades.

So, our reporter asked Megan Olson (above), what does a smoking hot figure pro like yourself do when you get home after a good hard workout?

Well, she replied, I like to put on the second tiniest bikini I have and just look at myself in the mirror, admire the muscle, the veins on my abs, that kind of thing. And then I take a selfie or two and upload it to my Instagram so others can admire me too, you know, the results of all my hard work, the veins on my abs and so on.

I’m sorry, said our reporter, you did say the second tiniest bikini you have. I mean, what about your tiniest bikini? When do you get that one out?

Well obviously I’d much rather be showing off in that one, of course I would. But the thing is, she smiled, it’s so damn tiny I can’t usually find it…

FMS fave Maria Kuzmina (below left) made a late entry to the discussion with her new Facebook profile pic. A former two-time NABBA Ms Universe, Maria spent 2013 trying unsuccessfully to win her IFBB pro card as a Physique competitor. This year she has been losing muscle mass on purpose in order to compete in the Bodyfitness division, and finished in the top 3 at the recent Russian Championships. I thought I was already so tiny, she wrote, but no, I need to shrink further. Not the best news we’ve ever heard, but though the IFBB judges don’t ever seem to be satisfied with Maria’s package, we think she’s (still) spot on for our “Hot and Hard” division.

And we finish off today with two women that everyone involved in the, er, selection process for this post agreed upon, two women that you could say almost define what we mean when we talk about “Hot and Hard”. Above right, IFBB Physique pro Asha Hadley says I walk the line between beauty and beast. Now, this is not a line that FMS acknowledges because for me the whole beauty is in the beast, but if walking that imaginary line means Asha continues to refine a look like this, then it’s all good.

And I can only imagine that two-time Brazilian (here we go again) champ and IFBB Figure pro Janaina Ferreira (below) has quite breathtaking mental powers, because her own motto is Mens sana in corpore sano (A strong body makes a strong mind). And maybe, after all the discussion, the stickiness… the attempt to find a definition of “Hot and Hard”, what it is really about is not just the magnificent bodies, but what these hot hard bodies reveal about the strength of these amazing women’s minds…

It’s good to be back. Welcome to Hot and Hard Week!

Enjoy!