Tinsley Carter
When Eastern Kentucky University student Megan McBride began training for figure competitions five months ago, she didn’t expect to win her second competition, the 2006 Kentucky Muscle Strength & Fitness Extravaganza on Oct. 21 conducted in Louisville.
“The second show, I won my class, and then I won first overall, out of 60 to 70 women,” she said. “I was stunned. It was very shocking.”
Figure competitions, a more feminine form of body building, are judged based on the symmetry and femininity of muscles. “They want you to have muscle tone, but still look like a girl,” said McBride.
Depending on the show, the ladies are divided into classes. Megan’s first show in Cincinnati, called the Big Dust Classic, only had two classes, divided by height; the second show in Louisville had four classes.
In the figure competition, the contestants are first brought out by class, and perform a number of quarter turns and poses. The judges, many of whom have a background in body building, either by being past competitors, are pros, or have been judging a long time, compare each of the competitors, and can keep the contestants in a pose until they have made a decision.
“If it’s a close competition and a lot of women look really good, they’ll keep you up there until they decide,” said McBride. “They’ll switch women around and compare two or three women.”
The women are judged in their one-piece and two piece outfits, and then generally have a break. Then in the finals, they do three poses of their choice, and the judges talk to the contestants to find out who they are, where they’re from and how long they’ve been training.
Then the women are lined up, the top five are picked and from there, the order of the winners are announced.
Once a contestant has placed first or second in their class at a national qualifying show, they can compete in the national level. They have two years to compete at the national level to try and earn their pro cards by (depending on the show) placing first or second.
If they don’t complete this goal by then, they must go back and requalify at a smaller competition again in order to compete in the national level and attempt a pro level again.
The rewards for small and national competitions are trophies. It is in the pro level that they begin to win money.
It is at that level that sponsors may pick up a competitor. Between the diet food, supplements, trainers and suits, figure competition can become expensive.
“My next goal is to get my pro card, which I don’t know how easy it is,” she said.
The 5-foot, six-inch, 122-pound exercise and sports science major said she has always been pretty fit, but seriously began her training with a strict diet of almost no carbs and no sugar and weight training only five months ago.
“The diet is really difficult to deal with because I’m actually someone who loves to eat and you have to measure out all your food,” she said. “There was a specific diet I had to follow. I can put specific foods in and out to change it up, but it’s always a cup of vegetables, and you’re only allowed a certain amount of carbs, very little carbs in your diet, and no sugar unless it’s a fruit with natural sugar, but even then there’s certain fruits you’re not allowed to have.”
The diet consists of: lean meats, such as chicken breast, fish, turkey and beef; non-starchy vegetables, such as asparagus, celery and cucumbers; and fruits, not dried or canned, such as apples, cantaloupe and grapefruit.
“The diet part is really hard to deal with. It’s probably the hardest part because when you don’t have carbs you tend to get a little irritable,” McBride said.
As far as training, McBride had fellow EKU senior Nathan Hater, a certified personal trainer, work with her. He also inspired her a bit to do the competitions.
“Nathan did his first show last March in body building,” said McBride. “After he ended up winning his, it was motivating for me to see someone so new to it do so well, it pushed me, I thought ‘I ought to try this, maybe I can do that well, too.’”
The intense training focuses more on weight training in the beginning to build muscle definition. “But in the end, I think the last two weeks, it’s a lot of cardio, because now you have the muscle, you have to make your body look lean to define all the muscle,” said McBride.
She spent about two and a half to three hours in the gym each day, but the lifting sessions did not go over an hour, “because the body starts to deplete itself,” she said.
With such an intense gym schedule, McBride said it was difficult to balance.
“I work at a local restaurant as well go to school full time, so working and trying to train was really hard because everything had to fit into a time slot,” she said. “I graduate in December, so I have to make sure I do really well in my classes so it’s been hard trying fit everything in. But it worked out fine and I have a little break before my next competition.”
Another difficulty she faced was people not understanding what she was doing and why she was doing it.
“A lot of women going to the gym in college might not be as concerned with muscle definition as I might, and you have to put on a tan, either airbrushed or painted, and I had my friends paint me — you put on all these coats and get a really dark tan with an orange tint — but they look at me and don’t understand why my skin is that color, and I got a lot of weird looks. And that’s really hard because if they don’t understand what I’m doing or why I’m doing it,” she said.
“The first thing they ask me is ‘What do you win?’ and I say, ‘If I win, I get a trophy.’ They don’t understand why I put my body through this vigorous workout just to get a trophy,” she said. “But the thing is the fact that you can accomplish something great, and you can get to the point where you make money, but it’s not about that. It’s about pushing myself to the highest physical level that I thought that I could.”
Most the competitors McBride has faced have been older than her, but figure competition is something she thinks younger adults should be involved in.
“I think it’s something that should be pushed to younger age groups, but I think people worry about eating disorders, which may be part of why it’s not known to the younger group,” she said. “But at the college level they should be old enough to know what they can and can’t do physically.”
She recommends people do research before being involved in it. A good site to visit is www.figurecoach.com/figure/figureguide.html.
“If mothers and older women can handle it, I think students can. I did fine. It is a little stressful, but I think if you’re not carrying a heavy load in school it’s easy for a student to try,” she said. “If you have that mentality and you want to push yourself a little further, I would definitely try it. But research is important to find out what it’s all about.”
Upon graduation in December, McBride will go to Texas to do an internship in personal training on a corporate level. Her next competition will be on the national level in July in Las Vegas.
