THE NPC FITNESS NATIONALS 2000
REPORT AND OBSERVATIONS

By Bill Dobbins

I have written before that I am rarely able to predict whom the judges are going to select in a fitness contest. I think this has never been more the case than it was at the Manhattan Center for the 2000 Nationals. Not there weren't any fitness competitors who seemed outstanding. On the contrary, the difficulty is that so many of them look so good, have great figures, pretty faces and perform excellent routines that it seems impossible to choose among them on any kind of an objective level.

As the scoresheets reveal, Caroline Nash won the under 5'2" class, Stacy Hylton the 5'2" to 5' 4.5" class, Beth Horn won the tall class and the overall. They all looked great. But so did many of the women who didn't win. So while I can give you the names of the winners, I can't really explain on what basis they were chosen.

The problem, as always, is defining "what is fitness?" The officials explain fitness is not a bodybuilding contest, not a beauty contest and not a gymnastics contest - although it involves bodies that are muscular to some arbitrary degree, the winners have to have attractive faces and figures and the better gymnasts they are the better their chance of placing near the top in the performance round. So if not bodybuilding, beauty or gymnastics, what exactly is it?

"Fitness" started off as entertainment provided by entrepreneur Wally Boyco at trade shows. It evolved the performance aspect as Boyco realized he could syndicate his contests on television but needed a "show" that would fill up the air time. Nowadays, the non NPC/IFBB -sanctioned Ms. Fitness and Fitness America contests are both primarily for television. But when you have fitness events promoted by the National PHYSIQUE Committee or the International Federation of BODYBUILDERS, you would expect the emphasis to be more on muscular bodies, even if those bodies are far less developed than you'd see on a national or international bodybuilding stage.

At this year's Nationals, I spent more time backstage than usual, partially to get a lot of "up close and personal" photos for the Webzine/Gallery and because I had no desire to sit through 54 fitness routines, all of which begin to seem alike over time. (How the judges keep track of so many performances is beyond me.) During the course of prejudging, being in close proximity to the fitness competitors over the course of hours, something I had always suspect became absolutely clear to me:

Fitness competitors are bodybuilders.

All of them train with weights and their physiques show the full, round musculature that results from such training. Many of them would have placed very high or won bodybuilding contests held right through the mid-1980s with just a few extra weeks of dieting. Many would look a lot more muscular in contests, but because so much pressure is brought to bear on these women NOT to get "too big," the majority have to work to LOSE the muscle they build from their normal gym workouts.

Some of them are so obviously genetic bodybuilders (and find the judges think so too, scoring them in general very low) you have to wonder why they are in fitness at all - until you look at the negative climate created by the federations and physique magazines over the past several years. They are constantly being told fitness is thriving and female bodybuilding is dying, although this seems to be more a case of a "self-fulfilling prophecy," whereby the powers that be create the outcome they are predicting. But if it is so obvious to me that these women are, in effect, junior bodybuilders, why isn't it obvious to everyone.

The answer, I think, is scale. The fitness competitors have real muscle, but it isn't that big and they aren't usually all that defined - because that's how they have been told they ought to look. But when you are standing close to them, you simply can't miss the physical structure resulting from their weight training and diet. However, as soon as they go out on stage things change. Their physiques tend to disappear because the judges and the audience are NOT looking at them very close up - the judges are 30 or 50 feet away and the audience even further. As an experiment, I walked up the aisle into the audience about a third of the way, half way and then almost to the back. The further away I got, the less I could tell these women had any muscle at all. Toward the back of the hall, they might as well have been regular bikini contestants. You would have needed binoculars to observe any muscular development.

This is by and large NOT true with bodybuilders. Sure, you can see less detail the farther away you are, but even from the back you can tell you are looking at muscular physiques. On the other hand, the female bodybuilders tend to be LESS impressive observed close up backstage. They generally don't have the quality make-up the fitness women do, aren't wearing fancy costumes, are covered with Pro Tan, and you can see the imperfections in the color when you are standing next to them. But once you get them on stage and look at these bodybuilders from 30 feet away, or 30 rows away, you can no longer see these imperfections. What you do see are their physiques, their muscularity, definition and symmetry.

So fitness women look great close-up, but are less impressive at a distance. Women bodybuilders are less impressive backstage, but come into their own once they are on stage and under the theater lights.

But even being able to see fitness competitors close up, it is still difficult to predict winners, since the performance round is such an important element in the outcome. Here's an illustration: At the end of the finals, when Susie Curry was standing in the wings waiting to hand out trophies, one of the judges turned to me and said, "Isn't Susie beautiful"? I said, sure, but there were a whole lot of beautiful girls in fitness. That's what fitness is all about. "I guess you're right," said the judge. "I suppose that's why it all comes down to gymnastics."

Question: Should the National Physique Committee be sanctioning events that are mostly decided by gymnastic ability? I leave that for the reader to think about.

As to the performance round itself, although I didn't watch much of it I can report than nobody was seriously injured, which regular visitors to the Webzine/Gallery know I have previously suggested is a strong possibility. I don't know for sure if the IFBB/NPC is going to limit the use of tumbling in the routines as has been suggested (although they probably will after consulting an attorney regarding liability), but apparently the NPC is going to introduce a "non routine" figure contest next year, IN ADDITION to bodybuilding and regular fitness.

Hmmm, women in bathing suits on stage in high heels, being judged not on the aesthetics of their muscular development but on physiques that are supposed to remain conventionally attractive in spite of their muscles - doesn't that sound like a BEAUTY CONTEST? The question remains why an organization that is primarily in the business of promoting bodybuilding keeps expanding the fitness and beauty aspects of its contests. Or, to avoid any accusation of gender discrimination (muscles for the boys, bikini shows for the girls) are we perhaps going to see men's fitness contests sanctioned by the NPC in the near future? Male models with abs prancing around in tiny little bathing suits? Speedo city?

It is odd that, in the "wide world of sports," we have seen a movement over the past several decades in the direction of full equality for women in athletics. It is one of the fundamental policies of the International Olympic Committee. Can you imagine a tennis tournament in which the women were scored on the excellence of their tennis game PLUS how they looked in a bikini? Or Marion Jones told she would have to "tone down" those great legs in order to win a Gold Medal? Why is bodybuilding the major world exception to this trend? Why are the federations moving toward increasing rather than decreasing gender discrimination in their events?

I would think the LAST thing we need is ANOTHER kind of fitness show. What we should be looking at is allowing fitness women to develop their natural, genetic levels of muscle - to recognize that they are, in effect, junior bodybuilders - and limit what is allowed in the performance round so that we don't have competitors trying to outdo each other in tumbling, continuing to escalate the difficulty of their routines, until somebody ends of as the "Fitness Christopher Reeve."

Years ago, Joe Weider suggested instituting what was then called "soft" bodybuilding - still bodybuilding but with less emphasis on the extremes of muscularity, hardness and definition. Although I would suspect that just having bodybuilding weight classes right up through the pros would be enough to give the smaller competitors a chance to be successful, if you HAVE to have fitness and its going to be sanctioned by a bodybuilding organization, it would make sense to recognize that fitness women are a type of bodybuilder and structure fitness competition accordingly.