Effortless Flexing

It sounds like my head is underwater as I try to grunt uh-huhs and nod while Amy shows me
proper form. I am sitting on the bench in the womens weight room of 10 Fitness on Rodney
Parham for leg-day. Leg day comes twice a week for Amy Peters, who is training for her next
bikini competition. On Sundays and Wednesdays, she spends an hour in the weight room of
whatever 10 Fitness gym is closest, doing squats, calf presses, and lunges in order sculpt perfect
calves and thighs for a competition months from now.
We have just started the warm up, and I am nearing tunnel vision. Amy faces the mirror wall
and straddles a cushioned weight bench about knee-height. She explains and demonstrates how
we will warm up our muscles and get our heart rates up in order to burn the fat off of the muscles
we would build, or more precisely she would build.
She bends her knees, the 100 degree angle visible in her spandex capris, takes a breath, and
springs onto the bench, pulling her feet together. She takes another breath and jumps right back
down. I assume the position and attempt the same move pretty successfully. While continuing
the multi-leveled jumping jacks, she explains that we will do 10 reps, up and down. I try
another, getting a little more fearful of the height. On my third attempt, I catch the bench with
only one foot and try to keep my balance.
Woah, this is scary! I pant, only just realizing how taxing each spring onto the bench really is.
Amy sees my fall and puts her hands on the bench in front of her to steady her next rep.
Try it like this when you jump, then pull them off when you get up to make sure your thighs are
doing the work, she says demonstrating the balance at the top of the bench.
You can put your hands back when you jump down if you need to.
I finish the set of 10 with Amys modification, feeling brave and keeping my hands off the bench
to jump down. She says we rest for 60 seconds before we do the next set, and I sit down on the
bench, complaining of my underwater audio. My ears feel clogged.
With a wealth of knowledge on how to shape a body, Amy sounds like she has been training for
bikini competitions for years, but shes actually pretty new to the bodybuilding scene. She
started training for her first competition a year and a half ago. Since then, she has competed
three times and is preparing for her fourth. When I asked if she was going to compete in Little
Rock in August, four months away, she said she didnt know if she could be ready in time.
She showed me a picture on her iPhone of the body she was trying to sculpt and said Months!
The woman on the screen is tan and hard, with a shiny grid across her stomach where each
abdominal muscle is visible beneath the taut copper skin. National figure competitor, Ashley
Toms says it takes her 12-18 weeks to prepare for a competition a tremendous amount of
willpower. You can't "cheat" or it will show on your body (Toms qtd. in Andersen).
While we rest between sets, Amy shows me a pose like she would do on stage. She stands on
her toes, demonstrating the calf muscles that would be flexed on the 5-5 heels required for
competing. She stands with one hand on her hip and the other out to her side, but not hanging
limp. While looking in the mirror, she subtly moves the position of her wrist.

Did you see that? I look closely, wondering what I could have missed.

Womens competitions are divided into four divisions: bikini, figure, physique, and
bodybuilding. The values of each division are size and shape of muscles. Female bodybuilders
are the biggest; they are the Arnold Schwarzenegger counterparts. Physique competitors build
smaller, but still large, bulky muscles. Figure competitors shape a more feminine look. They
still flex each muscle group for the judges and perform impressive gymnastic/aerobic routines,
but they build smaller, leaner muscles. But in bikini, the woman is on display. The muscles are
longer and leaner, and many women have breast implants. When they are oiled up on stage in
sequined bikinis, they seem like glamorous Barbies. The posing reflects this feminine image.
Amy explains in front of the mirror how she flexes a thigh muscle when she turns her toe out.
She doesnt look like shes flexing though, not in the biceps curled sense.

Amy, still on her toes in imaginary heels, kicks out one toe, flicking it up and pivoting to the
back, where she pulls her blonde hair off her shoulders, looks back and then reassumes a pose.
She explains that you dont ever really flex, but you do want to show off muscle groups. So that
subtle repositioning of her wrist made a lax muscle in her shoulder tense up. Dr. Stacey Naito
gives new competitors posing tips on rxmuscle.com:

Stand with feet shoulder width apart or wider and stick your butt up and out to smooth out your
hams and glutes. I always tell my contest prep clients to think of themselves as cats in heat, with
their butts high up and an exaggerated curve in the low back to emphasize the roundness of the
glutes (Naito).

I pass on trying to pose like a cat in heat in my unglamorous sweats and pony tail since my head
is still swimming from our pounces onto the bench. How in the world could anyone do those sex
kitten poses with the flirty glances back at the judges, remembering to tense up this muscle and
smooth out that one? In a bikini and 5-inch heels?

So when youre up there, concentrating on how your arms are, if your glute is showing, if your
leg is the right way, or make sure youre standing in the right spot . . . then when you turn
around, are my [bikini] bottoms in the right place? You tape your bottoms to you, or glue em. I
had Elmers glue. Its Elmers spray glue so nothing moves! For my first show, I had my front
and back glued, but I didnt do my sides. It was an extra small bottom. By the time I had
dropped my water, they were too big. The sides kept falling down when I was up there.

These women arent just in control of which muscles they are showing off to the judges. They
are highly aware of their weight and everything they eat that might affect that weight. Amy
joined a team with trainers who send her a menu that will last her the next six weeks. There are
only six meals on the menu. Shell eat the same six meals, every day, for the next month and a
half in order to shape a body thats ready to be strutted on stage. In return, Amy sends a picture
of her changing shape each week to Florida, where her competition team is headquartered.
Anything not on the menu is not allowed. There is one cheat meal every few weeks, but even the
cheat meal is planned, intended to shock her body from the routine.

Amy is a small woman. At 52, she used to tip the scales at 100 lbs, but when shes training,
she is trying to maintain at least 105 lbs. With up to three trips to the gym a day, it wasnt easy
for her to get enough calories to maintain that weight.

Last year, we took away my peanut butter, she says. Once they took away my peanut butter, I
just dropped. It was any little thing.

To most girls, losing some weight doesnt sound like a problem. The trouble was that she
couldnt gain muscle to show off if she couldnt eat enough to give her energy for the gym and to
build the muscle.

Here, on leg day, I watch as she finishes the warm up and moves to a 6 ft. barbell, where she
loads twenty-five pound weights on one side. At five inches taller and twice the width, I try to
help add the weight to the other side. My arms fall with the weight as I pick it up to slide on the
other side of the barbell. Amy had made it look easy. She stands with her legs apart and the bar
across her shoulders; she squats deeply, dropping almost all the way to the floor. As she nears
competition, shell be back two or even three times a dayonce to work a muscle group and
another hour or two for cardio.

She told me that when she was training last year, she would come at five or six in the morning
and do an hour of cardio. Shed bring her breakfast to the gym, and take a break to eat after the
cardio. Then she would work a muscle group after breakfast. If there was time left in the
evening, shed come back for another hour of cardio.

How do you find the time to come here three hours a day? Why not just buy some dumbbells
and do this at home? I ask.

If you have something in your house, youre going to walk by and stare at it. You have to be
really dedicated to have something in your house to do it. The way Amy sees it, shed have to
have more control to keep the weights at home.

She is creating control in other ways.

She cuts out pictures of girls in bikinis, clips their heads off, and tapes them around her computer
at work, so shes not tempted to reach for chocolate. She has to remind herself of what she
wants to look like when she gets a craving for something off menu. In his article, Pumping
Irony: Crisis and Contradiction in Bodybuilding, Alan Klein says, Self-mastery is the goal.
Experiencing each repetition and calorie in terms of an overall plan for physical transformation is
the means (Klein).

Amy has gone off-plan, off-menu, and out-of-control that body-transformation of this extreme
requires. Shes had a friend try to keep her away from the vending machine before Amy
ultimately gave in and bought a Reeses. Her cousin will text pictures of his most delicious-
looking desserts to introduce playful temptation. Even now, shes getting back on track after
months of being out of training shape.

I watch her roll onto her heels as she comes up from her deep squats. She moves from her last
set to a marathon of calf presses, some kind of push, and lunges. Only when she starts to step
into deep lunges toward the mirror do I notice that shes begun to sweat. Small beads slide down
her nose as she exhales and drops her right knee to the ground while stepping out with her left
leg. Its the only visible sign that any of this is hard, that the posing is calculated, that shed
rather eat candy than vegetables, that shes giving up time with friends and kids to be here, that
she needs bikini girl cutouts on her desk to remind her why shes doing any of this.

While Im still kind of winded from the warm up, I watch her swig from her water bottle with
her head back. She takes a few deep breaths and goes to sit down for the second set of the leg
series (calf press, push, and lunge). Shes already wiped the sweat from her face with the bottom
of her tank top. When she starts counting down the calf presses again, it looks effortless.


Sources:
Andersen, Charlotte. "True Life: I'm a Female Bodybuilder." Shape Magazine. American Media,
Inc., n.d. Web. 11 May 2013.
Klein, Alan M. "Pumping Irony: Crisis and Contradiction in Bodybuilding." Sociology of Sport
Journal 3.2 (1986): 112-33. University of Connecticut, 12 Mar. 1998. Web. 10 May
2013.
Naito, Stacey. "Posing Essentials For NPC Figure and Bikini Divisions." Rx Girl. Rx Muscle, 13
Feb. 2013. Web. 10 May 2013.
Peters, Amy. Personal interview. 21 Apr 2013.