Celeb Fitness: March 2011

WORKING OUT WITH: Lenda Murray; Wonder Woman In the Flesh - The New York Times

HEN Lenda Murray struts into a weight-lifting room, grown men freeze in mid-grunt.

Those lats!

Those pecs!

Those quads!

Ms. Murray is Ms. Olympia, the goddess of the body-building world and a rock-hard, in-the-flesh assault on conventional assumptions about beauty, strength and femininity.

"Sometimes, I think I scare people," she says, straddling a bench and effortlessly curling a pair of 22 1/2-pound dumbbells.

Ordinarily, Ms. Murray would spend one to three hours in the gym; that's her daily routine for most of the year. This morning, though, she's working out only for a few minutes at Better Bodies in the Chelsea section of Manhattan. The scene is mainly a photo session, one of many the three-time Ms. Olympia has endured since she first won the title in 1990. (It also explains the dangling earrings and extensive eye makeup.)

"I may come back to work out this afternoon," she says.

Ms. Murray is in New York for just 18 hours, the length of her stopover on a flight from Luxembourg, where she appeared last month in an exhibition, to Southfield, Mich., the Detroit suburb where she lives when she isn't traveling to endorse products, make appearances or pose for muscle magazines -- enterprises that will bring her about $300,000 over the next year.

The pro body-building season for women essentially consists of one major event: the annual Ms. Olympia competition, which was held on Oct. 17 in Chicago. So, Ms. Murray can now take a break from her spartan training regimen and low-fat, high-discipline diet.

"I'm really looking forward to lunch," she says.

Ms. Murray, who is 30 years old, started body-building 10 years ago. Initially, she joined the local gym to help thin her thighs so she could make the Dallas Cowboys' cheerleading squad; she had made the next-to-last cut, having prepared for two years by pumping pompoms for the Michigan Panthers of the now-defunct United States Football League. As she worked out, though, her thighs didn't shrink. In fact, they grew even larger.

During this Sisyphean struggle against size, some male weight lifters noticed her swelling musculature, and they encouraged her to take up professional bodybuilding. Her only experience in competitive sports had been running track in high school and in college at Western Michigan University, where she earned a degree in political science. It wasn't long, though, before she had gained 20 pounds and was doing squats with a 315-pound barbell resting on her shoulders. Eight repetitions, no less.

"It was something that I never thought about, never knew anything about," Ms. Murray says. "But they said I was a natural."

"Natural" in female body-building, though, means having a classic V-shaped male physique: broad shoulders and wide clavicles on a taut torso that tapers to a narrow waist. It means long leg and arm muscles with short tendons. It means little body fat (about 11 percent compared with about 25 percent for most women.)

Indeed, without this foundation, which is derived from genetics and hormones, sculpting a body into Schwarzeneggerian shape is virtually impossible, regardless of sex, diet or exercise program.

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Amateurs flex their muscles - Winnipeg Free Press

About 200 amateur bodybuilders competed in the novice championships of the Manitoba Amateur Body Building Association on Saturday night at Pantages Playhouse Theatre.

The event was a sellout, with 1,750 people. "It's the highest turnout in years," said Dave Clow, of Muscles by Meyers, an event organizer.

Many new bodybuilders entered the competition and many had personal turmoil to fight through to build up their physiques, said Clow.

One example is Coco Kissack. She has only been bodybuilding for a year and beat out five women in the open class women's lightweight category. She also won "best women's poser."..continued

About 170 bodybuilders took part at the novice championship of the Manitoba Amateur Body Building Association Saturday. Coco Kissack and Debbie Rotoff compete in the Master Women division.

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