FIGURE COMPETITION - WHAT IS IT?

Well first and foremost it is an athletic endeavour. Body building is different than most sports in one single way. How often would you be able to look at a ball player, soccer player, or triathlete on the street and know that is what they do? Not often. A body builder - you pretty much know what they do - they wear their sport.

I admire women body builders - holy cow the work, the strength the muscle development. I look at Heidi's stuff (a bodybuilder I met at the IDFA competition) and think she looks ready now - but she won't compete till 2010. But it is really not for me.

The main difference between body building and body building figure competition is muscle mass and body fat. Body builders have huge muscle mass and are extremely lean with low body fat for competition. They are stronger, harder, leaner. Figure body building is more feminine with good muscle development, but much less muscle mass than body builders and they are less lean.

ALAS. I have heard from reliable sources that with figure, although it is supposed to be a category with more feminine lines, the judges often choose the most muscular contestant. Soon there will have to be another category or perhaps a totally different competition with different judges?

Figure modelling - for that you also need to have a drop dead figure type body and be quite attractive and photogenic and I imagine - young or famous. There are figure competitors who do figure modelling as well, and there are figure models who only model.

Ok. So far I have found that many people mix up figure competitor and figure/fitness model. Now people, I am sixty and I have no illusions that I am going to be a figure model! I am stretching it to train to the figure competitor level but I know I can do it.

Seems there are more over 60 body builders than figure competitors.

For a brief period (might have had a mini stroke) I thought I might try to find a sponsor and compete for real. So I started with the Oryx the protein product I use. I emailed the distributor and asked if they sponsored women's figure competitiors? Guy must have been sitting at his computer - a nano second later I was asked to send posing pictures and advised I could work at a booth in California.

Hah! I didn't send a picture - he would have croaked to see a bikini clad 60 year old - told him I wasn't looking for a job - I was looking for sponsorship - nope - don't do that -I briefly though maybe Depends or Geritol would sponsor me but gave up that idea.

I would rather be working out that trying to come up with my off season training plan. But I have to get on it. There is a huge amount of info out there - lots of it conflicting - my head is swimming. But, I will approach it like I do everything else - like a business plan. I have read copious amounts about the 'look' the V taper - dont overdevelop obliques - overdevelop upper lats, tone and underdevelop lower lats etc - there is some critical thinking to do on how to get the end result.

There are also different plans for each stage - e.g. off season, pre-season, pre-comp etc. So I will start at the end and work my way backwards to try and figure out the business plan. Most of all, I will concentrate on the basics of competition training, most of the other 'out there' theories are to get past plateaus and to zero in on specific areas. I have to keep it simple for now. I don't want to get so bogged down in the process that I can't actually do the work.

And I want to try the "competition leaning out process" just to see if it is doable and if my abs pop out :)