My Perspective: The Sport of Bodybuilding

The sport of bodybuilding is unique in so many ways. Competitors train incredibly hard, eat strict diets, practice posing, and mentally prepare for a competition for months, sometimes years! And why? Just to be judged by complete strangers and to 99% of the time find out that you are not good enough. The judging is subjective as well… so competitors don’t ever know what the judges are really looking for. There is not set “image” that competitors need to duplicate, it is completely based off of what a panel of judges decides is “the look” they want to see that day. Now I’m sure you can imagine that this causes a lot of issues.. and it does. Competitors and/or spectators are often shocked by the outcome of competitions, and many people are left hurt and upset and confused. Also, the sport is VERY political, so your name, the connections you have, the team you may be a part of, it can all alter the outcomes as well. So for me, even though I love this sport, I hate it at the same time. We work SO hard and win what? A plastic trophy? A title? But nothing more. We live and breathe our preparation for a competition, yet we hardly receive any prize worth working for. Also, we train our butts off for this image we feel that we need to have, and then we may not even be right about what “image” we really need to mimic in the first place. This is all so crazy to me because at the end of the day, I LIVE for this sport. It’s my lifestyle, it’s my passion, it’s my hobby, it’s where I can prove to myself that I can conquer any dream. Yet the sport quite simply sucks. It’s expensive, time-consuming, and selfish… It requires competitors to take extremes: Extremely dark skin, extremely lean bodies, extremely hard workouts, you get the point. To truly excel at the sport, I have been told time and time again that you must be willing to do any and everything to be the best. You must be selfish, you must put your body in an unhealthy state, you must take certain “supplements” to help you achieve that perfect look. Well, I don’t care what people tell me… I refuse to do this sport and do unhealthy things to my body. I did bodybuilding to get healthy in the first place! So why would I now put my health at risk when I am trying to do something that is good for me? It just doesn’t make sense in my opinion. It also doesn’t make sense that other people don’t see it like this either. I want to lead by example and be a competitor that is NOT selfish, that does NOT do crazy, drastic unhealthy dieting or training. I want to be a female competitor that is 100% natural in a sport where most competitors are not. I want to show that finding balance and happiness can get you a very far way. I want to show that consistent dedication can make a huge difference, where competitors won’t have to crash diet or do cardio for hours upon hours. Bodybuilding is something I love and something I hate. I don’t NEED a competition to live the way I do. I don’t need a stage to push my body and mentality to a new level. I just happen to live a certain way that allows competitions to be a part of my life, too. I will never do something that could potentially damage my body, and I will never be willing to risk it all just to win in a sport where you don’t even know what you need to look like in order to do so.