SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA — Emily Green hasn't slept for weeks. The only thing keeping her eyes open is pure adrenaline — and the five long black coffees she knocks back each morning.
She's been exercising for over three hours a day, six days a week, and fuelling herself for the gruelling regimen with only 700 calories.
In a nutshell, she describes herself as an absolute "basket-case."
While starvation and sleep depravation sound like Guantanamo-style torture, Emily is actually doing this to herself. It's 2012 and at 25 years old, she's training for a fitness competition – the sports model category.
If you’re thinking this seems like a paradoxical way to prove that you’re a pillar of health and fitness, you’re absolutely right. It’s paradoxical and dangerous. The troubling thing is, Emily’s far from alone in this cruel and unusual way of achieving a 10/10 physique.
Bodybuilding and physique competitions aren’t anything new in the fitness world. Arnold Schwarzenegger won the famous Mr Olympia title seven times in his hey-day, while the international Arnold Classic awards its strongest man with US$130,000 in prize money, a Hummer and a designer watch with a price tag that’d make you weep.
Traditionally, these bizarre competitions have been the domain of elite bodybuilders and models. To most ordinary people, standing almost naked on stage while a panel of judges openly criticise their body is the stuff of nightmares.
But these days our quest for a selfie-worthy body has escalated to a point where ordinary people are strutting these same stages wearing nothing but a bejewelled string bikini and a deep shade of orange.
Competing is serious business. Contestants enter categories like fitness model, bikini model, figure and bodybuilding, each with its own assessment criteria for muscle definition, balance and symmetry, plus stage presence. Contestants are even expected to attend special posing workshops.
For professional athletes, it takes between 12 to 17 weeks of specialised training, dieting and fine-tuning their bodies to be "stage ready." Now, ordinary women with little experience are trying to mimic this training routine.
http://mashable.com/2016/03/08/fitness-competitions-dangerous/#hzGB.N70qkqM
She's been exercising for over three hours a day, six days a week, and fuelling herself for the gruelling regimen with only 700 calories.
In a nutshell, she describes herself as an absolute "basket-case."
While starvation and sleep depravation sound like Guantanamo-style torture, Emily is actually doing this to herself. It's 2012 and at 25 years old, she's training for a fitness competition – the sports model category.
If you’re thinking this seems like a paradoxical way to prove that you’re a pillar of health and fitness, you’re absolutely right. It’s paradoxical and dangerous. The troubling thing is, Emily’s far from alone in this cruel and unusual way of achieving a 10/10 physique.
Bodybuilding and physique competitions aren’t anything new in the fitness world. Arnold Schwarzenegger won the famous Mr Olympia title seven times in his hey-day, while the international Arnold Classic awards its strongest man with US$130,000 in prize money, a Hummer and a designer watch with a price tag that’d make you weep.
Traditionally, these bizarre competitions have been the domain of elite bodybuilders and models. To most ordinary people, standing almost naked on stage while a panel of judges openly criticise their body is the stuff of nightmares.
But these days our quest for a selfie-worthy body has escalated to a point where ordinary people are strutting these same stages wearing nothing but a bejewelled string bikini and a deep shade of orange.
Competing is serious business. Contestants enter categories like fitness model, bikini model, figure and bodybuilding, each with its own assessment criteria for muscle definition, balance and symmetry, plus stage presence. Contestants are even expected to attend special posing workshops.
For professional athletes, it takes between 12 to 17 weeks of specialised training, dieting and fine-tuning their bodies to be "stage ready." Now, ordinary women with little experience are trying to mimic this training routine.
http://mashable.com/2016/03/08/fitness-competitions-dangerous/#hzGB.N70qkqM
