Archives for April 2009

Congratulations to IFBB Fitness Pro Sandy Grant for making the final cut this week. Sandy is now part of the Lingerie Football team in Seattle, the Seattle Mist. I caught up with Sandy this morning and asked her how she felt about making it on the team. Sandy excitedly shared, “I am SO Excited to be on the team! I’ve hardly been able to sleep since Wednesday when I found out I made the team. I had a lot of fun at the tryouts. This weekend, I’ll be at the Seattle Mist Mini Camp.”

Sandy’s sister, Shannon Gill gave me a heads up on some other news surrounding the Seattle Team. Shannon tells me, “One of our team (SG2Victory fitness/figure team that Sandy & I run), members, Amy Jae Springer also tried out and succeed to grab her own spot! AJ has done NPC Fitness competitions, is an amazing and (winning!) boxer and is venturing into Kickboxing! She owns her own Fitness Studio here in downtown Bellevue, WA called Extreme Fitness too!” That’s pretty cool! Congrats to both ladies.

Today’s photo of the day comes via the Denver Dream Tryouts. NPC Colorado Chairman Jeff Taylor was at yesterday’s events where he was auditioning for the Waterboy position. No, no I’m just kidding. A strong gust of wind came through the area and sent plastic cups sailing. Jeff, being the helpful guy he is, picked up the cups before they found their way all over the stadium. Me being the rovering photographer I am, of course, had to snap a shot of the action.

Jeff is often backstage at national NPC shows organizing and orchestrating the trophy presentations. If you’re in Colorado you know that his shows are the best fitness, figure and bodybuilding events there are. Those of you competing at a national level NPC show just look for the really tall guy backstage and hey he might even help ya out with that needed cup of water.

Yesterday, the Lingerie Football League’s Denver Dream held another round of tryouts. The NPC & IFBB women are representing well. Just days off their showing in Orlando, Heather Mae French and Jesse Palmer were running, catching and tackling to defend their positions on the team. I was told by the league’s creative director that Heather is one of the smallest girls on the team but also one of, if not theee fastest. Heather ran her 40 yard time in under 5.0. Anyone who is familiar with 40 times knows that if you are below a 5.0 second time you are flying.

Stacey tries her hand at the QB position.I haven’t received the “official” word as to who the new team members will be just yet but it looks like Stacey Oster could be the new quarterback for the team. Stacey is currently preparing for the NPC Contra Costa. She was in great shape and had a heckuva an arm. There was another woman who will battle her for the QB spot both were impressive in the tryouts. NPC competitor Chantelle Schwandner strained her calf muscle early on in the tryouts and unfortunately sidelined her from the rest of the events. Also spotted were NPC Figure competitors Kari Abt, Jenny Lewis and Shawna Wittrock. IFBB Pro bodybuilder, Lisa Bickels was also at the event where she showed off her speed and took a hand-off in for a touchdown during the scrimmage. Lisa is three weeks out from her pro debut at the New York Pro.

Overall there were a number of impressive hardbody females on the field. Shannon Martin is quite the running-back and has some wheels. Check out the entire team and updates on the team at lflus.com/denverdream. Yours truly is the team’s “official photographer” and yes poor, poor me.

Check out the slide show with all the photos from yesterday’s event. If you have a short attention span like me and don’t want to watch the entire video you can see all the photos in the gallery here.

Stay tuned for more team updates as the head into Mini-Camp today & Sunday.

If you’re in the New York area mark your calendar for Monday, April 27th to meet Figure International Champ, Zivile Raudoniene. Zivile will be making her first  appearance for Gaspari Nutrition at Bev Francis Powerhouse Gym in New York on Monday from 4-7pm. She’ll be prsenting a FREE fitness and nutrition seminar as well as free Gaspari samples. Nice to see the Figure champ out and about helping the industry.

If anyone attends let us know how it goes and send along a pic.

IFBB Fitness Pros (and sisters) Tanji & Safiya Johnson teamed up for a guest performance at the 2009 BSN Emerald Cup. Hardbody.com’s Ron Avidan said the performance was “great and interesting.”

Let’s hope the “American Gladiators” does better in Europe than it did in the United States. The revived American Gladiators were never quite the same as the original. IFBB Figure Pro Jane Awad shares that she is part of an American Gladiators’ spin-off. Jane’s apparently not only starring in the show but serving as the co-executive producer.

Many of you have started “tweeting” and are now part of twitter. It took me a little while to figure out what the deal was with it and why I needed it. I don’t NEED it but it is a helpful way to get news out in a quick fashion. If you’re still wondering what twitter is all about or even if you’re part of the tweetworld – check out this very informative and helpful page. This covers pretty much everything you ever wanted or needed to know about twitter.

I don’t know about you but some of the Miss USA Contestants look like they could be NPC Bikini competitors. A few of the women were sporting abs and a nice, fit, tone physique. What do you think?

I had a fun shoot with IFBB Figure Pro Erin Stern last weekend, the day after her fifth place finish at the Orlando Pro Show. It was like having a sibling who could do a special trick. Erin’s “special trick” was high jumping and I encouraged her to “do it again.” It was so cool to see her flying over the bar with ease and photographing it. Erin was a trooper and we did the shoot from a number of angles and a number of times. Here’s one shot of her clearing the bar with ease.