Now I love going out."Īngela Eriksen, 51, has three children aged between 12 and 24. "It was one of those moments in my life when I actually liked myself again. "What appealed to me most was how I looked and how I felt," she says. "My mouth was wobbling, everything was wobbling, but there was this sense of euphoria. "I can't remember my moment on stage because I was shaking like a leaf," says Eriksen. Competitors can be on stage for around 20 minutes, doing their quarter turns and freestyle poses, fighting off cramps from flexing in unnatural positions. They are looking for qualities such as symmetry, presentation and visible muscle presentation, depending on the category. The judges are usually lined up at a table directly in front of the stage, with the competitor's supporters at tables behind them. Or, they can perform "open", against the younger competitors. When competing in the different divisions - such as bikini, figure, physique and fitness - women might enter under a "masters" category, which indicates an older competitor and is split into age brackets such as 40-plus, 50-plus and 60-plus. And in middle-age, women can potentially find their role changing, perhaps through their children gaining independence, or a long-strained relationships coming to an end, or retirement.Īngela Eriksen has on the Australasian Natural Bodybuilding Association's Over-40 Miss Queensland title ( Supplied) 'I was shaking like a leaf' It seems that the transformative nature of bodybuilding is particularly appealing to those already going through a transition period. According to the federation's 2019 data, 60 out of 150 women who competed across all states were over the age of 40 - a proportion that would be unheard of in most sports. "We have a lot of women over 40," says Angela Eriksen, director of International Natural Bodybuilding Association Australia. The interest in the sport from older women only seems to be growing. Others are in their 40s, 50s, or 60s - though you'd be hard pressed to tell the age difference in the line-up onstage. There's a lot of "pumping up" going on - getting blood flowing to the muscle by using weights - and the last-minute run-through of posing routines. Women wearing silk robes and thongs flit between the hair and makeup stations for touch-ups, or take their place at a tanning tent. Similarly, black coffee, a diuretic, draws water away from the skin surface to make muscle more defined. Potato chips provide a burst of carbs, the intake of which will have been carefully rationed over the past months, and salt, which dehydrates.
Coca-Cola or port wine dilates the veins and makes them pop pleasingly because of the high sugar content. Each competitor will have staked out their own area and populated it with bejewelled bikini-shaped cases, high heels and snacks. Slip backstage at a bodybuilding competition and you'll find a mirrored metropolis behind the scenes.
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