Bodybuilding being an activity of body modification that results to excessive muscle hypertrophy is often and used to be considered a discipline of the male gender. However in 1970’s female bodybuilders first found there way into joining professional body building activities in Canton, Ohio and other succeeding competitions and are similarly acclaimed as with the men now a days. It gave way to more women to participate in bodybuilding and became popular to the female gender as it is in men. In a bodybuilding competition, participants flaunt their physiques to a jury who give points from how the body strikes. The muscles are exposed through “cutting process” a process where fat loss, oils and tanning lotions combined with proper illumination highlights the different muscle groups. Participants perform standard poses – the front lat spread, the rear lat spread, the front double biceps, the back double biceps. Another poses are only required for men.

Bodybuilding competitions where female bodybuilders have been a mainstay usually focus on condition, size and symmetry. Different categories have been included in some other bodybuilding contests. Overtime there have been changes to ruling in female categories. IFBB required a decrease of 20% in female muscularity stated in the “20 percent rule”.  Another change was implemented by IFBB in 2005 which ruled abolishment of the weight class system adopted in 2000.

A female bodybuilder as with the males can be considered as professional bodybuilder if she has won in qualifying competitions as a novice with a “pro card” issued by International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness. Bodybuilders follow a strict discipline in order to attain such a perfectly carved-like body. They often use the cutting and bulking strategy where they gain as much muscles as they can in a year (the bulking) and followed by three to four months of “cutting” or losing fats. Others resort to clean bulking that promotes maximum muscle mass enhancement with least fat formation.

In the modern bodybuilding profession, related discipline has arisen such as fitness and figure competition where female bodybuilders have turned their attention to. In this activity women are not required to develop the level of muscularity necessary for bodybuilding. Muscle tone and not muscle size is given emphasis in this new competition and done concurrently with bodybuilding.
Indeed women have proven themselves in areas where men leads and in fact women are doing just as well in these disciplines, a proof that what men can do, women can do better.

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