Hot and Hard: Danielle Reardon

The 'High School Bodybuilder' at Wesley Chapel High School in Florida

A few years ago, a homemade video appeared on the forums of a ‘High School Bodybuilder’ called Danielle Reardon. The clip (which as far as I can see is no longer available to watch) consisted solely of Danielle talking to camera. She talked, as far as I remember, about her future goals in the sport, her love of the lifestyle and the thrill she got from competing. I remember thinking that she was rather eloquent and came across as being very sure of herself and what she wanted. And I also remember thinking, Hang on! She’s talking about having competed. How can a teenage girl possibly have competed already?


Well, that's first place, thinks the girl in the glasses. Maybe I can get second.

To Brits like me, the idea that a high school (or secondary school as we say over here) would have a bodybuilding contest is, well, a little far-fetched. As a teenager I might have dreamed that some of the girls from the hockey team, the ones who frequented the weights room anyway, would do a bit of flexing for me, but it never once occurred to my overactive imagination that they would stand on the stage at the school in bikinis as competitors in our school’s bodybuilding show.


Miss Wesley Chapel 2008

It seems high school bodybuilding not only exists, but is well-established in some schools, at least in some parts of the US. The shows are essentially fundraisers for some sporting activity or another at the school, and involve boys and girls. Not surprisingly, perhaps, these shows have attracted rather a large amount of criticism. One member of the American Council on Exercise has said that teenagers experimenting with nutritional supplements, crash dieting or pre-contest dehydration is ‘a recipe for disaster. Emotionally, psychologically, physiologically, their bodies are not ready for it.’



But Danielle didn’t appear to have any of these issues. She seemed well-aware of what she was committing herself to, and did so simply because she had decided that the lifestyle bodybuilding entails was the life that she wanted to lead. And that is exactly what she has done.



Born in 1990 (!), Danielle hails from Florida. She attended Wesley Chapel High School, and competed in their annual bodybuilding show every year she was there, winning it in both her junior and senior years. It was totally energizing, she says, I loved the spotlight.





In 2010, she competed as a Figure competitor at NPC shows, and continued to do so in 2011, winning the short class at the Sunshine Classic and finishing 14th at the Nationals that year. But, now 21, it was becoming apparent that all those years of bodybuilding as a teenager meant that Danielle was simply too muscular to succeed in Figure at the highest level, and right from the get-go she had made it her ambition to be at that level, so she decided to move up to Physique.



Danielle at the 2012 NPC Southern States

The improvement in her results were immediate. She won her class (short) at the Mid-Florida Classic, finished 2nd at the NPC Southern States, and consequently qualified for the Nationals. There, she won her class. At the age of 22, she had her pro card.




Danielle wins her class at the 2012 NPC Nationals, obviously

It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that this young woman is on the verge of becoming a phenomenon. What better advert could there be for the Physique division? And what better way could there be for Hot and Hard Week to end?

Hot and Hard: Joele Smith

2011 saw the debut of the Women’s Physique Division at the NPC Nationals. Far from suffering from interest, 106 competitors entered. Some of them were former bodybuilders, downsized for the new class, while many others were former figure competitors who had added a little more muscle. One of those was Joele Smith from Mississippi, who had been competing in figure for a little over a year.



Joele was into dance, gymnastics and sport in general while growing up, but didn’t begin serious weight training until she was at Nursing School in Mississippi. I had to find something to nourish my need of physical activity, she says. Then I met my husband, Randy, and he introduced me to serious weight training. I loved it! He had a background in bodybuilding and taught me everything I know about weight training.



After a couple of friends from the same gym began to compete, and with Randy’s encouragement, Joele first competed in May 2010 at NPC Steel World (!) and won the overall title in the Figure Division. If she had had doubts about doing more competitions, that first victory wiped them all away: I was hooked!



But Joele’s ride to the pros was not without its bumps. She failed to place at two of her next three contests, and by the time the NPC Nationals came around in 2011, she had been about to give up competing. That she didn’t was thanks partly to her husband and another trainer’s powers of persuasion, and partly to the fact that the new Physique division was being introduced at that show.




Joele was one of 30 (30!) competitors in the tallest of the three height classes. After a patchy Figure career, she was an unlikely winner, but win she did, and although she missed out on the overall title, she’d won her first Physique show, and was now a pro, one of the first six women to be awarded professional status in the division.



And last year she took to the stage in four high-profile pro shows and placed in the top 6 in all of them. And set up Physique Pro Fitness, which she hopes will help other women (and men) reach their fitness targets.



I’m well aware that to many female muscle fans, ‘Physique’ is a dirty word. Many feel it’s introduction was a thinly-disguised attempt to bang another nail into the heart of female bodybuilding, and on that point I quite agree. But intention is one thing and outcome quite another. Have a bit of faith! Female bodybuilding will survive.



Some women, Joele for instance, fit right into the Physique class. She wasn’t a success as a Figure competitor, and is unlikely to ever have the muscularity to succeed in the Bodybuilding division. Physique is where she belongs, and if it hadn’t been brought into existence, she may well have given up competing. Take a good look at Joele. Wouldn’t the sport, in fact, wouldn’t the world be a poorer place if that had happened?

Joele’s website
Physique Pro Fitness website

Enjoy one of Joele's 2012 appearances, the IFBB Europa in Orlando



It's all good. More heat tomorrow!

Thighs of the Day: The Elite

Twelve elite thighs (and other bits) from the top 6 at the recent Miss International.

left: Angela Debatin (6th), right: Cathy Le François (5th)


left: Brigita Brezovac (4th), right: Debi Laszewski (3rd)


left: Yaxeni Oriquen (2nd), right: Iris Kyle (1st)


Want more elite thighs and bodies? You could do worse than check out jlelmariachi's youtube channel, where the descriptions are almost as good as the images and the biggest and best in professional bodybuilding get the 'Mariachi' treatment...
Over and over again.

Thighs of the Day concludes tomorrow.

FBBUK: The Transformation of Linda Gartside

And so to our final post of this epic week (well, it's been bloody epic to put all these posts together, anyway - I do have a life outside this blog, you know!) highlighting just a handful of the finest women in Britain today, with the story of the 2012 NABBA Universe Trained Figure Class 1 Winner, Linda Gartside.



And I believe it's such a good story that there's no reason at all why it shouldn't be made into a movie. My screenwriting handbooks tell me you need a first act that sets up the main character, their inner need and the flaw that prevents them from achieving it. Well, Linda's story certainly has that. See what you think about this for a set-up.

Rochdale, England. The 1980s.

15-year-old Linda Gartside, like the rest of her family, has weight issues. Shy, bullied at school, she stuffs herself with crisps and sweets in secret.

Linda loved Arnold Schwarzenneger in Conan, so when her mother sees one of his books at a jumble sale, she buys it for her daughter. Linda loves it, especially the pictures of Arnold and his mighty muscles.

Linda bugs her mother to let her join a gym. As she slips into the weights room, the sight of so many strong, muscular, Arnold-like men in one place makes her gasp. So when one of them turns and looks at her, all she can do is blush and leave.

Linda and her mother struggle down the street carrying a dumbbell each.

In the garage, Linda attempts a bicep curl. She fails. She removes weight from the dumbbell and tries again. Again she can’t do it. More weight off, just one tiny plate on each end now. She picks it up again, and… success! She removes the weight from the other dumbbell and starts to curl them both, counting one… two… three… The camera pans to Arnold on the cover of the book, smiling… four… five…

Fade out.



In the second act the protagonist attempts to attain their goal, but is prevented from doing so. In the middle of the second act comes the turning point - a major event that changes the way the protagonist approaches their goal. Again, Linda's story has that.

Fast forward twenty years and on the face of it, Linda has overcome the issues that her shy, bullied, binge-eating teen self struggled with. She owns her own driving school, she’s a black belt in taekwondo, and she’s a qualified holistic therapist. She’s the mother of two children and she’s now a regular at the gym. It all seems so different.

But underneath, those issues remain. She’s still scoffing chocolates and crisps in secret. In fact, it’s her guilt about this that drives her to the gym. She still feels like an outsider, in her own words, a dumpy wallflower. And by her own admission, her anxieties over her clandestine eating and her body have meant, despite having had the children, she’s been unable to maintain a relationship.

Then, at the age of 38, Linda makes a decision that by the age of 40, she’s going to stand on stage as a competitor at a bodybuilding show. What made her decide this is unclear, but before I pitch the script in Hollywood, I’m going to have to find out.

She’d just joined a new gym at the time, maybe she met a woman there who was preparing for a contest. Perhaps that woman’s muscled-up beau was the motivation. Perhaps she came across the old book on Arnold or her rusty old dumbbells while clearing out the attic. Whatever the reason, her transformation had begun. But she was not alone. Into her life came Ken ‘Skip’ Hill, a contest prep expert from Colorado of all places (what was he doing in Rochdale?!)

Now in my mind, Ken looks and sounds exactly like Meredith Burgess in Rocky. Sadly, Mr Burgess is no longer with us, so we’ll have to find an equally gnarled character actor to play ‘Skip’. Maybe he’s ended up in Rochdale because he’s washed up, and what Linda offers him is a last chance to redeem himself.

Anyway, over the following two years, Linda Gartside, with Skip’s help, completely transformed her body. You can watch the complete transformation on her website.



So where’s the third act? In the third, and final, act, the hero (or heroine) finally overcomes all obstacles, conquers their flaw, and finally gets what they want. But hasn't Linda done that already? Well, yes and no. Because although our heroine has transformed herself, fate was about to intervene.

Four weeks before her first competition, Linda was, as usual, giving a driving lesson to a client when her car was hit from behind by a 26-tonne truck.

There’s your third act!

Now thankfully, Linda was not seriously injured, and the accident delayed her competitive debut only by four months. For the movie, I think we’ll need a more serious injury, her kids and Skip waiting for news at the hospital, hoping, praying. For dramatic effect, we’ll need doubt about Linda’s ability to ever train again, just so we can have her inspiring recovery take us to the story’s climax.

But in fact Linda took to the stage in September 2010 at the NABBA England and finished 2nd in the Trained Figure Class. Four weeks later, the dumpy wallflower was the NABBA UK Champion.

I can see it now. The kids punching the air and running onto the stage. The music rises to a crescendo. Skip, backstage, the tough guy façade finally cracked as tears of joy stream down his weathered cheeks. And Linda, finally the champion she’d first dreamed of being twenty-five years before…

I think you’ll agree that there wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house.

But that is not the end of the movie, or indeed the real story of Linda Gartside’s transformation. Sure, she had achieved her ambition to stand on the stage. But had she defeated her demons?

She certainly didn’t think so. A year after her first contest she underwent hypnotherapy and regression therapy in an effort to resolve her eating disorder. It was a success, and Linda’s greatest victory of all.

So perhaps the film shouldn’t end with her NABBA UK victory. Perhaps the story should continue with a relapse into binge eating, an ultimatum from Skip - It’s the chocolate or me, kid - before Linda starts the therapy. Then we can have the big finish set at the NABBA Universe last year.



Linda won her class there, and though she lost out on the overall title, we can leave that out of the movie, or just have her defeating Maria Kuzmina in the overall posedown anyway. After all, this is ‘based on a true story’.




But on second thoughts, we could still have a stirring finish by sticking to the truth. As Linda says herself, The best part of competing is knowing full well that I have beaten my family history of obesity.

Me and you, Linda. Your story, my words. Hollywood. What do you say?







A truly amazing story of a truly amazing woman. The best possible way to end our FBBUK week.



Visit Linda's website for more of this remarkable woman, and she also has a youtube channel with contest and training clips, as well as clips of other NABBA competitors.