Changing the blueprint…

With the acquisition of the new classic physique division, the bodybuilding community has been much abuzz, and for good reason. The new weight class makes bodybuilding more accessible to the public as well as giving serious builders more opportunities to compete. Although much of this buzz is good, few people are acknowledging the major implications this means for bodybuilding as a whole. We don’t know if anyone else has watched the announcement video to the end but if they did they would see that there’s going to be some major changes coming to bodybuilding in the next coming years.

For one the women’s divisions will be scaled down to a more “athletic” look and will stray from the mass separation and striation look of yester-year. This doesn’t come as much of a surprise with so many major IFBB competitions dropping Women’s Open Bodybuilding all together. According to NPC and IFBB Pro League President (Jim Mannion) and IFBB/NPC head judge (Sandy Williamson) the athletes themselves, as well as the general  public, has expressed that they are no longer into mass building but instead muscle density,  and full bellies with aesthetic lines will hold more weight (pun intended).

“As judges though we’ve started to ward a little more size in women physique…where ever you are now, if you’re at that top of the line you just need to scale it back another ten to fifteen percent.” -Sandy Williamson

The men’s league is not immune to these changes either. Jim Manion has also expressed that the tides are changing and that in order for bodybuilding to keep on growing at the rate that it has – it must go with those tides even if that means slimming down body building as a whole. While he emphasized that judging this year will stick to the usual script, it was revealed that starting next year a more athletic streamlined build will be more what the judges will be looking for. He also expressed that men and women will soon be able to crossover divisions as long as it’s not within the same contest. This essentially means that in one show guys can compete in the men’s physique division and in the next show the men’s classic division as long as you can meet the newly displayed requirements on the NPC website. The same rules apply for women.

So what do you think of the new changes? Yay or Nay? Will Classic Physique and these new rules change the sport for the worse or better? Sound off in the GI Forum or hit us up on Facebook and Twitter.

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