Three Airdrie bodybuilders earned first place titles at the Southern Alberta zones competition.
Kathy Krath, Jennifer Streeter and Charmaine Wall all competed in and won their respective heavyweight, middleweight and lightweight classes at the event held in Calgary on June 19.
Airdrie’s Kristina Macintosh also won the bikini model competition.
“I’m ecstatic with the results,” said Rick Doucette, owner and personal trainer at Sculptures Personal Training who also won his men’s class and will head to nationals in August. “We have all done really well.”
All three female bodybuilders qualified for provincials, held the following weekend, June 26, in Edmonton with 145 other competitors.
“Most of the people that go to provincials take a year off to get ready for it,” Doucette said.
“My girls went the week after. I said ‘Let’s go right away and see what happens.’ That’s pretty tough on the body.”
Wall, 45, placed the highest among the three, and her third position in the middleweight class was good enough to qualify for next year’s nationals.
Krath, 44, and Streeter didn’t place high enough to qualify. But Doucette said all three women performed tremendously, especially considering how long they’ve been training.
“Charmaine and Jen have been training with me for about eight months, with just those two and me,” he said. “They’ve been doing heavy, heavy lifting and a strict diet for the eight weeks before the show.”
Krath only started working with Doucette six months ago and was able to trim her body fat from nearly 30 per cent down to around 6.5 per cent.
“Everybody thinks they can do it, but the sport is difficult because you have to bring yourself up to a certain weight and they you have to cut down and be strict with your diet,” Doucette said.
“For six weeks, I had all three of them on broiled chicken and broccoli for six days and one day with carbs. At 44 and 45 years old, to go in there with younger girls, says a lot. The mental change is unbelievable.”
