In her mind, that put her in spitting distance of qualifying to be a pro with the NPC the following year or the year after that. When she placed 11th among about 75 competitors, Foxx was delighted. Instead of chemical “fat burners,” she carefully ate lean food. Instead of pharmaceutical diuretics, she took dandelion root. The competitors perform their poses for a table of judges, mostly men, and smile throughout, often with forced grins.įoxx had skipped the extreme measures. Under the hot lights, and despite being hungry, dehydrated and almost totally exposed, they flex their muscles as mightily as they can. The leaner they are, the better their muscles look. Dressed in a baby blue bikini, she was in the masters’ figure division for women 35 and older, a category for slimmer and less-muscled athletes.īodybuilders call the run-up to a contest “ peak week.” They flush the water out of their bodies, often with dangerous pills, and usually go on extreme diets to lose the last ounces of fat. Months after her win at the Shredder Classic, Foxx took the stage at the NPC Nationals Team Universe show in New Jersey, competing against top amateur athletes in the sport. The Reporter: How a Post reporter whose father brought bodybuilding into the mainstream ended up investigating the sport. She earned a GED and enrolled in college with aspirations of becoming a lawyer. She was a runaway, an addict, a drug dealer, an underage strip dancer and a mother - all before turning 20. She was beaten by her mother and sexually abused by one of her mother’s boyfriends. She was born to a single mother from a family that had fled the cross burnings and lynchings of Mississippi in the 1950s to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. The failure to create or enforce protocols has essentially given the green light for bodybuilders, some in their teens, to experiment with a growing number of risky substances.įoxx’s bodybuilding career was a short stretch of the road she’d traveled. ![]() The organization does not drug test at most of its shows, and since 2017, NPC President Jim Manion has been on the Prohibited Association List of the World Anti-Doping Agency for violating the agency’s rules. ![]() The shows she was competing in were overseen by the largest bodybuilding federation in the world, the National Physique Committee, or NPC. And she had a rare quality among bodybuilders: a natural stage presence and a dazzling smile.īut for all her talent, Foxx was naive about the track she was on. Her weight dropped to between 125 and 130 pounds. In those moments, when the second runner-up wasn’t Foxx, when the judges named her the winner, she thought about a lifetime of trauma, and euphoria washed over her.įoxx has what bodybuilders call “good genetics.” Once she started training, the muscles on her 5-foot-6-inch-frame quickly grew bigger and more defined. It took Candace Foxx two years to master the “lat spread,” but she has what bodybuilders call “good genetics.” (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post) ![]() She and her husband had agreed that if she won, she’d go to a top national contest in New Jersey. Five finalists were called back to the stage, Foxx among them. It had taken her two years to master what bodybuilders call the “lat spread.”Īfter 39 athletes had performed the prescribed poses, the emcee conferred with the judges. Turning her back to the judges, she curled her arms, squeezed her shoulder blades together and opened her back muscles like a bird spreading its wings. She knew that her legs were more impressive than her upper body, and her right side was better than the left. The 35-year-old bodybuilder flexed her muscles, focusing on the poses she’d been practicing for years. Onstage at the 2014 Texas Shredder Classic, Candace Foxx couldn’t see the crowd through the klieg lights, but she could just about make out the judges. They first interviewed Candace Foxx at Arnold Schwarzenegger’s contest in March 2022, and Jason Galihadd the following month, just days after a kidney transplant. ![]() Desmond Butler and Alice Li followed the careers of two bodybuilding coaches for more than a year.
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