Everyone knows that having a great physique on stage is integral for winning a show. However, what you may not know is that proper posing and stage presentation are equally important. How else are you going to outshine your competition?
5 Tips for Perfect Posing
- Start practicing your poses about 8 weeks before your competition. This will allow you time to practice both with and without the mirror. After the first 4 weeks, you should be spending half of your posing time away from the mirror. After six weeks, you should be practicing almost entirely away from the mirror. This allows your body time to internalize the movements so you’ll nail them flawlessly, even if your mind goes blank when you’re up on that stage.
- Practice walking in heels. Unless you don’t have to wear heels on stage of course! The trick here is that you want to master an elegant and feminine stage walk. This means you’ll need to be able to turn fluidly on stage, with those heels on, while looking stable and comfortable during all your poses.
- Learn your mandatory posing for your organization and for your category. This can be done by going to your organizations website. For example, the Ontario Physique Association lists all its physique and posing expectations for all categories here: http://www.physiqueassociation.ca/info
- Practice holding each pose for 30 – 40 seconds and maintain maximum poise. This is to build endurance. You may be asked to hold a certain pose for an extended period of time because the judges are having a tough time making comparisons. Bodybuilding poses are especially tough. You’ll need to practice building stamina in holding contractions all while making the pose look easy and your transitions smooth. If you’re up there grimacing, it could hurt your chance to win!
- Practice your fitness or bodybuilding routines (if you have them). Start practicing these around the same time you begin practicing your poses, around 8-10 weeks outside of your competition. This way you can perform your routines flawlessly to music, come what may. If these moves are not deeply ingrained in your brain, you may forget them once the jitters kick in…and that would suck, wouldn’t it?
Six Things Not to Do When Posing:
- If you’re competing in Fitness, Figure, Bikini or Fitness model, do not strain when you pose. It’s about presenting the body in a fashion that shows flow, symmetry and appropriate conditioning. It’s not about tensing and squeezing all your muscles. That is Bodybuilding! You should look poised but relaxed.
- Don’t make facial grimaces. It will look like you’re in pain. Smile! The poses should look easy and natural. Awkwardness shows that you have not practiced and judges will catch that right away. Not smiling is the worst thing you can do. You need to show charisma and personality in order to shine on that stage. You can’t do that if you don’t smile. This goes for bodybuilders too! You should look like you’re enjoying yourself.
- Don’t fidget or twitch. Don’t play with your hair, pull out a wedgy or pick at a nail while you are standing in your relaxed poses! Also, be careful of weird hand positions or wrist flicks when you do quarter turns.
- Don’t chew gum. Chewing will make you look like a cow and, to win, you will need to look poised and polished.
- Don’t chit chat. Talking to other competitors while you’re standing in relaxed poses on stage in a no-no. You’re still being judged. Just because you are standing at the back does not mean they’re not watching you. Stay focused on your game! Keep your poise and energy at 100% for the entire time you’re on that stage.
- Don’t avoid looking at the judges and audience. You can’t look shy! It doesn’t matter whether you’re posing in quarter turns, performing a fitness routine or performing a bodybuilder routine–you need to connect with the judges and connect with the audience. Smiling and looking at them shows confidence and charisma, and it makes people like you. That said, staring them all down will have the opposite effect, so keep it balanced.
If you’ve got a competition coming up, you may want to check out my posing and stage presentation DVD for Figure, Bikini, Fitness and Fitness Model athletes. It covers all aspects of what I’ve written about here with greater depth and provides a visual guide. It’s available for sale worldwide and many competitors have told me they found it helpful in their contest preparation.
Come back on Tuesday to read the next Team T & E update (I’m training Eftihia for her shot at the stage!). It’s worth checking out, especially, if your planning to compete one day or if you just need some inspiration for your own fat loss mission!
Yours in health,
Tammy
