Alison Brundage

[achilleus]

I have recently seen Lenda Murray in a promotion video for WOS championship and thought: its amazing she is still around and such a good ambassador for the sport. Then I have seen another interview with Bev Francis, which was fabolous and she seems to be doing well with her gym. And I always love to read inside stories from you on here.

On the other hand there are so many new and really young athletes on the rise, across all mentionable divisions probably more then ever. It is somehow the first time we are looking at different generations of female bodybuilders/athletes.

Question to you, Alison: are you in contact with the current bb movement, are you interested in whats going on at the Olympia? Do the young athletes ever ask for advice? In which way do you interact with each other ?

Thanks and best greetings

[alison brundage]

Achillius,
   Thanks for your kind comments !   When I began bodybuilding back in the early 80's I began in Hawaii way out of the loop.  I was in the very first women's contest that was held there ( we had to wear high heels when we came out !).   No internet....no FBB mags. Ironman and my trainer were my plumb-lines.  There was no "standard" for women then really.   Time passed...I won every contest I entered in Hawaii and came in 7th twice in the nationals and won my weight class at the Golds Classic...retired.    My only contact with other women  bodybuilders was Pillow...by mail !   I trained alone all that time in a backyard gym that my trainer and my husband made by hand.    I retired and remained out of the loop. ( keep in mind ...all the time I was winning those Hawaii contests Paula Suzuki was training just on the other side of the island and being trained to be one of the very best the sport of FBB has ever seen.....I never met her in person !)   As time passed nothing changed...I never really got very much interested in the finer nuances of contests .  To tell you the truth I never really scrutinized my score cards after a contest.  I remained in my own little world....and pretty much still today.   

I was a naturally muscular gal ( a bit older than the rest...mid 30's) trained by a very talented guy who was one of Bill Starr's buddies.  I received excellent training advice from the start ( considering what was known at the time). That said...we made our mistakes having accomplished what we did in a vacuum.   I missed the weigh-in for my first national contest and competed in the middleweight class when I was a lightweight.  ( I was busy doing chin-ups on the plumbing pipes in the fire escape stair-well of Caesar's palace with my trainer)  I doubt any of that would happen today.......( laughing)

At 70 1/2 years old I am very thankful for what I learned from my trainer regarding the lifting arts because it's part of my life now and I believe I can easily say I owe much of my physical ability today to what I learned and now practice.  That is my life as a FBB.   Totally absorbed in it...yet as always, out of the loop.   

                                                                                                                  Alison
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 You are not allowed to view links. Register or LoginI'm the far right.  I competed as a middleweight, but was a lightweight.  Huge error ! Carla won as I recall

[achilleus]

Good old times, it seems like a surreal movie at some point. I think you all had lots of pride and curiousity in your eyes on stage, the young athletes take everything for granted, not much gratitude anymore. Guess I have to buy pumping iron 2 to recall the spirit of the 80s in female bodybuilding.

When you browse through Saradas, and you see miliions of pictures floating around, what are your feelings? What do you think of todays womens bodybuilding as compared to your active days?

[alison brundage]

Good old times, it seems like a surreal movie at some point. I think you all had lots of pride and curiousity in your eyes on stage, the young athletes take everything for granted, not much gratitude anymore. Guess I have to buy pumping iron 2 to recall the spirit of the 80s in female bodybuilding.

When you browse through Saradas, and you see miliions of pictures floating around, what are your feelings? What do you think of todays womens bodybuilding as compared to your active days?

Well I found Sar a das quite by accident.  I was surprised to find a thread dedicated to me and some of the photos that Bill Jentz took so long ago for Womens Strength & Physique.  I hadn't looked seriously at a FBB mag or on-line for that matter in over 25 years.  Ok so it was sort of like waking from a nightmare.  I had to ask one of the fellows here what "sessions" meant ( laughing...but serious).  Ok so it was pretty obvious that steroids had become the breakfast of champions and as well the fellows we called muscle-lusters were now in full force and so encouraging women to make muscle and money while doing it.  It was what seemed to me to be some symbiotic perversion of sorts...like a fungus on a dead log out in the woods somewhere.  I decided to be honest, share my story here and possibly put in my 2 cents for life without steroids.  ( ok my threads seemed popular but the stand against steroids not so much...they seem to think I'm crazy on that issue....yes, and old...laughing)    Well I've made some nice friends here and they have been very kind to me.  Very encouraging.  It gives me the same joy for lifting i had when I first began.   Soooo it's all good.   Keep in mind I left the building before computers were common.   It's not been but in the last 7 years I've been on-line.  So it was a pretty amazing thing to me to see how far the girls have come...good and bad. 

Here...apart from the 80's lovers...it seems the bigger the better.  Form and the art of expression of a gifted form not so much.  I'm talking about the few gifted gals who were born with an amazing frame and muscle bodies that drape it like an exquisite Christmas tree ornament.   The advent of artificial breasts on the female physique so common now I feel has damaged what should appear to be a perfect body.  Ladies in lean form at peak generally do not have large breasts.  So to my eye it looks like graffiti on the Taj Majal .   It looks like it does not belong and makes ugly a work of art.   But that's just me.

So that's my take on things in the FBB world.   It is what it is.   

Alison
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[achilleus]

Ok the graffiti on taj mahal made me laugh !

I remember one article with Lenda Murray, where she spoke out about her move from cheerleader to bodybuilder. I remember her saying hat she never had something for bodybuilding, but a coach in the gym saw the potential in her. She accepted the fact that she has the genetics of a champion and was grateful enough to turn this into victory.

There is lots of talking that the right spirit makes a champion, but I more trust in Lenda Murrays word: some women just "have it". If the genetcis are not there, neither believe in yourself nor steroids will make a champion out of you.

How was it back then when you mingled with ordinary people? I mean, female bodybuilding just did not exist before, so I imagine poeple were some sort of confused. I mean .. these days everybody knows female bodybuilding and has some stupid comment at hand any time. I imagine people were speechless at the sight of womens muscles back then. Well ... I was 

[alison brundage]

I lived on the North Shore of Hawaii in a small town that was the surfers mecca.  It was a town of athletes.  Being one...you sort of blended in.  I was a nurse who worked at night in a teeny little country hospital.  The cops were my fans.  They'd visit the ER at night and tell me where the latest stop sign post was bent over so we could collect it  the next day for my gym construction.  They invited me to train in their station.  Hawaiians are big on having a local champ...so I was sort of a small town hero.  That said I'd be running up a steep hill training my ass off literally and I'd get some idiot lean half way out of the car and yell: "How does it feel to be a freak?".....so not everybody was a FBB fan.   Out surfing I'd get respect that normally a female surfer didn't in a pretty chauvinistic sport at that time.  Getting a wave or two extra in a very competitive surf environment was a definite plus.  Surfing was always my first joy.

It was an exciting adventure.  To me anything was possible.  There was this "dream".   It was all good.  Great memories !

Alison
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[alison brundage]

.....and of course because I appeared unusually muscular for the time in history most thought I used steroids.  I'd get questions from parents of teens who played football on the local highshcool teams asking me which steroid was the best for their boy.   It gave me a platform to teach them that a healthy lifestyle and proper training were the techniques I used.  They all seemed dumbfounded that it was possible.  I don't think a lot of them believed me.
Alison
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[mooveeguy]

You looked like a statue here.

[alison brundage]

Frozen in time !
thanks Moveeguy !  My trainer and best friend ...and photographer was good at all of it.  ( thanks Steve...you made me look like a statue )
A

[steved6464]

Alison: She never had a choice

Everyone has life thrust upon them, arriving in the world with a mixed bag of advantages and disadvantages, not always in the proportions they would choose. 
Alison, at a very young age, became conscious; some may say self conscious, that she was in a category of her very own.  She was endowed with a propensity for muscularity, not a feature that most girls of that era would have chosen.  It’s possible that Alison may not have chosen it either, but then, she never had a choice.
Keep in mind that this was in the early 50’s; women’s bodybuilding was decades in the future, and even men’s bodybuilding was in its early stages. 
Fast-forward to the late 70’s, and at an age when many bodybuilders, women in particular, would be hanging it up, Alison and I crossed paths for the first time, when she and Bill came to get a lifting belt. Call it kismet.
She found herself in the process of being convinced, by a total stranger no less, that within a period of months, she would be standing onstage in a bikini, subjecting herself to the scrutiny of a bodybuilding audience, while competing for the title of Miss Hawaii physique. To say that there was a touch of apprehension on her part, when this subject was broached, would be an understatement.  I think her first reaction was to say, “I just came to buy a belt” or was it, “Bill, go start the car”.  Once we got past that little hurdle, it was “game on”.
All of her preparation was a process of converting individual muscle group contraction using weights, to multiple muscle group contraction with no weight resistance, all the while transitioning from one perfectly artistic position to another, and looking comfortable while doing it.  Sounds easy, doesn’t it?  As Bill was fond of saying, “It was all smoke and mirrors”.  Amazing how some clichés are perfectly appropriate.
It became the focus of all our training that Alison’s stage presentation would be our primary objective.  “It Just Doesn’t Matter” was the slogan that drove her training, but we put that on the back burner on contest night.
The rest, as they say, is history, as it became apparent from the initial lineup that the contest was, in fact, no contest.  Alison happened. Instead of a competition, it was more like her coronation.  Sort of like a debutante ball, minus the gowns.  Maybe a little oilier too, but then I’ve never been to a debutante ball…yet.
The months of preparation were intensive, but a distant memory at that moment.  Her devotion to the details made my job easier, as I had just tried to relieve her of the need to experiment.  The final product was a presentation that would have justified her being a guest poser in her first time on stage, this according to Bill Nelson, Hawaii NPC Chairman at the time.
I am proud to have been part of this quantum leap forward in Alison’s life, where her potential began to bloom into her legacy. I wish her fans on this forum could have seen her at her peak.  Alison’s abbreviated career is a matter of record, but suffice to say, she deserved her spot on stage as one of the best of the best. 
My feeling is, at her current age, with 3 months of preparation, that she would be highly competitive in an “over 50” women’s competition.  OK, we’ll give her 4 months. They have them for men, I say, why not?   Alison may have to be cajoled, or dragged, kicking and screaming into doing it, but in the end, would she really have a choice?

[achilleus]

I am very much in favor for Alision on stage in the over 50s category  Plus pictures and interviews and all that ... 

[alison brundage]

I am very much in favor for Alision on stage in the over 50s category  Plus pictures and interviews and all that ...

No...the over 70's category.  That's my only ounce of hope now that I'm 70 1/2 !  (laughing)
There was a man in the over 70 men's category...like the mega ultra grand masters or something.  He was the only one in his class....he won ( still laughing).  This guy has been in competition since Adam and Eve first flexed.  He said: "I knew if I kept at it someday I would win and go pro"  Ok...finally he became a professional.  He outlived all his competitors.   

Yes !
Alison
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Hey, I can still mow a lawn without a gardener !

[alison brundage]

Thanks Steve !...we had fun that's for sure.  I got a ton more than the lifting belt I was looking for.
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A

[alison brundage]

I went back though the old posts and attempted to fix, change or eliminate some of my copy mistakes....(many I posted in my early attempts were mega Godzilla sized or they dropped).
Some day I'll have to get my lazy ass into the storage room and scan more pics I have.  Moveeguy has been at me forever to do it.  I'm just lazy...sorry
Alison
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[alison brundage]

                                                             
                                                                             
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                                                                                     ECLIPSE tonight ! Don't forget to watch it..............
                                                                                                                 Alison                                       
                             

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    ( In this picture I was imagining a big combo pizza with a milkshake.  Only thing on the menu was 3 cans of tuna a day..and you can see why ! ...laughing)