At 49, I Began Training For A Bikini Contest. 1 Part Of My Transformation Shocked Me Most.

It all began when I became obsessed with a photo I saw on the Facebook page of a writer I knew. She was backstage at a bikini competition in heels and a sparkly bikini, and she held a trophy high overhead. Part of me thought she looked ridiculous with her silver eyeshadow and her deep spray tan, but her smile told a story of strength and accomplishment. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt strong or accomplished.
I was almost 50, had been parenting for 22 years straight, and was in the muddy middle of trying to write a memoir about my decade in Japan’s underbelly. My day job was running children’s yoga and nutrition classes, where not only did I teach my girls and my students downward dog, boat pose and the importance of healthy eating, I also taught nonjudgment and unconditional self-acceptance.
Bikini competitions do not fall within these parameters. Parading around on stage in a tiny swimsuit for a panel of judges went against my morals. So why was I so taken by the idea of possibly competing?
My friends were as befuddled as I was. Why not just work out? they asked. Why demean yourself in a bikini competition? I told them I needed the discipline of a trainer to tell me how and when to exercise, and a deadline that I couldn’t wiggle out of. I needed skin in the game. Someone who wouldn’t let me quit.
Some people thought I was having a midlife crisis. I wondered about this myself. Maybe something in my brain was misfiring because I don’t have one competitive bone in my body. Some accused me of setting unrealistic body expectations for my girls, who were 11 and 21 at the time, so I sat down with my daughters and explained it wasn’t about dieting or losing weight per se, it was about their mother completing a hard thing and hopefully becoming stronger in the process.
Linda Hamilton’s ripped physique while playing Sarah Connor in “Terminator 2” had long been my goal body, but it wasn’t just the look of her body that I found so appealing. I was drawn to her character’s transformation from a mother who had been dealt a shitty hand in “The Terminator” to the formidable warrior she became in “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.” I wanted a bit of that bad-assery. Ultimately, it wasn’t just her muscles I coveted ― I also wanted Connor’s emotional resilience.
I told myself to get a grip and stop being ridiculous, and yet, as my 50th birthday crept closer, I couldn’t let go of the idea. I reached out to the writer in the Facebook picture, who introduced me to the trainer who coached her for competition.
Dressed in my husband’s shapeless SXSW T-shirt and my baggy gray sweats, I stepped into Team Fitness gym to begin a five-month transformation I couldn’t afford. I’ve never had extra to spend, and certainly not on something as vain as a bodybuilding competition, but my husband said he’d figure out a way to pay for it to celebrate my milestone birthday.
On the wall behind the desk of my new trainer, Yelena, hung a picture of a woman in a black tank top and cargo pants standing in the desert with a shotgun in hand.
“That’s me as Sarah Connor,” she said in her thick Russian accent. “You know, from ‘Terminator’?” I couldn’t believe it. Among the kettlebells and dumb bells and squat racks, I’d found my coach.
Yelena, with her killer body, dagger-like gold nails and hairless Sphynx cat companion, assessed my physical metrics. She told me I had the metabolic age of a 39 year old, but my body fat percentage, especially viscerally, was too high. She had me outline exactly what I ate every day and how much of it. Even though I teach nutrition, I was surprised to learn that I wasn’t eating enough, especially protein.
My first workout with Yelena was humbling. Somewhere between the 5 lb. shoulder presses and the push-ups, I began to see stars. Nausea set in. Yelena told me to rest for a while and then we continued. Thirty seconds into my first of three one-minute planks, knife-like pain in my lower back set in. I began to shake.
“What’s your favorite color?” Yelena asked.
My favorite color? I could barely breathe, let alone have a conversation. On an exhale, I managed to blurt out “green,” the color of the heart chakra.
“Good. Now visualize yourself on stage in a green bikini holding your trophy.”
I thought she was insane to think I’d ever even make it to the stage, but I did complete that one-minute plank without lowering my knees.
At first, I wanted to fly under the radar and not tell anyone what I was up to. After five months, I hoped to rip off my sweats to reveal the stronger version of me. But by the end of my third week of training, I told anyone and everyone who would listen — partly for validation, but more for accountability. It was one thing to quit on myself, but I did not want to appear like a quitter in public.
My younger daughter became my taskmaster, watching over me to make sure I didn’t deviate from my meal plan. My 21-year-old vegetarian daughter, disgusted as she was by my copious chicken consumption, cheered me on. My husband returned from Costco with packages of white fish, organic chicken breasts and cartons of egg whites.
Compared to writing my memoir, weightlifting was much less agonizing. Once I got past the initial learning curve that forced me to memorize not only a new vocabulary — time under tension, German volume, RPE (rate of perceived exertion), Smith machine, squat rack, split squats, split training, RDLs, (Romanian deadlifts), straight-legged deadlifts — but also how to safely use the machines at the gym, I simply put my head down and banged out the reps. There was no staring at a blank screen. No editing or deleting or second-guessing myself.
Ten weeks into my training it became easier to get up in the mornings, and I could get through most days without a nap.
When it came time to buy my competition bikini, I literally felt nauseated by the thought of the cost. Depending on the amount of bejeweling involved, bikinis range from hundreds of dollars well into the thousands. Thankfully, the owner of Suit Lady, the go-to boutique for competition bikinis, helped me choose a gorgeous emerald green one from the consignment rack. It was half the regular price and, just as I had pictured, the color of the heart chakra.
One of the most important pieces of the bodybuilding puzzle was posing. I hated Saturday posing classes. I felt self-conscious and awkward wobbling about on 4-inch lucite heels. Trying to remember my choreography was almost impossible: quarter turn to the right. Front pose. Back pose. Sexy walk. Superwoman pose.
“If you think your butt is sticking out, stick it out more,” Yelena told me. “Try to look natural but walk with straight legs — like this ….” I tried to emulate her, but it felt hopeless.
“Arch your back. Tits over toes!” she said time and time again.
Tits over toes.
That was her way of telling me to stick my butt out more and lift and spread my clavicles. Those three words became a household favorite. My husband and girls yelled at me when they caught me slouching. They chanted it to make me feel better when they found me crying in my car after a grueling posing class.
Despite all of the encouragement they gave me, I felt like a terrible mother. There were a thousand more important things to do with my time other than teetering around “tits over toes” in high heels. There were floors to mop. Meals to make. Homework to help with.
I tried to quit twice but Yelena wouldn’t let me. “If you don’t have confidence in yourself, borrow mine,” she said, “because I have full confidence in you.”
This concept of borrowing someone else’s belief in me worked. I got my head back in the game.
At 5 a.m. each day, I pedaled my husband’s road bike, which he’d mounted onto a stand in our bedroom. To educate myself and drown out his snoring, I listened to Oprah’s “Super Soul Sunday” podcasts and other shows about trauma-informed weightlifting. I was (and still am) fascinated by the concept of weightlifting as a means of moving trauma out of the body by facilitating a grounding experience.
Week after week, I lifted the weights and ate the chicken. My legs grew stronger. My shoulders grew more defined. I added more weight to my deadlifts. I picked up heavier dumbbells for my bicep curls.
On competition day, bikini-clad women sat on towels on the floor of the theater’s backroom — an over-packed jumble of hair, heels, bathrobes, makeup, doughnuts and gummy bears. (Apparently a dose of sugar on competition day can help give the body a pumped-up, muscular look.) For the first time, I felt like a real athlete, and it was intoxicating.
I met women who had their own reasons for lifting heavy shit. One was dealing with grief. Another was proving to herself she could live with a potentially life-threatening disease and still kick butt. There was a mother-daughter duo who had taken up the challenge to honor an ill family member. One woman, like me, was also about to turn 50, but this competition was more than celebrating a milestone for us. It was a call to action — a personal revolution.
Knowing my family and friends — along with the writer from the original Facebook post that had inspired me to begin my journey — were in the audience made me so nervous that I messed up my left and right while doing my routine. Whether or not that was what kept me from placing top three in that Grandmasters Competition for women over 45 didn’t matter. Even without a trophy, standing on that stage in my green bikini after years of feeling invisible made me feel like a motherfucking panther woman.
Maybe you don’t agree with women participating in a sport that some argue is demeaning. There are things about this sport I don’t love either: the fact that women must wear high heels while the men get to compete barefoot. The subjectivity of the judging. The cost. But let’s concentrate on the positives. The high I felt after that first competition lasted for weeks. I usually come down with at least one or two bouts of the flu or catch a couple of colds over the winter, but during that training period, I didn’t get sick once (working out helps boost the immune system). I lowered my metabolic age, lost 18% body fat, gained a good amount of muscle. But the thing I was most proud of was setting an almost impossible goal and seeing it through to the end. This instilled in me a sense of accomplishment I’d never felt before. Sure, my kids and my husband were sick of hearing me talk about my workouts and macros, but they were thrilled to see me so happy. The Natural Physique and Athletics Association put me on one of their promo posters, and Yelena hung a large picture of me beside her Sarah Connor photo.
There were also my interactions with strangers. I’d be at the gym and random women would approach me. They’d seen the picture of me or had watched me train over the months. Each had her own struggles and told me I’d inspired her. Knowing that my training had a positive effect on people I didn’t even know made me realize that what I’d done, which at times felt selfish and vain, was a catalyst of change for others. This was the part of my transformation that shocked — and delighted — me the most.
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The following year Yelena convinced me to do another competition. This time I placed in the top three — not just in the 45+ grandmasters category, but also in the open category, where I was up against athletes of all ages. This motivated me on to create and lead a free 90-day transformation challenge on Facebook during the pandemic lockdown. Dozens of women joined, and they were thrilled with their results. I even arranged a group photo shoot at the beach for the local participants to celebrate their achievements.
I’m 56 now. While I have no desire to compete again, I feel stronger and healthier than I ever have. I make sure to get enough protein and work out regularly. I no longer follow a strict protocol — if the sun is shining, I’ll head out for a hike with my dog. I lift weights at the gym once or twice a week and work out at home the other days. It turns out my initial desire to compete wasn’t about my 50th birthday, it was about self-actualizing and reclaiming my inner wild.
I still invoke Sarah Connor as my inspiration, but I don’t need to save the world. I just need to be true to myself and, if I’m lucky, inspire a few others along the way.
Dhana Musil lives on the unceded and occupied territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh people in British Columbia, Canada. She is a mother of two daughters. Her stories and essays have been published in various anthologies and literary journals such as The Ex-Puritan, The Tahoma Literary Review, Grain Magazine, and forthcoming in SugarSugarSalt Magazine.
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