Bodybuilding posing is important because it is a way for competitors to showcase their physique and demonstrate their muscle development. Posing helps judges evaluate the symmetry, muscle definition, and overall aesthetics of the competitor. Additionally, posing can help build confidence and stage presence for the competitor. It is an essential part of bodybuilding competition and greatly adds to the overall performance and presentation of the physiques.
Only at the Arnold Classic is the posing round scored. However, they’re not judging the posing, they’re judging the physique, which makes no sense at all. Why is the posing round not judged? Why did they condense the prejudging into one round?
Bodybuilding is about building muscle but the artistic side of bodybuilding has been lost for decades. For at least 10-20 years, athletes do not take posing seriously. The only thing competitors practice is the eight mandatory poses and 99% of the athletes don’t care about the posing round.
If you ever watched gymnastics at the Olympics or dance recitals on ESPN, they all have posing rounds. In figure skating, they have tricks that they have to do and there’s levels of difficulty that the judges score them on. In gymnastics, their floor routine has criteria that the judges follow but it’s all subjective because that is what makes the sport exciting. Anyone could beat anyone in those sports because they get rewarded on their routines. In bodybuilding, we could do the same thing. We can all brainstorm some criteria for the athletes to follow that the judges can score on fairly so that athletes will then put the effort and time into their posing round.
Imagine how exciting bodybuilding would be if you open your Instagram, or YouTube channel and see all of your favorite bodybuilders posing hard as hell and actually caring about it, putting effort into it and loving it and having passion for the art of bodybuilding.
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