17: Hated For Winning? Society v. Ashley Kaltwasser

Welcome back guys! This episode is about society’s perception of winning and defeat.  I use a case study of IFBB Pro Bikini Competitor Ashley Kaltwasser and some of the heat she is getting from peers as an example.  

I offer a different perspective about winning and how I believe you can think more like an unapologetic competitor. 

I also talk about how the “more is more is better” attitude is hurting our sport.

Lots of personal opinion and passion in this one!

Let me know what resonates with you in our Facebook group called “The ‘Everything Else’ in Bodybuilding Podcast Insiders!”

Key Takeaways:

*Handling defeat (2:54)
*Why people are mad at Ashley (3:45)
*How to qualify for the Olympia (4:41)
*How to analyze like a competitor (6:34)
*Story of Sara Blakely’s, founder of Spanx (11:45)
*Why the “more is more is better so I can win a trophy like everyone else” attitude is hurting our sport (14:08)
*Story of Rich Strike (15:54)

Additional Resources:
-Want To WIN Your Next Competition? I Can Help! Go to www.posingwinsshows.com

-Do you want to LOOK AND FEEL BETTER at any age or fitness level? Go to www.killitwithdrive.com 

-Grab your FREE Bikini, Figure, or Men’s Physique Posing Tutorial at www.learntopose.com
-Grab a “My Own Motivation” tank top, hat, or sweatshirt at shop.killitwithdrive.com 

----TRANSCRIPT----

What is so wrong with wanting to win? Wanting to be the best? Why is there this mentality that we have to soften the blow of defeat like it’s the end of the world? 

We are so caught up in protecting people’s emotions, that we forget that we need to build resilience to BE more resilient when times get tough.   If you live long enough, life will teach us resilience.  Amiright?  But the perception of what is a tough time will change the more resilient we become. Situations won’t feel or seem as bad if we have gone through, and worked through, them before. When we do this, we in essence, have built the resilience to manage the stressor.  We are stronger and less panicky.  

We have all been through rough patches that tested our will. I remember one time everything I owned was packed in my car after I sold all of my belongings.  I watched people come and take all of my things like piranhas like no big deal.  It WASN’T a big deal for them. Why would it be? They were getting a deal on stuff for a fraction of its worth.  It was a good day for them.  For me, it was the ultimate defeat.  Looking back on that time in my life I now see that the defeat build a more resilient me.   After many rough patches I now sit here today with a perspective that is unrecognizable to the me before those times.  Not much surprises me, nothing is impossible, and no one is going to save you except yourself and your inner drive.

We don’t teach people how to handle defeat, beginning with our youth.  We don’t teach that not winning means you weren’t voted the best up there.  Instead we give participation trophies.

We don’t teach that defeat is an opportunity.  Let me say it again, defeat is an opportunity.  Instead we coddle people and their emotions and stroke their ego or hate on others to make them feel superior. 

We don’t teach that shitty times happen and there are other ways to channel the emotions.  Instead we live in a society where medications are overprescribed at an alarming rate.    

Which leads me into what I’m calling the case of Society v. Ashley Kaltwasser. Guys hopefully you’ve been listening to me long enough to know that I’m being sarcastic. I hope at least. If not, stick with me and it’ll all make sense. 

So recently I came across some commentary about a pro bikini competitor, Ashley Kaltwasser, who is ruffling feathers in the industry……because she keeps …winning.  

Let me give you a little background.  Ashley won the ultimate title, the Olympia title, from 2013-2015.  So let me put it in perspective.   At the time of this recording the last time Ashley won the Olympia was 7 years ago. However, Ashley still continues to compete on the pro stages and wins quite often.  So often that today she has the most professional wins, among all competitors, of all time. You might be thinking…..annnnnnnnddddd….the problem is?

Well the PROBLEM is other competitors are mad that she keeps winning. If you are still confused, let me explain it further.  Bodybuilding in the IFBB federation has a competition once a year for all the professionals that requires you to qualify for it. Kind of like the all star teams in baseball.  Or the super bowl in football.  It’s the ultimate prized win.  And just like with any of these major events, you have to qualify. 

In bodybuilding, there are 3 ways to qualify.  One is to literally win the Olympia competition and you are qualified for life. The second way to qualify is to win a pro show. And the third way is by a point system. You build points when you compete at pro shows and get certain placements.  These placements are given a value and if you add up these values and hit a certain number, you qualify for the Olympia. So the complaints are that whenever Ashely wins a show, she removes the chance of another competitor getting that one and done shot to the Olympia. Instead, competitors will have to qualify by accumulating enough points or perhaps by continuing to compete and hoping to get a 1st place trophy.

So let me summarize…people are mad that they will have to either keep competing to earn their ticket to the Olympia or figure out a way to win a show, or better, find a way to beat Ashley if she keeps showing up at shows.  

Iain Valliere, a pro men’s open bodybuilder got flack last year for already having qualified for the Olympia and having competed in another Pro show too. Same thing - he was accused of blocking someone else’s spot at the Olympia. So it’s not just Ashley, but Ashley is getting the most heat because she didn’t just do it once. 

In my opinion this crybaby mentality is because we don’t teach people how to handle defeat.  How to EARN the win and not expect it.  And we don’t teach that defeat is an opportunity.    Instead we have built a society that feels entitled to things even when it isn’t earned.  We built a society where everyone gets a trophy.  A society where everyone should let everyone win, instead of a society where everyone gets a chance to participate and THEN rises to the occasion and EARNS the win.  

It’s like telling Tom Brady in the NFL one of the best quarterbacks of all time that he shouldn’t compete anymore because he should let other athletes have a chance to play. Please. Maybe those athletes should just be better. How about that?

I think maybe I should’ve titled this episode, Crybabies v Ashley. Post a comment on this episode if you think so. 

I’d like to offer some perspective from a fiercely competitive and unapologetic approach. You guessed it, I’m talking about from me. 

Let’s together pretend we are both fiercely competitive and not sorry to say it.  Now that we established that baseline, let’s talk about the opportunity at hand with Ashley competing like every weekend and slaying the stage. Think of it like game tape. Like what my Dad did as a coach.  My Dad was a high school basketball coach that brought a no name school to win back to back state titles.  My Dad watched the tape recordings (and I mean literal tapes….with the fuzz and all) of games to analyze weaknesses of his opponents so when the team had a re-match later in the season his team was better prepared. He didn’t just bring the same team to the game that lost the last game. He analyzed the weaknesses and looked for opportunities to one up the opponent and re-built his team to be more competitive.   

Let’s take this same concept and talk about Ashley.  Ashely placed 3rd at the last Olympia. So this means she is beatable. If you aren’t beating Ashley, then you have a long way to go to actually WIN the Olympia. And something noteworthy is the first and second place winners of the Olympia so far haven’t competed very often, so opponents haven’t had many opportunities to stand next to those top 2 winners, and probably won’t, until possibly the Olympia anyways. So you only have Ashley to try and beat during the year.  As of right now, if you aren’t beating Ashley, then there is room for improvement. If you keep showing up with the same package and continuing to lose, then you aren’t thinking like a competitor. Ashley competing nonstop allows you a chance to test different packages against her every time. What are her weaknesses?  What are your strengths?  What are YOUR weaknesses?  

Analyze like a competitor and not a crybaby and come up with some new options.

Bring a completely different look. Your current look clearly isn’t going to do it. Test. Test. Test. She is beatable.  Everyone is beatable.  In fact, Janet Layug who won the Olympia in 2020 hasn’t competed since that competition until this recent show in Pittsburg. She looked stunning on stage… and got third. 

Everyone is beatable. You need a new strategy.  

And if you don’t have people around you that can see the minute details, the angles, shapes, weaknesses, strengths, then you need to be open to another perspective.  If the TEAM you are competing on all looks like carbon copies of each other, then there’s your sign.  Be open to new ideas. 

I’ve been to modeling and acting schools.  I’ve gone to school for my yoga teacher training in something called embodyboga because of its emphasis on the body at the cellular level.  I’ve been to dance schools.  Despite 10 years of teaching men and women in all federations and divisions, and building my own curriculums, I went to all these schools to learn more.  I believe it’s my duty as a teacher to continue learning and evolving.  The minute you stop learning, the minute you stop growing.  My intent of going to these schools was to build a bigger arsenal of information to be a better teacher for my posing students.  

It’s essential that to be competitive and be a winner, you need to be open to change. You need to be open to the concept that you might NOT have it all figured out.

Even Ashley herself just tested a new package at that Pittsburg show I’ve been talking about and it paid off. In that Pittsburg show she changed her posing slightly. I’ve commented on her posts here and there, among the thousands of other comments she gets, and I’m sure it went unseen, but whatever, I’ve been saying that her hips in her front pose need to be more profile to show a smaller waist on her….which is critical when you stand next to Lauralie Chapados and Janet Layug who both have incredible genetic structures.   And sure enough, I finally saw her hips more towards the side in this last show and she looked phenomenal. Best I’ve ever seen her look.  With this new look, she beat Janet, who, again, won the Olympia the last time she was on stage.  

But Ashley still got second. She is beatable.  So even with her current best package there is still room for improvement. And Ashley, if you happen to listen, I love your tenacity and drive. I love that you think like an athlete and don’t follow the crowd.  I love that despite winning and losing Olympia competitions, you are still competing after many years and always working on improving.  You don’t get all wah wah if you don’t win.  You keep going.  And you keep creating your best you.  You have a champion mindset.  

With that in mind, with all the crybaby naysayers, I’d love to see you keep winning.  I think you should test a completely different persona on stage.  You’ve talked about bringing up your shoulders, but I am going to go rogue here and suggest that you try something completely different beyond your physique. The judges have seen you for many years on stage. Try something new.  P.s. I’ll be in Vegas soon and would be happy to pop in and work with you on my ideas.  If any of my clients from the past 10 years want to jump in here, go for it. 

So again we don’t teach that with defeat there is opportunity to improve.  That studying new ways to get better and testing new methods is what it means to have a champion mindset.  That’s what I love about the clients I work with in my Posing Wins Shows program.  Every single one of them has admitted they want to win.  Some of them took a bit to come around to verbalizing it. It’s almost as if we have built some sort of shame in owning our drive to win.  This idea that everyone SHOULD get a chance is not building resilience, it’s building an acceptance for mediocrity.  Follow the crowd, you will get no further than the crowd.  Walk alone and you will find yourself in places you never dreamed of. 

Do you guys know who Sara Blakely is?  She is the founder of Spanx which specializes in body shaping panty hose that gives women a smooth appearance under clothes. There is even Spanx for men too.  She is also the youngest female self made billionaire.  Not millionaire. Billionaire. 

How did she do it? She didn’t do it by following the crowd. By putting her “everyone gets a trophy last place trophy” on Mom and Dad’s mantle for all to fake fawn over.  Nope. I listened to an interview with her and she described what it was like growing up in her household. Her father would literally ask her every day what she failed at.  It was considered NOT a good thing if she didn’t fail at something. Why? Because it meant she didn’t learn anything that day according to her Dad.  She didn’t push herself to do better, be better, and not follow the crowd.  And look where that landed her.  A freaking billionaire. 

It didn’t happen overnight. It took like 14 years.  And here we are in bodybuilding and everyone wants a pro card their first season competing.  Or 2 year transformations with a shit ton of PEDs to grow obscene amounts of muscle just to get a pro card with no regard for what is happening to their insides and health. Let me be clear. I don’t care if you do PEDs. Do you.  But what I care about is the influence that young people or even new people to the sport of bodybuilding, that these transformation have on them.  These results are happening incredibly fast so that the pro card can happen faster.

I’ve been competing for 20 years and this evolution is really hurting our sport.  Long before social media and these unrealistic transformations became the norm, there were a lot of people that I competed with that disappeared after shows.  Like gone.  Never heard from them and have no idea what happened to them.  There were some friends that had eating disorders to begin with that were only enhanced by the nutrition protocols they were given.  And many had health problems from supplements that they didn’t realize were dangerous.  I remember one competitor who showed up to a show not looking as lean as she usually looked. We got to talking and she said that her thyroid was a mess from the supplements her coach had told her to use. Granted, she is an adult and could’ve looked into what she was putting in her body and said no, but she didn’t.  So here she was at this show and looking much less lean and she said that her body is struggling.  She went from first place at the prior show to placing third at the current show.  I haven’t seen her compete since.  Again. Gone.

And now we have this “more is more is better so I can win a trophy like everyone else” mentality.  I’m shocked with how many women are virilized on amateur stages.  Like local stages, you guys, in small local scenes….not even national stages.  So many women I see on stage, their physical appearance has changed drastically from PEDs, and they aren’t even on pro stages.  I never saw this 10 years ago, and certainly not 20 years ago when I competed.  Again, I don’t care if you do PEDs unless you do them and go and compete in a drug tested federation. The moral issue of PEDs isn’t today’s discussion. Today’s discussion is winning and society’s perception around it.  And with this “expecting to win right away” attitude, we now have PEDs given at the local level to people so they can win faster now too.  

All you new people to the sport of bodybuilding, please hear me.  Be unapologetic about winning but don’t expect it to happen overnight.  Consider the consequences of your choices.  And I’m not just talking about PEDs.  Demonizing food and doing ridiculous amounts of cardio just to hurry and get on stage is not healthy.  So many of the people I saw disappear from competing back in the day, it wasn’t because of PEDs, because like I said, PEDs weren’t as rampant as they are now.  It was because of a poor relationship to nutrition and exercise.  Your health matters more than a trophy.   If you are continuing to struggle with a healthy relationship to nutrition and exercise and want a solution I do have one. Go to killitwithdrive.com and check it out. 

Anyways, back to Society v. Ashley Kaltwasser, here we have fellow competitors who don’t want her to compete as much, so they can get a better placement, and get to the Olympia competition.  I can’t people. I just can’t with this mentality.  Personally I want to earn my wins.

You know what mentality I resonate with today?  I’ll give you a hint. It’s not human.  

I don’t know if you saw the Kentucky Derby race, but if you haven’t seen the overhead view of the horse, Rich Strike’s, comeback for the upset, you have got to see it. It’ll give you chills. The horse was towards the back of the pack and you can see him muscle his way through the cluster of horses, kind of like my husband in highway traffic. If you don’t know then just imagine me with my hands covering my eyes at certain times during the ride and it’ll give you a great picture of how all this went down. It was quite intense.  

So this horse is at the back of the pack.  He pushes and pushes and muscles his way through a large cluster of horses and then finds a straightaway. It’s like someone hit the NOS button on a car, because all of a sudden, you see him surge forward with ridiculous speed.  The the other horses were trucking along with a similar, much slower, intensity. Rich Strike, now his energy was different. There he was on this straightaway and you see him surge forward.  His legs outstretched, galloping with so much speed, I’m amazing his jockey was able to hold on.  It’s a sight to see you guys.  So Rich Strike goes on to pass like 16 or so horses and makes it to the front of the pack where there are two horses left to beat.  

These two horses are neck and neck at the front of the pack and have the complete focus of the announcer. In fact, the announcer didn’t even see Rich Strike coming until he pretty much won. It wasn’t until he literally smoked past the other two horses that everyone was like, what the heck just happened? 

You guys, what a display of heart, perseverance, and utter drive to win.  It’s something to see if you google it.  

How does that make you feel?  

For me I felt a little adrenaline when watching. Not gonna lie. That horse understood the assignment.  That drive I watched come out of that horse hit me deep.   Pushing hard to go after a goal with everything you got.  I can relate to that. I swear Rich Strike is going to be a movie some day.  

But even a horse has haters.  A horse.  People saying that the horse must be on drugs to have done that, and that’s all they have to say.  It’s like our society doesn’t know what to do when they see something or someone push forward with incredible force, energy, and drive.  Now don’t get me wrong, the horse will be tested for drugs and if he is found to have drugs in his system I’ll be incredibly disappointed because the horses are not supposed to be doping.  It’s a drug tested event.  Kind of like a bodybuilder who knowingly does drugs and competes in a drug tested federation.  Total douche-baggery.  Cheating isn’t a winning mindset.  People cheat because they don’t believe they can win otherwise.  That’s a loser mentality.  And assuming a horse “must” be doped to have smoked the competition is not my first thought.  My first thought isn’t to drag down something or someone because he, she, it, they whatever won.  My thought was WOW. What an incredible display of heart. 

What an inspiration while I continue to push forward towards my own goals with laser focus and drive.  And I hope you do too. Find that drive within, that competitive nature, and never stop improving. Don’t be afraid to lose because it was never a loss if you learned from it.  Be strategic. Be competitive. And be unapologetic about it.

Thanks guys for listening, as always like, review, subscribe to let the podcast people know the show is cool. And share in fitness groups so others can learn more about the whole sport and not just one federation or one division.

In the mean time, if you want to pull out the big guns and strap on your competitive hat, come join my posing wins shows program.  Allow me to transform you into a champion and hold you accountable over a 16 week period and then receive ongoing critiques for the life of your competition career in the Insiders group where there are men and women from all divisions and federations.  20 years of knowledge wrapped up in a bow just for you.. Go to posingwinsshows.com and book a zoom call with me. 

Ok guys I’ll be back with more topics soon.  Take care.