Profiles of local people

As competition day draws near, the tension mounts. Naz's training partner, along with her best friend Wendy, are by her side until she walks on stage. They help her apply the obligatory fake tan and posing oil, and try to calm her nerves in the final minutes before posing begins.

Facing the judges

Naz recalls her first time on stage: "I was panicking, as you can imagine, thinking, 'Oh my God, how am I going to get there, on a stage, in a bikini?' It's all you've been working towards, you're fiery, you're buzzing. I was back stage and my heart was thumping, and Mark was going, "Just keep breathing, just keep breathing!" and I was thinking, 'come on Naz, you have to do this!' Then all I remember is walking up on stage and putting my head up high. All I could see was darkness - heads and cameras everywhere, and my heart was racing and I kept telling myself I could do it. For every woman it's different, but I was on autopilot."

A massive acheivement

Since the start of her training, Naz Nureen has won first place in the English Federation of Body Builders UK qualifiers lightweight under 57kg class, in October 2006, and then 4th place in the finals of the same competition the following year. This is a massive achievement, considering she only took up the sport three years ago.

2006 British Finals Qualifier trophy

But Naz has a lot more to contend with than the competitive environment of women's bodybuilding. She's a single mother and holds down a full time job, as well as pursuing a passion that forms the backbone of her life. So how did it all start?

"All I remember when I was 17 is walking into that gym, looking at all those pictures on the wall and thinking wow, look at those women, they've got muscles! I love lifting the weights, but it's the look that I like more than anything, and that's why I did it."

A man's world no more

The sport was, for a long time, male dominated. From the father of modern bodybuilding, Prussian Eugen Sandow, who organised the first British competition in the Albert Hall in 1901, to US Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, men who have built their lives around the "perfect" muscle bound physique are no rarity.

Since the 1970s, more and more women have bucked this trend, making female body building an internationally recognised sport, with hotly contested annual competitions, and rising British female stars. Naz Nureen is one of them.

Naz with her 2006 trophy

Naz has been interested in fitness from a young age, and after giving birth to her son at 19, and contending with all the bodily changes pregnancy involves, she was determined to claim back her toned appearance. Three years ago things moved up a gear, as she decided to take the plunge into serious bodybuilding.

Achievement against the odds

Now she trains five times a week, after work, concentrating on different muscle groups each day. She follows the plan set out by her training partner, Mark Blundell, at his gym in Black Heath.

Mark has been training bodybuilders, including his own wife, for 25 years, so he knows what he's talking about. According to him, "Naz is very talented and she could probably win the British Championship in years to come. What she's achieved in three years, some people don't achieve in a lifetime. Everything is against her, but she's the most determined person I've ever met."

Naz Nureen

With Mark's help, Naz's lifestyle, her diet and exercise plans drastically changed, in order to achieve competition physique. It's a highly involved process, comprising strict eating plans, rigorous exercise and rest periods. All this makes for a regimented, super-organised life.

Life on a diet

Eating a controlled diet is a vital part of the training process. Naz eats a full high protein meal every two to three hours- typically chicken or tuna and rice or baked potato- and tops this up with regular protein shakes. She takes her own strictly controlled meals everywhere. Even when she goes on holiday later this year to visit her family, she'll be making all her own food, and has already sought out a gym in the area she'll be visiting.

It must have been hard to streamline her diet so drastically, even with Mark's help, so what was involved? "When I first started I thought 'oh this food is nasty', my mum had never fed me rice without salt and oil, the way I saw it, it was just impossible. I remember sprinkling salt in there, because it was just so bland, but over so many weeks I got used to it. If I had a meeting at work, for four hours I wouldn't eat, and I'd think, oh, it doesn't matter, it'll be alright, but every meal that you miss does make a difference."

Dieting like this for a few weeks is one thing - most people have tried on occasion, to lose weight or control an allergy. It's easier to keep yourself going with the thought of the chocolate or cake you'll treat yourself to at the end. For Naz, this is not an option: "Mark was checking on me every week, monitoring my diet, and training me at the same time, and saying, "don't worry, you've only got a few more weeks," and I was going, "No way, I can't wait until this diet is over!" Before I knew it, I'd been dieting for 18 weeks, and Mark said to me, "OK, I want you to start eating like this forever."

Naz posing at the British finals.

The long road to the big day

In preparation for competitions, Naz's regime becomes more extreme: over the 12 weeks running up to the event, she slowly reduces the amount of food she eats, cutting down little by little, to reveal the muscles under her taut skin, and achieve the coveted competition look. Throughout this run up to the big day, training continues, even intensifies, so it's hard to imagine how Naz must feel.

"The carbs drop so severely, and that really knocks you about. You're basically living off your own body fat. I've had a baby, and I'd say it's as hard as giving birth. When I'm dieting I stop talking to people, I do not have the energy to smile - you've got something on your mind that no one knows about, you can't explain it. All people are saying to you is, "you're wasting away," and in the gym they ask, "When is it? How long have you got? You look great." You're just thinking, 'leave me alone!'" So is it worth the effort? Naz thinks so: "You look fantastic, because when you're on that stage, you're really toned and defined."

Extreme measures

A common reaction to pictures of muscle bound bodybuilders flexing their biceps is that they must be taking steroids or growth hormones. Reports often emerge of prescribed drugs like insulin illegally bought from diabetics to enhance muscle growth, and muscle fibre binding injections like synthol, which produce massively swollen muscles with no need for exercise, but can provoke muscle sagging, severely constricted blood flow, nerve damage and even pulmonary embolisms.

The natural way

It's easy to see how some bodybuilders may be tempted by such high risk measures to increase their chances of winning competitions, given the gruelling training regimes, but Naz has never even considered it: "I don't know if people take drugs, I've heard some probably do, but I've never touched anything because I've always been taught by my trainer that if you train hard, if you eat the right foods, and take the right supplements, you don't need anything." Groups such as the BNBF (British Natural Bodybuilding Federation) have been holding drug free competitions for 7 years- proof that not all aficionados of the sport opt for artificial means of body enhancement.

Naz with her 2007 trophy

The time Naz takes out for this interview was hard won- cooking for herself and her son is just the start: "I'm a single mum, my job is flexi hours, which helps, but it means I sacrifice an hour and a half in bed, so I can go to work early, get back, drop my son at my mum's, train, then be back by six o'clock so I can have time to myself and my son, so really I've got more than a 12 hour day, but it's what I choose, and I wouldn't change it."

A proud son

For Naz's 10 year old son Norm, having a mother in better shape than most of his classmates' parents is something to be very proud of. He grins when he sees the trophies she's won, and says, "Mummy's the best body builder in the world!" For Naz, this approval is priceless. She enjoys sharing her achievements with Norm, and with those around her: "My friends think it's fantastic, they think I'm a bit loony I suppose, but it's what I want and it's who I am. My muscles are on the outside, it doesn't change the human being on the inside."

Naz comes from an Asian home - not the usual background for bodybuilders, especially women. Before getting up on stage for her first qualifiers in 2006, she had never worn a bikini, or shown her body at all in public. "I was brought up in such a way where I wasn't allowed to wear western clothes, let alone show my body off. Being Asian in this sport is hard because you're brought up in a certain way, where if you've got a fantastic body, great, but you're not supposed to put it on display."

Naz Nureen

Nothing like lap dancing

People often conflate the bodybuilders' scant onstage clothing with more sexualised presentations of the female form, but Naz is keen to dispel this preconception: "To do the competition, I had to be in a bikini, but it wasn'’t me saying, "Hey, everybody look, I've got no clothes on!" The judges aren't looking at you like someone would a woman in a lap dancing club."

Strong on the inside

For Naz, and other bodybuilders, the muscles that fill out their bodies are an affirmative sign of the physical and mental challenges they have put themselves through, as part of their sport. She feels she's a positive role model for other women like her: "To tell the truth, I respect myself and my body more since I've been training. Often Asian women don't look after their bodies, I can say that because it's where I come from. Maybe they don't get encouragement from their partners, I don't know. Within myself I feel really confident, and more than anything, mentally strong. I feel like I can cope with anything, because I've taken control of something. It makes me feel powerful."