Judge #5: The Hebrew Hammer

Exciting drama at Camp Stumptuous! After some vigorous arguments among the four of us, we had to call in a tiebreaker to help us pick the winners! Yes ladies, your entries were just that good!

So please welcome Judge #5, Tami aka “The Hebrew Hammer”. (BTW, if you don’t get the reference, check out the movie site here.) I first met Tami when we were negotiating the use of the squat cage at our gym. As I was adjusting the bar, a muscular, cheerful woman approached me. “How much are you going to squat?” she asked. I think she figured she’d need to go do something else while I cranked out 100 “toning” reps of featherweighted 1/4 butt bounces. I told her the weight. “Not bad,” she said, and we agreed that we could do business.

Turns out that Tami has made a pretty amazing transformation of her own! (She’ll have to enter the 2009 contest, I guess.) She’s about to go to nationals for judo, and has started a women-only judo class, which I am currently loving. By day she teaches special needs kids as well as Hebrew. She says she went from being over 200 pounds, drinking, smoking, bad relationships, and fast food to losing 40 pounds, being the provincial champ, eating good food, and training 6 days a week. Along with some spectacular injuries such as a broken nose, torn foot ligaments, thumb dislocation, etc. she also tells me that she has severe anemia and needs transfusions in order to keep going, crazy asthma as well as arthritis, and colitis… but she insists “none of that shit gets in the way though!!” She was recently featured as our gym’s success story, and her club has named a judo throw after her — “Tami’s Otoshi”. On top of all that, she is incredibly funny, generous with her time (she volunteers to teach), and a hell of a tough lady.

Judge #3: Leah

Leah says that she would prefer not to have a nickname, and just to fight as “Leah”. She says she wants her name alone to strike fear into the hearts of her opponents. But I have given her lots of little pet names anyway. One of them is Anaconda, for the way that she will carefully and calmly encircle her opponent before they realize — too late — that suddenly, inextricably, their own arms are cutting off their airway.

Leah is the best loser I have ever met. By this I do not mean that she often loses. She kicks my ass on a regular basis, and the two of us are like Mozart and Salieri, continually trying to find the other’s weakness and revise the game plan. It’s my goal to be like her, careful, sly, wisely cunning. She is a wonderful technician: watching her grapple is like watching a surgically precise instructional video. Even the way she holds her feet is elegant. Her rear naked chokes are like some kind of Renaissance painting establishing the Platonic ideal of murderous grace.

No, what I mean is that Leah’s incredible generosity of spirit has taught me how to admire my opponents for the skills and talents they bring; how to respect and encourage them to challenge me. What basically defines Leah’s personal coolness is a single moment: at a competition, she was getting crushed by a highly skilled opponent; instead of pouting about losing, or freaking out, Leah used her remaining oxygen to gasp at the woman, with a big astonished grin, “You’re awesome!” Even while getting her ribcage crushed into a cube, Leah is a class act.

Leah on top, about to work her anaconda magic.

Judge #2: Killer Kayla

Judge #2 is my littlest sister, Killer Kayla, or as I like to call her, Baby K. Do not let the adorable face fool you. This grrl is tough as nails.

I used to laff at cheerleaders, until she joined her high school’s cheerleading team years ago, and I discovered that cheerleading these days involves acrobatic aerial stunts with only tiny teenage girls as safety nets. She’s played on an all-male lacrosse team (in case you don’t know much about lacrosse, it makes hockey’s brutality look like a Three Stooges limp-wristed slap fight). She’s kickboxed. Frankly, she got the few jock genes in the family.

But what continues to amaze and inspire me is that she’s fought her way back from being literally bedridden by a debilitating chronic disease to graduating university with an A average, running half marathons (in the Canadian winter, no less!) and considering grad school with the goal of helping other women with invisible disabilities. This kid puts the fabulous in feminist.

Meet your judges

Although my website is an enlightened despotism, I felt it fair to get a second (third, and fourth) opinion on which lucky ladies should become the first-ever Stumptuous Fitness Models.
There were too many outstanding entries to choose on my own, so I enlisted the able assistance of three of my favourite asskicking grrls. Let’s meet them!

Judge #1 is, of course, my excellent sidekick and henchlady, OMGBFF A, better known as Alaina, aka “Machine”, fresh from her gold-medal victory at the Arnolds grappling championships in Ohio.

As a scrawny nebbish child, Alaina was constantly getting the snot kicked out of her, so she took up martial arts. As a scrawny, nebbish adult, Alaina took up bodybuilding and packed on a bunch of muscle and self-confidence. Last year we started Brazilian jiu jitsu classes together. Nine months later, she’s got a nice collection of medals.

Along the way from scrawny to brawny, she’s also run, kicked, cycled, climbed and punched. I assure you that her nickname is well earned and you do not want to be on the business end of her fist. Despite her killer instincts she is a vocal supporter of women’s grappling, and can usually be found at tournaments making new friends… before she armbars them into oblivion, anyway.

Alaina (standing) hanging around with black belt Felicia Oh.