Female bodybuilder prepares for first competition in Hampton

On a recent Friday afternoon, Martha Clipston bubbled breathlessly into the gym, a fuzzy fuchsia bathrobe tied around her slim hips.

"I'm down three pounds," she said, flashing her dazzling dentist's-daughter smile.

Clipston high-fived her trainer. She high-fived her workout partner, high-fived her... posing coach?

The 27-year-old mother is training for her first competition, Saturday's Cardinal Open bodybuilding and figure contests, a North American Sports Federation men's and women's competition in Hampton.

She remains firmly committed to her goal, but going in she didn't fully appreciate the time or the expense of it. She works at her father's dental office and has two young children, so time is at a premium. As for cost, there's the trainer, the food, the tanning, the $60 posing suit, the heels. And she learned that she probably wouldn't win without long hours with a posing coach.

So at 5 a.m., she hit the gym with her training partner, Nerissa Warmack, a petite, rock-solid 42-year-old who also is eyeing a prize in Hampton. For two hours, the pair lifted weights, clocked some cardio and a long round of killer abs with their trainer, Julia Moldovan, a former fitness model and 26-time powerlifting champion. Clipston also ran six miles, like she does every single day.

The two Chesapeake residents started training for the competition in the fall. They spend an hour each morning weighing and measuring their daily rations. Warmack even uses an Excel spreadsheet to track calories, carbs, protein and sodium intake. They each guzzle a gallon of water every day.

The lean, rippled results of their tenacity can't guarantee a trophy, though. Competitors will be judged on musculature, symmetry, skin tone... and presence and style.

Enter Butch Donato, 61, retired Navy aviator and aerospace engineer-turned-bodybuilding competitor, certified fitness instructor and posing coach.

His mission: to showcase their buff bodies by teaching them the mandatory poses - the front double bicep, the front lat spread, the back double bicep - and then tweaking each one so that it shows, say, a particularly nice hamstring muscle or delt.

"It's my job to accentuate the positive and take away visually, if I have to, the things I want to hide," said Donato, a former competitor who learned the art while developing routines for himself. "We can do certain things to make them appear to be stronger than they are."

And he teaches something else. Confidence. Sass.

"Onstage you need a little attitude,. When you get onstage, your body needs to be saying, 'I really belong here. This is what I've got.' "

Donato is one of several local trainers who also offer posing and presentation lessons to bodybuilding competitors.

"It might not be the deciding factor, but it's important," said Vladimir Popov, who owns Classic Lines Fitness in Virginia Beach and also is a posing coach. "Even if you have a really good physique, you have to know how to present it."

Popov, who studied dance in his native Bulgaria, has a master's degree in performing arts from Regent University. The best routines, he said, are "very dramatic, like body building combined with modern ballet."

Coaching costs roughly $50 an hour, although some coaches offer packages that include diet and training advice. Donato has six clients, not enough to make it a full-time gig, but enough to keep him busy.

For Saturday's competition, Donato has developed 75-second routines for the figure competition and 60-second routines for the bodybuilding event for both women.

Each event requires a different approach.

For the women's-only figure competition, heels are de rigueur. Contestants wear makeup - but no jewelry - and perform a sort of modeling routine, stopping to flex into a pose of their choice every few seconds. A little flirtiness, a little personality, a little sass doesn't hurt.

The bodybuilding event requires barefooted competitors, both male and female, to strike 13 mandatory poses.

Posing coaches choreograph the moves so the transitions from one pose to the next are fluid and graceful. But when the competitors flex into position, their bodies should be positioned precisely to show off what they've got and draw the judges' eyes away from what they don't.

 The room was bare and brightly lit, with floor-to-ceiling mirrors along two sides, aerobic steps, mats and hand weights pushed to the perimeter.

Womack had just finished her hourlong session and was back in her pink robe, munching pieces of cooked chicken breast - no skin, no seasoning - from a zip-top baggie with the calories, carbs and protein scrawled on it in magic marker.

Clipston strapped on a pair of clear, plastic, spike-heel shoes and slipped out of the pink bathrobe to reveal her "posing suit," a high-cut black bikini that dipped down to a "V" in the front and back.

Before getting down to work, Donato peered over his glasses to adjust the back ties on Clipston's top. He hadn't decided yet what would be more flattering for her physique -tied straight across or crossed down to meet the bottoms at the hips.

They debated the issue, Clipston perfectly at ease with the physical contact. The partnership between Clipston and Donato seemed like a sculptor and masterpiece-in-progress.

He adjusted the fabric at her hips, making sure it wasn't too high or too low, but precisely the right position to accentuate and draw the judges' eyes to what Donato has assessed as a near-perfect proportion between her hips and shoulders.

Donato moved to one end of the room.

Clipston adjusted her posture. Shoulders back, tummy flat, head high, big smile. She was pure confidence as she strode to the center of the floor, high heels clacking on the hardwood.

"OK, turn right," Donato said.

Hands on bare hips, she did so, looking straight at Donato, smiling, arms, legs, back, abs, shoulders and even hands flexed rigidly into position. As she squeezed, muscles became more pronounced along her entire length.

"Bring that hand back a little further," he said.

It was a tiny adjustment, but the change rippled into her upper arm, torso and shoulders.

"Look how her shoulders have come down," Moldovan said. "She looks awesome."

"She's not holding as much water - she got rid of that dairy," Donato said.

"And the Crystal Light," Womack added. "Look at her hip flexors."

Soon, Clipston was flushed with the workout, which was surprisingly aerobic. A few minutes later, she swept one pointed toe forward, crossed bent arms high over her head, curled her hips under and flexed her abs hard, one, two, three times. It's called the "Hands Over Head Abdominal," a pose she's perfected in the past six months.

Then something magical happened.

"Now you're talking," Donato said, grinning.

"Are they there?" Clipston asked.

He nodded, Moldovan clapped, Womack gushed over her partner's emerging six-pack. Despite her dedication to diet and hours of exercise, until now her stomach was flat, but not sculpted.

"Dogonne it, it's about time," Clipston said, elated.

Further into the session, Clipston struck a bent leg pose that revealed a slight vertical separation between the muscles at the back of her thigh. Each day, as the fat recedes from her frame, new contours emerge and she gets closer to the coveted "shredded" state where each surface muscle is visible.

Two weeks before the show, Donato was pleased. "If her legs come down the way I think they are going to, there won't be many women who can match them."

Just two years ago, Clipston weighed 220 pounds, with a body fat percentage of 40. Today, she's a sleek 5-foot-7, 145-pound certified personal trainer with 15 percent body fat and a goal of 10 percent for the competition. She met with Donato monthly in August and September and practiced posing on her own 20 minutes a day. At the start of the year, she upped posing practice to once a week.

By now, Clipston's training has kicked into overdrive. She'll have cut her carb intake in half, switched to distilled water to remove minerals and started training with Donato three times a week.

She firmly believes that ignoring the intricacies of posing could cost a competitor a title.

"That's why they need a posing coach," Moldovan said. "We definitely want that edge."

Lorraine Eaton, (757) 446-2697, lorraine.eaton@pilotonline.com