Bo­bie-Lee Dixon

When the 2016 Olympic Games start in Rio, Brazil, on Au­gust 5, peo­ple every­where–even those who don't usu­al­ly fol­low sports–will be glued to their tele­vi­sions. As part of the pre-Olympic games pub­lic­i­ty, top mag­a­zines have fea­tured artis­tic pho­to spreads from mag­a­zines all over the world, show­ing the fine­ly-tuned, well-chis­elled Olympians in their–some­times naked–glo­ry.

Some of the more com­pelling pho­tos have fea­tured lead­ing fe­male ath­letes like de­fend­ing 100m cham­pi­on Shelly-Ann Fras­er-Pryce from Ja­maica, US gym­nast Gab­by Dou­glas, and de­fend­ing hep­tathlon cham­pi­on Jes­si­ca En­nis-Hill from Great Britain. Sure­ly, in the com­ing weeks, we'll see our own fe­male Olympians Kel­ly-Ann Bap­tiste, Michelle Lee Ahye and Cleopa­tra Borel in posters and ad­verts.

These women with their slim, well-toned bod­ies, are of­ten tout­ed as the "ide­al" as far as fit women go. But for the av­er­age woman, fit­ness comes in dif­fer­ent shapes and sizes. On so­cial me­dia sites like Face­book and In­sta­gram, there is a grow­ing move­ment to recog­nise "big girl fit­ness," the plus-sized sporty women who take part in triathlons and ad­ven­ture rac­ing.

These health-con­scious and de­ter­mined women are more in­ter­est­ed in their 5K times than the num­bers on their scales. Plus-sized Aus­tralian triath­lete Leah Gilbert wrote on her blog Body Pos­i­tive Ath­letes, "Please stop as­sum­ing that we are show­ing up be­cause we want to lose weight...We are show­ing up be­cause we want to chal­lenge our­selves, phys­i­cal­ly, and men­tal­ly, and we have goals that in­clude train­ing and com­pet­ing a triathlon."

In T&T, more and more women are think­ing like this. T&T Guardian spoke with sev­er­al fit­ness ex­perts who spoke about how full-fig­ured women can and do main­tain fit­ness.

Fit­ness train­er Rod­ney Vire, of Rod­ney's Rev­o­lu­tion Per­son­al Fit­ness Cen­tre and Cross­Fit 12-12-12, said there is noth­ing to stop big­ger women who want to be fit. Cross­Fit is an in­creas­ing­ly pop­u­lar ex­er­cise phi­los­o­phy that in­cor­po­rates el­e­ments from high-in­ten­si­ty in­ter­val train­ing, Olympic weightlift­ing, ply­o­met­rics, pow­er­lift­ing and oth­er ex­er­cis­es.

Vire said gen­er­al fit­ness is the key to main­tain­ing func­tion­al move­ment to de­vel­op the strength the body needs to keep it mo­bile.

"We train full-fig­ured women in Cross­Fit and they are not re­strict­ed by their size. When coached prop­er­ly they are en­cour­aged to do more so they find it easy to climb a 15-foot rope.

"Once trained and dis­ci­plined the sky is the lim­it for a full-fig­ured woman," said the Wood­brook, Port-of-Spain based train­er.

Nu­tri­tion plays a ma­jor role in keep­ing fit. In fact 90 per cent of your fit­ness and over­all health be­gins with nu­tri­tion. Vire said peo­ple do not have to em­bark on ex­treme calo­rie re­stric­tive di­ets, but just be more mind­ful of what they eat.

"Once she has a clean bill of health, there is no rea­son a full-fig­ured woman should feel in­tim­i­dat­ed to train.

"We are no longer train­ing women with light loads, we are giv­ing them more to em­pow­er them­selves and to help them push past what they be­lieve is their lim­it."

Gre­go­ry Seale, founder of Move­ment Me­chan­ics, ex­plained that full-fig­ured women are usu­al­ly en­do­morphs. They tend to be round with in­creased fat stor­age around the mid­sec­tion, hips and thighs. They have slow­er me­tab­o­lisms by na­ture and a low­er tol­er­ance for car­bo­hy­drate-rich foods.

Seale, a sports per­for­mance and cor­rec­tive ex­er­cise spe­cial­ist who works with na­tion­al sport­ing teams, ex­plained how full-fig­ured women should ap­proach get­ting in­to fit­ness.

"Typ­i­cal­ly when full-fig­ured women em­bark on their weight-loss jour­ney they go out and start run­ning. This is not an ide­al sit­u­a­tion for weight loss and cer­tain­ly not an ide­al sit­u­a­tion for the joints."

Seale said since full-fig­ured woman tend to have a high­er per­cent­age of body fat, they will re­spond bet­ter to a com­bi­na­tion of weight train­ing and some car­dio­vas­cu­lar ac­tiv­i­ty.

"Every­one can train what­ev­er their size and body type. What is im­por­tant is ac­cept­ing the body type that you have and im­prov­ing on that rather than try­ing to be a body type that is im­pos­si­ble to at­tain," he said.

"An­oth­er key fac­tor in train­ing full-fig­ured women is choos­ing the cor­rect loads and in­ten­si­ties and as­sess­ing struc­tur­al and strength com­pe­ten­cies be­fore de­sign­ing a train­ing pro­gramme."

The Mar­aval-based ex­pert said fit­ness can on­ly be main­tained with com­mit­ment and ded­i­ca­tion, be­ing con­sis­tent, pa­tient, and stick­ing to the nu­tri­tion and train­ing plan. See the box be­low for some of Seale's train­ing tips.

'My eyes aren't on the scale'

At six feet tall, T&T Guardian's as­sis­tant sports ed­i­tor Rachael King is one of the short­er peo­ple in her fam­i­ly.

The moth­er of two is a for­mer cap­tain of the T&T bas­ket­ball team and has won sev­er­al na­tion­al ti­tles with Hori­zons Sports and Cul­tur­al Club. King's jour­nal­ism job means long hours as well as the chal­lenges of jug­gling ex­er­cise, moth­er­hood and be­ing a home­mak­er.

Weigh­ing 248 pounds, King's train­ing regime ide­al­ly con­sists of bas­ket­ball twice per week and net­ball twice a week.

"Usu­al­ly, it's bas­ket­ball on Tues­days and Thurs­days and net­ball on Wednes­days and Sun­days. Present­ly there is no bas­ket­ball league so train­ing has stopped for a while but my net­ball team trains for ten months of the year so that's on­go­ing.

Like many of the full fig­ured women who are par­tic­i­pat­ing in fit­ness events, King doesn't keep her eyes on the scale.

"I didn't wor­ry much about my weight dur­ing my col­lege play­ing years be­cause I was fit and more mus­cu­lar. Post chil­dren, my weight both­ered me a bit be­cause it was dif­fi­cult to ad­just to play­ing with more weight un­til learned to use it to my ad­van­tage.

"Nowa­days my weight doesn't both­er me re­al­ly. Once I am healthy and fit enough to play my sports, I'm good. Of course if I can get rid of some bel­ly fat and tone up my arms and legs a bit, I will be more con­tent­ed," she said.

The Eck­erd Col­lege grad­u­ate says she prefers to mix up her train­ing meth­ods, as she's not a fan of gyms.

"I nev­er re­al­ly liked work­ing out in a gym be­cause I find it bor­ing. I like get­ting my ex­er­cise on a court, bas­ket­ball or net­ball or some­thing out­doors like walk­ing, run­ning and hik­ing, not be choked up in gym where every minute you have to be clean­ing an equip­ment be­fore and af­ter you use it."

One thing King not­ed, was the dif­fi­cul­ty a lot of for­mer fe­male ath­letes have in main­tain­ing their peak fit­ness.

"The dy­nam­ics of your life change when you get mar­ried and have chil­dren. Your time has to be shared. Be­fore when I could have spent hours work­ing out, now I have to get as much in as I can with­in a time lim­it and that is dif­fi­cult at times.

King is known among her peers as high­ly con­fi­dent, dis­ci­plined and strong-willed. She has al­so tak­en this ap­proach to her fit­ness.

"Don't try to put me in a box, I won't fit and it has noth­ing to do with my size. My con­fi­dence, re­silience and pos­i­tive de­meanor won't let me be con­fined," she said. "I have a rock-sol­id mind and a nev­er say nev­er at­ti­tude. You can be slim, tall, short or big-bod­ied, if you don't have that men­tal­i­ty, there is not much you will ac­com­plish as an ath­lete or oth­er­wise."