Season Finale – The Last Show of the Year

At 10:30 p.m. on November 15, I shot the picture of Matthew Roberts that’s featured on this month’s cover. Right afterwards, I packed my camera into its case. Matthew had just won the heavyweight and overall titles at the 2008 OPA Western Ontario Championships, the last bodybuilding show of the year.

All told, in 2008 I’ve been to over three dozen competitions involving well over 2000 competitors and taken more than 100,000 photographs. Matthew’s win signaled the end of what has been a great season. Now we will take a break for the month of December.

In January, we’ll back again when the IFBB Professional League starts the New Year with the Iron Man Pro XX competition in Los Angeles, California. We won’t be going to that one, but I know some people who are competing and working at it. However, we will be at the Arnold Sports Festival that runs from March 5 to 7 in Columbus, Ohio; I have friends competing in both the amateur and professional events and we’ll be doing a lot of coverage at this massive competition. Later that month, the Canadian amateur bodybuilding season begins with the CBBF National Natural Physique Championships in Montreal. After that, there will be competitions throughout the year with everything finishing up once again in November. I expect 2009 to be just as exciting as 2008, if not more so.

As I pointed out in my "Publisher’s Page" article last month, there are a multitude of bodybuilding competitions going on and simply not enough time to get to them all. But we try to get to as many as we can. Look for another SeriousAboutMuscle.com update on December 15 with Denis Pedneault’s "Body Sculpting" column, and then we’ll see you again in 2009.

...Doug Schneider, Publisher
das@seriousaboutmuscle.com

Doug Schneider is the publisher and chief photographer for SeriousAboutMuscle.com, BodyBuildingLive.com, and SeriousAboutFitness.com.