Bodybuilding/Fitness Judging issues

[iffsathlete]

I have been in the BB game for over 30 years, and every time they create a new category, over the course of 5-6 years, the athletes increase in size, leanness and that becomes the rewarded physique.

When you look at men's physique, or women's figure competitions, the winners of the first generation of competitions are considerably smaller and less lean than the winners now. When men in physique are similar weight and height to Arnold in his peak, that isn't a beach attainable physique.

How do you keep categories pure? How to frame the judging criteria, so that when all things are visually equal, size isn't always the winning factor?

How do you make judging, so that no matter who sit's down at a judging sheet that the results are similar?

Politics can easily be handled by random selection of judges in each category and a large enough judges pool that I would never know who is being coached by who.

I'm in a unique position to influence future judging and have always felt size isn't always the most esthetically pleasing attribute.

Just asking.

[smokinal]

I agree; bigger, faster, stronger; everyone always pushing the envelope to stay on top. Look at all the deaths we've had over just the past 4-6 yrs; and the number of unhealthy athletes that we don't even know the medical status of.
Anyway, I'm going off the deep end here.

I think until an organization has regular and often workshops with their judges to create some sort of standard, this will continue to happen. Even then, the standards will be slightly different from org to org, but at least there may be some consistancy within a given org.

I will say, I've been with OCB for years and they seem fairly consistant. Granted they're on the smaller side I would say so it may be easier than, say, IFBB.
I'll say too, that I've entered Classic a few times over the years, in different states, with different panels; I never do well in that category and when I ask for feedback, it's always that I'm too lean, even though I've "fattened up"...for me anyway. So they're pretty consistant in the look they want for that category and they seem to hold firm with that "classic" look.