07.21.2004:Female Bodybuilding is a Grueling Sport

From the website of Isabelle Turrell, who had to withdraw from the junior nationals"

" want to say thank you to all for your support. It has helped me very much. I am very lucky to have so many people like you to support me like you have. It has been a very difficult time for me "believe it or not". I know everyone is wondering what happened to Isabelle Turell at the Jr. Nationals. I want you know detail by detail what happened to me. It's hard to sit here and write this because it depresses me more and more but at the same time strengthens me and motivates me to push forward and look to bigger and better things. I want you to know my story and here it is........

Basically, my body went through a really tough time. I trained at least 3 times a day not including cardio. I would start my day at 3:30 am till 8:00 pm at night. I worked too hard< that later on I paid for it. At 4 weeks my body started fighting with me. It was trying to tell me something. I was so lean, that I had a cheat meal almost every 3 days. It was crazy. Then it happened. I started falling apart. My body started aching all over. I couldn't even lift a 5 Pd dumbbell. My shins started hurting really bad ever time I did cardio I was only getting in 5 minutes at the max. Normally I got an hour and ½ straight of cardio done. I thought it was my shoes, so I bought $150.00 shoes to help. You know what it didn't help a bit. What the heck was going on? I started getting really angry. I was busting my ass more and more in the gym. That was a bad mistake. It just made everything worse. I then started getting depress. There was one time when I was doing a straight bar curl on my back, and I couldn't get up because my back was in a lot of pain. I started crying. I have been working so hard, I wasn't about to give up my trophy. Even when I got a spotter to help me, I still had a lot of pain in my muscles.

We have some archive photos of Isabelle posted in our hoemgrown section.

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