Bodybuilder takes fourth in competition

Jennika Hill has turned a page in her book and is anxious to get on to the next.

Hill placed fourth in Women’s Physique bodybuilding competition last Saturday at the Northern Quest theater in Airway Heights.

“Boy was I nervous,” Hill stated Tuesday. But, as she says, “as soon as I started to perform everything was okay.”

Hill continued, “When I walked out on the stage for my one-minute routine, a big roar went up and that helped settle me down.” The roar, in part, was from a handful of Credit Union employees that were on hand to encourage her.

The Electric City woman, who is a teller at Coulee Dam Federal Credit Union, said she has her sights on another competition in October in Bellevue.

Now it’s on to eating and heavy weight lifting again, a repeat of the regimen she followed that eventually leads to the fine tuning part of her training just before going on stage again.

Hill met most of her goals she set for last week’s performance. One goal was to get her body fat down from about 16% to 8% and that’s where it was Saturday.

A pre-judging event was held in the morning, where actual placement took place. However, competitors didn’t learn of how they rated until the evening “entertainment” performance.

The seven hour wait between performances, the one for the judges and the one for the paid crowd, was one of the more difficult parts of the day, Hill said. “I finally had to lie down on a bench in the casino to rest because I didn’t get a room,” she said.

Getting ready for the performances required three coats of bronze paint and a touch up session over the 24-hour period leading up to the judges event.

Her routine this time will pretty much follow the one she just finished -- a 12-week period of eating and doing heavy lifting, then a more restricted diet and the long fine-tuning period leading up to October.

Jenn got a fine trophy for finishing fourth.

“I could see my weaker body points, like my lower back and lower abs,” Hill stated. She plans on working on these this time around.

During the training period, Hill lost 16 pounds and turned body fat into muscle. “I won’t have so far to go this time,” she noted.

The event featured some 240 bodybuilders. There were eight in Hill’s class.

In the final days, Hill was drinking two gallons of water a day and this stopped and she gave up soda the last three days. “I got a little dizzy about this time,” Jenn said.

At 5 feet 7 inches, Hill towered over her other competitors.

Summing it up, Jenn said, “It is all about routines, and that’s easy for me.”