The Natural Olympia is the pinnacle event within the natural bodybuilding community and it is being hosted by the ABA/INBA/PNBA. You can learn about the event and the organization in general on their Natural Bodybuilding website. This is an amazing organization that truly supports their athletes and supports clean, natural, healthy lifestyles. They truly stress the all natural competitions by adhering to W.A.D.A. standards – the athletes are 100% drug tested to the exact same standards as Olympic athletes. You and your organization can feel good about supporting Ankhjii and the INBA/PNBA in general – you are supporting a proud, all natural Toledo Ohio athlete representing the USA at the ultimate world event in the sport.

Ankhjii will be competing at the Olympia as a Figure competitor – she will be competing as an amateur and also, for the very first time, competing in the professional arena. She has moved from competing as a complete novice to a professional in only two competitions.

Here’s a little background to how we got here:

Ankhjii has always been into a healthy lifestyle, exercising and focusing on nutrition. But we didn’t always know it would lead to this. Back in 2008 we were involved in a motorcycle accident that landed us both in the ICU and later in rehabilitation facilities for many months where we were slowly brought back to health. We both had extensive injuries with many broken bones and we weren’t sure what sort of permanent damage we would be faced with. Once Ankhjii was out of the facility and recovering, she seemed to embrace truly seeing what she could do with her love of living a truly healthy lifestyle.

ankhj_trophies Before the accident, we had attended a bodybuilding show in Michigan which had piqued her interest. There was another local show in Toledo in 2012 called the Glass Scepter which was put on by Executive Productions – a local all natural bodybuilding federation. This really caught her attention and she began to wonder what would happen if she decided to participate in that event.

For the next year, Ankhjii truly threw herself to hard work and clean eating and felt that she wanted to dedicate herself to making it up onto that stage at the Glass Scepter. She committed to making that happen, and in April of 2013 she got on that stage as a Figure competitor at the Maumee Indoor Theatre.

Executive Productions is a great organization that pride themselves on helping brand new athletes get on that stage – which can be an overwhelming and frightening thing to accomplish. Ankhjii entered that competition as a novice but also decided to enter the open category. Novice is for anyone who hasn’t won a competition before; whereas, open is exactly that – open to any competitor who has competed and/or won any previous event.

Ankhjii took that stage in the best shape of her life and she was very surprised to win her first class – novice figure short. They divide the women by height for the first round; short, medium, and tall. After each class is judged, the three winners compete for the novice overall title. Ankhjii took the stage again and won the Novice Figure Overall title. Next up came the open category, where she would compete against girls with experience. Once again Ankhjii won her class – open figure short, and moved on to the overall championships. Again, she won that which won her the title of 2013 Toledo Glass Scepter Open Figure Overall Champion. She was actually presented with the glass scepter for which the show is named!

You can see more information about Ankhjii’s Glass Scepter Win by clicking here.

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After the Glass Scepter, we wondered “What next?” We were pointed towards a new federation, the INBA as something to consider. We did some research and discovered an upcoming competition in Chicago, The Natural Universe. This competition was in August, only 4 months after the Glass Scepter. So much to consider, and not much time to do it! Ankhjii had won at her first show and could no longer compete as a novice, so we would have to go into her second show ever competing in the amateur open division. After some serious soul searching, Ankhjii dedicated herself to competing once again.

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This show was going to be a whole different experience. This wasn’t anything local. We didn’t know how to prepare for a show with travel involved, and we couldn’t even see the venue ahead of time. Ankhjii knew that this show was on a totally different level and trained harder and ate cleaner than ever before. We worked hard to figure out the logistics, how to pay for everything, how to handle having enough clean, healthy food on hand at all times, where to sleep, etc.

Just like with the Glass Scepter, we relied on the generosity of our friends and family to help with expenses. We solicited for cash donations, for advice, even for necessary things like help with hair, makeup, etc. With the backing of all of our friends we went to Chicago so that Ankhjii could compete at her first international level competition. She took that stage in even better shape than before and she was rewarded for her hard work, sweat, and tears. Ankhjii got on that stage and won the open overall figure class, she also won the award for Best Female Presentation. But this time it meant more than a trophy! This win opened up some doors which required some serious thought.

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Ankhjii now had a Ms. Universe title! She had won the Ms. Figure Natural Universe Open Overall championship! With that win came her pro card. This doesn’t mean she is a professional athlete yet, it earns her the opportunity to get onstage and compete against the professional athletes to earn her pro status. She also earned an invite to The 2013 Natural Olympia in San Diego, California at the beginning of November.  You can see a bit more about the Natural Universe win by clicking here and you can also check out all of the results from that competition here.

After the Natural Universe competition, Ankhii was surprised by an interview request. She hadn’t considered that she might have an interview to prepare for. Nonetheless, she spoke clearly and had an amazing interview. I hope you’ll take a moment to check out the interview by clicking here.

Training and Preparation

One important thing for me to mention here is that Ankhjii does all of her training and preparation on her own. She relies on friends for support, advice, and motivation. But she isn’t a member of any gym. She doesn’t have a training coach, a posing coach, a diet coach, etc. She works out in a home gym that we built and she lives by the plans that she develops based on her own learning and research. This adds tremendously to the things she needs to consider for each show – but I also think this is pretty amazing!

Outside of training herself, Ankhjii also works a full time job at The Toledo Zoo. During the warmer months she is a horticulturist – which essentially means she works 8 hours a day doing extremely manual labour; lifting, digging, shoveling, mulching, trimming, etc. When the month get a little colder she runs heavy equipment while helping to put up and tear down the Lights Before Christmas. I think it’s pretty amazing what she can accomplish in her home gym even though she is exhausted after coming home from some of the more physically difficult work days.

That brings us up to the present, here’s the details and information about our run up to The 2013 Natural Olympia!

The 2013 Natural Olympia

This competition takes place in San Diego, California November 7-10. This will be essentially two competitions for Ankhjii. She will be competing as both an amateur and a professional. She is not yet a pro, she is pro-qualified. As such, she is allowed to compete as both. If she wins in the pro division and accepts any cash, that moves her to a pro athlete and she will no longer be able to compete as an amateur.

Flying across the country to a place we’ve never been, competing in two events, competing among 1000 other natural athletes. This is truly amazing. But we cannot pull this off on our own. For each of Ankhjii’s two previous competitions we have relied on the generosity of friends and family. They have stood tall and helped us to cover nearly all of our expenses. Without that generosity, we couldn’t have made it this far. The Natural Olympia is so much bigger and will cost so much, we need to seek out generosity from our entire community. Ankhjii can do the hard work, she can eat clean, she can put in the effort. But we really need support to make this dream a reality.

The Costs

This event could easily cost between $3000 and $4000 to attend, here is a list of expenses we have thought about so far – and I’m sure more will come up.

Hotel for 5 nights – $109 per night plus fees = $650 (approx)
Flight – $700 (approx)
PNBA Pro Card Application – $150
Amateur Figure Entry – $150
Pro Figure Entry – $275
My (her husband) all access pass – $249 (I need all access to go backstage to help her any way I can)
Cooler and Microwave – $200 (there are no kitchenette rooms, we need to be able to prepare competition food for her)
Groceries and dining – $400
Posing Suit – $400 (she will need a second suit for this multi-day show)
Taxi / Rental Car – $350 (we still need to determine what will work best)
Tanning – $250
GoFundMe Fees – $280

Media Appearances

Ankhjii has been featured on WTOL 11 news, you can check that out by clicking here.

A powerful news story was run by 13ABC news that you can see online at this link.

She was recently featured in the Bedford Now paper, you can see the online version of that story here.

You can also see an interview done by Midwest Muscle right after her Natural Universe win here.

Our Fundraising Site

To help cover these expenses, we have set up a fundraising site on GoFundMe – the link is http://www.gofundme.com/NaturalOlympia and we have a payment widget at the bottom of this post.

We hope you will consider donating to help get Ankhjii to the Natural Olympia where she can represent Toledo, Ohio, the USA, and a clean and healthy lifestyle.

If you can’t afford to donate, you can still be a huge help to us. We hope you will consider sharing this campaign far and wide. Perhaps your work would help Ankhjii out. Maybe you know of a business or organization who would like to help. We would be happy to work with any potential sponsors to share their brand here on the website and any other way we can during the campaign and after the event.

Some organizations might be able to donate in ways other that money if they would like. For instance, food or supplement donations would cut down our expenses tremendously – we will be going through an insane amount of chicken breast, kale, brown rice, and sweet potatoes over the next 8 weeks!

Sponsorship Letter

We have received a sponsorship letter from the World President and Founder of the ABA/INBA/PNBA , Mr. Denny Kakos. This letter describes the organization, the event, and Ankhjii’s role in all of this. We hope you will share the letter with anyone you can to help us reach our goals. The letter can be found by clicking here, and the link to the letter is: http://vudu.me/sponsor

Thank You!

I truly hope Ankhjii’s story and accomplishments inspire you to help sponsor her trip to achieve her dreams. This competition will be huge and we truly feel it will be life changing. Both Angela and I truly thank you from the bottom of our hearts for anything you can do to help us make this happen!!

The link to this post for you to share is: http://vudu.me/olympia

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