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Introduction 1999:
Monica Brant
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With Monica Brant winning the 1998 IFBB Fitness Olympia, I thought it would be appropriate to go back to the initial interview I did with her right after the 1997 IFBB Fitness International. The premise of the interview back then was that although everybody in the industry has seen the numerous covers and pictorials Monica Brant was featured in, I didn't ever remember reading an in-depth interview with her. At the time, I thought we'd get the scoop on her before any other magazine, but that wasn't to be. Since the printed version of the NPC News is only bi-monthly, by the time we were printed, MuscleMag International had done a Star Profile on her that pretty much covered all the same ground as my interview.
For my original introduction to this interview, I stated that Monica's condition at the 1997 IFBB Fitness International was the best she had ever attained. Suffice it to say, the way she showed up in Nice, France put all of her other competitive appearances to shame - including that IFBB Fitness International. She was better than she'd ever been in Nice and easily walked away with the contest. How she got there is another interview. But you can read here how she hit it for that 1997 event. If you are unfamiliar with Monica Brant, then you must be living under a rock or something! Without doubt she is the most recognizable fitness competitor in the world today. There has never been any fitness competitor, or fitness model, who's been on more magazine covers in the health and fitness industry. She would definitely qualify as high profile in the industry. More than just a pretty face and physique, Monica Brant is also a great fitness competitor, a fact that seems to be underrated. Before the IFBB initiated their pro fitness division, Monica was competing in other organizations and doing quite well with some overall victories and very high places. She then competed in the 1995 Jan Tana Pro Fitness Challenge, which was an invitation only event, although not an IFBB event at the time, and won the entire contest over the top women's fitness competitor's of that time. It was this victory that prompted IFBB Pro Division chairman Wayne DeMilia to invite Monica to compete at the inaugural 1995 IFBB Fitness Olympia. She accepted and placed seventh. Her next competition would be the 1996 IFBB World Pro Fitness Championships held in conjunction with the IFBB Night Of The Champions in New York. Monica placed fourth and the audience howled with disapproval. Next up was a chance to defend her Jan Tana title, (now an IFBB fitness contest), and she placed second. She re-qualified for the IFBB Fitness Olympia and placed sixth. She recently competed in the inaugural 1997 IFBB Fitness International and came in second, but was winning the contest at one point. Over the course of competing in her last three contests, (Tana, Olympia & International), I began to notice a steady improvement in Monica's physique. I know, I know, how could that physique need improving you wonder? Unless you witnessed the competitions yourself, you'd probably never notice the slight improvements, but I did. By the time she took the stage in Columbus, my initial thought was, 'Monica finally put it all together', and she was going to be very hard to defeat. Since the 1995 IFBB Fitness Olympia, this was her best condition to date. And yes, she performs a very good fitness routine too, and was equally impressive in the International. After the contest, one of my thoughts was to speak to Monica about the improvements she made in her physique, then I began to think about how much we don't know about her, outside of all the magazine picture coverage and her contest places. Having casually spoken to her over the past year and a half, I was interested in finding out more about this star of the sport. Where did she come from? How did she get involved in women's fitness? How did she get her What I initially learned is that this 26 year old is not a native Californian, but originally from Castroville, Texas. She began weight training at the insistence of her boyfriend at the time, who was a personal trainer and had her lifting more like a bodybuilder. She entered a few fitness contests in 1991 and then quit training again in 1992, and didn't do any fitness competitions either. All the while, starting back in 1990, Monica was cleaning up on the bikini and leg contest circuit in nightclubs around San Antonio and saving up all her money. It was around the time of her last bikini contest in 1993 that she got back into training and fitness contests again. Up next was California! I finally had the opportunity to speak at length to Monica for this interview two weeks after the IFBB Fitness International in March. She was in a great mood and eager to talk. I found her rise to fame to be fascinating and one she basically did on her own, which makes it even more impressive.
MB: I started competing in the pageants in '91. I did my first one, actually in Arizona. So I started training in February of '91 and I had just seen pictures of the winner of a fitness pageant and there was an article on her win. I had pulled out her pictures and stuck them up on my mirror and decided that I wanted to try and do a fitness show. August of '91 was my first show. I just worked with a little aerobics instructor and put a little routine together and didn't really know anything about it and you know, I got a little video tape of a contest and just watched it and followed what kind of routines they were doing and got some ideas. And that's my background because I never was into dance or anything like that and growing up we lived in the country and my dad had bought us a trampoline when I was about eight or nine and, I learned to do back flips and back handsprings on the trampoline. JM: So you had no formal training in other words? MB: Right. I took what I knew when I was fifteen off the trampoline and did it on the ground. I just messed around in the yard and ended up teaching myself to do aerials and front flips, back flips, back handsprings and walk-overs and those kind of things. I would practice them a couple times every evening and mess around with it. I never took gymnastics so, I never learned any technic or anything like that. I did my first show and there were only two of us in the show, and I won. The promoter of the show wanted me to compete their nationals, which I did, in September of '91. There were thirty-five, maybe forty women in the contest I think. I know Carol Semple did that show because I remember her name. I don't remember how she did, I think she placed maybe second or third, something like that. It was one of her first shows and I just remember everyone talking about her routine and how awesome her routine was. I don't remember any other girls in the show. I don't remember much about the contest, just that I was miserably sick, probably from nerves. MB: I quit weight training in '92 and I didn't compete. But back in 1990, I entered a bikini contest in San Antonio. I was doing bikini contests and leg contests, and all those kinds of little things in nightclubs just for fun and then I ended up doing them all the time and kind of made it like a little profession. I did really well in them and made a lot of money. I saved all my money. I would go for the contest then leave right afterwards. I guess I made a name for myself, I guess in San Antonio doing contest. I did really well I won trips, and I made enough money to buy furniture for my place, I bought my car and paid it off. I did so much with my money, I would save it up then go and buy something with it. I won a Mustang in my last big show '94. It was a contest at the Midnight Rodeo, it was like major finals they had done like all summer long and I went for it. I ended up getting rid of it and keeping the money. I already had a nice car. It was really cool and neat to go out with a bang. Then in '93 I met another guy that was bodybuilding at the time and he started talking to me about the fitness shows again. He asked me why I didn't enter a fitness contest since I had already won bikini contests? I started to think about it more and found a girl that teaches dance and cheerleading. My best friend's boyfriend at the time was a personal trainer and I started working with him. His name is James Butler. He was a very big help to me. He still is in fact an active personal trainer there. He worked with me throughout the summer, sponsoring me and teaching me more about weight training and helping me get ready for the show. In September of '93 I entered my next show in Houston. I came in sixth out of twenty. Finishing sixth kept me out of the top five for going to the Nationals. I thought, "I don't know what I'm going to do", so It was around the time that I wanted to do a show. I started training and thought this would be a good time for me to get a routine and everything together by June. Meanwhile, during Christmas of '93 I went to Tijuana to watch the IFBB North American Championships, that friend of mine that was in. There he had introduced me to John Parrillo and John introduced me to Ralph DeHann and Steve Wennerstrom from Weider. Ralph told me that if I ever came back out to California that he wanted to do a test shoot. He said "as soon as I got back out here, to call me up, keep in touch and we'll do a shoot". So I came out in March of '94 before that contest with a girlfriend who was going down to San Diego to shoot with Ralph. He sent me a bunch of pictures afterward and it turned out really good and it was real encouraging. He said he After I did the contest, Ralph and I decided to do another shoot. The same weekend that I did my show in '94, was the same weekend of the NPC USA Championships that Dennis Newman won. Ralph was shooting Dennis that Tuesday right after the show. He said if I can, he would like me to change my ticket and leave on Wednesday so that he could shoot me on Tuesday with Dennis. I did that with Dennis and we ended up getting the November, 1994, Muscle & Fitness cover. MB: Yeah. Then I went to Las Vegas in August to do the national show and I placed ninth. I was real happy with that. I came back home and kept training for the February, 1995, pageant and took ninth in that show too, which was I was very happy with that. I just wanted to make the top fifteen. I had a lot of friends come out, my brother and my dad came out, a whole lot of people came out for this show. After that show I stayed in California for about two weeks and did different photo shoots. This friend of my brother's I stayed with was his roommate from home and he told me that if I ever wanted to move out to let him know and he'd move in with me. He was working on the A.J. Foyt car racing team so he was gone just about every weekend. So he said I could think about it and let him know. After my February trip I went home and I decided that I wasn't doing anything in San Antonio that I couldn't be doing there. I was just personal training people and I was waitressing and I wasn't going to do any more bikini contests, I had enough of those. I thought I would give it a shot and just move there. So in between February and the time I moved out here the end of April, I came for another two or three week stay at my friend's apartment, did another photo shoot, got to know more people and a membership at the Redondo Beach Gold's Gym. They gave me a lot of encouragement. I decided to move in April of 1995. That is when I started training with a choreographer for the Jan Tana Contest. MB: I figured I would move out here and give myself a chance to try it out, see what I can do. MB: They had called me in November of 1995 and wanted me to work for a convention they were having in Vegas for the weekend and they had asked me if I would be interested in working. It went really good. I kept in touch with them and I had known Stoney Grimes and Tatiana Anderson already, and I guess they had spoke pretty highly of me to EAS. They called me in January right after I worked for them in November. They wanted to know if I would like to sign MB: Oh, its pretty cool! Actually, we had taken some pictures on Saturday. I went up there and stood on the back of the truck, it was kinda cute. That's pretty neat! MB: Yeah, Wayne [DeMilia] was at the show, and he approached me with the pro card and invited me to the Olympia. And I was real excited about it. It was about eight weeks away. That year, '95, was such a big year for me. I had competed in February and then moved, was working with a new choreographer, was in new circumstances and it was such a long year already for me, that right after the Jan Tana I just kinda fell apart, I couldn't stick to the diet. I didn't come into the Olympia as hard and strong as I did and Wayne wanted to know why I wasn't in the best of shape? I said, if you would just think about my year already. But I felt like I did the best I could and I came in seventh and I was happy with that just knowing that out of all the girls that were there and the competition and I felt like the main thing was that I wasn't as lean as they wanted me. I just shouldn't have gone, I needed a break. Oh, I had also gone and filmed Kiana's Flex Appeal before the Olympia. MB: Well, when I moved out here, right after the other organizations nationals in February, Jan Tana had been there with Carol Semple as her sponsor helping her out backstage. We happened to be in a dressing room together. MB: Yeah and my friend, Suzi, was with me and there were two or three other girls in the dressing room with me. Jan and Carol just happened to be in my room and I got to know them a little bit, and I didn't press anything with Jan, but I just gave her one of my cards and my phone number and I said, "You know, I would love to work with you on your product, if you ever need a model whatever". She called me in the middle of February and told me she wanted to invite me MB: Yeah it was. What did I do after that? I had gone with my boyfriend to Boston for a little while. I started doing karate classes. I didn't do anything major, I just went home for Christmas and when I got back I remember there was a ton of things going on. Muscle & Fitness had me work on an article. I started training in February of '96, did work some conventions. I worked a lot. I didn't train real hard but I did work a lot. At the end of February I started training for the World Pro. That's when I started working Cathy Sassin at the InterFit program. She is one of the head people in InterFit, a nutritional program at Gold's Gym. She has been working with me ever since then on my diet. Up until that point I didn't know a lot about dieting, I did a lot of protein, I tried to eat no fat and I just didn't know the balance. I didn't know exactly what I should be doing and it was real frustrating because I would try different things and people would tell me that I should do this and not that. I started working with her about six weeks before my show and she taught me all about proper eating habits and what type of food and gave me a menu and gave me a food sketch and how much to eat and how to weigh things and how to exchange certain foods for other foods and how many calories I should be taking in and all that stuff so its really been helpful and I've been working with her ever since. MB: Yeah. The Fitness International I really felt was my best as far as physique. We did finally get over a milestone. I just kept trying different things and finally found something that worked and I did one thing different as far as my training. I had started training with weights again, I had basically gone a year and a half without any weight training. MB: Just cardio and the routine. I was working every day learning the routine and working with the choreographer and stuff and it was so hard on my upper body. I guess I was just over training. I did a lot of running with a coach at UCLA named B.H. Bauer. As a matter of fact I'm getting ready to start with him again this week. Running helps with the speed and gets me in shape with the aerobics stuff. I just started weight training again this last fall after the Olympia. I was told to fill out your back and shoulders. So I started training my back and shoulders heavy and I don't do anything for chest other than push-ups. I did legs, biceps and triceps very light and millions of reps. I think that helped. I felt like this time around I really knew a lot more about my diet, what was going to work for me with my sodium depletion and how far I needed to start all that. But everything came together this time. I also walked on a treadmill that they have in the gym. I was walking on those an hour a day at the least, if not two times a day. At just a slow pace maybe any where from a 1.8 to a 2.1 upgrade depending on how tired I was. And I wear a heart rate monitor every time I do cardio, so I keep my heart rate where it should be for running. I think that really, really improved my legs, my rear and everything. MB: I was real happy with it. At first I was real hesitant on the question/answer stuff. I was very surprised that I won that round. it made me feel really good, real comfortable. And the Cybex round, I really liked it! I thought it was really neat! Although the first time I went on that thing I didn't know what I was doing obviously. MB: I was thinking that if I had one more shot at it I could have gotten it a little faster. I remember one specific spot where I wasn't positioned where I thought I was and I knew that took a whole lot of time away that I didn't need to be taken away if I could have just taken a look. But I liked that round, I thought it was really nice and fun and it didn't kill us for the routine, because that's where everyone works so hard. I don't mind doing the work because I trained for it and I ran track so it's kind of a similar thing, but it is such a hard thing and you feel worn out and exhausted afterwards, then you have to go do a routine at night. MB: I was very happy with the routine too!! I really concentrated on that aspect of it. I started working with Irene Rubinsky, Madonna Grimes' partner, before the Olympia last year. What happened was the girl I was working with originally, Lisa, had a job come up in Europe right before the Olympia. She called me and said that she had this huge job in Europe she just couldn't pass up. She told me to keep training on my routine we have been working on and we would go over it when she got back. I was really stressed about it because it was six weeks before the Olympia, and I thought I have to have a choreographer, I can't do this on my own. So I called Madonna Grimes and she was very helpful. We started working together and after our third workout, she was called out of town, so she set me up with Irene. Irene and I started working together and I just love her and we get along so well. She changed a few things in my routine that Lisa had, but we didn't want to change the whole routine so we just worked on some small changes. So last year's routine was a little mixed up. This year Irene and I started working on my new routine right after the Christmas holidays, picked out the music and wrote down everything we wanted to do in the routine. Madonna overheard us discussing what we wanted in the routine and she tried to talk us into doing less in the routine because we had more than enough by the requirements. But I wanted to do as much as I could, if it was going to be too much we could always take some things out. MB: So we had everything pretty much put together and then I met Richard Bastale, he's a gymnastics coach. He has trained Madonna Grimes and Carol Semple-Marzetta and works with a bunch of aerobics and fitness girls and guys. He came in to Madonna's gym while we were working out and he thought I could use some work on my gymnastics technics. Since I didn't have any formal training with gymnastics, to have an opportunity to work with him was great! I actually worked with him at least seven times before the Arnold Classic. He was truly a great help. I'm going to continue to work with him and Irene. I tried to be different with this show. I'm really excited about the Pro World Championships. I'm not too excited about the Olympia since they split it up and moved it to New York. MB: It should be a great show! The crowd is always great. It is a fun show and so quick. MB: As far as all that, it was very nice and very fun. I was encouraged by all that, but I did feel bad for all the other girls. I didn't think it was very fair to them. Karen and Michelle should have been able to enjoy their victories. I think it was because they're new and people didn't know them. MB: No, not this year. I need a break this summer. I don't want to train all summer for a show and then train for the Olympia. I have work for the summer with appearances and things. I'll still be taking dance classes, gymnastics and running. MB: I don't know. MB: Maybe sixteen. I keep getting these calls for photo shoots and I make myself available for the shoots. My days are really full, between eating right, training, appearances, photo shoots and fan mail, I hardly have time for myself let alone to spend some time with my boyfriend. I just keep saying my prayers and know God will open doors that are good for me. Just take it one day at a time. MB: It's funny you ask, I had a girl I met in Canada, she's been to all three of my projects in Canada this year and I've talked to her quite a bit. She was at the Arnold Classic with her boyfriend and we talked for over an hour. She was upset because she is trying to get started in the fitness industry but she feels like these guys are hitting on her because she is so pretty and in very good physical shape. I tell all the girls I speak to that they have to sit down and think of who they are, who they want to be and who you want people to think you are, and then to draw a line and stick to it. No matter what, you have to stick to your standards. Read in to everything, don't take anything for granted. MB: Well I think a lot of it has to do with my upbringing and my family structure has a lot to do with it. Growing up in the country, raising and training horses gave me a lot of responsibility my whole life, feeding the horses, cleaning stalls, cleaning the horses, riding the horses, giving riding lessons, etc. When I moved to California I took all that discipline and responsibility with me. Making sure I was responsible with money, calling people back, making appearances. Actually making myself a business. My dad helped me a lot for the first four months here. I didn't want my dad to help me forever. I think it helps for me being a Christian, going to church and reading the Bible. God has always helped me and watched over me. MB: Thank you very much! I have a great family, very, very supportive family. My mom and dad are divorced but they are both very supportive along with my older brother. All my friends are great and supportive. My boyfriend is wonderful and patient and very supportive. My roommate, Heidi Roth, is terrific. She is always there for me, understanding and she goes to almost all my shows. It is really hard. I have a good support system. Whatever I decide to do, they are all very supportive.
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