We have some bad news for our SAF competitors and friends—we have decided to stop our competitions for the foreseeable future. That means no June 2024 show or beyond.

This was not an easy decision and we could’ve just left it at that, but the decision was made for pragmatic reasons that we believe those who have supported SAF in the past deserve to know about. As a result, I want to spell the reasons out to you. Mainly, it comes down to three things:

Reason 1 (most important)

SAF has always prided itself on creating a seriously competitive atmosphere for fit women that is positive and healthy. We’ve always stressed that no woman should have to harm herself to get on our fitness stage—or on any fitness stage, for that matter. But the recent trends in competitive women’s fitness have strayed far from that ideal. These include the “normalization” of dangerous drug use, questionable and dangerous practices of some trainers and coaches, extreme attitudes towards nutrition often resulting in severe eating disorders, mental trauma from hazardous preparation programs, post-competition body-image issues, and so on. While some people have tried to downplay these issues with women’s fitness competitions, after more than 15 years of holding competitions, we know they’re real.

SAF could continue to rail against the dangerous practices and continue to follow our own path of positivity, as we’ve done in the past, but we’re unfortunately at a time in women’s fitness where all these problems are too embedded and also too extreme. In other words, the problems are worse than they’ve ever been and are widespread. These problems have even been exposed in the media time and again, but to no avail. With no improvements on the horizon, the issues are nearly impossible for a single organization to combat, which is unfortunate, because we do believe this is hurting women’s fitness tremendously—and will continue to do so. We hope that one day other organizations will realize the same and make positive improvements.

Reason 2

One of the benefits of SAF has been industry-leading exposure and opportunities, which we provided for years and we are very proud of. Over the years, many of our top SAF competitors were featured in magazines in workout spreads and advertisements, and they took part in incredible photoshoots, such as with Paul Buceta, who we’ve often called “the world’s best fitness photographer.” For many SAF competitors, Paul’s shoots were, as they often said, “the best day ever.” Besides being fun, these opportunities also provided a great reward for their hard work—in addition to the cash and other prizes many won at our competitions.

These were all extremely positive things that SAF could offer, but these were mostly before social media took such a dominant position in people’s lives. Today, social media gives far more exposure to women than any fitness competition or magazine ever could. It can also be far more lucrative and, for those looking for exposure, it can achieved more safely than with the dangerous practices many are taking to get onto a fitness stage.

This change hasn’t only affected SAF—every organization is affected by social media, which is evidenced by the fact that the current crop of social-media influencers enjoy far more popularity than any fitness-competition winner anywhere in the world does. Therefore, it’s made us wonder how much of a future women’s fitness competitions really have—particularly with all the dangers highlighted above.

Reason 3

Finally, SAF has always prided itself on creating beautiful, elaborate competitions on real stages that women could be proud to showcase their accomplishments on. This has always been an expensive endeavor, but when you see the photography or videography from a SAF show, you can see the result has always been worth it. Our shows have always looked spectacular.

But the recent trend in women’s fitness has been to orchestrate as many competitions as possible, oftentimes holding them in subpar locations, such as hotel banquet rooms and even gymnasiums, with shoddy stages, poor lighting, and inadequate production values. Once again, this is not a trend that SAF wishes to follow as quality has always been paramount to us.

Goodbye and good luck!

Those are the three main reasons for exiting the world of women’s fitness at this time. But enough about the bad news. The good news for those wishing to pursue competing in women’s fitness is that there are still many other organizations to compete with if someone chooses to compete. We simply encourage women who do go in these contests to do so safely and not to fall into dangerous practices that some coaches and trainers and other competitors encourage. As we’ve seen, it happens far too often, even with those people who begin with the best intentions. So if you do pursue a competitive path, know that greatness can be accomplished safely—we’ve seen it done—but it’s not necessarily the easiest path. We also know that when dangerous drugs come into play and/or if eating orders develop, it’s a sure-fire path to complete destruction. Please be aware.

So after 17 years, it’s time for SAF say goodbye, but in closing, I want to personally thank all the great competitors we’ve seen over the years, our incredible judges, and the excellent stage managers, MCs, assistants, photographers, videographers, and others who have helped make our shows successful to the end. We started on a positive note and, by ending at this time with years of successful shows behind us, we believe we’re finishing on a positive note. Good luck to everyone in your future endeavors.

Yours truly,
Doug Schneider
SAF Founder