Bodybuilding medal for Kilkenny's Dora!

From an idea to a podium position, a local woman has achieved her dream of takingpart in a natural body building competition - and taking a place on the winner's podium!

Months of hard work really paid off for Dora Kanpyka when she was awarded a silver medal at the Irish Natural Bodybuilding Championship in the 'bikini' class, last weekend.

In the run up to the competition Dora told Kilkenny Live how it was her dream just to appear on stage in the competition before her 40th birthday later this year. Taking part in last week's competition, and the World Natural Bodybuilding competition in New Ross the week before, saw that dream come true. Dora wasn't expecting to win, just to be on stage was enough.

However, the judges were impressed with Dora. She placed fourth at the New Ross competition and went even better at the Dublin competition.

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"It was an amazing show, it was absolutely brilliant," Dora said afterwards. She is very happy with her win and proud of the achievement.

“My goal never was to win, my goal was to be up on stage. That’s the most important to me, that I stuck to my plan for nine months and achieved my goal. So I feel like a winner already.”

Dora, who is a preschool teacher originally from Poland, has been living in Kilkenny for more than 14 years. She decided only a year ago to make the huge training commitment, after seeing a friend take part. The hard work really started in January of this year, when she began the serious work of ‘bulking’ then ‘shredding’ and all the training that goes with entering competitions.

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She found a coach who put her on a strict meal plan, and monitors her health daily.
The first 20 weeks of training were ‘bulking’ by eating almost 5,000 calories a day. This built up muscle mass, with exercise. The ‘shredding’ phase saw Dora down to 1,400 calories a day.
This week is ‘peak week’ when she has to get rid of all excess fluid in her body to be stage ready.

Dora trains hard. She’s up at 3.45am every morning for a cardio workout at home on a static bike, then at 5am she goes out to get her step count up. The gym opens at 6am and she’s there for an hour. All before starting work! She also works in a pub in the evenings.

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On Saturdays she travels to Cork, to spend time with her coach, and for posing classes - essential for the stage competition.
Even sleeping, and taking time to relax, is important.

Dora hopes to become a personal trainer. Her course work for that has been put on hold while she was training for this competition, but now she will have time to get back to that goal.