Dena Westerfield

by Hans- September 2003
Photography by GeneX and Hans

The morning after the 2003 Junior Nationals, middleweight and overall winner Dena Westerfield is sitting in the restaurant of the Hyatt Regency O'Hare hotel in Chicago devouring a huge post-contest breakfast of eggs, potatoes and pancakes. She is wearing an off-the-shoulder blouse and jeans, and her long blond hair flows over her thickly-developed delts, pecs and traps.

"You look incredible," says a guy as he walks past. This kind of thing has been happening all weekend, but Dena still has a look of complete surprise on her face.

Getting this kind of attention is still a pretty new experience for Dena. Until she stepped onstage two days earlier very few people in the sport had heard of the 32 year-old chiropractor from Ballwin, Mo. In fact, the Junior Nationals was only her second ever show. But by winning the contest she joined a list of names that includes Lenda Murray, Kim Chizevsky and last year's winner Sarah Dunlap. Suddenly Dena is one of the hottest new stars in women's bodybuilding - something she's still getting used to.

"I don't see what other people see," she says. "When I look at myself I don't see it. I think I look good, but I guess it's a typical attitude of a bodybuilder's I think I need work. I look at it and I think, 'I need to bring those legs up' and 'Those shoulders need to be fuller.' I just see things that need work."

To those who saw Dena onstage at the Junior Nationals, there wasn't much that needed work. At 5-foot-2 and 136 pounds (she weighed in at 131), she was the thickest woman in the class with a physique that rippled with striations every pose she hit. But Dena had no idea how good she looked. "I definitely wasn't expecting to win," she says. "I wanted to just get up there and see where I placed at that level and what I had to work on. I guess they liked my physique."

As awesome as Dena looked, she nearly blew it all at the evening show. Unaware of the time, she was standing in the audience when she saw the middleweights filing onstage. Fortunately she had her posing suit on underneath her sweats. "I just hurdled the trophy table and climbed up there," she laughs. After lining up, she rushed backstage and got oiled up, and came back on just in time for the comparisons. She had barely had enough time to realize what was happening when she won the class and then the overall. "Everything happened so fast," she says.

Dena Westerfield grew up in St. Petersburg, Fla., where she was an athlete from the age of three. Both of her parents were athletic, and as a child Dena did gymnastics and cheerleading, ran track, and played fastpitch softball. "I could climb anything and out run anyone," she says. "I always had a muscular build." Dena had seen bodybuilders on TV and in magazines and loved the way they looked. At the age of 7, she announced to her mother she wanted to be a doctor and a bodybuilder. "You can be anything you want to be," her mother told her.

At high school, Dena was one of only two girls who joined the weightlifting club. After graduating she started a pre-med degree at the University of South Florida in Tampa and became, as she puts it, "totally engulfed in the gym." After completing her degree, she moved to Marietta, Ga., to go to chiropractic school. With the help of a new trainer, Ty Felder, Dena won her first contest, the 2001 NPC Coastal. In Marietta Dena also hooked up with national-level heavyweight Mimi Jabalee, who also happens to be a chiropractor, and they started training together. Last October Dena moved to Ballwin, Mo., right outside St. Louis, to do a year-and-a-half long internship for chiropractic school. She now trains at Wild Horse Fitness, with Henry Lovelace, the gym's owner and her sponsor.

Combining being a full-time student with competing as a national-level bodybuilder means Dena is on the go virtually non-stop. She is up at 4 a.m., eats, prepares her five meals ("the most important thing"), squeezes in some studying and then has class from 7 a.m. until midday. If she can she gets in a workout before heading to the clinic where she works from 2 to 7 p.m.; otherwise she trains afterwards. In the evenings she also has neuromuscular therapy clients at the gym. "I'm just on auto pilot," she says. But tough as it is, Dena says she loves being busy. "I always have to be active," she says. "I don't feel complete if I don't have a goal to strive for."

Dena says the way she looks is a definite plus for her career as a chiropractor. "I use my physique as an advertisement," she says. "I can put on a tank top and go to a baseball game and talk to ten people about chiropractic. I don't even to have to approach people, because people look at me and they're like, 'Hey, lets find out what that girl's story is.' They ask me questions like 'How long have you been working out?' and as soon as I get into what my career is, the next thing you know they have back pain or they get headaches." Dena's chiropractic training has also helped her as a bodybuilder. "It definitely helps me knowing the body the way I do inside and out," she says. "It helps me train smart and stay injury free."

Six weeks after the Junior Nationals Dena did the USA in Las Vegas, where she placed seventh. She says her preparation was a little off but was impressed with the competition and was pleased with her placing. "Seventh in the United States isn't bad for your first time around," she says. Dena now plans to take some time off competing and concentrate on finishing school. She will graduate in April 2004 and then plans to practise either in Ballwin or in Florida.

Dena's next show will probably be the Nationals in November 2004, which will give her over a year of off-season training to focus on those areas that she thinks need work, above all her legs and her delts. "I have a blocky waist that I can't do anything about, so bringing out my shoulders and working on the lat spread and the sweep will give me more of a v-tapered look." Winning the Junior Nationals has put a little extra pressure on Dena, but those who know her think she has what it takes to go as far as her illustrious predecessors. "Dena has a strong mind and obviously a strong body," says former training partner Mimi Jabalee. "She can go as far as she wants to take it."

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