There’s a strange irony in women’s fitness.
It may be the most complete division in the IFBB as far as strength, muscle, conditioning, choreography, stage presence, and athleticism go; it is the very embodiment of the fitness movement—and yet it has always lived just slightly in the shadows of its more muscular, less athletic cousins. Unlike all the other divisions—male and female—fitness demands you not only look the part, but also prove it in motion—extreme motion. It’s not enough to stand there, hit some poses, and be more impressive than the person next to you. No. You have to fly. And that’s exactly why Jen Hendershott belonged on the Olympia stage.
Long before she was Ms. Olympia. Long before the Arnold titles. Long before the routines that made judges sit up like the front row of a Baptist revival. She was a cheerleader—a cheerleader who went through high school and college, rose to the very top of the heap, reached the zenith of her competitive career at 22, and looked around and wondered, what’s next?
The Missing Bridge
All things usually come to an end, but desire doesn’t know you’ve reached the end of the road.
“I wasn’t ready to retire from cheerleading,” Hendershott shares. “That’s how I found fitness.”
Hendershott had cheered at Ohio State. She had won state championships. She was teaching cheer all over the world. But competitively, there was nowhere to go. Then one day Mike Davies introduced her to a Fitness show.
“I said, ‘Yeah, I can do this.’”
And the rest is history.
Her rise was quick, starting with her first amateur show in 1997 at the Mike Francois Classic in Columbus. She received her pro card in 1999 at the USA Championships in Santa Monica. Then cast into the pros, where the lionesses feed. Let’s just say her success wasn’t instant.
“My first Olympia was in 2000,” she says. “I didn’t win until 2005.”
That’s five years of being close—but not close enough.
“When you’re living in it, it defines you as a human. If I took sixth or eighth… I’m eighth in the world, and I’m upset? I’m in the Super Bowl and I’m mad?”
Then come the critiques.
“You need bigger shoulders, bigger boobs, bigger this, bigger that—and of course better condition,” she says. “Everyone looks amazing. No one is showing up fat.”
There’s no telling fitness girls they have to come in harder or better conditioned. They’re always shredded.
“You keep working. You climb from eighth to fourth to third. You feel momentum. But the competition is fierce. None of those ladies are competing to lose. No one shows up hoping to place.”
But fitness has an added level of danger in the power of their routines. They not only have to showcase as conditioned and complete a physique as any other division, but in that incredibly starved and depleted state, they also have to perform what amounts to an Olympic-level gymnastics routine. That element of competition has claimed many a knee, hamstring, ankle, wrist, elbow… let’s just say it leaves a wake of collateral damage.
Injuries?
“None.”
“I believe I was born for Fitness.”
As a little kid, Jen did ballet, tap, and jazz. She turned down professional ballet at 13 because she wanted to cheer. She learned early how to stretch, how to ice, how to take care of her body.
“I’m loyal to my body,” she says. “That’s why I never pushed it past what it could handle.”
She never used diuretics to sharpen her condition (because she knew they would weaken her structure—dehydration radically increases the chance of cramps or actual damage to muscle, tendons, and connective tissue). She dieted hard—900 to 1,200 calories a day at times, 40 to 60 grams of carbs—but always stayed clean. You can consider Hendershott a regular egg whites and oatmeal kind of girl.
But even with such relentless discipline, why was there no hardware?
“What am I doing wrong?” she remembers thinking.
And then 2005 happened.
She won the Arnold. She won the Olympia—back to back. An Ohio girl winning the Arnold in her home state. Talk about being on top of the world.
“I had a dream to be Ms. O,” she says. “And to win the Arnold, being from Ohio — that meant everything.”
Winning once is hard.
Winning again as the reigning champion? Harder.
“Trying to win again as the champ was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
But she never quit. She never walked away. Even in the wake of tragedy.
The Moment No One Knew
After winning the Arnold in 2005, Hendershott got pregnant.
It ended in a miscarriage—on an airplane.
“I almost bled to death,” she says quietly. “Not one flight attendant asked if I was okay. ‘Do you want some water?’ Nothing.”
When the plane landed, she waited until everyone had deplaned before getting up and making her way out to her husband. She never made it public.
“It was private. It was devastating.”
It might also have been galvanizing, because 10 weeks later she won the Olympia.
“That catapulted me into an attitude I never had before,” she says. “I wanted to prove to myself and to the world that I’m worthy. I’m here. I can do this.”
In 2008 she won the Olympia again. In 2009 she won the Arnold. Then she retired.
“There was nothing left for me to win.”
Time to Give Back
Joe Weider and Jim Manion created a platform—whether they fully realized it or not—that merged cheer, dance, and physique into something entirely new. A natural progression for girls who had been flipping, dancing, and performing since elementary school.
“I literally fell into Fitness,” Jen says. “But I know there are other girls out there like me who want to keep going. We just have to show them a way.”
And what better way than the one Jen took? Why not bring cheer to the Olympia?
That is exactly what the Olympia approached her to do: bring cheerleading to bodybuilding’s biggest stage. Host the first-ever cheer competition at the Olympia. Create a feeder system into women’s Fitness.
“When they asked me, I said, ‘Seriously?’”
The logic is undeniable. Cross-promote. Bring college cheerleaders into the Fitness world. Welcome them before they drift away. Let them see that there is a next chapter. They don’t have to hang up competing at 22.
“I told them I’ll do this,” she says, “but I want a couple things. The first is that I want to give out the award for first place.”
I don’t think anyone is going to say no.
Back in the day, Fitness was tougher and not quite as appealing to some athletes. There were four rounds including two different swimsuit rounds, one for two-piece and another for one-piece. No other division demanded as much. Since then, someone came to their senses, and today it’s just two rounds, with more emphasis on routine performance. The division has evolved, but the core remains the same: athletic girls who refuse to be done performing.
Hendershott sees an entire generation waiting for a path forward—and she’s more than happy to show it to them.
Life In One Shot
A clever title for her new book: Life In One Shot: How I Built a Life of Passion, Purpose, and Zero Apologies. It took 15 years to become reality. That’s a long time in the book business, but not without cause.
After Jen retired, her father became ill. She cared for him for two years. Then she grieved for two more. Then her stepfather got sick. Then her stepmother battled leukemia. A decade of caretaking, loss, and grief.
“A year ago my brother dropped dead of a heart attack,” she says. “That’s what finally pushed me. People are always going to die. Life is always going to interrupt you.”
So she wrote. And wrote.
The book is not just trophies and stage lights. It contends with doubt. Frustration. Loss. Gratitude—especially gratitude.
“The IFBB and the Olympia gave me a place to shine,” she says. “I would not have the life I have today without those people and those experiences.”
More than that, it’s a blueprint for competitors who face the very common reality of aging out of their sport and finding themselves where they think is the end of the road. Well, it’s not; the road just turns. The journey continues. Passion drives it.
Life In One Shott is available everywhere—Amazon, Walmart, Barnes & Noble.