Lecturer of the year wins bodybuilding gold
Ruth Naidoo has had a big couple of weeks. The SPRINZ staff member based at AUT Millennium won two world bodybuilding titles in Reno, Nevada and then took out lecturer of the year at the New Zealand Fitness Awards on Saturday night.
Ruth qualified for the Natural Olympia World Championship after winning the equivalent New Zealand title. The Natural Olympia competition is organised by the International Natural Bodybuilding Association with a strict no-drug policy. The INBA promotes itself as the largest, best tested bodybuilding organisation in the world.
Ruth won the gold medal for both the Open Women’s Bodybuilding tall class and the Open Women’s Physique tall class. The Physique class is different to Bodybuilding in that competitors pose in high heels with open hands.
“It was totally amazing to be among this calibre of world class athletes, and the trip as a whole is actually indescribable. It was such an amazing opportunity.”
She then went onto compete for the Overall competition against the short class winner.
Holding the relaxed pose until judges decide
She said she had to wait in their ‘relaxed pose’ for quite a while for the decision. “When they announced that I had won, it was quite a strange feeling. I felt a bit like I was watching from outside my body,” she said.
“I got the medal and wreath placed on my head and Diana Kakos from the INBA guided me to the podium. They played the NZ National Anthem and I just beamed. I think I was crying inside. “It was unbelievably breath-taking,” she said.
Lecturer of the year
Ruth was still in the US when she heard she had won the lecturer of the year title.
The judges commented: Ruth specialises in teaching anatomy, customer service and exercise demonstration and is known for her enthusiastic, interactive and motivational lectures.
She uses a wide variety of teaching methods to deliver course content in a positively memorable way for example drawing on herself with permanent markers and having students build muscles on to skeletons with play doh. Overwhelming feedback from her students is that she is ‘excellent’, ‘a wow’ teacher’, who ‘makes it exciting to learn’ .
Ruth says of her own teaching style: "I’m prepared to behave a little silly if it aids understanding, motivation and fun."