Brian Cannone
Producer of Fitness Atlantic – Natural Bodybuilding, Fitness, Bikini, Figure and Model Championships held the last weekend in April each year.
Fitness Atlantic is sanctioned with the Fitness Universe Pageant and Musclemania organization.
I choose to sanction Fitness Universe and Musclemania due to the fact that they are natural events where the athletes can live a healthy lifestyle while being presented on the best stages with the most industry exposure.
I work with most organizations and actually when I first sanctioned my event with Fitness Universe and Musclemania they were non-santioned shows and all I was paying to use was the event name as they were television shows made for ESPN Network. The judging panels were made up of all natural event promoters including the ANBC, NGA, WNSO, SNBF and many others. I miss those days and still look forward to networking with other sanctions and promoters.
As far as my background I started working in a gym at age 20 and competed in my first showing just as I turned 21 years old.
After competing in three shows the promoter Fred Yale asked me to take over his AAU events due to the fact that I sold so many tickets when I had competed. I sold about 200 tickets to my first show.
My AAU Milford County and Mr. / Ms. Connecticut events had 50 local contestants and would always have a good attendance due to the fact that I always had all local beginners in my events. I trained almost everyone that did my events and they were first-time athletes.
Fred Yale was my mentor when learning how to produce bodybuilding shows he walked me through each step. Fred would give me a To-Do List and I would crank through the list right away. Printing posters, printing tickets, finding sponsors, buying trophies, finding a DJ, getting staff, and every little thing you wouldn’t think of and I would fly right through the list. I also started getting creative with staging, lighting, and other promotional materials.
The biggest challenge as a show promoter is that contestants don’t enter early – they always wait until last minute no matter what. As a show promoter is very hard to schedule your show when you don’t know exactly how many athletes will be entering as far as timing and the schedule. Another thing athletes don’t realize is that most promoters are spending the entry money as it comes in on things like the venue, trophies, mailings, posters, tickets, and they could spend around $20,000.00 out of pocket with nothing coming in until the last week to recover the costs.
As a former competitor myself I try to give the athletes the best personal experience they can have from the stage and lighting to the judging panels. I try to run the show on time and go by the schedule – I start on time and end on time and the show really does “sell out”. Another large factor about my event is we do tons of photos and video of the show and I build a huge website to include them.
Some of the most memorable moments from my shows would have to be the stage design in 1999 – it was really cool when I hooked up with a crew that produced Broadway stage sets – there was a circular riser at 4 feet high that was 15 feet across with staircases on each side and metal truss (I had to rent the largest moving truck they had to get it to the theatre) – it looked great! I would have purchased the stage set but had no place to store it and with fitness and bikini girls in heels made it difficult to use.
Oh, and the time I set off a fire alarm with a smoke machine and a show had to be put on hold in 1998 – that was messed up but I just had to have the smoke machine…
As I think back to the years I began running shows the internet wasn’t anything and promoters didn’t have email just phone numbers – my show posters looked like Chinese food menus and I would drive around to every gym in Connecticut and most wouldn’t even hang the poster up so after a while I would go to the hardcore gyms that I knew would allow me to hang the poster. Then people would call my phone at my house and leave a message and it would be so hard to get the phone number to return the call – how come people wait until the last few seconds of a message to leave the return number and fly through it? People would leave a 2-minute message and at the end say their phone number so fast you just couldn’t figure it out.
The Fitness Atlantic Championship is drug tested by urine samples – we hire nurses and test everyone the day before the event at the host hotel. I have used polygraph testing in the first few years and had good testers as they were police officers but the athletes prefer urine testing to the lie detector.
The bodybuilding classes are by weight and the fitness, figure and bikini classes for women are by height.
A BIG deal is that I hire 2 judging panels – one panel of 8 for bodybuilding and figure made up of judges from different organizations and years of experience and the panel of 6 for the women in fitness, bikini and model are from modeling agencies, cheerleading, dance, gymnastics and former athletes. This is so important as the women’s panel for fitness, bikini and model should look for different criteria. Bodybuilders should NOT judge fitness, bikini and model.
One bit of advice I would try and give people is relax and have fun – competing should start as your hobby – try not to be so serious that you forget who you are and your personality changes – have fun and try not to let your hurt feelings show too much if you are unhappy with your placing and don’t ever be mean to other athletes at your event you are entering – if you didn’t place as you thought you should ask politely and see what the answer is – if you disagree it’s still okay to disagree - but just realize if you get crazy your only going to look foolish – be professional and keep your cool.
You can find out more information about Fitness Atlantic from my website: http://www.fitnessatlantic.com
Many of the athletes from Fitness Atlaitic have gone on to get great industry exposure like Morris Mendez, Alicia Marie, Lindsay Messina, Nicole Costa, Megan Hoffman, and many others.
One thing I would like to offer in the future is a seminar on how to get creative in your marketing efforts, as many athletes want to make a little money from their hobby and love of fitness. Most people have a desire to make covers and get photos in magazines which is really cool but while trying to do that there are many other ways you can create your own outcome and marketing through products of your own like websites and blogs, ebooks, DVDs, and many other avenues you can control.
I’d like to thank my wonderful show staff including my professional soundman James Goldstein and Lighting Tech Anthony, my Webmaster Mike Westerdal, my photographer Todd Ganci, my video producer Bob Marini, Cathy Savage and her staff, my parents and Donna Poggio.
Thank You,
Brian Cannone
