Olena Chumakova works out twice a day, seven days a week, drinks up to seven liters of water per day and sticks to a very strict diet.
Her dedication and discipline to a healthy lifestyle have paid off in recent years: In 2013 she won the European Bodyfitness Championship in Spain, and this May she repeated the feat, returning from Spain for a second time as champion — something very few bodyfitness competitors ever achieve.
Bodyfitness, as opposed to bodybuilding, emphasizes a “natural” look — muscles should not be overdeveloped, but be in proportion to the body. Indeed, the 35-year-old Chumakova looks quite delicate as she sits with her husband Oleksandr in a café in Kyiv — it is hard to believe she is a top, professional athlete.
Husband’s support
According to Chumakova, she wasn’t appreciated in Ukraine’s domestic bodyfitness community. She said she had unusual proportions for a Ukrainian bodyfitness athlete, and she struggled to compete. Some women, she said, gained better results than her in competition after just eight months in the sport, whereas she had been training her body since the age of four.
It was Oleksandr Chumakov’s idea to take his wife to a new level of competition.
He came to the conclusion that if Ukraine did not appreciate Chumakova, they should explore other options, and in 2013 he talked her into going to Spain to compete in the European championship.
However, there was a problem: they still had to undergo the selection process in Kyiv for the international competition.
In Kyiv, Chumakova was selected for Group B, which meant she was low in the team’s rankings. No one had any high hopes for this group, so her win was a big surprise.
It was an even bigger surprise when she repeated her success in 2017.
“During the championship in Spain I didn’t see any familiar faces. Years had passed since my last visit, and everything had changed so much. I was the only one from the previous contest,” she said.
Mentor matters
Chumakova and her husband in 2013 moved from their hometown Zaporizhzhya to Sevastopol, a city in Crimea. Even though Russia annexed peninsula in 2014, Chumakova continued to see herself as a Ukrainian athlete.
But she couldn’t find a personal trainer in Sevastopol, and in 2015 she started working with Alexander Kyslyi, who lived in Kyiv. After two years of working with Kyslyi remotely, Chumakova and her husband decided to move to Kyiv.
Now, Chumakova says, her coach can make sure she is working out properly, and can monitor even the smallest changes in her body.
“Without a trainer, you cannot be objective. Sometimes you feel overweight, not beautiful, and you can’t even look at yourself in the mirror,” she says. “A trainer will calm you down and give his honest opinion on how to improve yourself.”
Healthy lifestyle
Chumakova emphasizes that leading a healthy lifestyle and participating in professional sports are two different things. Not every person can put up with the disciplined regime of a real athlete, she says.
“When I prepare myself for a contest, my regime is a lot like Groundhog Day — I wake up at the same time, eat at the same time, go to the gym, and go to bed.”
She also adds that as the time goes by, her body changes too, and this requires modifications to be made to her workout plan and diet.
“One cannot expect that if they ate only fish for a half a year and lost weight, then the next time they will get the same result,” she says.
Life after sports
Having proved herself with her latest win, Chumakova now wants to take a small break and have some rest.
She has traveled all around the world, but only for competitions, and hasn’t really seen the countries she has been to. Now is the time to change that, she says.
Also, she and her husband have started a new project — they are producing swimsuits under the Color Joy brand, which they plan to develop in the near future.
But this doesn’t mean the couple plan to leave sports — neither can imagine their lives without it.
But in Chumakova’s case, after her run of success, she wants to slow down a little and live for herself.
