Last December, Zoey St. John of Windham joined Dean Caputo’s Powerhouse Gym in Streetsboro with the intention of simply getting fit. But after she met her then soon-to-be coach, Cecilia Izaurieta, things changed.
A few weeks after joining the gym, St. John began training to compete against bodybuilders with years of experience.
“Last year, when I first joined the gym, it was the second day there, I think, and (Izaurieta) came up to me and asked me if I was competing in the Northcoast,” said St. John, 19. “She was always watching me in the gym, so at the end of December, I told her that I want to compete. She was like, ‘OK, perfect. Let’s go.’”
About five months after her training began, St. John claimed a surprising victory when she won the NPC (National Physique Committee) Northcoast Championships overall bikini category, defeating more than 30 contestants on May 25 at the Streetsboro Middle School gymnasium.
She became the youngest contestant ever to have won the overall bikini category at the Northcoast Championships.
Competitive bodybuilding has several divisions that fall under the categories of men’s bodybuilding, women’s bodybuilding and women’s bikini.
St. John competes in the bikini division, which focuses on fitness rather than bulk muscle mass. Bikini competitors are judged on presentation, posing and their overall physical appearance.
St. John began training with coaches Izaurieta and Verushqa Andrade in January.
Izaurieta and Andrade created a weight training program for St. John that focuses on her weaknesses, in order to better prepare her for competitions, and they’re also responsible for teaching her bodybuilding poses and general decorum when performing on stage in four-inch heels.
But winning the Northcoast Championships wasn’t her first victory; that came on April 20 when she defeated over 51 contestants to take the title as the overall winner in the bikini category at the NPC Natural Ohio Championships.
Generally, when beginners enter bodybuilding competitions they start out in the novice division, but not St. John.
“When a person goes into these shows as a newbie, or a rookie, they enter a division called novice,” Caputo said. “Zoey bypassed and didn’t even enter the novice. She went right into what they call the [women’s] open class. Open class means you go against people that have been doing this for 20 years. She went right into that at 19 years old. To win the overall is phenomenal; not many people can do that. Now she’s got a following because of her age and because of what she did.”
Caputo was a competitor back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s and has been in the bodybuilding industry for over 40 years. He’s seen many bodybuilders come through his gym, but he says Zoey St. John has something special that he rarely sees.
“I can tell when I see a different type of a structure on a person with their genetics and stuff,” Caputo said. “I started noticing her and I thought maybe she’s an athlete. She just had the muscle and the shape and the aesthetics that would be perfect for competing.”
St. John’s dad, Ted St. John, is the chief executive of Hope Town Inc., a recovery service in Windham, but in the ‘90s he, too, competed in bodybuilding competitions and trained at Dean Caputo’s Powerhouse Gym.
Ted became aware of his daughter’s athletic abilities long before she became interested in bodybuilding.
“When she was in fourth grade, probably, they had a track and field event on the last day of school at her elementary school in Windham,” Ted said. “They had the 50-yard dash and they had her running with 10 boys. She was the only girl and she was second; there was one kid that beat her. Every year, she would be the only girl to enter that race against the boys. Even though she was a skinny little kid, she had explosive muscles.”
During high school, St. John played volleyball and softball, was a member of a cheerleading squad and ran track.
She’s currently training for a national competition later this year, or early next year.
“It’s intimidating because the [national] competition will be a lot more competitive,” St. John said. “Everyone’s fighting for the same thing. It’s very scary, but I am very confident in myself and what I’ve done, the work I’ve put in in the last six months and how I’ve changed my physique.”
But she says training is the easy part, it’s maintaining a good diet and avoiding the late night snack cravings that she finds difficult to manage.
“The eating is more work than the training itself,” she said. “I am a snacker at heart. I had a terrible relationship with food before I did this. I honestly did not think I would stick to the diet as well as I did. Going into this and having to eat more than what I was used to, and then only eating whole foods: that was definitely a shift for me.”
Her daily diet largely consists of chicken, rice, sweet potatoes and oats, but from time to time, she indulges in Hay Sweetie gourmet cookies and the occasional Starburst Mini.
