Fusion Hack: Posing Pet Peeves with Reijuana Pribula
Hey, FitFam!
You can spend months building your physique in the gym, dialing in your nutrition, and bringing your best conditioning—but when you step on stage, you still have to know how to showcase what you built.
On this Fit Body Lifestyle Fusion Hack, Jami and Greg sit down with Reijuana Pribula, an experienced posing and prep coach, to break down some of her biggest posing pet peeves—and, more importantly, how competitors can fix them.
From trying to add flair before mastering the fundamentals to overlooking mobility, overposing, and assuming “more” always means “better,” this episode reminds us that great posing is a skill developed progressively. Just like training, it requires a solid foundation, repetition, body awareness, recovery, and coaching that adapts to the individual athlete.
The goal isn't to force your body into the most dramatic pose possible. It's to present your physique with balance, symmetry, flow, and confidence while making all that hard work look beautifully effortless.
5 Key Takeaways from the Episode
1. Master the Fundamentals Before Adding the Flair
Reijuana’s first rule is simple: posing has an order of operations.
Competitors often want to jump straight into beautiful arm movements, dramatic transitions, and individualized stage flair before they've mastered their basic positioning. But just like you wouldn't load a movement in the gym before learning proper form, you shouldn't rush the progression of posing.
Start from the ground up: feet first, then knees and hips, followed by the torso and upper body. Once those fundamentals become second nature, you can layer in the personality and artistry.
Crawl. Walk. Run. Build the pose first, then make it beautiful.
2. Treat Posing Like You Treat Your Training
Would you walk into the gym completely cold and immediately attempt your hardest working set? Probably not. Reijuana encourages competitors to give posing that same level of preparation.
Mobility work can dramatically affect your ability to twist, position your pelvis, control your rib cage, open your back, and showcase your physique properly. Tight hips, psoas, adductors, shoulders, or other areas can even change how your muscular development appears on stage.
And remember to practice both sides. Even when you have a preferred posing side, balanced practice can support mobility, movement quality, and symmetry.
Posing isn't something separate from your athletic development—it's part of it.
3. Stop Overposing Your Physique
Sometimes competitors work so hard to create shape that they actually begin hiding it.
Excessive arching, twisting, pelvic positioning, or tension can make a pose look forced and disrupt the natural flow of the physique. And as you develop more muscle, the amount of manipulation required may actually decrease.
That's an important lesson for athletes progressing through multiple seasons: your posing needs to evolve as your physique evolves.
What worked when you had less muscular development may no longer showcase your current physique effectively. Your posing should grow with you.
4. More Isn't Always Better
More glute pop. More shoulder width. More twisting. More arch.
It might look impressive—but does it create the balanced physique your division requires?
Reijuana explains that drawing too much attention to one body part can disrupt the overall flow judges are looking for. This is especially important in divisions such as Bikini, where balance and symmetry matter more than making one muscle group appear as dominant as possible.
The same principle applies when adrenaline kicks in during comparisons. Fighting harder doesn't necessarily mean posing harder.
Sometimes relaxing, releasing unnecessary tension, and allowing the muscle you've built to speak for itself creates the better presentation.
5. The Best Coaching Cues Are Individualized
A cue that instantly clicks for one athlete might completely confuse another.
Reijuana compares this to training: sometimes you can hear the same instruction repeatedly without connecting to it until one coach phrases it differently—and suddenly everything makes sense.
Posing works the same way.
A strong posing coach should have multiple ways of explaining and demonstrating a position. They should also understand that the goal isn't forcing every athlete into an identical pose. It's finding the cue and positioning that allow that individual athlete's physique to look its best.
And if something isn't clicking immediately? Don't get frustrated. Keep communicating, experimenting, and learning until you find what connects.
