It can take ladies years of incredible amounts of discipline, juggling strict training schedules and diet plans with their nine-to-five jobs and family life, to get them ready to compete in peek condition.

Palmerston mum Liv Miller is one of the dozens of women pumping for perfection and adding to the rise of female bodybuilders in the Top End.

The 32-year-old has been in the gym daily, bulking up muscle for seven years now and became the first Territorian lady to make it as a professional in the International Federation of Bodybuilding (IFBB) in March last year.

It is a huge accomplishment considering that she managed to get her pro card only 13 months after giving birth to her daughter Cruiz.

“I wanted prove that the female body is capable of absolutely anything,” Miller says.

“I’m a solo parent too, so I had no one to help me but I still managed to find time to train.

“Even when I was low on sleep from waking up every three hours to feed the baby, I’d be up at 4am every morning to fit that workout in before she woke up again.”

It is a “big deal” for her to show her daughter that girls could be strong too.

“I want to set an example for Cruiz, show her that it’s okay to be different,” Miller says.

“She’s only 20 months old but she already knows half of the bodybuilding poses already.

“I’ve taken her with around the world to different shows in places like Vegas and New Zealand. She’s already met Arnold Schwarzenegger too.”

Carla Nunn, 46, is another mum from Palmerston who is big on bodybuilding.

On top of her training, she works as a hospital sterilisation technician and raises three daughters. “I started bodybuilding about seven years ago when I had my last child,” she says. “It’s been a really empowering experience and my kids are really supportive.

“They love that they’ve got a strong mum.”

Miller is also a personal trainer for the ‘Ultimate Dream Team’ at iFitness Coolalinga, where she’s been preparing about 30 amateur female bodybuilders to compete the iCompete Natural (ICN) Northern Territory championships, to be held on September 15 at the Darwin Convention Centre.

She says it has been encouraging to see the surge in local female bodybuilders over the last few years.

“I think more women are taking it up because slowly but surely more women are feeling empowered and comfortable with breaking the rules of the status quo,” Miller says. “Because there are social pressures and challenges that come with female bodybuilding, on top of the more obvious physical ones, that guys in the same field don’t have to deal with.

“You’ve got to deal with peer pressure to look more feminine and people who don’t understand it or think it’s silly.

“I’ve had people ask me point blank: ‘Why would you want to look like that?’

“Just because it’s different and goes against the grain of what people think a woman ‘should’ look like. I cop it nearly every day of my life.

“That’s why I think you need to have a lot of confidence in yourself and who you are to be a female bodybuilder.”

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POWER and Water financial account Rhonda Dunstall started bodybuilding in Darwin a year ago and now she works out in the gym for no fewer than 12 hours a week.

“I competed in my first ICN comp in Darwin 2017 and straight away fell in love with the whole process and seeing how my physique transformed, but knew I could do better,” she says.

“I’m a very big on goals, I like setting goals for myself and working my butt off to achieve them.

“So now I’m up at 4am every morning, in the gym six days a week doing cardio and weights.

“It can be difficult to balance it all, especially when you work full time like I do, but you just have to make time for it.

“Get up early and just go get it. Soon it becomes just like brushing your teeth, it’s a habit.”

Dunstall is in her off season at moment, preparing for a big national competition next year. “To me the off season is the most important aspect of competing, because that’s when you need to eat a lot to fuel your body to grow muscle,” she says.

“I’m having six meals a day that are specifically balanced with carbs, proteins and fats.

“You don’t grow muscle during comp prep, that time is just all about shedding fat to reveal the chiselled muscles that are there beneath.

“I usually do my prep over 12 to 16 weeks, between January to May last year I lost 10kg to get my body fat percentage down to nine per cent for a show.

“But it can be a challenging process because when you lose body fat, you can’t control where it disappears from and it can come off places you wish it didn’t.

“It can become a bit of a mental struggle when you go from needing to wear bras to not even needing to own any.

“Overall though, body has totally transformed since I started bodybuilding and I’ve never felt more powerful.”

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MALAK bodybuilding trainer Marnie Scobie says balance and consistency is “key” when it comes to losing weight before a big competition.

“A lot of bodybuilders do things like water and salt loading before a big comp,” she says. “It can help you shed a lot of water weight and make your veins pop on stage but I’ve also seen people take their prep way too far.

“It can be very dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing and lead to other health problems, with things like kidney stones.

“Some people go on a real strict crash diet and they won’t eat enough and train too much. I’ve seen it first hand, when I used to compete a lady dropped on stage once from completely depriving herself of carbs.

“That’s why having a healthy balance of the right calories and training is so important in this sport.”

Scobie says it is also important for bodybuilders to ensure they keep their mental health in check while training too.

“People can get a very skewed idea of what they look like,” she says.

“They look in the mirror and see something that’s not really true and start to think that carbs are going to hurt them.

“It can evolve into something obsessive but with bodybuilding you’ve got to remember your in peak condition for one day during competition and it’s not realistic to think that you can maintain that same look for the whole of your life.

“But some people think that they can, so they’re always striving to get there.”

Crime scene examiner by day and bodybuilder by night Senior Constable Kirsty Ray has also been bulking up for seven years.

The 38-year-old Darwin bodybuilder cleaned up in the ICN World Titles in Thailand last June and simultaneously earned her “pro card”.

“My lifestyle has changed a lot since I started out and I really think I’ve grown into the sport — it’s become a lifestyle,” she says. “It’s like you live and breath it.

“I love the stress relief of the gym, it’s not a chore.

“Some times my job can be quite hard and quite emotional so it works as a good outlet for me.

“Darwin’s definitely has a social drinking culture up here and some people might prefer to go have a beer or a wine after they knock off but that’s not really for me.

“I work hard and I train hard — that’s how I like it.”