Honestly, if this had been anywhere other than the IFBB website I’d have thought it was a joke
“Men will also have their individual presentation but in casual sport attires: an unbuttoned fitness style jacket, worn directly on the body, showing the front of the trunk and abdominal section and casual style pants like jeans, khakis, corduroys, chinos, cargo, twills, etc.”
LOL I’d like to see them skip this step and go full bore into a best body part competition where you come out in a green scuba suit on a green stage with just one body part cut out.
All you see on stage is, say, a giant 28" arm floating around or a lat on its own. The twist being competitors can use video effects, as per a movie green screen, to create an artistic display.
What would be really cool would be just a glory hole the judged body part gets stuck out of but you can’t do that for all body parts so I’d settle for the first approach.
We don’t have enough room in prisons to lock up all criminals. For the lesser end of some crimes, we package them into a profession and ignore the injustice. In this instance, it’s called Marketing
Initially the bikini divisions attracted girls who didn’t really look like they trained, but were certainly willing to pay entry fees in exchange for attention and being called an athlete. Eventually the backlash became too great and the judges had to start rewarding “harder” girls in the npc amateur shows in attempts to add credibility to what most people saw As an insulting money grab.
The men’s physique division started similarly, going from “pretty” and “athletic” looking competitors to guys who look like from the waist up they could be decent bodybuilders if they wanted.
So now that those divisions have actually evolved into (somewhat) respectable classes, they need more categories to keep the inflow of $. And yeah, it does appear to be getting ridiculous when everyone and their friend is an “IFBB pro” but you’d never actually know it if you’re expecting a world class physique that should be unattainable by 99% of the population.