Lisa Aranda

Among the newest sports at the Arnold Sports Festival is amateur bodybuilding, which has opened the doors for competitors such as Lisa Aranda of Lancaster, Ohio, to consider competing at the largest multi-sports festival in the United States. Aranda is an upstart amateur who has fared well in various competitions but is now working to compete at a higher level. Lisa appeared in the promotional DVD for the 2009 Arnold Sports Festival and she and her husband, Jim, spent time during a break in shooting to chat with Arnold Sports Festival News.

ASF News: Lisa, how long have you been competing?

Lisa: I’ve been competing on and off for seven or eight years. I took three years off, but am back into it now. When I was young I ran track in junior high and played a little bit of basketball.

ASF News: Jim, you also compete, right?

Jim. Yes. I played a lot of traditional sports growing up, like baseball and basketball. I got into caddying and golf through my dad, and then did some triathlons to stay active when I got older and then some weight training in the early 1990s. I met Lisa in 1997 and we got married in 1999 and that got me back into it. I did two or three shows in 2000 and 2001 and then in 2006 competed in the master’s nationals. That was the neatest weekend I’ve ever experienced.

I competed in 60-and-over and finished second by one point. Lisa competed that weekend, too, and won her weight class and competed in the overall competition. It was all really neat.

ASF News: Lisa, how much training does it take to compete at this level?

Lisa: I train four days a week. I train with weights Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, take Thursdays off and then train Friday and take Saturday and Sunday off. I do five or six days of cardio, but actual weight training is four days. I try to be in and out of the gym in 1 hour, 15 minutes.

ASF News: Jim, what do you think of adding amateur bodybuilding to the Arnold Sports Festival?

Jim: I think it is fabulous. The phenomenon of figure being added to the sport, in my mind, has taken away from bodybuilding and taken the sport in that direction. The positive is that it allows a lot more people to compete because the number of competitors is huge compared to bodybuilding. But having women’s amateur bodybuilding added to the Arnold Sports Festival is huge.

But, for example, Lisa recently competed in the nationals in Miami and all the top women from around the United States were there. It was one of the largest fields of the year, but there were just 82 women there from all 50 states. That is not very many.

For a figure competition in Pittsburgh recently, there were more than 150 competitors. That is a huge number of athletes. So that is more than a trend.

ASF News: Lisa, do you plan on competing at the Arnold Sports Festival in 2009?

Lisa: I hope so if I am ready. But it is a really competitive show, and it is an international show. So I want to compete because to say you competed in an international show is really cool. But I talked to a couple of judges in Chicago and they said I need to streamline my physique. So I will work on that and see where I am in the spring.

ASF News: Jim, what are your thoughts on the Arnold Sports Festival?

Jim: The story of Arnold Schwarzegger is one of the great American stories. When he steps on the stage on Friday and Saturday nights as host the people just go nuts. He is just one fantastic personality and to think that through Jim Lorimer he has worked to bring all of these events to Columbus, Ohio, is just tremendous. We are very, very fortunate. Arnold Schwarzenegger comes here every year – how fantastic is that?