ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, July 26, 1996 TAG: 9607260017
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALESSANDRA SOLER STAFF WRITER
UNTIL last July, Amelia Hernandez would wake up at 5:30 a.m., take the bus from her home in Barcelona to the nearest subway station, hop on the Metro and go to the gym.
As a personal trainer, she'd meet with clients at 9 a.m., take an aerobics class during her lunch break at noon, and fit in an early evening workout just before taking the train back home - all while following a strict low-fat, high-protein diet of lean horse, rabbit and bull meat.
These days, while training and dieting are still important, life's a little easier.
She now eats like an American, incorporating fish, chicken and eggs into her daily meals, and it takes her about 10 minutes to walk to the Botetourt Fitness Center, where she trains as a professional bodybuilder. And the new man in her life - husband Dale Bivens - gives her time off from her job at his fitness shop to train full-time and work on her tan.
"So much has changed for me now," Hernandez, 32, said in her native Spanish. "I'm much more relaxed, and I have more time to concentrate on my training. I worked a lot of hours when I was in Spain, and I wasn't eating very well or getting much sleep. I'm lucky to have someone who understands what it takes to be a professional and to train as much as I do. It's very important."
Hernandez is the first professional bodybuilder living in this area to compete in Saturday night's ninth annual Jan Tana Classic at the Roanoke Civic Center auditorium. Last July, she was a foreigner here, leaving Roquetas, a neighborhood in northern Barcelona, to compete in the contest, where she placed 15th out of 24 competitors. She's been living in Botetourt County ever since.
Bivens, who practices speaking to his wife in Spanish while she responds in heavily accented English, said he hopes her hometown advantage and relatively stress-free year will help her place within the top competitors.
"Foreign competitors are at such a disadvantage," said Bivens, a Roanoke native who owns the Golden Bodies Tanning Salon and Pro Shop in the Crossroads Mall. "Timing is everything in bodybuilding. A lot of times, they spend hours traveling the night before the competition and have little time to rest and recuperate from the stress of flying. This year, Amelia's way ahead of the game."
Bivens and Hernandez were briefly introduced at a post-competition banquet following the 1994 Jan Tana contest after taking pictures together. Although few words were exchanged - neither understood the other - Bivens, an avid follower of the sport of female bodybuilding, decided he wasn't going to let the opportunity slide.
"I was absolutely moonstruck," he confessed. "She just looked incredible, and I was determined to meet her. I guess you could say I was captivated."
With the help of a friend, he wrote her a letter in Spanish shortly after she left Roanoke to return to Spain, and they corresponded for a year.
"Before I came in July [1995], he told me I had three options: I could stay in Spain and we could keep on writing to each other, I could come to U.S. for the competition and we could stay friends, or I could come to Roanoke and marry him," said Hernandez, who helps Bivens run his business.
Choosing was easy, Hernandez said; it was getting over the language barrier that was tough. So, they bought themselves an electronic translator to get through the basics.
"We burned out 10 sets of batteries in a week," Bivens said. "We had to go over to Circuit City and have them order a case for us."
Hernandez, whose father died when she was 11, is the second-youngest daughter in a family of five. When she was little she loved helping her father, a construction worker, carry the heavy stones and bricks he used to build houses.
"You know how kids love to get their hands dirty," Hernandez said. "I didn't care what I had to pick up or do, as long as I was with him."
For 13 years, she worked in beauty salons throughout Barcelona, cutting hair and giving manicures. And even though there was a gym next door to one of the salons where she worked, exercising, much less bodybuilding, wasn't part of her daily routine.
Eventually, Hernandez decided to change her lifestyle. Her interest in becoming physically fit and healthy prompted her to become a vegetarian - for a short time - and start experimenting with different kinds of cardiovascular exercises in the gym.
"I was curious about the machines that all these men were using," Hernandez said. "At the time, there weren't very many women in the sport, so I started working out on the machines by myself. One of the personal trainers who worked in the morning would come and show me how to use them, and then I'd come back later that night, and there would be another guy telling me something completely different from before."
Hernandez decided to learn the correct way to use the weightlifting machines on her own, so she took a six-month course to become a certified personal trainer and nutrition consultant.
Four months after she first walked into a gym in 1991, she competed in her first bodybuilding competition. The following year, she won her first regional competition. In 1993, she won the European equivalent of Ms. Olympia, beating competitors from Spain, France, Italy and Portugal. That win allowed her to move from the status of amateur to professional in the United States.
She has been competing as a professional since 1994, and this year's Jan Tana Classic, one of only three professional bodybuilding shows in the country, is the last avenue for qualification into the Ms. Olympia Pro Women's Competition.
Before a major competition, Hernandez, who carries 140 pounds on her 5-foot, 2-inch frame, maintains an average of 5 percent body fat. As of March 19, she eliminated practically all dairy products from her diet to minimize water retention and keep her 21-inch waistline. Chocolate, one of her few weaknesses, and starchy foods high in carbohydrates also are ruled out during the weeks before the contest.
"I'm very serious about my training, and I'm not here to fool around," Hernandez said.
Bivens, who helps choreograph his wife's posing routines and gives her advice on nutritional supplements that weren't available to her in Europe, said living with a professional bodybuilder has made him realize he lacks discipline.
"She comes home from working out and brings me ice cream and frozen pizzas, and she just sits there and watches me eat it without a problem," Bivens said. "A lot of my friends who are bodybuilders would go crazy if I did that to them, but she's OK with that."
Hernandez recently cut down her caloric intake from 2,200 during the regular training season to 900 calories, most of which are derived from protein-rich foods.
Her vice: caffeine.
"I wake up in the morning and eat my bowl of raw oats and drink my coffee," Hernandez said.
Any cream or sugar?
"Real coffee drinkers drink their coffee straight." Jan Tana Classic
* The Jan Tana Classic & Pro Fitness Challenge at the Roanoke Civic Center auditorium. Amateur tonight at 7; tickets are $10 general admission, $25 reserved seats. Professionals compete at 7 p.m. Saturday; tickets are $15 general admission, $25 reserved seats, $45 VIP seating. Call (800) JAN-TANA.
LENGTH: Long : 136 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ALAN SPEARMAN Staffby CNB1. Amelia Hernandez works on her abdominals: When she began
bodybuilding "there weren't very many women in the sport, so I
started working out on [weight] machines by myself."
2. "So much has changed for me now": In the past year Hernandez
has moved to Botetourt County, married the owner of a local tanning
salon and fitness shop and seen her career prosper. color.