She’s been a Marine and a wrestler. Now 23-year-old Sarah Zabala
is going to try to be something a bit more glamorous: Ms.
Universe.
Gilroy – She’s been a Marine and a wrestler. Now 23-year-old Sarah Zabala is going to try to be something a bit more glamorous: Ms. Universe.
Zabala, a Gilroy Health and Fitness personal trainer, was chosen to be one of 20 U.S. representatives at the Mr. and Ms. Universe Bodybuilding, Figure and Fitness competition this December in Germany, where she will compete against contestants from 30 countries.
The 2000 Live Oak graduate will compete in the figure competition, which requires its participants to be in great shape, but isn’t quite like bodybuilding.
“They (judge) you on beauty, pose, stage presence,” Zabala said. “They want you to look feminine, but muscular.”
As a personal trainer, Zabala is no stranger to keeping in shape. But she’s fairly new to competition. Zabala competed in her first fitness show, the Santa Cruz Bodybuilding and Figure Championships, in June. In that one showing, she took first place and earned a spot on the U.S. team going to the Mr. and Ms. Universe competition.
According to Zabala, she was in the right place at the right time. It turned out one of the judges, Calvin Fountano, was the founder of the World Bodybuilding and Fitness Association and coach of the U.S. team. He was impressed with Zabala and asked her to be on the team.
“It was the first show I did and I’m going to the biggest one now,” she said.
Zabala may have her hair and makeup done and wear stilettos and a bikini on stage for competition, but the training she does leading up to that involves little glitz and glamour. For the next three months, Zabala will continue to work out five days a week and eat a steady and strict diet of chicken, fish, broccoli and asparagus. Each workout session includes two hours of weights and one hour of martial arts training.
All this to add 10 pounds of muscle to her 5-foot-6, 130-pound frame.
“I drink a gallon of water a day and protein shakes,” Zabala laughed. “It’s not too fun.”
Then again, the south San Jose native doesn’t sound like too much of a stranger to a strict regimen.
At 17, Zabala joined the U.S. Marine Corps, where she became a close combat instructor in Pensacola, Fla.
“It was great, the job I had,” she said, smiling. “I got to beat up Marines all day.”
Before that, Zabala hung tough with the guys on the Gilroy Hawks wrestling club, where she was a member for 10 years during her childhood.
She joined with her younger brothers when she was in junior high school, and was the three-time grand national champ at San Jose’s Martin Murphy Middle School, where she later became the head wrestling coach.
Zabala has never traveled further than Mexico, but the Dec. 2-3 Mr. and Ms. Universe competition will take her to Cologne, Germany.
The event, which California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger won decades ago to launch his meteoric rise to fame, will be televised on ESPN2.
