There was a time when Lauren Takao was so weak, it was difficult for her to carry groceries. She had no coordination, no leg power and no core strength.
But after giving birth to her daughter in 2010, Takao had an epiphany and realized she needed to gain some strength or she wouldn’t be able to carry her baby.
“I’m not that strong and my baby was getting big,” she said. “We have four flights of stairs, and I needed to be able to carry her up the stairs. I wanted to make sure that I was strong enough to do it.”
So Takao tackled her weakness head-on: She became an Olympic-style weightlifter. Today the 5-foot-1, 103-pound Takao can lift a lot more than an infant. She can lift her own body weight. Overhead.
Takao had always maintained a healthy lifestyle, running cross-country in high school and finishing marathons and triathlons. She also took regular yoga classes. But these activities mostly built her endurance, not her strength.
Takao, a 35-year-old Aiea resident, works as an English teacher at Hawaii Baptist Academy and uses the high school weight room to help her stay fit. When she can’t work out on campus, she spends time in the UFC gyms in Kakaako and Waikele.
Olympic-style weightlifting follows a discipline of specific movements with heavy weights and requires strict form and focus to avoid injury. Takao’s introduction to Olympic-style weightlifting was in a CrossFit program, but she wanted more guidance, she said.
“I dabbled in CrossFit for a bit; it was hard to get individualized instruction that would help me work on my weaknesses because classes were large,” she said.
Takao hired a personal coach, Brandon Moriki, to help her meet her goals. During her coaching sessions once a week, she works on her weaknesses. “He will have me attempt weights that I wouldn’t try on my own,” she said. “It’s different than a normal workout because he focuses on my issues right then and there.”
Lifting weights put Takao more in tune with her body, she said. She’s more mindful of her posture and can feel when her body — her bones and joints — is somehow out of alignment.
When Takao became pregnant with her son, who was born in July, she took a break from Olympic lifting. “I’d still lift weights but it wasn’t the same,” she said. “I started back up in November.”
Managing a training session nowadays is a bit trickier, she explained. “After school I want to go home,” she said. “I have the baby and a cute 5-year-old at home, so I train before work. It helps keep me sane.”
Her 40-year-old husband, Kyle Takao, a former professional mixed martial arts fighter, has been supportive in her journey, and that makes all the difference, she said.
“My husband does jiujitsu, so he understands the importance of my training,” she said. “He has been a black belt in Brazilian jiujitsu. He teaches at UFC and at Sapateiro Jiujitsu, his own place.”
Takao continues to work on building upper-body strength, so on the days when she’s not Olympic-lifting, she uses dumbbells and kettlebells in her workouts.
On the weekends the couple normally does a light and fun workout together, which takes less than an hour.
Unlike running, lifting weights requires Takao to pay attention to what she’s doing. “There’s so many moving parts to it,” she said. “When I run I space out, but with this I’m always thinking about the technical parts and breaking everything down.”
Takao does a 15- to 20-minute warm-up, which includes stretching, during her typical two-hour workout. She films her workouts and sends them to her coach to get feedback.
“I don’t have a strength training background and have learned not to listen to negative self-talk,” she said. “Just think that you can and go for it.”
Initially Takao thought that the bigger a person was, the easier it was to lift weights. Not so. More body weight doesn’t equal an ability to lift more weight, she said.
“It’s all training, dedication, perseverance, nutrition, rest and recovery,” she said. “But I’m one who likes challenges, and seeing a great obstacle before me ignites a fire within me that I need to pursue.”
