For Lisa Kitagawa, powerlifting changed her life, and now alongside her partner Lucas Paczek, she wants to show others how powerful (and fun) strength training can be.
She stumbled into powerlifting during the COVID lockdown, and by 2022 Kitagawa had qualified for the IPF Classic World Championships in South Africa.
“I got into fitness in 2018, and I started with CrossFit. I was 100 pounds more than I am now, and I had never touched a barbell and just didn't know what a gym was,” Kitagawa told The Squamish Chief.
“I really liked the atmosphere and fell in love with the strength side of things. I did a couple of random CrossFit competitions and things like that, and then unfortunately, lockdown happened, and everything kind of shut down.
“My friend had a home gym set up, and I was like, well, maybe we'll try and get strong for a little while. So I switched over to doing some powerlifting and then realized I was a lot better at powerlifting than I was at CrossFit.”
Kitagawa said squats, bench presses and deadlifts were her strongest skills, so she decided to hire a programming coach, and before she knew it, she was on her way to the world championships.
“It was crazy… the worlds are like the Olympics of powerlifting,” she said.
“I hadn't really done any travel before that, so my first sort of international travel was by myself, on a 50-hour adventure to South Africa.
“I didn't do anything extravagant there, but just being there was amazing, I think I ended up pulling like the 11th best deadlift in my weight class.”
Fast forward to Aug. 6 this year and Kitagawa brought home gold in the under 69 kilograms category at the International Powerlifting Federation’s North American Regional Championships in Scottsdale, Arizona.
“I ended up winning in my weight class, which was really cool. I got a gold in the back squat, a bronze medal in the bench press, and then a gold medal in the deadlift, and then gold overall. And then our Canadian team for the women's and the men's actually came silver overall.”
Now alongside her partner Lucas Paczek, they are hoping to expand the powerlifting community in Squamish in their very own gym.
Peak Strength Club is located at Unit 103 - 1121 Commercial Place.
The club opened on Sept. 25 and is a powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting gym open for all strength-based athletes.
Whether you’re just beginning on your strength journey or you're a seasoned pro like Kitagawa, Paczek says the space has something for everyone.
“Both of us always wanted to open up our own gyms eventually one day and we kind of just tossed around that idea for a long time. I was always on the internet looking at potential gym spaces. Squamish is really hard to find any sort of commercial space, no matter what your business is, whether it's a restaurant or mechanic shop, there's just nothing available,” Paczek said.
“I used to come here because this used to be the O'Briens pet store, so I'd always come and get my dog food here which is pretty funny to think about. So I just sent it to Lisa and said, 'If we really want to do it, this is the space to do it. It's really the only option.”
The gym has powerlifting competition-specific equipment, including two deadlift platforms and adjustable powerlifting racks that you can use to squat or bench press.
The space also has other exercise equipment typically found in a gym.
The big thing that both Paczek and Kitagawa hope to achieve with Peak Strength Club is a community for powerlifters and strength athletes as a whole.
“I think a lot of people are scared to get into powerlifting. It's quite intimidating, by the sounds of it, but once you actually go and start powerlifting, people generally get pretty obsessed about it, and that's all they think about and look forward to, especially at competitions,” Paczek said.
“If it's your first competition, often a lot of people are really scared, but the strongest people at that competition will be the first ones to help the new people.
“That's kind of what we're trying to highlight here, is just the community aspect of it, building your own little gym family.”
Kitagawa hopes to show other women that strength training isn’t always about bulking up like the Hulk—sometimes, it is just about being able to build the strength you never knew you could have.
“It's very empowering as a woman to be able to lift heavy things. I guess there's that scary side of being 'too bulky,' but it takes a lot of effort to do that. You're not just going to get bulky from lifting in general; you have to try really hard to do that,” she said.
“So, that shouldn't be something that stops women from doing this kind of thing. It's more about the empowerment of feeling strong and feeling like you can lift up that thing by yourself, or take all the bags of groceries in on your own.”
Memberships for Peak Strength Club are $88 a month, but the gym also does drop-in passes, 10-visit and 20-visit passes.
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