They’ve dieted together, they’ve worked out with each other and they’ve competed against one another.
They’ve dieted together, they’ve worked out with each other and they’ve competed against one another.
Now they’re reaping the fruits of their labors together.
“We’re enjoying eating,” Hillary Luna said.
Her father, 49-year-old Layne Luna, is the patriarch of this fitness-crazed family, and, in a way, of the Hawaii bodybuilding scene in general.
For years, Luna said he lived in regret for not chasing his dream earlier, but that’s just made the four titles he’s collected during the past two years all the more satisfying.
His regimen goes like this: wake up at 4:30 a.m., hit Penn Fitness & Training by 5 a.m., teach at Waiakea High, then back at the gym by 6 p.m.
It helps that he’s young at heart.
“I’m 49 going on 18 and very adolescent,” Luna said. “I’m a free spirit, and living a dream, at this age, it becomes almost surreal. I get very emotional.”
That’s one reason Luna is known to cry on stage, though Hillary Luna has another explanation: “He cries about everything.”
Perhaps Layne Luna scared away the competition when he claimed a pair titles as the only participant in the masters divisions in September events on Maui and at Team Hawaii on Oahu.
If those victories were hollow, the next ones certainly weren’t. Luna won pose-offs in the overall category at both sites against the other division winners, some of whom were either half his age or much bigger than he was.
“The older muscle stands more,” Luna said.
On Maui, Luna beat someone whom he considers his own, Isaiah Kanakanui. The 21-year-old has been dating Hillary for almost five years, since they were high school sweethearts at Hilo High.
Kanakanui had just won the championship in open middleweight and came on strong after being coaxed into participating in his first physique competition. He took runner-up in a field of 22.
Old, competitive habits die hard for Kanakanui, a former Big Island Interscholastic Federation wrestling and judo champion for the Vikings.
“Isaiah was bigger than me and shredded in areas that I wasn’t,” Layne Luna said. “But I know the sport so well, I used my tricks. An old dog, I know how to hide my loose skin.
“It’s a game. I told him about those tricks afterward.
“I was just proud to be up there with him. It’s not about winning or losing, it’s just about being up there with him.”
He also gets a kick out of watching his daughter compete.
Hillary Luna was a BIIF judo champion (126 pounds) at Hilo and a former beauty pageant winner.
But her weight got away from her during her freshman year at Hawaii Community College.
“It wasn’t the Freshman 15, more like the Freshman 30,” Kanakanui said.
The tipping point came when Hillary weighed in at 163 pounds, only two fewer than her boyfriend.
“It was embarrassing,” she said.
That was November of last year, but by June she was fit and slim, and after losing 40 pounds in 16 weeks she won a bikini competition at the Junior Stingray Bodybuilding Classic on Oahu.
“I was much more clean and tight than when I did pageants,” she said.
While Hillary is keeping her future options open, Kanakanui is intent on competing in physique, which favors ascetics and fluidity in board shorts, as opposed to the rigid, tight flexing of bodybuilding.
“The sport is changing,” Kanakanui said. “It takes some time to be 200 pounds and shredded. I’d rather be able to function in life.”
Meanwhile, the patriarch says he’s retiring, only with a caveat.
“I’m retiring from Hawaii competitions,” he said. “It’s a selfish and self-consuming sport. I’m the type that succumbs to the dark side and I get consumed by it.
“But you have to remain respectful and humble.”