Coaching on Impulse : Weightlifting: Van Nuys High biology teacher emphasizes importance of the brain and the nervous system.

You probably already knew this, but if a neurotransmitter chooses to spaz on its way from one nerve cell to another with, say, 240 pounds somewhere between a clean and a jerk, some unsuspecting lifter could be left forever singing soprano.

And you thought weightlifting was all about muscle?

As a lifter might say, get a grip!

This is a sport in which brain comes long before brawn. At least that is the way Bob Takano explains it.

Weightlifting competition in the Olympic Festival takes place this weekend at UCLA’s Royce Hall, and Takano will be coaching the West women’s team.

Takano runs a weightlifting club at Van Nuys High out of what could best be described as a shack. It has two lifting platforms, an assortment of free weights and a squat rack.

But though sorely lacking in the appearance department, it suits Takano and his lifters just fine.

Diana Fuhrman, the top U.S. lifter in the 67.5-kilogram (148 3/4 pounds) weight class the past four years, trains there. So do Jackie Mah, Carole Louise and Kathryn Elliott, all of whom will be competing in the Festival.

A vacated print shop is club headquarters. It has no mirrors, no chrome, no bar that sells carrot juice. The clang of metal weights, punctuated by an occasional loud grunt, is the only music to Takano’s ears.

One of his proteges describes the place as dirty. Takano says it is comfortable. “Function is always more important than cosmetics,” he said. “Once you get beyond function, I’m probably not the guy to ask to come over and work on your place.”

Takano, 44, has taught biology at the school since 1977. “I believe very strongly that you have to understand the organism from a scientific viewpoint before you make changes to it,” he said.

Takano is sitting somewhat uncomfortably in UCLA’s weight room. It is Wednesday and several Festival competitors are tuning up with light workouts. They are not alone.

Jack Haley, who played center on UCLA’s basketball team a few years ago, is shaking hands and trading jokes. Several others are toying with weights on shiny chrome machines, some with an eye on the nearest mirror. Music plays. Takano tries to ignore the distractions.

“You can see muscles; people get caught up in that,” he said. “You can’t see nerves. We’re talking about a system that starts in the motor cortex of the brain, runs through the motor nerves and goes out to the muscles. The muscles are the end organs that perform the work, but if you don’t have the proper impulses coming through the motor nerves, you’re not going to accomplish the lifting in the most dynamic manner that you want.”

Takano takes a well-deserved deep breath. He is asked how one goes about training somebody’s nervous system.

“That,” he deadpanned, “is the tricky part.”

The past 29 years of Takano’s life have largely been spent belly up at the bar. He grew up in the Lincoln Heights area of Los Angeles and took up weightlifting in his back yard at age 15 because he was “small and weak.”

There was another reason. “There was a lot of anti-Japanese sentiment when I was growing up, which wasn’t too long after (World War II),” he said. “I was the only Japanese kid in a predominantly Chicano neighborhood. You can take some flak from that.”

At 19 he started competing for the local YMCA, placing in a few state competitions but never making it as far as the nationals.

Since becoming a coach, what was a passion has become an obsession.

“Bob is fanatical, he just loves being in the weight room,” said Louise, who will compete in the over 82.5-kilogram (181 3/4 pounds) class Sunday. “You could lock him up in the gym and tell him it was for the rest of his life and you know what he’d say? He’d say thank-you.”

Mah, who is ranked second in the 75-kilogram (155 1/4 pounds) class, moved from Sacramento to train with Takano. She used to lift at a place called L. A. Workout. “There were mirrors, music. It was fun,” Mah said.

And what of Takano’s club? “Not fun,” she said. “He’s a meanie. But he has me lifting weights I never did before.”

Takano is primarily known for his work with women lifters, but he has also trained Albert Hood, a 1984 Olympian and former American record-holder, and Chris Altieri, at one time a top super-heavyweight.

The stable’s current star is Fuhrman, the American record-holder in her weight class for snatch, clean and jerk and total. Fuhrman met Takano when she enrolled in his honors biology class at Van Nuys. “I was his little lab rat,” she said.

Fuhrman, who competes tonight, took up weightlifting as a junior in order to improve as a tennis player and track athlete. As a senior she temporarily dropped the sport--”I succumbed to peer pressure”--and became the school’s May Day queen and a homecoming princess.

A year later she was back. She has been serious about the sport ever since.

And seriousness is, indeed, a prerequisite at the Van Nuys Weightlifting Club, where the minimum commitment for members is to attain a national ranking.

“There is an agreement made when you walk into the gym,” Louise said. “He lays it on the line right then. He doesn’t want recreational people in there.”

In a sport void of the monetary rewards available to, say, top track and field athletes, Takano has few problems keeping his lifters motivated.

The key, he said, is finding the right athlete.

“You never hear him yell,” Louise said. “He puts it all on you. It’s like, ‘Come on Carole, are you going to do this or not?’ That’s all he has to say. There are still times you ask, ‘Why am I doing this?,’ but I’ve noticed I always ask that as I’m driving to the gym. And I always get there.”

Fuhrman, who as national champion has traveled the world to compete, said of all the training routines she has heard about, Takano’s is the most challenging.

She tells of a time six years ago when she went with another coach who convinced her that she could keep her strength while losing some weight, thereby allowing her to compete in a lighter class.

“I was with him about three weeks and I could just see my body composition changing for the worse,” Fuhrman said. “I felt soft, totally untrained.”

So she went back to Takano. “He writes up by far the most stressful workouts, but we keep coming back because we see the results,” she said.

Besides, what the Van Nuys Weightlifting Club lacks in ambience, it makes up for in quick-witted entertainment.

“Bob is very science-oriented and just about everyone who trains with him has some background in biology,” Fuhrman said. “The humor is kind of different.”

Leave the club again? She’d have to be out of her cerebral cortex.