Julius Naranjo

Julius Irvin Hikaru Takamura Naranjo is the eldest son of a Filipino father and Japanese mother and has 3 younger siblings.

Naranjo had earned his Bachelor of Sciences in Exercise Science & Health Promotions with a minor in Nutrition at the University of Guam in 2013.

Naranjo had represented Guam's National Weightlifting Team and is a record holder in the old 69 kg weight category.[1] He had represented Guam at the 2017 Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games[2] in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan competing in the 62 kg weight category.[3][4] A career-ending back injury forced Naranjo's retirement.

After retiring from competitive weightlifting, Naranjo turned to coaching. During his athletic career, Naranjo was also managing a functional fitness facility and physical therapy clinic, where he had coached classes and did strength & conditioning for various clients including students and Guam national athletes.

Naranjo as of 2020, is currently a weightlifting coach, strength & conditioning coach, and team manager for Team HD,[5] the Olympic Core team for Hidilyn Diaz[6] who competed in the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, which was later postponed to July 2021.[7]

Naranjo and Hidilyn Diaz, along with their Head Coach Kaiwen Gao have been training in Malaysia[8] as lockdowns and the current situation of COVID-19 around the world have created a difficult situations for all Olympic Bound athletes.

Naranjo also does remote coaching for weightlifting athletes and has built a good following from his coaching and weightlifting videos with more than 20,000 followers on his Instagram.[9]

Aside from being a coach, Naranjo is also a filmmaker who co-founded the Collective Culture[10] and also promotes the sport of weightlifting on Instagram and Facebook.

Naranjo had worked for just over a year as a production artist and had been a Director of Photography for a number of productions[11] with Docomo Pacific, a telecommunications company based in Guam.

Naranjo and Hidilyn Diaz have collaborated through Collective Culture to help spread her awareness advocacy of weightlifting by creating documentaries such as Move to Inspire[12][13] and Lifters for Lifters.[14]

Naranjo collaborated with Malaysian/Filipino singer Yazmin Aziz as a filmmaker for her news segment on TFC News Asia and aiding with a number of projects for her music.[15][16]

Naranjo married his fiancée and the Philippines' first Olympic gold medalist, weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz, in a ceremony held at St. Ignatius Church in the Philippine Military Academy grounds, Baguio, Philippines, on July 26, 2022, exactly a year after the latter's historic gold medal win in the 2020 Summer Olympics.[17][18][19][20]

Then engaged,[21] both had been featured together in various Philippine television programs. This includes an episode of Kapuso Mo, Jessica Soho in GMA where their romantic relationship was featured.[22] They were also featured on Sports U[23] and Magandang Buhay[24] of ABS-CBN.

Naranjo is also Diaz's assistant weightlifting strength and conditioning coach helping the latter secure the Philippines' first-ever Olympic gold medal in the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.[25]

Julius Naranjo at the International Weightlifting Federation