Strength Beyond Lifting: Mary Theisen-Lappen on Body Image, Balance, and Belonging in Sport

Challenging sports culture

While the current landscape of sports looks vastly different than how it has in the past, there are still a handful of themes woven throughout that can be incredibly harmful to an athlete’s physical, mental, and emotional health. Among these themes is the notion that (1) athletes won’t find “success” in their sport unless they are exposed to and specialize in it as early as possible, while another is that (2) athletes’ bodies need to look a certain way in order to be considered “athletic.” Neither of these statements could be further from the truth, and a perfect example of an athlete who challenges both can be found in USA Weightlifting’s Mary Theisen-Lappen. 

It's never too late

If you watched Mary represent Team USA in the 2024 Paris Olympics, you would probably think that she has been weightlifting all her life, especially since she grew up around the sport - her dad and all three of her sisters were avid lifters, with one sister claiming a world champion title in the sport. But, Mary didn’t actually begin her weightlifting career until she was 28, let alone consider that competing in the Olympics as a 30-something-year-old adult might be a real possibility. Instead, she was exposed to a wide variety of sports “starting with soccer from kindergarten until junior year of high school, basketball all growing up, track, softball, volleyball - I even skipped prom to play AAU basketball and I didn’t get my driver’s license until I was 18 because I skipped driver’s ed to play more basketball,” she laughed. Out of all these sports, it was the throwing events in track and field that captured Mary’s heart and time after she finished high school. She competed for Winona State University for two years before transferring to Indiana State University to study sport management while competing in the shot put, discus, hammer throw, and weight throw events each track and field season. 

Once Mary’s competitive throwing career came to an end in 2014, she continued to stay immersed in the sport from the coaching side, beginning as a volunteer coach at University of Wisconsin-Madison before transitioning to UW-Oshkosh where she coached for the next six years. While in Oshkosh, Mary received a call from USA Weightlifting’s Senior Director of Sport Performance, Mike Gattone, inquiring about her interest in pursuing weightlifting - a former throwing teammate of Mary’s had recommended her as someone who might be interested in the sport. After all, Mary had “always felt comfortable and confident” in the weightroom, and had continued powerlifting to stay in shape while coaching her throwing athletes. A voice in her brain told her she may be better at lifting than she was at throwing, and thus began the start of a new journey.

Mary began her weightlifting career with the help of a coach who trained her remotely while she continued to coach track and field, until the Covid pandemic struck and she found herself furloughed from her coaching job. The five-month furlough ended up being a blessing in disguise, as it gave Mary a taste of what it would be like to “basically live like a professional athlete.” It also helped her make the tough decision to leave coaching, “[it] was so physically and mentally exhausting and I knew I could lift better without that,” she said. After coaching her final season in Spring 2021, Mary was able to pursue her weightlifting career full time, and has since racked up an impressive record of awards and accolades on the international stage. 

Mary does not shy away from recognizing that she has had a “unique weightlifting journey because of the age [she] started,” and wishes she could “spread the word more” that not specializing in one sport is important. She also says that she has realized that her role in the sport of weightlifting, “is not to have the biggest lifts ever,

I was put in this sport for a reason and that’s for people to see a bigger athlete and be a role model that someone can look up to.

...There are athletes out there who don’t look like the ones we saw when we were younger.”

This has led Mary to take a lot of young, super heavyweight athletes under her wing as she continues her coaching career in lifting. “It’s important for kids to see missed lifts and that they’re part of the process,” she says. 

Lessons from the Olympics

Mary acknowledges that mental and emotional health are the hardest part of her athletic career, recalling how miserable she was in the process of making Team USA and the negative effect that had on her experience at the Olympics. “I put a lot of pressure on myself and would dwell on missed lifts at home; now I think about how terrible that felt and I would just prefer to never feel that way again.” This self-reflection paired with finding balance between lifting and non-sport activities, thinking “silly things like ‘you have to make this or you quit’” while lifting, and working closely with a sport psychologist have made a recognizable difference in Mary’s happiness and enjoyment of competing. 

So, what’s next for Coach Mary? She does plan to lift competitively for at least one more year for a shot at competing at Worlds in Norway, otherwise, she isn’t ruling out any possibilities. “Except running, I will never get into running, never.” Spoken like a true lifter. 

Written by Kaycee Glattke

Kaycee is a dual-discipline engineer with a passion for sports science and educating athletes. She earned her BS in mechanical engineering with a minor in biomechanics from the University of Florida and her MS & PhD in biomedical engineering from Arizona State University. She has experience working with athletes of all ages and levels in both a clinical and research setting from her pre- and post-doctoral training in Sports Medicine at Mayo Clinic Arizona.

She is currently the Chief Research and Development Officer of Visven, LLC, an Arizona-based start-up that lays claim to the most accurate markerless single-camera motion analysis system for injury prevention, rehabilitation, and sports performance. She is also a coach and personal trainer at Legacy Gym in Milwaukee, WI. When she's not trying to develop the next big thing in biomechanics, you can usually find Kaycee lifting, climbing, baking, or hanging out with her dog, Gibson.