Takes long to import and lots of lag once imported into character animator

Hi,

My name is Sean and I have a puppet with over 500 layers being imported into character animator. It took 30min to import because of all the layers and there is immense lag when I am moving my puppet. I was wondering if there are some techniques to speed this up so I can move my character with ease for the great fluid motion. Let me know and I think you're a great teacher! Thanks!