Making the Cut - June 30, 2008

by Mike Gill

Many people have asked me to write more about why I cut nearly 50 lbs and how I did it. Deciding to change weights was a mental struggle for me for a number of reasons. I had invested a lot of money, time and training into becoming big and I liked it. To me, being big and powerful was something I admired since I was a kid. So cutting felt like I was moving backwards. Plus in this sport, smaller is almost always equated with weaker and my goal has always been to be the strongest I could be.

Much has changed though at how we look at training and nutrition and I hoped that if I did things correctly, my progress lost would be minimal. I also felt that the trade off of less bodyweight would also lead to increased health. Even though I was lean and my blood pressure, cholesterol and other health indicators seemed to be good being that heavy was talking a toll on my body.

I was eating about 6,000 calories a day to keep my weight up. I was constantly full and my stomach was regularly distended. The arthritis in had gotten worse since adding the weight. I'm on my feet 12-14 hours a day at the gym and the additional stress of 50lbs was adding up. Health wise, cutting seemed like a smart move.

As far as competing goes, I was holding my own as a heavy. I had won or placed second at a number of regional contests and regularly beat guys much larger than me. But after 2 years of local contests I went to nationals and had a poor showing. I didn't put in the effort necessary to be ready like I should have. Perhaps more important however, was for the first time I had a look into where my weaknesses lay and where I needed improvement. I felt that if I wanted to turn pro as a heavy, I would need another two years of serious strength, endurance and speed training. I'll be 36 this November and not getting my card until I was 38 was not appealing.

On Saturdays I train with two lightweight professionals; Glenn Kaifas and Kevin Nowak. At 280lbs my ability ran close to theirs. I was slower than them on some of the medleys and equal on stones and tire flipping. But on pressing events I had an advantage. I knew that I was holding 10-15lbs of bloat that would not affect my strength if I dropped it and I was also carrying some "extra muscle" that was not doing me much good either.

I knew some of my muscle was, in scientific terms, caused by sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. What this means is the muscle has gotten bigger by increasing the amount of fluild they hold without increasing my strength. This useless muscle could be shed and not impact my lifts. I estimated that between those two factors I could lose about 30lbs and maintain most of my current strength while getting faster. This would put me at 245-250lbs; 15-20lbs over the weight class limit. If necessary I could cut water the last few days of the contest and make weight.

In mid January I cut out my carbohydrates and ate a diet made up almost entirely of fats and proteins. This causes a very rapid drop in weight and fat until your body acclimates to it. Within a month I was 255lbs and already felt better on most lifts. My strength was erratic though. By the end of the week when I had depleted my stores of glycogen I was significantly weaker. This made training nearly useless until I carbed up over the weekends. For an athlete consistency is key, so I had to rework the game plan.

My training and business partner Glenn is also a Certified Strength and Conditioning specialist. We talked about my approach and he gave me a few ideas. After a week, I asked him to take over my training and he agreed; as long as I promised to follow his every direction. I did and we revamped my plan. His vision for me was to lose some additional muscle and get faster. Nutritionally he cut my protein from about 400 grams a day of mostly red meat and eggs to about 250 grams a day from turkey, fish, and egg whites (lean protein sources). This switch alone would cut my fat intake drastically from about 150-200 grams a day to about 60 grams a day. I needed an energy source to burn then so we added carbohydrates to the mix. Brown rice, light whole wheat bread and oats became my sources for 250-300 grams of carbohydrates a day.

Next, Glenn outlined a training protocol for me that included plenty of conditioning work and sprinting. By increasing my cardiovascular capacity we would decrease the toll each event took on me. The only traditional weight lifting I would do would be Olympic lifts, squats and deadlifts. Nothing was performed for more than 5 repetitions. This would hold my strength by causing my body to shed the muscle that was not needed to perform those basic lifts. I would also perform the events during the week as well. I would do the medleys for two to three sets with minimal rest. After just a few weeks I began to feel excellent. More like an athlete and less like a guy trying to force weight to do what I wanted. I was losing a steady two pounds a week.

With two weeks left before the contest I was 240lbs at 7% bodyfat. I had only dropped 4% during the entire process but 40lbs of of water, food mass, useless muscle and some fat. The amazing thing was besides getting faster I had gotten stronger in every event and every lift. When we started the process I could clean and press a 270 lb log 4 times in one minute. By the contest I was hitting 6 reps. I could do 25-30 tire flips in a row where before I was cooked at 10. Loading a heavy keg for reps would kill me, now I was doing multiple sets with just 3 minutes rest between sets. My times were dropping on everything and this helped me mentally accepting the weight loss.

This process helped me to understand that for athletes we all have an optimal weight. There is a certain point where your body is going to function it's best and no additional size is going to help it. I think many guys struggle with this. There is more glory in being a heavyweight. The big guys look more impressive and "put more butts in the seats" so many athletes are attracted to competing in this class. Unfortunately it maybe holding them back. And while I had fallen into that mentality as well, ultimately I realized that I'm going to perform better and be more successful at a lighter weight. Once I realized that, there was no other choice.

Posted by Mike Gill at 12:42 PM

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