Have you ever wondered if competitive eating champions have techniques on how to win? How do they prepare? Is there such thing as training for competitive eating? Mentalfloss.com interviewed Yasir Salem, full time marketing director, part time competitive eating champion.
Eating may be the most pleasuring and relaxing thing for some, but for Salem it is to be taken seriously -eating means business. He is currently ranked number 10 in the list of the best competitive eaters in the world and here are some tips and techniques written on his secret book of how to win with your stomach full:
1.There is actually a trainer and training for their competition.
But there is no manual. In Salem's case, the internet was his sole reference on how to do it the right way. Some competitors are hiring trainers but not him. He got advice from fellow competitive eaters along the way. "If you enter enough contests, you get friendly with them, and they'll share tidbits of how they make things happen," he says.
2. Like most of the professionally played sports, there is a season and a governing professional association.
Major League Eating puts on some 70 contests every year, including July 4th's Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest. There are separate events for men and women while some contests don't categorize contestants by their sex.
3. WATER IS A COMPETITIVE EATER'S MOST IMPORTANT TRAINING TOOL.
Immediately after watching that first Nathan's competition, Salem was challenged, excited and decided he was going to try. He capped himself to eat at most 20 hot dogs and buns. "I did three or four and I was like, 'I'm done,'" he says. "I couldn't continue."
After that first competition, he decided that he needed to train his stomach and increase its capacity to hold food. How to do that? By simply drinking huge amounts of water daily. He said he started small and little by little drank up to a gallon of water with no problem. He did this daily until days before the competition. He needed to increase his stomach capacity, which he did by drinking large amounts of water. Salem worked his way up to a gallon, which he can now drink in under a minute-and does so almost daily when he's preparing for a competition. "You have to go up and up and up," he says. "It's conditioning."
Aside from the water training, Salem also tries to eat 6-8 pounds of broccoli and cauliflower with "a couple of pounds of sauerkraut," and eats it in about 20 minutes-"at a fast pace, but not in contest mode" every two to three weeks.
4. THEY WORK OUT THEIR JAW MUSCLES.
Legs are your key strengths when you play football, lungs when you swim and and arms when you play volleyball. For competitive eaters like Salem, it's their jaws. One of the objectives when you're on an eating contest is not letting your jaw get tired from endless chewing and munching. That's why there are specially drafted jaw muscle trainings and exercises. Some competitive eaters will chew up to six pieces of gum at a time to strengthen their jaw muscles. Salem on the other hand chews on silicone tubes that doctors usually prescribes patients that have undergone jaw surgery. "I bought three of these things in different strengths and I chew on them two or three times a week or so," he says.
5. you have to breathe it out.
Believe it or not, competitive eating not only requires a tough stomach but also strong lungs. Salem now regularly joins triathlons as part of his continuous training. He said that when he learned how to swim, it made him eat more-from 20, now he can gobble 25 hotdogs. "In swimming, there's a rhythm to breathing," he says. "You have to understand you're going to breathe every two or three strokes. If you don't stick to that, you'll throw yourself off. There's a similar rhythm in eating: Maybe you breathe every hotdog, or every two hot dogs. But you need to figure out your rhythm and stick to it. Otherwise you'll get out of breath and you'll have to take a step back and relax, and it takes a few seconds to get your heart rate down. When you're talking like 25, 30 hot dogs, and you're breaking every three or four hot dogs for 30 seconds, that's 30 percent of the contest. You don't have that time to waste."
Salem revealed more. Before signing up for the next eating competition, read all of his tips here.
