Competitive Eating Training

There are a lot of questions on the health of this sport. Some of the training methods are pretty extreme, as well as the fact that people are stuffing huge sums of food into their stomach in relatively short periods of time (10-12 minutes). I was looking over their site and I found a few things that they have found to be a concern that you may want to be aware of.

Vomiting

If your training methods end up causing you to vomit all the time than you’re really going to need to address this. Vomiting plays a very simple role in our body, but if it is happening all the time for your training than you’re causing problems.

Water Intoxication

For the most famous training method of drinking a gallon of water in a few minutes, you could be causing problems. Just as competitors take in a lot of water during the competition as well. Too much water is a bad thing. There was a radio competition where they had the contestants see who could drink the most water. Well, one of them died.

Binge Eating

If your eating style is very binge like, than you can cause some forms of stomach perforations. This happens when you have an ulcer in your stomach that you didn’t know about.

I hope this gives you a good insight into the problems that could be caused with training and eating competitions in general. That’s why I always recommend that you talk to your doctor to make sure you should be trying these things out.

I wanted to share with you some competitive eating tips that can really help you develop as an athlete in this sport. Tips are hard to come by because there simply isn’t that much knowledge available to the general public. This is still a sport that is pretty taboo and most people don’t care. The good news is that I have some competitive eating tips to help you out.

1. Consistent Pace over Speed

When you’re in a competition, you want to eat fast. You want to stuff all that food in your mouth as fast as you can, so you can win. The problem is that if you go to fast you’ll choke, but not only that, if you go to fast, you’ll eventually lose pace.

It’s sort of like marathon runners. They don’t burst out of the starting gates. They pace themselves. They know that it is much easier to be consistent, than it is to go super fast.

That’s basically what you want to do. Have food coming in your mouth at a pace that you can sustain for the entire time. That will work the best.

2. Practice With Proper Food

If you’re going in a meatball competition, eat meatballs. If you’re going in a hot dog competition, eat hot dogs. The point is that you need to practice with what you’re going to eat. It has to be a constant thing, so you understand exactly how to eat a food.

3. Experiment

Eat the food you’re going to be competing with, but experiment with the eating process. Try something. Try eating two hot dogs at the same time. You might surprise yourself and realize that you can take advantage this and help you win the contest.

Competitive eating is extremely new and I believe it hasn’t evolved to the best methods of eating. That means there is a lot of room for innovation and you can win if you just take the time to experiment.

I hope these competitive eating tips help you out. I know they have for me.

Hello readers,

I thought it was important for me to keep you up to date on some of the competitions out there. We have the Battle at the Big Apple World Pizza Eating Championship in Fort Pierce, Florida. What you’re expected to eat is a big apple pizza. I’ve never heard of this kind of pizza, but I’m sure a lot of you have.

The price is a good one. You get $2500 plus a cruise for two. And if you set a record you get another bonus of $500. Pretty sweet.

Here’s a summary of what is going on…

On November 8th, the nation’s finest gurgitators will once again go cheek to jowl in the pizza discipline in the Battle at the Big Apple World Pizza Eating Championship in beautiful Fort Pierce, Florida.

Festivities will begin at 11:00am. The contest will be held at the Big Apple Pizza location:
2311 S. 35th Street
Fort Pierce, FL 34981

If you’re interested in participating, you can apply here.

For all those first timers out there, you’re probably trying to learn how to do this, so you can enter a competition with a decent prize. The problem is that you don’t have any experience. You train, and than you get up on the stage with everyone – it’s almost like a culture shock. It’s extremely different than training and you might not be sure what you’re getting into.

As much as you train and try things out, you’re not going to know what it is like. You can watch every competition on SpikeTV and you’re still not going to know what to expect when you’re on the stage with a pile of food in front of you, looking out at a crowd. It’s totally different when you’re doing it.

Things like pace and having a sound mind go out the window. You’ll people on both sides of you chowing down and you’re not going to be consistent.

I think it’s important to enter into any competition you can. No matter how small it is. The reason is that it gives you that experience of what it is like. It’s really the only way you can train to be in a competition and actually understand what it takes psychologically. There might not be any big prizes and you may feel a little embarrassed, but you have to deal with that now. When the big competitions come along, you want to be at peak performance and no what to do.

The last thing you want to have happen is the competition start and you’re still dealing with the fact that there’s a crowd and television cameras staring at you.

There are a lot out there that really don’t understand how much practice plays in a competitors ability to win. Before any of these people end up at a competition, they try to know exactly what they’re eating and how they’re going to eat it. It’s never on the fly, it’s always planned out before hand.

Size, Density, and Technique

Most competition won’t tell you the exact size of what you’re eating. It is pretty easy with something like a hot dog because they’re generally the same size. If a competitor doesn’t know how big it is, they’ll try to mimic what they think it’ll be. A prime example of this is with meatball eating competitions. No competitor is going to know the exact size or density of these meatballs, so they literally have to guess and practice for a wide range of them.

By knowing the size and density,  you’ll need to develop a technique of eating them. The key to any successful run is holding a consistent pace. Often you’ll see people taking in two hot dogs and buns at the same time. The reason is that their mouth is big enough and by the time they chomp on it a few times there’s enough room for it to go down their throat.

Maximizing the input of food is probably the toughest part of all the training people will do. Anything less than what you can possibly do is a loss in productivity. This is a sport that comes down to very short 10-12 minute spurts, so a competitor has to be able to get the maximum out of themselves for that short period of time.

I hope this helps you. Remember that practice makes perfect, so grab the food you’re going to be eating and work to make it as productive as possible.

As you should be aware, it takes a lot of determination and dedication to be extremely good at this sport. One of the most important training techniques is your ability to stretch out your stomach linings. I must first warn you that I’m not a doctor. You should speak with your own doctor before you actually start trying some of these techniques because it’s not considered that healthy.

Basically your stomach can only hold so much food and if you want to stuff a lot of food in your mouth in a relatively short period of time, than you’re going to need a lot more space to store it. This is the whole point of this exercise.

If you’ve never pushed the limits of your stomach, than you’re never going to stretch the lining and be able to hold more food. So I have a few techniques that the professionals use to help themselves out.

1 Gallon in a Few Minutes

It is very common for the professional eaters to drink a gallon of water in a short period of time. The rapid rate in which the water comes in will force your stomach lining to actually stretch and expand.

Buffet Eating

There are a few professional eaters out there that are only eating one meal a day, but there one meal is a large buffet style of dinner. When you start to eat rather big meals, just once a day, you’re training your stomach to expand and stretch to meet the food you need for the day. It appears to be a more biologically driven way since your body will want more food for the entire day.

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These are the two most common methods for stretching out the stomach, which you’re going to need to do to be competitive in this sport. I strongly recommend that you speak with a doctor before hand because you don’t want to actually do something that could cause some serious complications. All the professional competitive eaters check with doctors before they try any sort of new training.

Competitive eating is a sport that I really enjoy to watch because it’s one of those sports that is just blossoming. Do I have a shot at being an NFL player or an NHL hockey player? Probably not, but when it comes to eating competitions, I can move full steam ahead and push the limits because this is all new to people.

I was a bit surprised to learn that the record for hamburger eating is 103 in just eight minutes. That is absolutely amazing. I’m not sure if they’re like real hamburgers or the little ones you get at White Castle, but I don’t think I could eat 103 hamburgers in eight minutes, let alone eight hours.

This didn’t seem to be much trouble for Joey Chestnut, a 23 year old from San Jose, California. The previous record was only 97, but he was able to beat it by six and take home a $10,000 cash price. Nice one Joey. The former record holder didn’t compete this year because of jaw problems after they had their wisdom tooth removed.

What I wanted to illustrate with this post is that these people are truly competitors and athletes. A lot of people don’t view them that way, but they train extremely hard at this and to say otherwise is a slap in the face to them. 103 Hamburgers in just eight minutes is no minor thing. It took a lot of dedication and practice just for a person to do half of that, let alone 103.

I want to give a salute out to all the competitors out there and urge them to continue working hard.