Carter Vail is becoming a heavyweight in more ways than one. Online, he’s the indie‑rock creative oddity behind entertainingly silly tracks like the bossa‑nova‑tinged “Dirt Man” and the insect‑addled anthem “Ants in My Room.” He’s also released the seriously cinematic EP Coydog. Together, those projects have helped Vail rack up well over a million social media followers and tens of millions of views across platforms.
Away from the Wi‑Fi, the 6’4″, 210‑pound chiseled creative has found a new performance outlet—competing in jiujitsu—as a heavyweight—at Los Angeles’ 10th Planet. After a morning of crafting songs and singles, his afternoons are often spent rolling on the mats. That contrast in crafts is exactly the balance the Connecticut‑born 29‑year‑old needs. “The big benefit that I’ve found with doing jiujitsu and being creative in my normal day to day life has been, when I’m doing jiujitsu, I can’t think about my music career,” Vail said on the *Country Muscle Podcast*.
Sports and fitness have been part of Vail’s routine long before success in front of the mic was ever on the table. The former high school tight end considered taking offers from several smaller Division III football programs, but once the now–classically trained audio engineer was accepted into the University of Miami’s music school, his choice became clear. “I was thinking about playing in college, I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll do this,’” he recalls. “Then I got into a school for music, and I was like, What am I thinking?”
As a towering athlete in high school, walking across the University of Miami campus and seeing the Hurricanes’ defensive line confirmed Carter Vail made the right decision. “I remember feeling like a big guy, and then you see the defensive line walking around campus, and you’re like, Oh my God, those are some big guys,” he says. “These are monsters walking around. It is an entirely different version of humanity. So, no, there was never a shot of me playing football at Miami.”
Still, training like an athlete has remained a key part of his daily routine. His attachment to the weightroom never faded. As a high school tight end, lifting was his favorite part of football. “The part of football I kind of loved the most was the team being in the weight room,” he says. “I loved the games, but the most interesting part was lifting for me.” By graduation he’d built some serious one‑rep maxes, including a 315‑pound hang clean and a 340‑pound bench press. “I was never very good at squatting, but I remember hitting, like 340 on bench and being stoked about,” he says.
Big High School Numbers and Why He Ditched Power Cleans
Despite his impressive numbers, one ugly moment in the weight room ended his desire to perform hang cleans ever again—and he says he’s stuck with that vow. While spotting a friend, the teammate’s knee gave out mid‑rep, causing a severe lower‑body injury and scarring Vail mentally for life. “I haven’t hang cleaned since high school,” he says. “It was one of the grossest injuries I’ve ever seen. Since that, I was like, f*** hang cleans. I don’t need to do any crazy, kinetic kind of movement.”
Instead, Vail now chooses violence—the good kind—as a recreational hobby on the 10th Planet mats. It’s become his second home, where both choking and getting choked are part of the appeal for this artistic athlete. He gave BJJ a try as an outlet during COVID and has been hooked ever since. He’s also competed in several tournaments, earning three wins—including two by submission en route to gold in 2024.
“I remember coming away from that first class and being like, This is unbelievable,” he says. “This is, like, one of the most caring communities I’ve ever been a part of and they all want to beat the s*** out of me, and then they want to tell me how to stop them from beating the s*** out of me.”
He trains Nogi instead of in the full gi to keep his fingers from getting caught and mangled in heavy cloth grips. “I don’t like getting my fingers all torn up, especially for guitar playing,” he says.
That doesn’t mean BJJ has been consequence‑free. A routine roll left him with a torn LCL, and he readily admits he mishandled the recovery. Rather than backing off completely, he took a short break and then went right back in. “I didn’t respect the injury,” he says. “I should’ve done a lot more long‑term recovery, because I’ll still wake up and be like, ‘This is not feeling normal.’” Even so, the pull of the mats has been too strong to walk away. The sport gives him something music can’t: a momentary gift of total mental silence. “When I’m doing jiujitsu, there is no music happening in my head.”
Photo: Courtesy Carter Vail
Today’s Training: Simple But Consistent
Another approach to the Coydog singer’s approach to fitness is geared toward building a sustainable physique for every branch of his career. Gone are the hang cleans and in are tech-savvy programming apps such as RP Hypertrophy.“I’ve been using that for the last probably year, or a little over a year now, and I love it,” he says.
A lingering LCL issue means his current routine leans upper‑body heavy—chest and back sessions, dedicated arm days, shoulders. With his knee issues, he’s temporarily scaled back on heavy leg days, incorporating a lighter goblet squat when he’s feeling pain-free. Although he keeps a gym membership on hand to avoid monotony of being a homebody, Vail’s built a compact but serious home gym at his Los Angeles home, including a squat rack, bench, and preacher curl station outside in a small courtyard, while inside, a treadmill, lat pulldown, barbells, and adjustable dumbbells up to 85 pounds. The idea is to strip away friction. “Anytime I can take out some of the commute of the whole thing, it makes it a lot easier,” he says.
Vail’s nutrition philosophy has gone through an even more dramatic evolution. During COVID, he used the downtime to push his body in both directions—first with an all‑meat carnivore phase that leaned him out but wrecked his gut, then with a Gallon of Milk a Day bulk that added about 20 pounds and torpedoed his endurance. “I got super cut up, which was fun, but I was also sh**ting my pants all the time,” he says of carnivore. His crack at GOMAD. “I tried running a mile, and I was like, I can’t do this at all.’”
Those experiments taught him that extremes weren’t worth the trade‑offs. Now he eats like he trains: consistently. Most days revolve around a heaping serving of ground turkey and brown rice. He doesn’t particularly care what it tastes like, only that it does its job. “The thing is, I don’t have much in the way of taste buds, and so flavor of food doesn’t actually matter that much to me,” he says. “That’s pretty much all my meals. It’s relatively healthy, but not exciting.”
Unlike his unique style of music, his expertise in experimentation in the kitchen is now at a minimum. “I’ll put salt on it and be like, ‘I’m creative,’” he jokes.