At 149 pounds, Lavion Mayes is one of the most dominant wrestlers in the NCAA, placing third in 2016 and earning All-American honors—one of the highest honors a college athlete can receive. This weekend, he’ll compete for his college, the University of Missouri–Columbia, vying for a NCAA champion title.
To stay competitive, the Mascoutah, Illinois, native keeps a strict diet, but he doesn’t count calories—or plan cheat days. “If I was going to drink a soda, I’m going to drink a soda when I want to,” he says.
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Mayes calculates that he eats—and burns—more than the average 2,000 calories a day. For breakfast, he will normally have a light snack and a cup of oatmeal. Throughout the day, he might have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a turkey sandwich, protein bars, or a chicken breast—“something that’s big enough to make you feel like you ate something, but you’re not eating a meal,” he says.
Mayes’ lunch is the biggest meal of his day: two sandwiches, along with fruit and vegetables, to help recover from a morning workout and as energy for an afternoon practice. “I’m not sitting down for a full-course meal that you would expect to see football players eating,” he says.
After practice ends at 3:30 p.m., Mayes prepares for dinner. “That’s going to be mainly for recovery,” he says. “And depending on when you go to bed, you might need a snack. But you don’t want to eat too close before going to sleep because you won’t burn it off.”
The jump from high school to college was nothing short of grueling for Mayes, who went from a conditioning-heavy program to a wrestling-heavy one. “We can practice two times a day, and we can put in so many more hours on the mat,” he says.
Mayes didn’t start off at the 149-pound weight class. In 2014, Mizzou coaches Brian Smith and Alex Clemsen approached him about dropping weight to wrestle in a different bracket. “I laughed at them,” Mayes recalls. Then the plan changed, and the coaches asked Mayes to gain weight. “I focused on putting a lot on my body, eating a lot of protein, making sure I was getting into the weight room,” Mayes says.
At one point before the season started, he got so sick, he recalls not eating for two weeks, causing him to drop from 165 to 146 pounds. “That entire year was me working from getting out from bottom and trying to figure out my nutrition,” he says.
Those first few years, Mayes often reduced what he ate to stay below a certain weight, but it put stress on his body throughout the wrestling season. After a 20-match winning streak, he found himself losing for the first time. “I felt like I was getting weaker throughout the season,” Mayes recalls.
This year, he’s worked on staying at the right weight without skimping on hydration or nutrition. And this weekend, he’ll look to treat the NCAA championships like any other competition, regardless of whether he wins or loses.
“Hopefully, I end up achieving what most would say their goal is: to be a national champion,” Mayes says. “ But my goal is to go out there, wrestle, and compete.”
