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Victor Maccharoli/Daily Sound

Kevin Fisher, 54, dead lifts at the San Marcos High School gym Tuesday.

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A passion for pumping iron

By ERIC LINDBERG

Last weekend, Kevin Fisher lifted three times his body weight.

In the world of elite powerlifting, hoisting 661 pounds in a deadlift is admirable, sure, but far from spectacular.

That is, until you consider the fact that Fisher turned 54 years old today.

The Santa Barbara resident rebounded from a nasty quadriceps tear in a big way, pulling off his best deadlift since 2004 at the World Powerlifting Championships in Vienna, Austria.

“I had a plan and I didn’t deviate from it,” he says.

He opened with a 595-pound lift, moved up to 630 on his next effort and then topped out at 661 pounds, his goal going into the competition.

Sitting on an exercise ball yesterday amid a small jungle of training equipment in the back room of the chiropractic and sports injury center he runs with his wife, Fisher looks like a power lifter — built like a barrel — but probably has more gray in his beard than most people who can heft 500 pounds on a regular basis.

And while he just deadlifted the most weight he ever has since turning 50, he admits that age is definitely becoming a factor.

“It is so much harder to train in my 50s than in my 20s,” he says. “…It’s a big challenge to try to keep doing it.”

As a high school student in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., Fisher hit the weight room at the local YMCA to supplement his training as a baseball and track athlete.

But once he saw a powerlifting competition at the gym, he was hooked.

He competed in his first meet in 1974, at age 20. After being recruited to play football at Mars Hill College, a small Baptist university near Asheville, N.C., he organized his own powerlifting competition on campus and competed in it as well.

“I’ve wanted to do it ever since,” he says. “I just love it.”

Back then, he weighed closer to 185 pounds and stood at about 5-foot-11. Now he lifts in the 220-pound weight class and is closer to 5-foot-9.

The field of competitors has narrowed over the years as well. At state and national competitions en route to qualifying for the world championships, Fisher faced just a handful of lifters in his weight and age bracket.

“It thins out when you start to get older,” he says.

His participation in the state deadlift competition earlier this year marked the first time he lifted competitively since tearing his right quadriceps muscle a year and a half ago while doing squats.

After modifying his training, using new exercises to avoid re-injuring his quad, Fisher says his deadlift started feeling a lot stronger.

His wife, D’Ann Lawson, says of the three standard power lifts — deadlift, bench press and squat — her husband’s specialty is the deadlift.

“Kevin is known for his deadlift,” she says. “He’s always been exceptional in the deadlift.”

In fact, he has held a state record since 1984, when he lifted 788 pounds.

For those not well-versed in weightlifting terms, a deadlift consists of lifting a barbell loaded with weights from a squatting position above the bar to a standing position with the bar suspended just above the knees.

When training, Fisher focuses on speed, technique, control and not lifting above his ability. His 12-week training cycles include three weightlifting sessions a week — two lighter workouts and one day when he does massively heavy lifting with little rest.

He tosses out weightlifting lingo, rattling down a list of exercises he does on heavy days: stiff-legged deadlifts, regular deadlifts, good mornings, bent-over rows, and kettlebell snatches and cleans.

“It’s a brutal workout,” he says.

The 54-year-old trains at a gym he owns at 209 Gray Ave., on the edge of the Funk Zone. Although dubbed Hardcore 360, the facility isn’t solely the stomping ground of Muscle Beach types.

He says a large open area allows for “functional” training with gym balls, elastic bands, balance boards and medicine balls. The iron pumpers have their area near the dumbbells, others mix it up and some stay away from the weights entirely.

He acknowledges that powerlifting isn’t a popular pastime. Not too many of his customers at the gym are piling 500 pounds onto a bar and cranking it up to their knees.

“It’s really hard on the body,” he says. “It’s not a spectator sport. You do it because you love to train.”

On top of his rehabilitation practice and gym, Fisher also works with young athletes at San Marcos High School, where he has been a strength and conditioning coach since December working mainly with the football team.

He says he loves passing on tips and techniques to the next generation, making them better athletes and better trainers.

“They just soak it up,” Fisher says.

He’s constantly attending seminars to stay up on the latest research and training practices, which he says have changed dramatically since he started lifting in the 70s.

Even so, he openly admits that he needs to add more cardiovascular exercise into his personal training mix, adding that he plans to take a brief break from heavy lifting to get his cardio and flexibility up.

And he still doesn’t feel he has hit his peak as a master — a category of power lifters older than 40 — despite wiping out the whole field of masters in Vienna last weekend, even those younger than him.

Fisher’s ultimate goal is to break 700 pounds again.

“I think my window to do that is really short,” he says, as in the next three to five years.

If he doesn’t get injured again, he’s confident he’ll be able to push 680 pounds by next year. The record in his class is 678 pounds.

But for the past few years, a couple of nagging injuries had him stuck in the 620-pound range, including minor rib and gluteus injuries.

“You cannot have those little things going on and try to push heavy weight,” Fisher says.

His left knee isn’t helping things much either. He points to two jagged scars running along the inside of his knee.

Battle wounds from two major surgeries after he injured it playing college, then re-injured as the years wore on.

“My training revolves around not straining this knee,” Fisher says.

He admits everything will have to go perfectly in the next few years for him to be able to break the 700 mark. But he’s still going to push the limits.

“There are people in their 70s that are still lifting,” he says. “I sure hope to be.”

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Great article. : 11/22/2008

Great article. Keep training hard Kevin! www.muscleandbrawn.com

Steve Shaw

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