Taylor Lost 20 Pounds on Way to 2020 Pendleton Whisky Velocity Tour Championship
By: Justin Felisko
PUEBLO, Colo. – Mason Taylor licked his lips and began to rattle off his favorite pizza toppings.
“Man, that meat lovers gets me every time,” Taylor said, laughing. “Sausage, pepperoni, ham and bacon. If I am going to eat it, I am going to go all out and eat it.”
There were very few slices of pizza consumed by Taylor last season.
He put his love of pizza on the back burner, as well as his obsession with ice cream, as he began to dedicate himself more to his body, and, in turn, his career.
Taylor has lost 20 pounds since the end of the 2019 season, and he is hopeful the weight loss will help him crack the Top 10 of the PBR world standings in 2021 following back-to-back Top-15 finishes.
In fact, Taylor was able to buy himself a celebratory pizza from Toppers Pizza in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, last month after he went 2-for-3 with two 90.5-point rides to win the 2020 Pendleton Whisky Velocity Tour championship.
It was during his championship performance that Taylor could really tell he was in better physical shape than he was a year earlier. Taylor bucked off two bulls in the second round, one being a re-ride option, before having to ride Marquis Metal Works Draggin Up for 90.5 points less than an hour later to win the Velocity Tour title.
“I used to be out of breath when I would ride,” Taylor said. “At the Velocity Finals, I got on a re-ride. I got on three bulls back-to-back-to-back. And being in shape’s a whole lot different than when you’re not in shape. I mean, I might not be as in-shape as Keyshawn (Whitehorse) or Ezekiel (Mitchell) or none of them guys like that, but I’m in riding shape. So I can get on four or five bulls in a night and be completely fine.”
While Taylor may be a mainstay on the Unleash The Beast, don’t be surprised to see him appear on the Velocity Tour whenever the UTB schedule allows for it.
The 2021 Pendleton Whisky Velocity Tour season begins on Jan. 15-16 in Cedar Park, Texas, with the Cedar Park Chute Out before the PBR’s development tour heads to South Carolina for the Greenville Invitational on Jan. 22-23.
Taylor’s weight loss journey began in 2019 when he reached out to 2016 World Champion Cooper Davis on how to lose some weight after he had gotten up to 177 pounds.
Davis famously lost 24 pounds in less than three months during his rookie season and went on to become, at the time, just the fourth rookie to win the PBR World Finals. A year later, Davis won the PBR World Championship.
Taylor, who entered the 2020 PBR World Finals at 157 pounds, said Davis stressed to him that for as hard as he was willing to work in the gym, it was that much more important to be focused and dedicated in the kitchen.
“Cooper kind of told me all the secrets that I needed to know,” Taylor said. “I used to not ever really work out. Just working out every day, and honestly, it’s 90% in the kitchen. So once you start eating good, (the weight) kind of just falls off of you. If you’re not eating like crap, you don’t feel like crap.”
Taylor said goodbye to some of his weaknesses – bread, French fries, ice cream, Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew and other salty or fatty foods – and replaced them with steak, shrimp and brown rice, while slowly beginning to embrace vegetables, such as broccoli.
Learning to enjoy vegetables had not been easy for Taylor, but Davis recommended a variety of seasonings that are low in sodium and okay to cook with. Taylor prefers to stir fry his vegetables hibachi style.
If he goes out to eat on the weekends, Taylor turns down the temptation of a bun with his cheeseburger. Those French fries? Well, they have now become green beans.
What about any late-night sweet tooth urges?
The secret, Davis told Taylor, was natural honey.
“Learn to like it,” Taylor said with a smile.
Taylor calls Davis a trendsetter in the locker room when it comes to nutrition.
“He’s definitely the sole part of it,” Taylor said. “I couldn’t have done it for as long as I have, and I damn sure wouldn’t have even thought about doing it, if it wasn’t for Coop. I mean, he comes around and he’s a little chubby kid, and he loses the weight, wins the Finals. Next year he wins the world. So, I mean, it works. It just goes to show you it works.”
Davis said he enjoys seeing more and more riders being willing to take the necessary steps to attempt to reach the pinnacle of the sport.
“I don’t know if I’d call it being a pioneer or what, but it’s just the sport’s evolving,” Davis said. “The bulls are bucking harder and there’s fewer guys that are staying on them. If you want to win, you’ve got to go out there and bust your ass to make it happen. And you’ve got to put the work in. I think guys maybe seen that I went and put the work in, went from being a mediocre bull rider to winning the world, and it just kind of showed guys that a little extra work can go a long way. So that is cool, in the aspect of seeing guys push harder and do better. And I get a lot of feedback. Guys on Instagram, Facebook, stuff like that, saying I’ve helped them. That is cool to me.”
It is easy to commit yourself to the gym, but staying away from salt and sugar and monitoring calories can be harder than pushing yourself to work out that much longer on the treadmill, Davis explained last year.
“My biggest struggle was the eating right,” Davis said. “You can work out day in and day out, but if you are eating 4,000 calories and burning 2,000, you aren’t going to lose weight that way. You basically have to burn more calories than you are consuming. I told him to stay away from the sodium, sugars and watch your calorie intake.
“He has taken it to heart because, heck, I have gone to eat with him the last few weekends and he dang sure has been paying attention to what he is eating.”
Taylor has also used the Muscle Booster Workout Tracker mobile app, which has helped him build a custom workout plan to help with his weight loss.
The Maypearl, Texas, native sometimes works out twice a day, with his morning routine focusing on cardio whereas the afternoon is focused on stretching and recovery.
“Honestly, it’s not like I go in the gym and absolutely kill myself,” Taylor said. “I’ll just go either walk on the treadmill, or run two miles on the treadmill. It’s not like you’ve got to kill yourself to lose the weight. It’s like the harder you try to lose the weight, the harder it is to come off. If you cut out sugar and everything like that, the weight pretty much just falls off of you. It’s more of the diet. And yeah, I’ll eat chips here or there and stuff like that, but it’s not like I’ll go every single day and go eat Taco Bell, or go eat Pizza Hut or stuff like that.”
Taylor earned a career-high payday at the Velocity Tour Finals as his event win, and ensuing championship, netted him $60,146.67.
The two-time PBR World Finals qualifier knew he had an outside shot to run down previous Velocity No. 1 Jose Vitor Leme at the Velocity Tour Finals, but he figured it would be a long shot. He also had no idea how much he had even won until he read the post-event story on PBR.com.
“I didn’t even think I could win the year end (title), so to say the least, I did not know that I was going to walk out of there with $60,000,” Taylor said. “I just figured, ‘Hey, I come here, do my job, win the Finals, I’ll walk out of here with $20-25,000. I went to reading that article that was on PBR.com and it said, ‘after Taylor has a $60,000 weekend.’ I was like, ‘Holy shit!’ Cody Lambert told me, ‘If you go out there and you stay on everything,’ he said, ‘they’ll pay you, I promise.’ And he wasn’t wrong.”
Taylor concluded 2020 ranked 15th in the world standings after going 1-for-4 at the PBR World Finals. He went 19-for-59 (32.2%) on the Unleash The Beast after battling a nagging injury to his riding hand/wrist. However, he began to show promise with a second-place finish at the UTB regular-season finale and then his victory at the Velocity Tour Finals.
Taylor also plans on doing all he can to maintain his weight loss so that 2021 can be his best season to date.
“If you put in the work, you’ll get the best results out of it,” Taylor concluded.
Follow Justin Felisko on Twitter @jfelisko
Photo courtesy of Christopher Thompson/Bull Stock Media
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