Fear and plate-loading in Las Vegas: Jay Cutler's otherworldly twice-a-day back routine

Flex, Jan, 2004 by Greg Merritt

I just swallowed 40 grams of whey protein, along with six grams of creatine and five grams each of glutamine, HMB and BCAAs, all in a smoothie made of papaya juice, bananas, mangoes and yogurt. I'm in the middle of the devil's desert. Talking statues, marauding pirates and groups of blue men torment me, and I'm being approached by what appears to be a tank with eyes. I struggle to make sense of it all.

The tank, I realize, is Jay Cutler. But what is Cutler the Tank doing in this desert gym rife with giant female impersonators; magicians and inveterate slot jockeys? Why is he sucking oxygen from an air-conditioning duct like a drowning man on a lifeline? And can Cutler really be training his back twice in the same day?

BACK BUFFET I'm 30 minutes from the Las Vegas Strip, at the Gold's Gym on Craig Road. A bank of treadmills, stationary bikes and hanging TVs block the squat racks from the squeamish. In a glass enclosure, a gaggle of seated octogenarians aerobicize their arms, and all the gym's tanned and youthful can peer into this "After" exhibit and ponder their furrowed futures. In keeping with the family-fitness vibe, Cutler is joined by his lovely wife, Kerry, who appears fitter than the fittest fitness babe. Kerry jokes that she gets her squat workout spotting her husband on chins.

Like a boxer inserting his mouthpiece, Jay Cutler prepares for battle by cinching up the belt and wrist straps he uses for every set of lat work. Faster than dice tumbling across a felt-covered table, he has finished two sets of underhand front pulldowns. He calls these "feel sets" (lighter sets to warm up and judge his current strength). He then sets the pin at the bottom of a 300-pound stack and pounds out 10-rep sets, leaning back slightly during the downward portion of each rep. "I always start with reverse-grip pulldowns," Cutler says. "You can really pop the lats on them and get good extension to the upper back."

Cutler often does barbell rows next, but today the Hammer Strength machine is his weapon of choice. "These mostly focus on middle thickness. Back density is a real target for me," Jay explains. Starting with three plates per side, he's soon up to five per side (450 pounds). "All the way back," Kerry encourages. "One more on your own."

Cutler keeps up a brutal pace and barely has time to catch his breath while stretching between sets. He is perpetually grabbing hold of nearby vertical bars and tugging, and I'm in constant fear that he'll tear out a ceiling joist. "Stretching is going to open the tissue for better blood flow," he explains. "It's really important to do, especially with back. It's such a large muscle that you really need to stretch it out as much as you can to get the maximum width and density."

Cutler begins one-arm dumbbell rows with 120 pounds but is soon hefting a 150-pounder. He keeps his torso parallel to the floor throughout and pulls the dumbbell straight up, unlike some who stand more upright and let the dumbbell travel out in front at the bottom. Sweat rains from his soaked shirt. Between sets, Cutler hugs an airconditioning duct, gasping for cold oxygen. Later he tells me, "I feel dumbbell rows are the cornerstone to all the improvements I've made in my back over the past couple of years. They stretch the lats and allow for a strong contraction. giving me both width and thickness, especially in the lower lat area."

Skinny teens in tank tops and at least one man masquerading as a woman watch bewildered and bewitched as Cutler pumps out reps with the gym's biggest dumbbell and then struggles to remain conscious during his 45 seconds of rest. He is no longer able to talk. "Back is the bodypart that takes the most out of him," Kerry tells me. "It's not that he doesn't train 100% when he does everything else, but back has been the one area he's really focused on. As you can see, his training gets really intense."

HOMESTRETCH Cutler grinds out front pulldowns on the Hammer Strength machine. For the final set, Kerry, strips off weights for a brutal drop set. "Jay, let's go," Kerry encourages. "Let's go."

I glance over to the room where the oldies are barely sweating to the oldies. Above us, the TVs give off a deadening buzz of Headline News. A ventriloquist bench presses to the beat of the stock market report, and I swear I see his dummy on a StairMaster. Is it just my imagination or are the drag queens multiplying? I wonder what else was in that protein smoothie I drank. Never trust a Vegas juice bar.

This gym, like many modern workout emporiums, doesn't have a traditional T-bar rowing station, so Cutler approximates T-bar rows with a plate-loaded machine in which he lies on a pad set at a 30-degree angle to the floor. "I just want to really squeeze these," he says. He places much of the emphasis on the contraction of each lift, raising the weight as far as possible during two working sets with four plates (180 pounds). Whether rowing or stretching out between sets, he leaves behind a pool of sweat wherever he goes.