Bulgaria’s strongman Karlos Nasar on lifting above pains, a champion mindset and his meatball-heavy diet
The men’s 89kg Olympic champion is one of the stars to watch at the 2024 World Weightlifting Championships in Bahrain from 6-15 December. Watch live on Olympics.com!
Karlos Nasar is not your average weightlifter.
At just 20 years old, the Bulgarian has already set world records that defy his age and even his body weight in the 89kg class.
At the Paris 2024 Olympics, he convincingly won the gold medal, living up to his billing as one of the rising stars in weightlifting.
His success is not just a stroke of luck. It’s built on a foundation of resilience and dedication, a rigorous training plan, and a meticulous diet.
Fuelling is important to him. His ‘high carb diet’ is not about massive food intake or ingesting a set number of calories but maintaining constants. From the ever-present meatballs in his structured meal plans, he also doesn’t compromise on his daily 12-hour sleep and his eight-hour training regime.
“My training doesn’t have an end. My training is in my food, my training is in my sleep, through recovery, routine, everything,” Nasar said in a podcast with Bulgarian Stefan Chefo.
“I am on a high carb diet…it’s not a diet per se…For breakfast, I have tuna meatballs, 10 eggs, and oatmeal with milk. Then I go again with meatballs for lunch and dinner.”
Nasar, a holder of 22 senior and junior world records at 89kg, returns to the competition platform at the 2024 World Championships in Manama, with high expectations, presenting him with yet another chance to write weightlifting history.
Karlos Nasar’s early lifts and challenging beginnings
At the age of 10, Nasar was capable of lifting 45kgs. His prowess stood out and he gained experience fast, out of necessity.
The young boy was not from a well-off family, nor did he have the opportunities of most of his peers.
“Sport was the thing that I knew I had and would put me ahead of others who had more opportunities than I had,” he said on the podcast.
By the time he turned 16, the lifter from Cherven Bryag, a town in northern Bulgaria, was already a continental silver medallist.
A year later, he broke the world record in the men’s 81kg with a clean and jerk of 208kg. His total lift of 374kg, which won him the 2021 world title, were junior and youth world records.
The Bulgarian was the third-youngest world champion at 17 years old and 214 days, behind compatriot Sevdalin Marinov, who was just a month older when he became a world champion in the 52kg class in 1985.
Nasar was just getting started. The double European champion, who trains with Plamen Bratoychev, a two-time Olympian, was growing stronger and better, and it was almost impossible to defeat him in competition.
“At my second ever weightlifting event against lifters in my age group, I came in third. It made me very uncomfortable,” recalled the prodigy, whose first competition was as a nine-year-old against older weightlifters.
“I have so many medals, I don’t even count them. Not just for weightlifting but medals in chess and athletics. In weightlifting, I am always thinking that if I am not first, it’s just not enough. So, when I was nine, that was my only third place and the silver medals [from 2021 and 2022 Europeans], from then on it has been first place, first, first…”
Nasar on his big and constant diet: ‘Veal meatballs are mandatory’
For the 2021 world champion, it’s not just about pushing, pulling and pressing the heaviest of weights. The base of his soaring career is his careful planning and his focus on nutrition and fitness.
He never skips a day of training, and when he does, it’s an eight-hour weightlifting training drill, broken into sessions.
“Training all boils down to your will and how the body adapts to it. I believe that you never exert your full capacity, and the brain just deceives you that you can’t do it anymore. But your body will always do more, it can do a lot. You must train your brain to command your body not to stop, it’s very difficult. But it’s not impossible,” said Nasar, who also doesn’t comprise on his 10 hours of night sleep and two-hour daily naps at midday.
“There are certainly moments when I struggle with training in my daily life, but for me, the ‘cookie jar’ is those who support me and reach out to help me stand up. Those who come to me and tell me, ‘I want to be like you’, and for them, I can’t just give up.”
Nutrition is another crucial element for balancing his shoulders and knees as he lifts the barbells. He has a personal chef who makes his meals, which usually consist of green salad with boiled eggs, salmon steak, spaghetti or rice with minced meat.
“I don’t count calories or macronutrients… Lunch and dinner are the same. Then I go again with the meatballs,” he added with a smile. “Veal meatballs are mandatory.”
Karlos Nasar on bouncing back from career-threatening injury and his coach’s tragic death
Despite his young age, his resilience to bounce back from setbacks makes him stand out. Last year, he was a spectator in Saudi Arabia for the World Championships. With less than a year to go before the Olympic Games, he didn’t compete and wasn’t even sure when his next competition would be. He did manage though to do some light training with the Bulgarian team, viewing that period as a passing failure. This is despite, an eight-month absence due to a career-threatening Achilles tendon injury sustained in a domestic accident.
Nasar’s leg was severed by a broken sink, which required surgery.
“It was an unpleasant moment in my life. Life can be harsh and full of twists, but it’s all about how we react in such situations,” said Nasar, who in 2021 became the only male weightlifter to hold world records in two different categories, in clean and jerk of 220kg in the men’s 89kg.
“I recently learnt about stoicism, and I identified with it, I like this way of thinking overall, that everything happens for a reason.”
Settled in his new 89kg class, he stepped back on the platform at the Paris Olympic qualifying event last March in Qatar. He returned like he never left, dominating competition with a clean and jerk of 223kg, which were world records for both juniors and seniors.
They are lifts that even the most experienced weightlifters are yet to come close to.
So far this year he has set eight world records, but the highlight was the gold medal at his debut Games at the Paris Olympics, the start of another spectacular reign for the great talent. Nasar's historic achievement was all about achieving and fulfilling his late coach’s dream**.**
His former coach, Iliyan Iliev, was like a father figure to him. He not only trained him but supported his dream inside and outside the gym. Iliev suffered a fatal heart attack on his way to a training session with Nasar, who found him lying lifeless by the roadside. That was in 2022, just weeks before the World Champs in Colombia, where he bombed out.
“This is a person who really believed in me…he once said, ‘this man will become Olympic champion…’ and so on. If you asked me then when he said it, I wouldn’t say that. But he believed it… and I had to turn these words into a reality,” he said gloomily.
“I wouldn’t look at myself in the mirror if I hadn’t done that [won an Olympic title]. And I did it the first time, just like he predicted and it’s his words that pushed me to become an Olympic champion.”
This mindset makes Nasar a strong contender for his second world title and his first gold medal in the men’s 89kg class.