Jiujitsu and a ‘Slop Bowl’ Help Keep Carter Vail Going Viral

Carter Vail carries a unique musical skill set—not to mention an unassuming, rock-solid six-pack—that sometimes gets lost beneath the lime-green glitz of a head-to-toe bug costume.

The singer and content creator describes his work simply as indie rock, but for fans his style ranges from the serious and cinematic—like his 2025 EP Coydog—to the seriously absurd, like his latest insect-infused social media drop, “Ants in My Room.”

And his followers love it, as evidenced by the more than 1.4 million who’ve jumped aboard the Vail Instagram bandwagon since his 2024 breakthrough “Dirt Man” went viral, which has pulled in over 20 million views and counting. With Coydog, the shredded songster has made it clear that making serious music is at least as rewarding as chasing social media likes. Yet pulling off both sides with equal success is a feat even he can’t fully explain.

“I think I’ve been making music and funny songs and all this bulls*** for pretty much my whole life,” he says. “I think it’s like a muscle—the more you force yourself to be creative, the more you kind of recognize ideas.”

Laying down catchy tracks you can’t help but tap along to has always been a gift for Vail. Finding a way to shut off the nonstop, wild thoughts racing through his mind has been the creative challenge. That relief has come from an unlikely outlet: Brazilian jiujitsu. Beyond its aesthetic and athletic benefits, the mats now serve as the artist’s primary psychological safe space. After all, it’s not easy to think about catchy lyrics while you’re scrambling to fight off a rear-naked choke.

“The big benefit that I’ve found with doing jiujitsu has been that when I’m doing jiujitsu, I can’t think about my music career,” he says. “I can’t think about, like, ‘OK, how am I going to make the next TikTok video?’ When I’m doing jiujitsu, there is no music happening in my head.”

Jiujitsu is the latest athletic evolution for the 6’4″ former high school tight end, who chose the music program at the University of Miami over continuing football at a smaller school. “I got offers from very bad D3 teams,” he says. “Then I got into a school for music, and I was like, ‘Why would I risk getting a bunch of concussions for a team that’s on one of the longest losing streaks? That’s when I knew it wasn’t for me.”

While football came to an end, the training that came with preparing for a season continues today—just with as many adjustments as his music demands. In addition to rolling on the mats, he hits the home gym, which not only keep his creative mind sharp but, along with a daily dose of calories from his “slop bowl” have kept his physique in pristine condition where it can be proudly displayed either on a fitness magazine cover or hidden underneath one of his wild content-creation costumes.

“I love incremental success, and just finding ways to really measure progress slowly has always fascinated me, especially in comparison to the rest of my life,” he says. “In the gym, you just keep showing up, and you go up. It feels amazing.”

How 10th Planet Helps Calm Carter Vail’s Far-Out Creative Brain

Behind Carter Vail’s bizarrely brilliant content—such as 2024’s “Dirt Man,” a song about keeping dirt under your pillow as a defense against getting kidnapped by the mythical “Dirt Man,” set to a bossa nova beat—is a classically trained audio engineer who initially had no intention of performing in front of the microphone when he moved to Nashville after graduation.

“I wanted to be a producer,” he says. “When I first got out of college, I was an engineer for a guitar pedal manufacturing company. So I was soldering guitar pedals all day. I hated that job, so I quit, and was just super broke for a while.”

The track’s unlikely success has led to a flood of short, quirky content—including Vail’s latest eusocial anthem, “Ants in My Room.” He recently told WHSN radio that he wrote the lyrics right after ants literally infiltrated his room. It’s also helped grow his catalog of serious tracks, starting with 2024’s country-themed 100 Cowboys.

His musical breakthrough now requires a much-needed mindset release—and that’s where martial arts have become a priority for both his mental and physical fitness. Vail admits admits that, with on-camera fame, his face has become his livelihood. That meant choosing the right combat sport as a side craft—especially in a world where bruising, bloodshed, and broken bones are the norm—had to be carefully considered. “I’m very hesitant and afraid of getting into striking at all,” he says. “I’m not trying to get punched in the head.”

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu—specifically Los Angeles’ 10th Planet—became Vail’s logical choice. After a morning of making music, Vail routinely hits the afternoon class for a few rounds of Nogi training. Vail says there was some logic behind choosing Nogi—jiujitsu without the traditional full-length gi, just shorts and a rashguard-style top. the guitar-playing artist calls it a preventive measure to keep his hands safe from getting inadvertently caught during guard-passing drills in the gi’s thick cotton-polyester fabric. “I don’t really like gi,” he admits. “I don’t like getting my fingers all torn up, especially for guitar playing.”

So far, the white belt heavyweight has earned two gold medals in tournament action. He’s also picked up his share of injuries—he’s been rehabbing a nagging knee issue over the past few months from a light roll. He admits that his obsession with the mats brought him back prematurely instead of giving it rest.

“I didn’t respect the injury,” he says. “I should’ve done a lot more long-term recovery, because I’ll still wake up and be like, ‘Oh f***, this is not feeling normal.’”

While the creative shutoff comes with learning heel hooks, triangles, and escaping closed guard, the community aspect of BJJ has become a bonus benefit—especially when his first class resulted in getting his “a** kicked.”

“This is one of the most caring communities I’ve ever been a part of,” he says. “They all want to beat the s*** out of me, and then they want to tell me how to stop them from beating the s*** out of me.”

A Weightroom that Doubles as a Writer’s Room

While jiujitsu is a momentary escape from creativity, Carter Vail admits that the weightroom is often where a lot of his musical magic happens. “Most songs, to some degree, are written from the gym,” he says. “A lot of melodies will suddenly pop into my head.”

Since COVID forced most gyms to shut down in 2020, Vail says he’s steadily built an impressive-size home weightroom. Although he still keeps a commercial gym membership as an option, his home setup is well stocked with essentials—which it needs to be for the 215‑pound former high school tight end who boasts a 315‑pound power clean and a 340‑pound bench press. (“I was stoked about that,” he says.)

Split between a small indoor room and a courtyard, Vail has a squat rack, flat bench, and preacher curl bench outside. Inside, he’s got a treadmill, lat pulldown system, barbells, and a set of adjustable dumbbells that go up to 85 pounds. “I could not believe how expensive those dumbbells were,” he says.

With his knee still causing discomfort at times, he’s had to adjust his routine. His split has become more upper‑body focused—chest and back days, followed by arms and shoulders. If the knee cooperates, he’ll work in some version of light squats.

These days he also relies on an app for convenience, letting him skip the mental energy of planning workouts. “I’ve been using RP Strength for over a year now, and I love it,” he says. “Anything that takes away me having to think about, ‘What do I need to do next?’ so I can just think about executing is what I need.”

Opting for an app-based program is just the latest training trend Vail has jumped on with success. Some trends stick in his routine, and some fade away when it’s time to move on. For example, he recalls being wooed by Wolverine into a rowing phase as a teenager. “I remember Hugh Jackman posted something like, ‘The best way to get in shape is, like, 12 minutes of intense rowing,’” he recalls. “I was 19, and like, OK, I’ll try that. So for like a year or two I was really into rowing. And I haven’t done it since then.”

These days, his off‑the‑mat conditioning comes from incline treadmill walks wearing a 60‑pound weight vest. It’s a multipurpose habit—with strength, cardio, and health benefits—but for Vail, it’s also reading time and a quiet place for ideas to surface. “I think the most useful part about just being on the treadmill is if I have a first verse done, I’ll play that instrumental of that verse in my headphones just over and over,” he says. “Slowly, new words will come to it—I’ll just start rewriting a verse to it.”

Fuel Over Flavor Has Been Carter Vail’s Creative Game Changer

There’s a formula to creating visual content such as giant ant costumes or full knight gear for “Glorious Fields of Barley.” According to Vail, what starts as an inside joke between he and his buddies quickly morphs into a roughly two-hour creation before it ever has a chance to go viral. “So much of it is just me trying to make myself laugh and me trying to make my friends laugh,” he says. “Then I’ll make the song in 30 minutes, and then I make the video in another 45.”

Compared with his EP‑level music, Vail treats each 30‑second social media clip as a low‑stakes experiment. “If it’s the 30‑second stuff, it’s way lower stakes,” he says. “If it doesn’t work, who cares?”

Artistically, Vail is willing to take risks. From a culinary standpoint,  Vail’s kitchen is one of the few areas in which experimentation is at a minimum—but that hasn’t always been the case. During COVID, had the chance to try a host of different diets, from carnivore (“I got super cut up, which was fun, but I was also s***ting my pants all the time”) to the aesthetically less-successful Gallon of Milk a Day (GOMAD) diet, in which he gained about 20 pounds. “I tried running a mile, and I was like, ‘Holy s***, I can’t do this at all,’” he says.

Today, the majority of Vail’s macros are packed into what his friends have labeled his daily “slop bowl,” consisting of nothing but ground turkey and brown rice. “The thing is, I don’t have much in the way of taste buds, and so flavor of food doesn’t actually matter that much to me,” he says. “That’s pretty much all my meals. It’s relatively healthy, but not exciting.”

Sometimes his minimalist foodie flair is extended with a dash of seasoning. “I’ll put salt on it and be like, ‘I’m creative,’” he says. But in Vail’s day to day, nutrition has become more of a utilitarian chore than a delicacy.

“Food’s never really been a huge joy for me,” he says. “I want to eat a lot, but it doesn’t really matter what it is.””

And at the end of the day, his diet plan—no matter how bland—has been the fuel that helps keep his abs popping. At the same time, Vail’s meal consistency mirrors the steady, incremental gains he chases in the weightroom, on the BJJ mats, and in the music studio. And just like his attitude toward his simplistic meal plan, whether it’s a black belt choking him out or a keyboard warrior bad‑mouthing his latest work, Carter Vail will be back at it the next day. Even stronger.

“Everyone gets some degree of criticism on it, but I don’t take it that seriously because it’s not how I take my value,” he says. “So when people are like, ‘This sucks,’ I’m like, ‘Maybe that one sucks, but I’ll make another one tomorrow.’”