The “Curl Master” is seeking new challenges.

Mike Allas, known around the gym as the “Curl Master,” began strength lifting in 1991. Five years later, he captured his first world title record in the United States Strict Curling Association (USSCA) event of “strict curl.”

He told Fox5:

“I was in the 133 weight class, I weighed in at 129 and I did 135 against the wall.”

While the curl is not the most functional of movements, and Curl Master not the most prestigious of fitness titles, the impressive feat made Mike the sixth person ever to curl more than his body weight, and he reveled in the new championship status.

“Winning a world record was like walking on the red carpet because it was at Muscle Beach where everybody wants to work out. They had cameras there and everything. I was in a newspaper in Los Angeles.”

In 2008, Allas decided to refocus himself as a bodybuilder, and in August of this year, at age 59, Mike won Grandmaster Champion in his age division at the Mister San Diego Natural Bodybuilder competition. As a former curl champion, Mike might have been expected to take an ‘egolifter’s’ approach to bodybuilding, but he maintains that the most important aspect of the sport is diet.

“I do it to show people you can do it at 59. I’m gonna do this till I’m 60. I’m gonna compete at least one or two more years.”

Allas has his eye on next year’s Mister San Diego Natural Bodybuilder competition again and a new venture at the United States Warriors Natural Bodybuilding Championships.

But lifting for the past 26 years has given Mike a prudent view on the place of fitness in his life. While competition is fun and lends purpose to every session, he says the main goal is health.

“The older I get, it’s just like wanting to keep my cholesterol down, my blood pressure down and just all together fitness. I wanted to see what I could do in bodybuilding and so far so good.”

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