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Why 49ers TE George Kittle Lost Nearly 30 Pounds of Muscle in March

Kittle said that he has regained 20 pounds of the 30 that he lost, which means he still needs to put on 10 more pounds of muscle before the season begins in September, which seems doable for an elite athlete such as Kittle.

Grant Cohn

George Kittle greets the crowd during the “Tight Ends & Friends” concert at Brooklyn Bowl Tuesday, June 18, 2024 in Nashville, Tenn.
George Kittle greets the crowd during the “Tight Ends & Friends” concert at Brooklyn Bowl Tuesday, June 18, 2024 in Nashville, Tenn. / Alan Poizner / For The Tennessean / USA
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George Kittle's offseason has been intense.

First, he learned that he played through a torn core muscle in the second half of the season. Then after the 49ers lost the Super Bowl, he had surgery to repair his core muscle and also rehabbed injuries to his shoulder, rib and toe. During this time, he couldn't lift for roughly a month, and so he lost nearly 30 pounds of muscle.

“I couldn’t lift,” Kittle recently said. “I couldn’t do any upper body because of my shoulder and my rib, and I couldn’t do lower [body] because of my core surgery. …  I didn't lift from the Super Bowl until like almost mid-March. I went a month without doing anything, I wasn’t supposed to do anything.”

Kittle said that he has regained 20 pounds of the 30 that he lost, which means he still needs to put on 10 more pounds of muscle before the season begins in September, which seems doable for an elite athlete such as Kittle.

Still, it's incredible how much work Kittle has to put in to maintain his physique. If he misses just one month of lifting, he turns into a wide receiver. He literally has to lift all the time to have the body of a tight end.

When Kittle retires, I wouldn't be surprised if he loses 30 or 40 pounds and walks around at 210 to 220 pounds.

I wonder if Kittle will play at a lighter weight as he gets older in an effort to remain durable.

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Grant Cohn

GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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