Health Fitness

Making Weight for Wrestling – Part II

This month I would like to start with a little story. It dates back to my days as a competitive weightlifter. I competed for 12 years in weightlifting and I remember many contests where I had to lose weight. Towards the end of my weightlifting career I weighed about 196 pounds. He could have raced at 198 pounds. class, but chose to drop to 181 lbs. class to test a 500 lb. bench press. There weren’t many guys in those days who weighed 500 pounds. at 181 lb. weight class, so it sounded like a good idea.

During the first year that I was going to do this attempt, I had my best training lift of 475 pounds. for 3 reps in the gym. That would work out to about 530 pounds. form. It was the best training session of my life and my competition was the following week. He was super strong and super ready to “get the job done.” I only had to lose 196 pounds. at 181 lbs. and had a week to do it. At worst, I KNEW I would finally get my 500 pounds. bench press at 181 lbs. of body weight.

I wanted to stay strong, so I waited until Wednesday of that week to start losing weight, for the Saturday morning weigh-in at 9 a.m. and the weight-lifting contest at 12 noon.

I only ate 3 small meals each day, and they were basically sandwiches and protein shakes. On Friday night he weighed 189 pounds. I had to lose 8 more pounds. and I knew it would take the weight off of the water by the time the weigh-ins came. Heck, I’d have a couple hours to get the water back in, so I could probably compete at a total weight of 195-196 pounds. and finally get that bank of 500.

I did not drink water and sat in my friends sauna for a few hours on and off. The weight was losing. I was tired and not feeling very well, but the weight was losing. Plus, I could still put the water back in my system and race feeling strong.

At 9 a.m. the next morning, he weighed 181 pounds. in the nose. After the weigh-ins, I drank Gatorade and water. I tried to eat a little, but my appetite was mainly for water and Gatorade, not solid food. I also ate a banana to regain my potassium level. The long and the short was that I only bench pressed 470 pounds. that day. It was good enough to win that particular weightlifting contest, but it was a personal disappointment. I knew something was wrong. The following week in the gym, he weighed comfortably 197 pounds. and my bench press was even better. He hadn’t trained since the contest, but the following Saturday he was pushing a weight that would equal 535 pounds. bench press.

What did I learn from this experience?

I learned that if you want to maintain your strength, you better lose weight correctly. If you are a wrestler or a weightlifter, your goal is to achieve your best performance. Fighters don’t lift the maximum weight to win a match, but it makes sense to assume that if you are at your strongest point, you will fight to the fullest!

All things being equal, the strongest fighter wins!

With this in mind, here are some guidelines to reduce water weight, in order to fight in the best way:

Use Proper Weight Loss Methods To Lose Fat First If you don’t have a lot of fat on your body, you must either trick your body into encouraging further fat loss, or accept that your body will cannibalize its own muscle for food in another way. You should eat 6 or 7 small protein-focused meals throughout the day.

Do not weigh more than 3 or 4 pounds. about weight class two days before. Listen carefully. There are some basic physiological truths in this world. You cannot lose 10 pounds in one day and that come from fat. It has to be dehydration. Dehydration will weaken you if it is severe. I don’t care how tough you are, how good you are at fighting, who you learned from, etc. If you cut too much overnight, you may win the match or tournament despite poor weight loss techniques, but you will not fight at YOUR personal best! It won’t matter until you meet your partner. Be smart about your weight loss.

Don’t get dehydrated. You should start “restricting” the water about 15 hours before weighing yourself. That means you will drink 6 to 8 ounces of water every 3 hours starting 15 hours before weighing yourself. If you feel like you can’t drink water at this point and are just trying to sweat the old-fashioned way, you won’t conserve your strength.

The Super Saturation meal 36 hours before weighing (assuming you weigh 3-4 pounds heavier) you should supersaturate the muscle cells. To do this, you need to have a carbohydrate-heavy meal (pasta, rice, yams, baked potatoes, etc.). Eat as much as you can comfortably eat during this meal. Then restrict carbs for the rest of that day and the day after. Don’t worry, although your body will use stored carbohydrates (now in muscle cells as glycogen) for energy, you will still have glycogen stored in your liver. Your body will be able to use this stored liver glycogen for energy on wrestling day. After the super saturation meal, you will basically eat all protein meals.

If I had known then what I know now, I could have reached my 500 pounds. bench press at 181 lb. class. Instead, I came in with a comfortable weight of 193 pounds. later that year and got my 500 pounds. bench and failed at 535 lb. tried. Learn from my mistakes. Reduce your weight appropriately, consistently and watch your gains soar!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *