Weight cutting

to wrestler-coach-ref: I strongly agree that they need to make a 118 weight class in college, b/c there are a lot of sr. 103 and 112's who are very talented and love wrestling but will not get too wrestle in college or have any chances at scholarships because they are too small :(

nice insight.

Well the reason I posted this is because I know that weight cutting isn't as great as everyone makes it out to be. This is my theory about how it came to be that way, obviously it is just a theory and not fact. I wanted some feedback as to what people think. And yes I think a lot of people are getting off topic and there are a lot of different situations where weight cutting is beneficial, but overall it is not.

WELL.....let me give one example that further supports my point. The video posted of Bergman, Olympic hopeful. He admits to cutting 30 lbs in a few weeks before a big tournament. And is anyone wondering if it was a fluke that he sustained a huge injury that is taking him a full year to recover from? Does that make him tougher than the other guys who went to compete, in shape, near their more ideal weight, or does it make him stupid? I am sure he is great guy and clearly a tough competitor. But c'mon... who thinks it was a good idea to cut that kind of weight?Your call.

That is 100% true GSBones, but to understand that it is not only harder to put the pressure on yourself to compete in a dynamic environment at a high level as opposed to starve yourself in your static everyday environment with weight cutting you need to be educated. So if all a wrestler was taught or known was to cut weight, which was the culture back in the day and is true to a much smaller extent now, then the tougher wrestler may have cut the most weight....aaaand because he was tough there was a good chance that he won his matches on the weekend.

Ben,I accept your assertions 1. and 2. I follow your argument. I conclude that you are throwing this out there to start a spirited debate. Most of the responses, I think, miss your point.I disagree, I must say, that the toughest guy can cut the most weight. Compared to vigorous training, pushing yourself to the aerobic limit and then pushing yourself into anaerobic zones and sustaining it, skipping meals is easy. It is a pain in the a$$, but it isn't nearly as difficult nor does it takes as much dedication as doing the other things I mention above, day after day. There are plenty of non athletes with eating disorders that starve themselves down the equivalent of several weight classes all the time. If they pursue athletics, they are rarely top performers.The "ideal" concept of cutting weight is to bring yourself to what you refer to, above as your "best" weight. For wrestlers, this is being lean,period. Going beyond that means loss of muscle mass and water. There is no wrestler that will perform at their peak while trying to recover from dehydration. We have all seen ( or experienced) running out of gas when pushed to limit when undernourished or dehydrated. At least I have. And it was a performance WAY below what I could do on other days....and it was NOT lack of mental toughness on those days, by the way.Cutting weight sensibly is fine. Beyond that, it is an ego trip, a misguided attempt to prove something to someone, or just poor judgement.And doing it for sustained periods of time leads to an unhealthy relationship with food, for a long, long time to come. Ask me how I know (burp)

ha i like this one cutting weight sucks i know this one first hand but it does take mental toughness and alot of dedication to whatever goal u want to achieve at whatever weight class u want to be at kudos to the wrestlers who have this toughness and determination

8 weeks of training amounts to very little, no wonder you ran 3:26if you can't run 70 mi weeks you probably shouldn't bother with a marathon.Not trying to be harsh, just telling the truth

Ben..Thanks for your thoughts. I am always entertained by your blog. Keep Dorian going in the right direction!Yeah, we do have a lot of leftist indoctrination going on: Everyone is a winner, the government's job is to spread the wealth, it might hurt their self esteem, we don't want to push them too hard they'll burn out, etc., etc.I'm an Ayn Rand fan. The Cream rise to the top no matter how much weight you cut or don't cut. Don't be jealous of them, don't be afraid of them, if you can't help them or support them...then get of the tracks because the pain train is coming!

To Rick I watched my mom run the chicago marathon for the second time last fall. There were plenty of people in this race that were far from what I would call fit. Finishing the race if you aren't worried about time is as simple as putting one foot in front of the other for 26.2 miles.Let me clarify my thoughts on weight cutting. At the kids and HS level there are a lot of tournaments every year and kids are growing so cutting weight for these will hurt your growth process and force kids think more about weight cutting and less about wrestling and hate the sport, because we all know weight cutting sucks.In college the one hour weigh in for all intensive purposes eliminates excessive weight cutting, every once in a while people will get away with it, but more often than not in the past 8 years people have benefitted from a move up in weight rather than down. It is impossible to recover and wrestle a highly ranked opponent on a one hour weigh in.Internationally when you are only making weight 8-12 times a year and 75% of the time you get a 2kg weight allowance and approx. 18 hours to recover it only makes sense to cut weight. Couple this with the fact that weights are very spread apart and most international wrestlers are grown men who are done growing and you have a recipe for large weight drops. Right now I weigh 190 eating whatever I want. Most 84kg wrestlers weigh at least 200 lbs and are fairly lean, so wrestling at 84kg would put me at a significant disadvantage. 163 is very difficult for me, but I only had to make it 3 times over the course of a season, most of the time with the allowance it was 167.5

I firmly believe that most wrestlers would benefit from focusing on getting better at wrestling rather than weight cutting. Now with that out of the way.In some ways I am with you on your logic train. But even then the best wrestlers kept there weight down. I ahve never heard of Smith, Gable, or Sanderson talking about massive weight loss. I know Gable said he was always within 5 pounds of fighting weight. He just worked out like a machine. Sanderson seemed to really focus on conditioning also. Which kept his weight down. I do not know of Smith's training ideals. But I am guessing that there is a theme here. The best guys do not focus on weight cutting because they work so hard that they never need to "cut" weight.I also love the Flo interview with Taylor. He is what a wrestler should strive to be about. I can not tell you how many top level wrestlers have stated that large weight cuts only made them worse.

Weight cutting.......... Danial Cormier

The reason why cutting weight is so popular in wrestling has everything to do with ego. In fact, it's evolutionary. Let's be honest, wrestlers want to win, period. Consequently, to better insure victory, you see the bigger /stronger man wanting to compete against the smaller / (ostensibly) weaker man. In other instances, weight cutting becomes a necessary evil in wrestling so that a guy can find his spot on the team (think Darwin). If you can't beat the guy who is close to your weight, what do you do - you cut weight and beat out someone who's smaller than you. Either way, it's all driven by ego and survival of the fittest instinct. You see this in wrestling and you see it all the time in MMA. The egoic mindset goes something like this: "If I'm walking around at 195 pounds and am freak strong, then why take on other guys who are also 195 (or bigger), equal in strength and could beat me? But if could drop down to 174 lbs., just think much easier victory would be". Again, weight cutting is primarily driven by ego and the survival of the fittest mindset, which in the pursuit of winning, causes people to find an easier, more secure path to victory.