guide to making weight

For the more wrestling inclined, this type of ritual is compressed into a weekly rotation. Here is a typical (if brief) example of an amateur wrestler's week:

• First of all, if you're on or under weight, do what you have to to stay there. No reason for you to work harder than you have to.
• Night after last weigh-in/tournament -- Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!
• First day of cutting weight -- Denial. You have all week, so you can practice normally.
• A few more days -- Practice hard, maybe even use sweats and exercise machines, but eat relatively normally.
• Night before weigh-in -- Uh-oh. Stop drinking water. Some people start their spitting routine now, and haircuts aren't uncommon.
• 12 hours before WI -- Morning run (before school), probably shouldn't shower (don't want to absorb that moisture, now do we?). Try not to sleep through all your classes, ok?
• 6 hours before WI -- This is about the same time "normal" people are eating lunch. I tend to use this time to amass food for after the WI, or use my pity factor to get some quick cash. If you've been spitting, you've probably run out of saliva. If you haven't been, start using gum or hard candy to induce salivation. If you're all out, you might want to run.
• 3 hours before -- School's out, or you don't have class. Now we get down to work: depending on how far away you are, either start running or sleep.
• 2 hours before -- Some sort of pre-WI practice, usually for those not needing to lose weight to pound on those that do. Coaches like to set up 3-on-1 round-robins to get the heavies to work harder.
• 1 hour before --The waiting. If your coaches and teammates and yourself have done your/their jobs, you should be on or under weight. You just have to wait for it to be time to weigh in.
• After WI -- Get water. Right away. You need to start getting your body ready for the physical and mental beating that wrestling wreaks upon you, so get hydrated and eat the best possible food you can. And look out for the next weigh in. When you're clear and copius, you're hydrated.

Of course, cutting weight cannot compete at all for being easily on weight. By my senior year in high school, I could lose 10lbs in practice no problem, just from hard work. In fact, my typical yo-yo weight went between 142lbs and 134lbs, day in and day out.

note: this information is from my experience in high school amateur wrestling in the state of Michigan. Your milage may vary, and don't get yourself killed, because I won't take responsibility for it.

first off, most wrestlers cut weight to a cetain degree and it is common to be one or two pounds overweight- you can lose that simply by not eating or drinking- but on the other hand, there are times when one is more overweight and more drastic measures must be used. Here is "my way" which allowed me to cut between six and eight pounds to make weight every week.

The basics:

• Get a haircut: hair weighs something, getting rid of it can't hurt you, besides which it is easier to wrestle if you don't have to worry about getting your hair pulled or caught in your eyes.
• What to wear: at practice, wear a sweatsuit or windsuit at all times, as it will keep you warm, which is required in order to sweat.
• Run-run for half an hour every day before practice.
• Practice- in practice, keep wearing your sweats and try not to drink water.

For food, try to count calories- pickles are good because they are tasty and low in calories. I generally ate a normal breakfast, and then a very small lunch and dinner. Diet is something that you really have to experiment with- the general principle is to use more calories than you eat, but not in an egregious manner- if you starve yourself completely, you will not be any good to wrestle.

The day before a weigh-in, stop drinking water. At this point you may or may not be able to make weight. If you still need to cut, you can resort to more drastic measures. These are the main ones that I have seen/done :

• Ride an exercise bike: for however long it takes to sweat out enough water to make weight. (Set an upper limit of 1 hour 15 minutes)
• Find a hot room (example: a bathroom with the shower turned on) and do jumping jacks (or skip rope)
• don't shower-water gets absorbed into your skin if you do.
• spit- people actually do this, again it is just getting water out of your system.

(brought to you by the E2 procrastination project)