Making Weight & Everything Else Making weight and everything else | Page 28

With a good weight management regime, athletes should be close to their
target weight one week before the competition. At this point, they can no
longer rely on fat loss or muscle gain, but can temporarily manipulate their
weight in other ways.
Research has failed to show ways to gain weight in a short period of time,
in a way that would be beneficial to performance. However, one way to
slightly increase weight would be by filling glycogen stores to the maximum.
This can be done by ingesting extra carbohydrates on a regular basis
throughout the days preceding the event. This will probably not increase
body weight significantly, but it will bring lighter athletes to the competition
more physically prepared.
From here on, this chapter will focus in weight cutting.
Be aware that “losing
weight” and “cutting weight”
are not the same: Weight
cutting (or “rapid weight
loss”) is a temporary
manipulation of weight right
before a weigh-in, and an
athlete will aim to gain this
weight back as fast as
possible after his weight is
checked. Weight loss is a
long term or permanent
reduction of body weight.
Most athletes do not face the problem of
weighing too little. On the contrary, a large-
scale study in Brazil, involving 822 judo
athletes at all levels were asked about their
weight management regimes before a
competition. Of those questioned, 82%
reported being engaged in regular weight
loss practices. Most of these athletes cut 2-
5% of their body weight; 40% cut 5-10%
and a few lost even more than that [40] . A
smaller study of 63 male college wrestlers
found that 89% were cutting weight. A
subsequent more thorough research, which
questioned over 700 college wrestlers, found
that 84% of them were cutting weight [41] .