[QUOTE=Hampshire]
“Making weight” always struck me as the dumbest thing about high school wrestling. Wayyyy too much focus on something that is really absurd to do.
Why not eat extremely healthy, workout hard, stay hydrated, etc. and when it’s time to wrestle you’ll be in the best shape and feel great to wrestle no matter what weight class you’re in.
Don’t eat, don’t drink, feel fatigued, focus on losing weight for what? Just so you can wrestle someone a few pounds lighter?? So stupid.
Why not man up and challenge yourself a bit? If your that good then fight someone a few pounds bigger than yourself.
[/QUOTE]
That’s not really how wrestling works. The weight classes have fairly large differences compared to how much someone weighs. In HS, weighing 130 is a huge advantage over weighing 125. At the larger end of the scale, the classes are (from memory, unless they’ve changed) 160, 171, 189, 215, 285.
So let’s say you come into a season, as I did once, weighing 184. I was relatively fat (relative to wrestlers) coming from off-season, and already underweight for the 189 class that I was in. At that weight, 13 lbs isn’t a huge amount, but it still takes some time to lose. I don’t remember how long I had to lose it, but just from doing the practices alone I dropped probably 5 lbs in not too long. Through changing eating habits (not starving myself, but eating more healthy foods) I was probably able to lose another 3 or so lbs. So now I weigh about 175ish. This is what I weigh during the week. We have a match every Wed and Sat.
Those last few pounds can be lost through sweat. Every practice (and yes we had water breaks, not having them is stupid and dangerous) I would lose 4-6 lbs. Of course it was just water weight, but in 2 hours I would be 5 lbs lighter than I had been previously. Even though our matches were sometimes in the afternoon, we would get up and weigh in at 7. I had to weigh 171 at 7, and then by the time the match rolled around at 3, you’re given a 3 lb allowance, so 174.
So Tuesday and Friday nights, I would have to keep the water weight off that I had lost from 4-6PM until 7AM the next morning. I usually had an orange and an 8 oz glass of water for dinner.
But most of the time, I and everyone on my team ate well (not hard-- when you eat crap you feel like crap. I was never “tempted” by sweets or fried crap during the season) and lost weight well. I agree with that part of your post. What you don’t understand is that making that next weight class down isn’t a “few pounds” and it isn’t a case of “manning up” for a “challenge.” Wrestling is one of the toughest sports there is, and wrestling down at the next weight class, if you can make it safely and correctly, is simply where you’re supposed to be. Even though it might look like a huge weight loss to an outsider, it’s just how the game works. At 171, I was wrestling guys who were like me, probably cut down from 180-190 lbs, and are swinging 5 lbs of water weight. By the time we get to the ring, we both weigh about 175. If I were to wrestle 189, I’d be up against someone who probably weighs 195.
When I was in college, there were failsafes being put into place to insure that people didn’t cut too much weight. You passed a hydration test, then had a body fat percentage done, and then you weren’t allowed to wrestle at lower than a minimum body fat percent, which gave you a minimum weight. But even there, it seems like a huge amount. I weighed in at maybe 180, and my minimum weight was 164 or something like that. It’s just how the sport works.
The bad parts come from when you don’t lose weight safely, and rather than water weight you’re swinging bile weight by purging just before weigh-in. No one on my team did that, and it’s not really all that smart, but surely you can see why it’s important to be down at the next weight class.
ETA: Oh, and if you’re sweating up on that bike at 6:50, trying to get that last .2 lbs off, you better believe the jock strap is coming off. No one was “forcing” anyone.