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 Try these 10-steps to safely reduce your weight before your next fight.
1. Run before breakfast
Four to six-weeks before the fight, begin getting up and running slowly for 30–60 minutes BEFORE eating your breakfast at least three times a week.
Just have a glass of water, then get out there! Having consumed all the food in your stomach overnight, your body will have to primarily target stored fat reserves. Keep the running slow (60–70% of max heart rate), or muscle will be used for fuel instead of mainly fat. To preserve muscle mass, have a protein meal/drink (breakfast) within 30-mins of finishing your run.
2. Limit your intake of fatty foods
1-gram of fat contains 9-calories, whereas 1-gram of carbohydrate or protein contains just 4-calories. Watching the fat in your food will cut a lot of calories from your diet with little effort. Also bear in mind that 1-gram of alcohol is 7-calories, so watch that as well.
3. Increase your water intake
Water will help your body metabolise fat, and help suppress your appetite.
4.Reduce or cut out starchy food in the last week before the fight
By watching your intake of potatoes, rice, pasta, spaghetti and bread etc, you'll limit the amount of glycogen sitting in your stomach. And excessive glycogen makes you hold onto water—and water equals weight!
5. Monitor your body weight
Also in the final week before the fight, monitor your body weight before bed, first thing in the morning, and again after breakfast.
You'll typically lose 1 kg overnight through dehydration (water lost through sweat and moisture in your breath). If you can predict your weight in the morning, you know what weight you need to be before you go to bed! That way you can start getting your weight right the day before, rather than a crash in the morning!
6. Avoid a heavy breakfast on weigh-in day
On the day of the weight-in, don't eat a heavy breakfast in the morning and go easy on the drinks!
1-litre of water weighs 1 kg. So 300 ml of orange juice is going to put 0.3 kg on you instantly—just be careful, you should know where you are if you've been monitoring your body weight for a week.
7. A hot bath for rapid water loss
If you need to make a rapid adjustment, fully submerge yourself in a hot bath (as hot as you can bear)! You can easily lose 1-1/2 kg in sweat loss in just 15-minutes with this method, without any physical activity consuming your energy.
8. Don't under estimate the diuretic effect of nerves!
Pre-fight tension can help empty your bladder (and bowel) of surplus weight!
9. Once you get to the weigh-in, skip-off the remaining weight.
If you need to make further adjustments, make sure you've brought your sweat suit, woolly-hat and skipping rope!
10. Don't plan to cut more than 2% of your body weight through dehydration!
Losing just 2% of your body-weight through dehydration will reduce your performance by at least 10%. This performance loss is both physical and mental. Your concentration, decision-making and judgement will be impaired and your aerobic performance, speed and strength will depreciate significantly as you dehydrate. Any advantages you had thought you'd get by drying-out quickly disappear
But of greater consequence to fighters, dehydration also drastically increases the likelihood of serious brain injury resulting from concussive blows to the head. This is due to a reduction in the protective fluid surrounding the brain. Keep it sensible and always fully hydrate again before your fight using isotonic drinks etc.
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