Unless you’re a world class competitor, cutting weight for a BJJ comp is a terrible idea.
Now, there’s a difference between eating better, cutting out alcohol and a couple of lifestyle changes and cutting weight. If you’ve got 2 or 3 Kilos to lose and you’re a good few weeks away from your competition, then by all means, clean up your diet, up your training intensity and shed a few pounds to get to your healthy, natural weight.
However, if you’ve just seen the headlines about Deiveson Figueiredo weighing in at 125lbs but walking into the UFC cage (24hrs later) at 145lbs and think it’s a good idea, then slow your roll sunshine. Cutting weight through dehydration and water loading is dangerous, unhealthy and a bad idea, especially if you’re john from marketing and you train BJJ 3 times a week because you listened to Joe Rogan talk about it once.
If you’re thinking about competing but you’re not sure about what weight to go in at, let me suggest the following:
- Weigh yourself on a morning, after you’ve been to the loo but before breakfast, see what you come in at.
- Think about what possible lifestyle changes you can realistically make and how they might impact your diet. If you already eat well, exercise a lot and are in pretty good shape, enter the competition at whatever weight you fall into now and keep up the good work.
- If you eat a fair bit of rubbish food (think heavy carbs, pizza, chips, any fast food) and drink lots of sugary drinks, or sink 7 or 8 pints at the weekend, try cutting them out for a week. Still make sure you’re hitting whatever nutritional needs you may have, carbs, protein etc, make sure it’s realistic, weigh yourself before your test week, then after, see how you feel, what you weigh, and ask yourself if you can keep it up.
- Measure that against a realistic weight class at whichever comp you’re looking at, and get yourself signed up.
IF you end up a week out from your comp and panicking your weights too high, email the organisers! Usually a week out is the cut off and you can adjust your weight class entry accordingly, but always check with the BJJ comp organisers. Then enjoy your pizza.