Cutting Weight

Why Cut weight?

We wrestlers cut weight for many reasons. One is that a wrestler was unable to make the team at his natural weight. Second is body size. As I wrestled in college I found that I was in between weights. I was to small naturally to wrestle my body weight wich was 150. The best weight class would have been 134. But the other wrestlers were cutting down from about 165 or so. My natural body size forced me to wrestle 126. Thirdly and importantly, cutting weight makes you mentally stronger and hungry to win. Basically it makes you meaner when you step on the mat. Only those who have wrestled will understand. All this stuff about being weak is simply not true. Once you step on that scale and make weight the weight of the world is lifted off your back. And then you eat. Man what a feeling.

We could go to the college way of cutting. Start about 5 lbs over scratch and each mounth drop a couple of lbs. So by regionals and state every body is at scratch. Only two times will a wrestler make scratch. You can still give the one lbs allowance on two day meets. This will allow a wrestler to be in peek condition by the time scratch is made. Therefore making weight will be less difficult.

I would like to see weighins be an hour before duals. This helps the kids maintain weight for the weekend. Yes it does make kids suffer during the day. I did it and kept my grades. Yes it was very difficult and a strugle. But the lessons I learned about persiverance and dedication and prevailing in a difficult situation helped me during college and those difficult times that lied a head. Wrestleres are a differnt breed of people we do things that no other human would think about. That is why the majority of us are sucsessful after school.

Dave Hull
Campus High School
dhull@usd261.com

one reason some kids get into losing weight, is to make the team. We have had kids who were pretty good but had to cut weight to make varsity.

I would have to disagree with weight cutting. I know that it is part of the sport, but for only some people. And is not all that necessary in highschool. There is huge difference in cutting weight and being lean. Out of all of my years of wrestling I have had to lose weight. One year when I was a sophomore, I (CUT) close to 20 some pounds. I was good that year. Started off being 20 and before my first loss. As the season went on I got weaker and weaker. I would sleap through classes, and became uncontrollably cranky. Then came practice, I only went to keep my weight down. The reason I cut so much weight was because I did not think I could qualify at the next weight class. The point I am making is that kids are way to concerned about running from competition to be better. When really all the need to is quit being lazy and start runing, and lifting. Lifting is the most important factor. Instead of getting weaker and burned out through the season, why not get stronger by growing into a weight class. Not always an option though, just a thought.

When you talk about a good wrestler, generally you talk about his technique, strength, speed and heart; those are all parts of the sport. But you never hear anyone talk about a good wrestler in respect to how much weight he cuts.

Like tattoos in boot camp, we have kept weight-cutting around like it's some kind of rite of passage in this sport. We have convinced kids that the only way to be a success in this sport is to cut weight. When we do this, we do a disservice to the kids and to the sport.

This sport is about technique and skill; it is not an anorexia festival. We treat weight control as if it were sacred, when it many ways it hurts the sport. We've all (if we're honest) lost kids - potentially good wrestlers - because of horror stories about weight cutting. That only hurts us.

We have to stop telling kids that cutting a lot of weight is O.K. Sure, we did it when we were kids, but also did a lot of other stupid things when we were kids that we'd probably prefer our wrestlers didn't do.

Let's keep the sport what it's supposed to be; a testement to skill and strength and not a testement to the nutritional value of rice cakes and ice cubes.

What a GREAT way to present this. I agree with you completely. Current coaches and wrestlers need to take the first step in making this a sport about skill and technique and not weight cutting.