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