Wrestlers Making Weight the Right Way

Young wrestlers often feels lots of pressure to fall within a certain weight class. To lose weight, they typically eat less and avoid water. Sometimes they eat nothing but lettuce, rice cakes and other low-calorie foods. To gain a few pounds, they’ll stuff their faces. Yet, despite the wild strategies of young wrestlers to manipulate their bodies, these practices can be quite unhealthy and can lead to significant ramifications for the future. Coaches should advise wrestlers who need to adjust their weight to do so in a smart and safe manner.

Cutting weight with intelligence

Rob Majcher, coach of the wrestling team at Yale High School in Michigan, understands the importance of monitoring in-season weight, according to The Times Herald. Even though the state’s high school athletic association has established weight-management standards, Majcher goes beyond the guidelines by recording the weight of all wrestlers at every practice. He’s also thankful to have Tom Pemberton, a local elementary school teacher, serve as a nutrition liaison.

Austin Thompson, a senior wrestler at Marysville High School, knew that he couldn’t eat a whole pie at Thanksgiving this year, but he also didn’t starve himself.

“Cutting weight the right way is a big part of how you’re going to perform,” he told the publication. “If you’re drained and another person’s not, they’re going to perform better than you. That’s a big deciding factor when you’re at the state meet, because everybody’s good.”

Talking about nutrition

Indiana High School wrestling coach Tony Donatelli compares the human body to a car, according to the Indiana Gazette.

“Not feeding and hydrating it properly is like not servicing a car,” he told the Gazette. “It’s just not going to go, and even if it does, it’s not going to run up to its full potential.”

This explains why Donatelli had his young wrestlers sit down with Nicole Dann-Payne, sports nutrition services coordinator at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, to talk about smart dietary strategies. Dann-Payne gave advice on feeding and hydrating before a match, recovery tactics and how a player can maintain a certain weight throughout the course of a season.

A simple discussion is often the best way to help wrestlers avoid unhealthy dietary habits. Coaches can use a sports team website to teach their young athletes about proper techniques. By doing so, a player might be able to make weight and have some leftover Thanksgiving pie. Now that’s compromise.