The Wonderful World of Making Weight for Combat Sports

Reporter: “I am here with the Featherweight MMA Champion of Dream and 5 time Brazilian Jiu Jitsu champion Bibiano Fernandes. So Bibiano, 1st question, what is the hardest part of fighting in mixed martial arts?”

Bibiano: “Making weight.”

Ask any professional or amateur combative athlete and they will tell you the hardest part of competition is making weight. Anyone can drag their sorry ass to the gym and throw some punches at the bag or roll around on the ground practicing submissions. It certainly doesn’t take too many brain cells, or too few for that matter, to step into the ring with someone and punch them in the face, or again, get punched in the face, but making weight, now that’s mental strength. The dreaded weight cut prior to competition is probably more spoken about between teammates than the actual competition. Lately, with young athletes, cutting weight has become “cool”. This is 100% the WRONG thought process about cutting weight. It is not cool, it is a horrible process that if not done correctly can have very detrimental effects on the human body. In this article I will go through what is meant by making weight and some stories about the process and its effects.

Here's Anthony Johnson during a weigh in, making weight and looking ripped.

A Little History

Weight classes were created in order to make competition fairer. Wrestling, which has been an Olympic sport almost since the beginning is a great sport to use to explain weight classes, and, well, I am a wrestler. You have probably heard someone say something along the lines of: “Oh man! Last weekend my 160 lbs wrestler buddy beat up this 260 lbs guy downtown; it was CRAZY!” First off, stop being a tool talking about fighting at the bar, no one cares; however, this brings up a good point: if a 160 lbs guy can beat up a 260 lbs guy then why do weight classes exist? Simple, the 260 lbs guy in this story was either far too inebriated to beat up a guy almost half his size or more than likely has had no training in combat sports. Thus the difference was skill in combat. Now if you put the Olympic gold medalist wrestler from the 72 kg division against the Olympic gold medalist from the 120 kg division, sorry to say, but I am putting my money on the big man. Their skills are probably equal but now the size makes all the difference. Hence the implementation of weight classes allows for everyone to be able to compete, not just the genetic freaks such as Brock Lesner.

...and here's Anthony Johnson 24 hours later.

How Making Weight Works

“Making weight” is a term thrown around combative sport gyms all the time. The majority of athletes go on very intense diets and dehydrate themselves prior to weigh-ins in order to get in the lowest weight class possible. The idea being that after rehydration and a high carbohydrate intake the athlete will be the bigger stronger competitor in the division. When the athlete steps on the scale varies depending on the sport. Some sport’s weigh-ins occur 24 hours in advance while others are directly before competition. Obviously having a weigh in 24 hours prior to competition allows athletes to recover from losing a large amount of weight in a short period of time, so why have same day weigh-ins? Same day weigh-ins exist to prevent people from losing an unhealthy amount of weight in a short period of time due the fact recovery from a drastic, and possibly detrimental weight cut could not take place in a few minutes prior to competition. Now you might be asking, if it is about health and safety then why not have same day weigh-ins for all sports? Well, the fact is, it is not all about health, it is about money, but that’s a whole other article.

What happens if an athlete fails to make weight? Failing to make weight can either end in the inability to compete or in professional sports a deduction of pay given to your opponent. So basically, if an athlete bites off more than he/she can chew with what weight they wish to compete at, they can end up not even getting to compete (months of training wasted) or end up in financial trouble, which, in all honestly, most combat athletes are already in. Thus the importance of making weight is high. Once weigh-ins are complete the fighters are free to do as they please until their competition.

I am sure you are now really curious about how these athletes lose such large amounts of weight in such a short time?  You'll have to wait until Part II to learn how.

Thanks to my buddy Dustin for putting this together.  Remember, cutting weight is a specific task of fighters and wrestlers.  Please consult with your doctor or a professional if attempting to cut weight for your sport.  Cutting weight is not meant for the general population and we are not supporting the idea of cutting weight for non-wrestlers and non-fighters - this article was just meant to introduce you to the world of weight cutting.

Dustin Silvey, M.Sc Kinesiology Candidate, B.Sc Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, CSCS

Dustin Silvey has been involved in combat sports and fitness for over 20 years. As a child he competed in Kung fu and Kickboxing, later competing in MMA and is currently a prominent member of the Memorial University of Newfoundland Sea-Hawks wrestling team. Dustin is completing his masters in exercise physiology at Memorial University.

Thanks for reading,

-JK