So here you are, just one day away from the big event. You’ve planned well, trained hard and now you just have that last little hurdle before you compete: the weigh in. I’m not actually going to do a post on weight cutting, because most of mine have been relatively easy and I don’t know the nitty gritty science behind a lot of it. I’ve never done anything more extreme than five kilograms, partly because I’ve always managed to stay within that range and partly because I won’t risk my health (or indeed, my life) cutting anything more.
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With that said, I’ll give you a brief insight into why my cuts have always been easy. I’ve never needed to sauna, salt bath, IV bag, or any of the more extreme solutions to get the weight off. The biggest cut I ever did was 5kg, and that was only once. Most of the time, I was actually much closer — usually only 2–3kg off. To lose that weight is easy, it’s just a matter of cutting out carbs 5 days leading up to the weigh in, which causes you to dump a bunch of water naturally. I usually go light on the water in the 3 days before weigh in and adjust as needed depending on how dark my pee is. I know from experience that I can expect to lose at least 800g overnight while sleeping, so I factor that in too. Depending on how much weight i’m still holding the day before, I may eat a few tubs of yoghurt over the course of the day (quick digesting) or go without completely.
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The thing about weight cutting is, if you play it smart, it doesn’t have to be a horrible experience. And the issue is, the more you cut the more dangerous it gets. People have died from pushing it too far. My advice is to get your weight down to a manageable level and keep it there, or put more weight on and go up a weight class.
Instead of focusing on cutting weight, what I’m going to talk about here is what to do on the day of weigh in, so you don’t screw up and ruin the big day. If it’s a 24 hour weigh in, you’ve got a long period to put a lot of food and fluid in, and completely ruin your digestion and energy levels the next day as a result. If it’s a night before weigh in — as we usually did at judo, you have a much shorter window of eating, so you…
