Weight Cutting

[slewguy]

Should youth wrestles cut weight?

[woody53]

This is a loaded question. By using the word "Cut", it makes it a negative. Should a wrestler"Manage their Weight"? Yes. That is called "Discipline".

[ramjet]

The question is self incriminating to the wrestling community and actually adds to the perception of some folks that wrestlers are unhealthy in thier choices....

[Handles II]

Some wrestlers and some parents are unhealthy in their choices. It's a legit question, but wording needs to be clarified.

[bigoil]

This is a loaded question. By using the word "Cut", it makes it a negative. Should a wrestler"Manage their Weight"? Yes. That is called "Discipline".

I see it as clear.

Youth = before HS
Cut = lose weight from your existing weight.

Depending on the age of the child, most kids grow 5-10# per year and if you maintain weight for a four month season, you are losing weight already because you'd have expected to gain 1.66 to 3.33 # in growth from December to the end of March. If you qualify for nationals, now you maintain that weight for a couple more months depending on the organization.

[littleguy301]

In youth,,,simply watching what you eat is good enough. Meaning cut out the chips, po, ice cream, unhealthy snacks and subsitute a healthy choice of water, fruits and veggies. I have found that kids by just following this simple plan for a week or 2 will lose more weight than they planned.

High School,,,,,I prefer to say weigh management. Meaning the same thing as above but for a season of your sport. With the combo of some good hard work outs and good healthy choices at the dinner table, I have found out that most wrestlers will be able to maintain their weight at the weight class they want and are still able to eat.

Skipping meals especially in the youth or the first year or two of high school is not needed. You need your proper fuel to be able to preform and grow as a young athlete.

[npope]

From one who cut (and cut hard), I can say that that aspect of the sport is absolutely unsavory and needs significant oversight to ensure that it isn't happening. It is the single biggest black eye for the sport. That said, "weight management" can have a variety of different meanings might not be bad at all, depending on what the kid is actually doing.

So, that's the rub, every kid/situation is different - no one policy fits all situations. All I can say is that rapid and significant weight loss, the self-denial of even modest food intake, dehydration for days at a time, etc., are simply evil and need to be eradicated in the sport.

[DocWrestling]

I don't even like "weight management" at the youth level.  It may not be completely healthy but mentally it has a huge impact on wrestlers.
1) It teaches youth wrestlers automatically that the lighter you weigh the better you are.  This will just lead to more "weight cutting" as they get older
2) "Weight management" involves sacrifice and discipline that is really not needed at a youth level and is different from all other sports.  It makes the sport less fun possibly leading to a wrestler stopping the sport and if that wrestler and parent shares what they are doing with other kids and parents, it is less likely that they will join our sport.
3) Everything should be about wrestling and having fun.  Even when "managing" a focus becomes on what the wrestler weighs.  This is not fun for the wrestler or the parents.   A youth wrestler should never have to worry about what he weighs as the parents should pick a weight class that makes that possible
4) Why do we "manage" weight?  Is it to improve success?  Then that is another fault in what the focus of a youth wrestlers is.  Focus should be on simply learning and getting better and not on doing something that might help them win one match or tourney that really means nothing in their journey to becoming a high school wrestler.

Our youth should always be focused on growing and getting stronger while having lots of FUN!  It is not a health thing with "weight management" by simply saying you are eating better.   Then why not do that year round.  If you change things only during wrestling season that it is attached to wrestling in the wrestlers mind as well as his friends and that hurts wrestling in the long term

Just my thoughts.  Think about what it does mentally even more than physcially

[bigoil]

I would also add the majority of youth wrestlers weighing 70-100# don't exactly have much weight to manage, especially once they are in 6th grade. They are burning all their calories up each day.

[littleguy301]

I don't even like "weight management" at the youth level.  It may not be completely healthy but mentally it has a huge impact on wrestlers.
1) It teaches youth wrestlers automatically that the lighter you weigh the better you are.  This will just lead to more "weight cutting" as they get older
2) "Weight management" involves sacrifice and discipline that is really not needed at a youth level and is different from all other sports.  It makes the sport less fun possibly leading to a wrestler stopping the sport and if that wrestler and parent shares what they are doing with other kids and parents, it is less likely that they will join our sport.
3) Everything should be about wrestling and having fun.  Even when "managing" a focus becomes on what the wrestler weighs.  This is not fun for the wrestler or the parents.   A youth wrestler should never have to worry about what he weighs as the parents should pick a weight class that makes that possible
4) Why do we "manage" weight?  Is it to improve success?  Then that is another fault in what the focus of a youth wrestlers is.  Focus should be on simply learning and getting better and not on doing something that might help them win one match or tourney that really means nothing in their journey to becoming a high school wrestler.

Our youth should always be focused on growing and getting stronger while having lots of FUN!  It is not a health thing with "weight management" by simply saying you are eating better.   Then why not do that year round.  If you change things only during wrestling season that it is attached to wrestling in the wrestlers mind as well as his friends and that hurts wrestling in the long term

Just my thoughts.  Think about what it does mentally even more than physcially

I talk to my youth kids (middle school) about eating healthy choices. Cutting down the junk food, chips, pop, candy and so on. While I do not preach to fully elimate those choices, I stress look to other forms of food to eat.

If there goal is to wrestle a certain weight come regional time, I would like them to tell me that goal in January and then you have 2 months to work for it. A couple of pounds no big deal and usually if those said wrestlers eat better choices and along with good hard practices they reach that goal with in those 2 months with out really even noticing the change in anything.

I call that weight management.

I agree with bigoil about most kids that in that weight range of 70 to 100 pounds usually dont have much to lose and just stress to eat healthy. Heck I had a couple of kids that gained weight during those times eating better choices.

Should I say eating healthy choices is better than weight management?

Diets are a strange thing to say the least. I think if we educate kids/wrestlers about eating better choices I believe "cutting" would be an outdated term.

I say this because for the most part I dont see many high school age wrestlers making proper diet choices. Their diets usually have pop, candy, high fat food and such in it. Start changing some of the eating patterns and you notice those said wrestlers start to lose some weight without losing muscle and endurance.

Just my 2 cents.

[DocWrestling]

Teaching kids to eat healthy to improve performance is awesome but the emphasis should be that they are doing it year round.  Most kids should gain weight and muscle mass when eating healthy, meaning a lot of calories for all the work they are doing but calories that provide a lot of fuel for the body.  Coaches should want the kids to get bigger and stronger.

The problem is that middle school is when the sport loses a lot of kids for a ton of reasons but one obvious one is that they don't need to eat healthy in other sports or by not doing anything.

Personally I teach healthy habits to improve performance in every sport I coach which includes proper nutrition, proper sleep, hydration, and learning to practice and train with maximizing time.  Does no good to not sleep and have a protein shake to feel goo about yourself and then eat at McDonalds and drink sodas or energy drinks.

My main problem is that all this gets associated wrestling as it is the only youth sport that may discuss it and often it is only at certain times of the year like around regionals.

Maybe we should have the same talk about eating healthy but not mention weight.  If they happen to lose weight then fine but hopefully most gain weight.  No youth wrestler should really be lighter at the end of the year than the beginning unless they came in quite overweight

[Ivan Stankowski]

Its just like Tball where you start the young ones batting off a T. Teach them how to cut weight right away, teach them the fundamentals of weight cutting when there 6 years old, let them know that if they want to be any good at this sport they have to cut weight and if there really serious about the sport they should practice weight management all year around. No sense in waiting. It is all about fundamentals!!

[aarons23]

Teaching kids to eat healthy to improve performance is awesome but the emphasis should be that they are doing it year round.  Most kids should gain weight and muscle mass when eating healthy, meaning a lot of calories for all the work they are doing but calories that provide a lot of fuel for the body.  Coaches should want the kids to get bigger and stronger.

The problem is that middle school is when the sport loses a lot of kids for a ton of reasons but one obvious one is that they don't need to eat healthy in other sports or by not doing anything.

Personally I teach healthy habits to improve performance in every sport I coach which includes proper nutrition, proper sleep, hydration, and learning to practice and train with maximizing time.  Does no good to not sleep and have a protein shake to feel goo about yourself and then eat at McDonalds and drink sodas or energy drinks.

My main problem is that all this gets associated wrestling as it is the only youth sport that may discuss it and often it is only at certain times of the year like around regionals.

Maybe we should have the same talk about eating healthy but not mention weight.  If they happen to lose weight then fine but hopefully most gain weight.  No youth wrestler should really be lighter at the end of the year than the beginning unless they came in quite overweight

My daughter competes in both Basketball and track...almost year around.  Her coaches at the high school level as well as AAU level teach these same nutritional practices...its not just wrestling....but wrestling has weight classes thus wrestlers will always be working to make one weight or another.  The problem I see is as a community we don't want to admit that this is a part of our sport.  We want to kick it under the carpet and pretend it doesn't happen on our team. It does!!!!  It doesn't matter if we cut weight classes add weight classes or stay the same...it will happen! A better idea would be to face it head on and teach good weight management....not ignore it and let wrestlers make weight any way they want.  Some coaches (and I am sure there are some that do) need to step up and not allow this drastic cutting that goes on during the season.  I have to laugh when after state wrestlers go wrestle at nationals and are wrestling two weight or even three weight classes up from their state weight...and then someone says how that wrestler is wrestling up weight classes....no he is not he weighed in at the same weight everyone else did at that weight class...he was cutting for state and chose not to cut for nationals.  Your not going to eliminate cutting but we sure can do a better job of educating proper weight management.

[Mack]

I wonder how many parents who have kids beyond the youth level see the value of "cutting weight".  Or, if a lot of those parents are like me, and think any activity unrelated to building a child's enthusiasm, skills and interest for the sport of wrestling, is wasted effort.

[Jimmy]

Lg must you kick me when I'm down? Cut out ice cream?  OUCH