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I lived & breathed wrestling in high school.....ended up doing fairly decent (top 8 at 171 lbs in PA....the mecca of high school wrestling) and even briefly extended my career in college until my engineering major caught up to me. After college, I coached for 3 years before things got too hectic.
Most wrestlers (and their coaches) aren't exactly known for smart diet techniques. Usually, most guys starve themselves to make weight, drop a bunch of water weight a few days leading up to the match, end up gorging themselves after a weigh-in because they're famished, and repeat the process before next match. It's stupidity. I did it.....I didn't know any better.
I remember weighing 183 lbs before a friday afternoon practice one day. Saturday we had a big match scheduled, and weigh-ins were around 9am. There was supposedly a "stud" at 171 lbs, so my coach asked me if there would be anyway possible of making 171 lbs by the next morning. So, I threw on the garbage bags (which is now illegal) and sweats, dropped 7-8 lbs during practice, went home and ran, ate a few ice cubes for supper, got up in the morning and ran again, and made weight. The problem was that the stud was up at 189 lbs....oops. Yeah, I wrestled him ....I dropped 12 lbs overnight.....and beat him with a takedown with 1 second to go. I literally almost collapsed coming off the mat.
Now, my younger brother coaches the local high school team. He's asked me to try and come up with some general guidelines in regards to diet and hopefully get these kids on the right track when it comes to nutrition. (Yes, I know, good luck with that.) I'm thinking that a diet approach that incorporates some type of periodic refeed is needed since wrestlers exert a TON of energy at practice, and therefore are extremely depleted quite often. It's tough though, since the schedule varies so much.
Common sense tells you that a wrestler should start the season already near his goal weight. Fat loss takes time, so trying to scramble and drop a bunch of weight in the 2 weeks of preseason isn't going to get you anything except dehydration. So, this part is a given. (This advice will mainly be geared to a dedicated individual who already has done the leg work during the summer. If you show up fat to start the season, there's not much that can be done quickly.)
However, the schedule is all over the place. Sometimes there's 2-3 matches through the week, sometimes there are tournaments on the weekends that last 1-2 days (must make weight on both days), etc. So you can see why trying to lay out a diet plan would be difficult. The diet plan must be flexible for this reason.
I'm a big fan of Skiploading. However, I'm not sure something like this would be possible with this type of schedule. I guess as long as you have enough time to baseline again (3-4 days) you'd be fine, but that's not always possible......and it may remain like that for a few weeks, making it hard to get a proper refeed fit in somewhere.
Perhaps a smaller, more traditional (and boring), and maybe more frequent (2 per week) refeed would be more appropriate for something like this?
For you diet gurus out there......what's your thoughts on something like this? Large weight fluccuations are going to be hard to deal with, so keeping the refeed smaller and more frequent may result in a more stable bodyweight. (But, in my opinion, inferior refeed results.)
It's a tough one.
Most wrestlers (and their coaches) aren't exactly known for smart diet techniques. Usually, most guys starve themselves to make weight, drop a bunch of water weight a few days leading up to the match, end up gorging themselves after a weigh-in because they're famished, and repeat the process before next match. It's stupidity. I did it.....I didn't know any better.
I remember weighing 183 lbs before a friday afternoon practice one day. Saturday we had a big match scheduled, and weigh-ins were around 9am. There was supposedly a "stud" at 171 lbs, so my coach asked me if there would be anyway possible of making 171 lbs by the next morning. So, I threw on the garbage bags (which is now illegal) and sweats, dropped 7-8 lbs during practice, went home and ran, ate a few ice cubes for supper, got up in the morning and ran again, and made weight. The problem was that the stud was up at 189 lbs....oops. Yeah, I wrestled him ....I dropped 12 lbs overnight.....and beat him with a takedown with 1 second to go. I literally almost collapsed coming off the mat.
Now, my younger brother coaches the local high school team. He's asked me to try and come up with some general guidelines in regards to diet and hopefully get these kids on the right track when it comes to nutrition. (Yes, I know, good luck with that.) I'm thinking that a diet approach that incorporates some type of periodic refeed is needed since wrestlers exert a TON of energy at practice, and therefore are extremely depleted quite often. It's tough though, since the schedule varies so much.
Common sense tells you that a wrestler should start the season already near his goal weight. Fat loss takes time, so trying to scramble and drop a bunch of weight in the 2 weeks of preseason isn't going to get you anything except dehydration. So, this part is a given. (This advice will mainly be geared to a dedicated individual who already has done the leg work during the summer. If you show up fat to start the season, there's not much that can be done quickly.)
However, the schedule is all over the place. Sometimes there's 2-3 matches through the week, sometimes there are tournaments on the weekends that last 1-2 days (must make weight on both days), etc. So you can see why trying to lay out a diet plan would be difficult. The diet plan must be flexible for this reason.
I'm a big fan of Skiploading. However, I'm not sure something like this would be possible with this type of schedule. I guess as long as you have enough time to baseline again (3-4 days) you'd be fine, but that's not always possible......and it may remain like that for a few weeks, making it hard to get a proper refeed fit in somewhere.
Perhaps a smaller, more traditional (and boring), and maybe more frequent (2 per week) refeed would be more appropriate for something like this?
For you diet gurus out there......what's your thoughts on something like this? Large weight fluccuations are going to be hard to deal with, so keeping the refeed smaller and more frequent may result in a more stable bodyweight. (But, in my opinion, inferior refeed results.)
It's a tough one.
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