Making weight/Meet Week

[LiquidMercury]

Well I thought I'd detail my journey during the week of making weight for any who are interested. I'll be providing pictures etc. when I do my water drop and am expecting about 50 lbs or so of weight variance up and down. I'll be competing this weekend in the 11th Annual Georgia State Open Powerlifting Championships - 181 Raw this Saturday. Normally I wouldn't try to drop weight for a local meet but I figure it'll be a good prep for APC nationals and I'll also be going after the 181 Raw Squat, Deadlift, and Total records for the APC as well as my first elite total.

Current Weight: 199-200 - I'll get a photo up at some point today as I find pictures during big weight drops to be interesting/entertaining.

Weigh-In: 10 AM Friday

Plan:
Been having around 2.5-3 gallons of water a day with high sodium/potassium for the past few days. Been super low carb (under 30g/day) for the last 10 days.

Wed:
Restrict Salt at dinner, switch to distilled water

Thurs:
3 meals before 2 PM - mainly asparagus, celery, peanut butter, and protein shakes in coconut milk.
Each meal will also have: 500mg Dandelion Root, 400 mg Caffeine, 99mg Potassium. Water intake will be about 1/3rd what it normally is at this point - no more than 1/2 gallon.
2 PM-4PM = Nap time
4 PM = Start of dehydration process using 15 min sub-scalding baths and steam. Minimum of 2 baths per hour. Depending on how this goes through the night I may take another nap at some point.

Fri:
Weigh-in (I'll be so pretty all dried out! I'll also feel like death most likely).
10:00 AM - I make weight!

Immediately following making weight - 2 pedialytes + 2 nalgenes of distilled water + 2.75 tbsp of glycerol mixed in each one as well as 5g creatine monohydrate. Also supplement with 300mg ALA. Get this down asap.

I'll then proceed to have solid meals keeping carbs around 4:1 ratio and trying to pack in the food. Each meal will have 5g creatine monohydrate, 300mg ALA, 75mg Salt, and I'll take 200mg potassium (4 pills) throughout the day.

Target Weight: 210-215.

So that's the plan, if you've got suggestions feel free to add and I'll do some other documentation as I go along through the process.

[inkaddict]

Holy shit man, that's a serious cut you're planning. I'll be following, and wishing you luck. That'd be awesome to crush the 181's weighing 215 on meet day!

Most I've dropped was 18 through water maniupulation and sweating my ass off. Had a hard time performing, but your plan is much more thought out than mine was.

Good luck

[steel1970]

Well I thought I'd detail my journey during the week of making weight for any who are interested. I'll be providing pictures etc. when I do my water drop and am expecting about 50 lbs or so of weight variance up and down. I'll be competing this weekend in the 11th Annual Georgia State Open Powerlifting Championships - 181 Raw this Saturday. Normally I wouldn't try to drop weight for a local meet but I figure it'll be a good prep for APC nationals and I'll also be going after the 181 Raw Squat, Deadlift, and Total records for the APC as well as my first elite total.

Current Weight: 199-200 - I'll get a photo up at some point today as I find pictures during big weight drops to be interesting/entertaining.

Weigh-In: 10 AM Friday

Plan:
Been having around 2.5-3 gallons of water a day with high sodium/potassium for the past few days. Been super low carb (under 30g/day) for the last 10 days.

Wed:
Restrict Salt at dinner, switch to distilled water

Thurs:
3 meals before 2 PM - mainly asparagus, celery, peanut butter, and protein shakes in coconut milk.
Each meal will also have: 500mg Dandelion Root, 400 mg Caffeine, 99mg Potassium. Water intake will be about 1/3rd what it normally is at this point - no more than 1/2 gallon.
2 PM-4PM = Nap time
4 PM = Start of dehydration process using 15 min sub-scalding baths and steam. Minimum of 2 baths per hour. Depending on how this goes through the night I may take another nap at some point.

Fri:
Weigh-in (I'll be so pretty all dried out! I'll also feel like death most likely).
10:00 AM - I make weight!

Immediately following making weight - 2 pedialytes + 2 nalgenes of distilled water + 2.75 tbsp of glycerol mixed in each one as well as 5g creatine monohydrate. Also supplement with 300mg ALA. Get this down asap.

I'll then proceed to have solid meals keeping carbs around 4:1 ratio and trying to pack in the food. Each meal will have 5g creatine monohydrate, 300mg ALA, 75mg Salt, and I'll take 200mg potassium (4 pills) throughout the day.

Target Weight: 210-215.

So that's the plan, if you've got suggestions feel free to add and I'll do some other documentation as I go along through the process.

I suggest you read some of DCBeliever's journal....I think you may change your approach to such a drastic weight cut by reading about his recent experiences with it.....

[DCBliever]

I suggest you read some of DCBeliever's journal....I think you may change your approach to such a drastic weight cut by reading about his recent experiences with it.....

Is it a 24hr weigh in I take it? You may be able to pull it off. I just cut nearly 20lbs for my meet and I'll be honest it was quite miserable and could not get rehydrated fast enough. I suggest you continue to gradually lean down and as the meet you want to get to 181's for you'd have to cut 10lbs or so. You dehydrate over what? say 3-5 days, without the aid of some anti inflamatories and IV's I don't think you or anyone including myself can rehydrate in 24 hours no matter what supplements you use. Plus I think you are totally going to F your electrolytes further by sodium and potassium loading. If you don't have an experienced watchman you may be playing with fire. Take it from me, done 2 20lb weight cuts and my lifting suffered both times. I wish you luck if you decide to.

[LiquidMercury]

Yes it's a 24 hour weigh in - this will be the largest cut I've done but not by much. I've done a few 16 and 17 lb cuts as well setting PR's at the meet the following day.

I will say I have about 10 years of experience of making weight with 2 hour weigh ins for rowing and truly know my body quite well so this isn't just a wild fancy of mine.

I appreciate your thoughts DCB, and definitely have taken it into consideration.

To answer your question the dehydration process will be over a 20 hour period prior to weigh-ins. I do not believe in staying in prolonged dehydration as it has a ridiculous amount of negative effects in particular on the renal feedback loop and CNS.

Regarding leaning out to 10 lbs out - doing so would simply impair performance more than the water drop/rehydration in my opinion. I'm already sub 10% bodyfat with vascularity in quads/delts/triceps. Getting any leaner would impair my lifting, possibly changing leverages.

One thing that I've done this time that is a first for me is actually writing out the 30 hour window in 30 minute blocks of cutting water, then in turn rehydrating. I've found that I start to get mentally foggy around the -12 lb mark so I want something I can refer back to that is very precise instead of having to remember everything in a debilitated state. Furthermore, should something go terribly wrong there is a log of EXACTLY what I've done that may be beneficial to any emergency type personnel. I honestly believe this to be extremely important for anyone looking to do large drops and SPE manipulations.

If my lifts do indeed suffer, I'm lucky in that I have 8 weeks for me to come up with a solution for nationals.

While doing the cut I'll try to make notes about how I feel mentally and physically and then in turn do a meet write up to let you know my thoughts on how this affects everything.

[BryanB]

SPE manipulations

??

sodium, potassium, electrolyte??

[LiquidMercury]

??

sodium, potassium, electrolyte??

Yah - sorry for the abbreviations.

[BryanB]

So on Thursday you have 400mg caffeine with each meal? I would be pinging off the walls and I drink coffee all day long

[LiquidMercury]

400mg caffeine, 500mg dandelion root, and 99mg potassium at each meal - 3 meals for the day.

Sadly my stimulant tolerance is through the roof. I can easily drink an entire pot of coffee or have multiple energy drinks right before bed and fall asleep. For lent I gave up energy drinks in an effort to stem this and have been using benadryl 2 weeks on 2 weeks off to help clear out my Beta-2 receptors and hopefully take a bit of the stress off my adrenal glands.

[LiquidMercury]

I'm ahead of schedule. Weighing 185 with 7 hours to go before I leave for the meet. I wasn't even really pushing it in the steam/sauna and was taking more breaks than I spent time in there. Starting weight was 202. 4 lbs left. I'm going to take a nap until 3 AM or so and then get back in the bath. I'll put detailed notes up sometime tomorrow in terms of weight loss by the hour and how I felt throughout it and things I might change.

[LiquidMercury]

Made weight. Getting it all back on. I'll save my update for the weekdays - tired and need to go continue eating.

[LiquidMercury]

Meet Write-Up - APC Meet 4/7/2012
After cutting weight (21 lbs the day before) and making weight (82.1 kg in 82.5 kg class) I was back up in weight to about 205 for the meet. A bit tired but feeling good.

Squat:

Warmups went well dialed things in. Shut it down at 405.

Attempt 1: 451 or so (can’t recall kg equivalent). This was ridiculously easy, probably the best squat I had all day and it felt like it was 225. Just hit the groove smooth. Best type of opener you can have, one that feels light and boosts your confidence.

Attempt 2: 227.5 kg - 501 lbs. This is the attempt that pissed me off. I rushed the setup and didn’t have good balance. I started going down with it and just decided to shut it down and come back up because my balance wasn’t right. I basically wasted an attempt and had to retake it in the 3rd instead of going for a new PR and big lbs.

Attempt 3: 227.5 kg - 501 lbs. New APC record. This wasn’t a bad squat, came up quick and even though I didn’t hit the groove perfect it just goes to show me how much more I had left in the tank. This should have been an attempt at 545 or so.

QuickTip Squat - slow down the damn setup and find your groove. I left 45 lbs on the platform eat least.

Bench:

Attempt 1: 125 kg - 275 lbs. Easy opener, didn’t hit the groove perfect but it was light.

Attempt 2: 137.5 kg - 303 lbs. Still pretty easy.

Attempt 3: 147.5 kg - 325 lbs - maybe? Misloaded bar. Right from the start I knew something was wrong. Upon getting the lift off I felt as though the bar was way out to the right. I asked my center spotter (and teammate) to bring it back over to the left but he had brought his hands off the bar so unable to do so. I lifted my left hip up to shift the weight some (big mistake) and started my attempt. I came down, got the press command, and then it flew off my chest. Right when I started to drive with my legs my back spasmed massively and tons of pain which is where I lost the lift - I don’t really recall the next few minutes. Basically the offset in my hips from raising up caused me to be out of alignment in my spin and I paid the price. I managed to get out in the hall way before falling to the ground in pain and just laid there. Luckily the powerlifting community is awesome and I had teammates, and other competitors help me out getting me ice, advil, elevated my feet and even had one father/coach - who’s daughter destroyed it at the meet - that was a chiropractor adjusted me and worked out the pain in my back and eventually my hamstring which apparently was strained bad. I can’t thank him enough - not sure if you’ll ever read this but thank you!

Quicktip - bench. Misloads suck, deal with it and move on.

Deadlift:

Attempt 1: After the disaster in my last bench attempt I decided to bump down my opener on deadlift so I wouldn’t bomb out if it really started bothering me. Went down to 451 lbs and smoked it. No pain though still some tightness in my hamstring and back.

Attempt 2: Went back up to what my opener was originally - 227.5 kg. This also flew up, no pain. For some reason I got really really tired after attempt 1 and was yawning a ton and felt like I could go take a nap. Not good before deadlifting obviously.

Attempt 3: Since I didn’t have any pain I figured I’d go for the APC record in deadlift as well. Attempted 555 lbs (can’t recall kg equivalent). Because I was so tired I decided I’d take a few hits of ammonia and get myself jacked up. This ended up being dumb as I got so jacked up that my setup was rushed. I ended up pulling quick, shooting my hips some and the bar never even touched my shins. It got way too far out in front of me and I ended up having to bail on it at about my knees. This royally pissed me off because it was just technical and I absolutely had the strength for it. Left those lbs on the bar.

Finished with 1300 total and left about 125 lbs on the platform all said and done. I’m happy about the squat record but pissed with my overall meet performance.

Things to change:

More sodium after making weight and during the meet. I was told to go with pink sea salt and add it to my water - 1.5 tsp/day by the chiro that worked on me at the meet. I was still dehydrated some and I think this is why I strained my hamstring.

More food/fluids post-weigh in. I got my weight up but I really should have been up heavier. I also didn’t get enough sleep.

Bring my IPOD. I should have brought my ipod so I could zone everything out while I was in the hole/on deck helping me stay focused and visualize my lifts.

Bring more food to the meet. I definitely didn’t have enough solid food during the meet.

All and all as I said, pretty disappointed with my performance but I did qualify for nationals so I’ll be going through all this again in 8 short weeks. Definitely have time to fix some things and hopefully gain a bit more strength (not expecting much). The big thing at nationals I want is to simply put a good meet together. I’d also like to go 9/9. I think the cut went fine and didn't affect my performance other than the possible hamstring strain. The biggest issue here was technical mistakes that ultimately cost me a ton.

[breck]

Congrats on the record man and good luck at nationals. Good write up. Rest up and heal up.

[big ross]

Great write up. Just hurt my back on a 585 deadlift. Glad your ok after the bench and deadlift mishap. I'd also like to see some pics the next time you cut like that. Be awesome to see the dramatic change by simple water manipulation.

[LiquidMercury]

Yah, I meant to take after pictures (remembered to take before) and it was definitely a very dramatic change. I'll try and remember to do it for nationals though it won't be quite as big of a drop since I'm going to try and recomp down slightly towards a leaner 196/197 instead of 202.