The stories are grandiose. They border insanity. They’re unhealthy, and in some cases, so extreme that they’re tragic.
Cutting weight is as much a part of wrestling as shoulder pads are to football, though the practice has been taken to lengths that make football’s Oklahoma drill look like a day catching butterflies.
There are stories of wrestling coaches making their team run and not letting them stop until someone throws up. There are stories of slight wrestlers with weight to gain drinking three cartons of egg nog in a single day.
And there is the story of Billy Saylor, who, as a 19-year-old freshman at Campbell University in 1997, set up a stationary bike in a 92-degree sauna before the night of his first collegiate match in an attempt to qualify for his weight class. (Using any room with a temperature above 79 degrees has since been outlawed by the NCAA.)
Saylor wore a rubber suit and hammered away on the bike for more than two hours, leading to extreme dehydration, and eventually death by rhabdomyolysis – a breakdown of the muscle fibers that can lead to kidney trauma, and in Saylor’s case, kidney failure.
It was reported that his temperature reached 108 degrees.
Saylor was one of three collegiate wrestlers to die that year.
Then there are the much more common tales of wrestlers refusing to eat or wearing multiple layers of clothing during exercise (or both) to make weight.
In wrestling, making weight is of the utmost?importance, and those who don’t make the cut are looked at as ill-prepared.
“I feel like if I come in overweight to a weigh-in, that it makes it look like I didn’t care enough,” Southern Nash wrestler Ozzy Palacios said. “Wrestling is more mindset than anything else. If you’re going to make weight, you can’t have the mindset that you can eat whatever you want and not prepare for a match.”
Palacios said that he has seen other wrestlers starve themselves, force themselves to throw up or wear many heavy layers of clothing to sweat away the excess weight needed to make their wieght class.
“I’ve seen a couple guys do that, but I definitely don’t consider it a good idea,” Palacios said. “But there are guys that try it.”
Understanding the mindset of a wrestler shedding weight requires that one understand the psychology of the sport.
Because of the grueling, one-on-one nature of wrestling, many associated with the sport believe losing is tougher to stomach than in other sports. There’s one person to blame in a loss, and unlike a timed sport such as swimming or track, there is no congratulations for second place.
The most successful wrestlers often are the most dedicated, passionate of the bunch, and passion can sometimes blur the line between tough and crazy.
“Wrestling parents and the kids in general, you have to be passionate if you’re going to be good at it,” 14th-year Southern Nash coach Eddie Coble said. “If the kids have put in the work and the time, and they lose, it’s just devastating to them.”
Of course, such extremism is not encouraged by most coaches, nor is it healthy, especially for adolescent males.
More growth takes place during adolescence than at any point besides the first year of life.
As such, most teenage males need somewhere around 3,000 calories per day – more than any other point during one’s life – to satisfy their bodies’ need to grow.
Guidelines for Adolescent Nutrition Services, a 2005 book published by the University of Minnesota, notes that nutritional needs during the peak of the adolescent growth spurt can be twice as high than the average of the rest of the period.
High school wrestlers who choose to cut weight by not eating are depriving their bodies of energy when they need it the most.
“The adolescent growth spurt is sensitive to energy and nutrient deprivation,” the book notes. “Chronically low energy intakes can lead to delayed puberty or growth retardation.”
The problem, Coble said, is not that coaches preach that their wrestlers should not eat, but rather the kids don’t understand how to prepare for matches.
“Kids think you can eat, eat, eat, then not eat for two or three days and be healthy, but you can’t do that to your body,” said Coble, who is also a health teacher. “You have to eat and keep your metabolism going so you’re still burning calories. If you stop eating, your metabolism slows and you’re not burning calories. It’s hard for them to understand that.”
Losing weight is a simple formula. Consuming fewer calories than you burn will lead to shedding weight.
To many teenagers, the affinity for junk food surpasses the desire to make weight. (Guidelines for Adolescent Nutrition Services found that eight percent of adolescents’ caloric intake was from soft drinks alone.)
Coble even had a few wrestlers eating hot dogs before a match.
“I can’t go home and feed them. They have to eat the proper stuff, and we talk about that all the time,” Coble said. “If the kids would learn how to eat and be nutritious, it really wouldn’t be an issue ever.”
Helping Coble and other coaches is a program through the National Wrestling Coaches’ Association’s website called the Optimal Performance Calculator, a program initiated shortly after the three college wrestlers died in the late 90s.
At the beginning of the season, a hydration test and a skin fold test are administered to each wrestler, and that data, along with his weight, is implemented into the program.
The OPC calculates the lowest weight at which a wrestler can safely, though Coble said it’s difficult for most kids to reach it.
Further, Coble lets the wrestler pick his weight class, with Coble offering advice as to where he thinks the wrestler would be best served.
From that point, Coble won’t let anyone move down a weight class, and a wrestler’s weight is taken daily.
Since the implementation of the OPC, Coble said the problem has been mostly curbed.
“When I first started coaching, there was a lot of not eating,” Coble said. “It only allows kids to lose certain percentage each week, and then I can show them, ‘This is what the computer says you can go to, you can’t go anywhere further.’
“... Since the state implemented OPC, it’s just not hard for kids to make weight.”
Palacios said the weight he picked with the program’s assistance (138) is only three or four pounds lighter than his normal weight.
The problem – if there is any – is the responsibility of the coach, now more than ever.
Coble said he doesn’t think any programs in the Twin Counties have any problems, but that issues arise when a coach forces a wrestler in a weight class he should not be in, or simply doesn’t pay attention.
“I think there’s a few coaches that tell kids, ‘This is your weight class. You have to make weight,’” Coble said. “A lot of times you can look at kids when they come in to the wrestling room, and see if they look healthy or not. You can tell if a kid – the term for wrestling is called “sucking weight” – if you can tell they’re all sucked out, they just don’t look good.”
Though there are healthier ways to cut weight, the problem ultimately stems for the fear of losing.
Coble’s philosophy is to push his wrestlers to think about winning, not about getting pinned or the disappointment that comes with losing.
For the most dedicated, though, there is no greater disappointment than losing.
“Personally, I take (losing) pretty hard,” Palacios said. “I feel like it was only my fault, and I let everybody else down. I train hard so I don’t have to go through that.”
Nick Piotrowicz can be reached at 407-9952 or at npiotrowicz@rmtelegram.com.
Continued here:
PREPESPECTIVE: Wrestlers balance losing and ways to lose weight
