How do we solve this?
Well, truth is i'm not entirely sure but here are some things I beleive we can start to do to eliminate this lethal part of our sport.
- For starters Understand Fight Ready Shape. Getting your body in optimal shape is the first part and its not cutting weight, its just doing things the right way. Such as eating healthy, drinking healthy, and consistently training all required aerobic and anerobic and strength parts of your body.
- Next we should not create weight allowances or extra lbs for tournaments etc. What is the point of having a weight class if we are always bumping the weight up and encouraging likely even more weight cutting.
- Cutting weight takes away from learning and a focus on development skill wise, so why wear sweats all day everyday. It distracts you with pain. Yes it builds some character and toughness but so does consistently putting your body in proper form to be fight ready.
- Making competitions active with in 1 hour eliminates cutting too much weight as well. Having a quick weigh in is not hard, so why are we doing night before weigh ins etc... Eliminate this!
- Allowing parents to pay extra to weigh in early is both not moral and does not help the cutting issues.
- Allowing two hours for tournaments I believe is ok, but again if it was one hour people would cut less and they would be more focused on wrestling development.
- Elite Level Cutting taking scientific approach to water weight loss is healthier than depletion, everyone needs very clear teaching on how this is done and how it works.