Kid Wrestlers "Cutting" Weight

Being a parent of a 7^th grade junior high wrestler who has wrestled of over 6 years and on the wrestling board for our local wrestling booster club, I find myself reading lots of forums regarding youth wrestling. One recent forum covered younger wrestlers "Cutting" weight to get down to lower weight brackets for tournaments, more specifically the WWF (Wisconsin) Youth State Wrestling Tournament. The forums to say the least are very interesting reading.

Let me start out by displacing a common misconception on wrestlers and weight loss. Being that I never wrestled, I had some concerns with my son getting into wrestling due to what I had witnessed first hand with friends "Cutting" weight in unhealthy manners. That was 20 years ago and let me tell you things have changed majorly.

Wrestling no longer practices the same weight loss techniques of its predecessors (Like when I was in high school.) You no longer find a 15 year old high school wrestler sitting in a high school shower wearing a rubber suit trying to sweat off 10 pound before the evening meet. They are not starving themselves for days trying to drop down 3 weight classes. Checks and balances are now in place to make sure that our wrestlers maintain healthy weights. Fat tests and hydration tests are conducted at the beginning of a season that insures that someone at 145 pounds doesn't come down to 112 if it would be dangerous for them to do so. Everything is posted on a public website and every wrestler at the high school level is accounted for.

This doesn't mean that wrestlers aren't dropping weight, its part of what makes wrestling one of the toughest sports out there. It means that guidelines are in place to make sure that someone doesn't cheat the system and endanger themselves by utilizing unhealthy weight loss methods. You can't prevent everyone from doing something harmful to lose weight, but the emphasis of the modern wrestling world is on how to keep our kids healthy.

That being said, back to the topic of youth wrestlers "Cutting" weight. As I read the forums I could tell that most parents of wrestlers don't have a problem with kids losing weight to wrestle in lower weight classes. My son has done it this season. He dropped from 97 pounds down to a 93 pound weight class for a team dual tournament. Did he endanger himself in the process? Not in the least. Based on the baby fat he still has in his mid-section he probably could have dropped down below 90 pounds for the meet.

He and I both watched what he ate for the 3 days leading up to the tournament and he lost the weight through the normal junior high practices. He didn't have two helpings of tater tot casserole, he opted for one. He didn't come home and tear into a bag of chips. He ate an orange or an apple for the snack. He drank one glass of milk instead of half the gallon with supper. In other words he ate smart and his metabolism took care of the rest. I'm no doctor of nutritionist, but I'm pretty sure that the method we chose for him to drop the four pounds would be approved by most.

Should your kid drop weight to wrestle? The decision in all reality depends on the kid and you as the parents. Ultimately it's the parent's responsibility to make sure their kid is healthy, whether they opt to drop weight for wrestling or not. Some kids don't have the body fat to drop from 96 to 90, or as I read in some of the forums from 95 down to 85.

But if they do decide to "Cut" weight it should be done through healthy methods with their child's safety in mind.

I think the best comment I heard about dropping weight came from one of the kids in my son's bracket at the state qualifiers. He dropped from 118 pounds at the beginning of the junior high season down to make the 97 pound bracket. He looked very healthy at his new found weight so I asked him how he lost the weight (Please note that this is over a 4-5 month period.)

His comment: "I just stopped putting so much food in my face."