Gatorade gum - helped you spit your way to weight on match days.
On the Verge at 49/57
- Thread starter Ian
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Was always on full feed so can’t relate to cutting. It was the benefit of having a twin brother at same weight so the one who was a little better bumped up. Lol
Copenhagen was super effective. The only problem was the decade required to get un hooked from that stuff. It would have been easier long term to just cut off a digit or two... And, to this day, I could still go back and get re hooked tomorrow (maybe tonight if I go over to the bar)
Well, this source is saying he's trying to make the cut (and we obviously haven't seen him there yet), so you may be correct if he can't get there and feel comfortable at that weight and he still may be 165 anyway.
Gatorade gum . . . that brings back some memories, all of them bad! I still can't believe my parents allowed me to cut as much weight as I did. I can still remember a photo of me with my cheekbones all sunken in. My worst cut was the time I weighed 154 1/2 on a Monday morning and had to make 136 by early Thursday afternoon. I only skipped school once, and that was with my mother's permission so I could run that day so I could make weight. Cutting weight took all the joy out of the sport for me and I regret it to this day. It also explains why I could beat very good wrestlers in practice, but lose to lesser wrestlers in real matches. I had no energy after the cuts. I always tried to pace myself in matches because I knew I wasn't going to make it the full six minutes otherwise. This led me to not wrestling up to my skill level and that kept me from being as successful as I could have been. So, not only did cutting so much weight steal my enjoyment for the sport, but it made me a worse wrestler. I am so glad most of the wrestling community has wised up about this topic.
Pace yourself for 6 minutes? Just plan for the 20 second fall. Right @KCLion ?
It saddens me to "like" a post that bums me out. So instead, I'll respond as I did LIKE it.
Psalm, your story could be written by any of hundreds, maybe thousands of youngsters through the years prior to 1997 and maybe even after that year. The sentence that hit me hardest was "Cutting weight took all the joy out of the sport for me and I regret it to this day.". I've heard it before. Then in 1997, three young men, with their lives ahead of them died doing what you were doing, though in an even more extreme way.
This sport I love, and all on here love, was not providing a safety net for the extreme behaviors "back in the day". Much has changed, thank goodness, and those stories aren't as bad. Yep, cutting weight is still a thing, but not like then. Frankly, maybe we have more room to tweak the rules and be safer.
Thanks for sharing,
Roar
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Willie had Berge 7th in his latest CB ... this is all assuming a comfortable cut he said. He is aware of the bad seed Brady will get but also said he just doesn't see anyone past the first 3 as a sure favorite over Brady.
So many unknowns. Time will tell, I'll be rooting for him to end on a high note!
Similar stupid thoughts here.
At our school in the mid 80's they started doing the body fat test with the calipers and the regular doctor would give you your physical.
Skin caliper test was done but our doctor didn't show up and they told us he'd be back the following week for the physical.
Einstein moment.... Hey I'll cut weight till the Dr. gives me my physical and I'll get certified at a lower weight.
I certified to 112. I had 0 weight cutting skills. I'd balloon to the 130's and cut. My cut was spitting and not eating or drinking wearing rubber suits whenever I could. It was horrible.
It only does one good thing and that is remind you can do some very stupid stuff if you put your mind to it.
Lucky for me my stupid decisions don't require weight cutting any more.
LOL, that went so far over my head that yeah, 20 seconds sometimes seems like forever!
I remember a dad posing the idea of having his son give blood to make weight. Now that's crazy of course it might have been just a rumor but the kid has his hair buzzed off so they were doing everything to make weight
Sad if true. I remember so many of my classmates that wrestled in the rubber suits, the spitting, laxatives, and the other methods you guys mentioned. I knew they were starving themselves and felt fortunate that I played basketball and didn't have to cut weight.
Well, wrestlers don't play wrestling. So there is that.
What memories y'all have triggered! Sadly, my introduction to the sport came during those unenlightened years too. A knuckle-dragging coach + an unhealthy weight cut drove me out of what in hindsight was a promising wrestling career.
Wrestling was one of the few sports that came naturally to me. I took it up on a whim as a high school sophomore with zero experience and by some miracle found myself quickly beating teammates and opponents who had wrestled for years. I suppose that was partly due to growing up with 5 older brothers. That tends to present lots of opportunities to learn to get off bottom at home!
Within a couple weeks of showing up for my first wrestling practice I was on the varsity team. A few weeks later I tagged along with my more experienced teammates to a weekend tournament and managed to defeat a returning 3-time state champion in the semis. No doubt plenty of luck involved there. I got pummeled pretty handily in the finals by another 3-time state champ from one of the bigger schools in the area. But I fell in love with the sport and took to it like a duck to water.
Then came my coach's "expert" guidance. He decided that his most experienced wrestler needed to drop down to my weight class and I needed to drop down to the next lower weight. I didn't know any better and just did what I was told. That introduced me to all the weight cutting tricks y'all have discussed above and I soon became a shell of myself on the mat. I practically lived in that cursed rubber suit. I once went the better part of a week without eating any solid foods! I think if my mom knew that she would've called the police.
For reasons I didn't understand, my coach made it clear that challenging my teammate for the starting spot at my natural weight class wasn't an option (even though I was easily competitive with him). The whole experience soon became a miserable beatdown. My season ended in a blaze of mediocrity and I never went back. I've often wondered what might have been had I fallen under the tutelage of a decent HS coach.
Wrestling was one of the few sports that came naturally to me. I took it up on a whim as a high school sophomore with zero experience and by some miracle found myself quickly beating teammates and opponents who had wrestled for years. I suppose that was partly due to growing up with 5 older brothers. That tends to present lots of opportunities to learn to get off bottom at home!
Within a couple weeks of showing up for my first wrestling practice I was on the varsity team. A few weeks later I tagged along with my more experienced teammates to a weekend tournament and managed to defeat a returning 3-time state champion in the semis. No doubt plenty of luck involved there. I got pummeled pretty handily in the finals by another 3-time state champ from one of the bigger schools in the area. But I fell in love with the sport and took to it like a duck to water.
Then came my coach's "expert" guidance. He decided that his most experienced wrestler needed to drop down to my weight class and I needed to drop down to the next lower weight. I didn't know any better and just did what I was told. That introduced me to all the weight cutting tricks y'all have discussed above and I soon became a shell of myself on the mat. I practically lived in that cursed rubber suit. I once went the better part of a week without eating any solid foods! I think if my mom knew that she would've called the police.
For reasons I didn't understand, my coach made it clear that challenging my teammate for the starting spot at my natural weight class wasn't an option (even though I was easily competitive with him). The whole experience soon became a miserable beatdown. My season ended in a blaze of mediocrity and I never went back. I've often wondered what might have been had I fallen under the tutelage of a decent HS coach.
This thread has evolved into pure gold. This is truly why I love hanging out here. Most of what is being written is why we are such crazy fans. We live the glory that most of us never got to fully experience (except for a few outliers like @HAMMER167 and a few others) through all these athletes.
I'm glad they don't do it now like we did it then. It would make it harder to watch. So feel free to share your experiences. We have a long couple weeks ahead!
I'm glad they don't do it now like we did it then. It would make it harder to watch. So feel free to share your experiences. We have a long couple weeks ahead!
I grew up the son of a Marine DI and PA HS wrestling coach. I feel like I cut weight from birth. Highschool was actually somewhat of a reprieve as I only cut weight toward the post season. I take pride in the fact that my son ate breakfast before weight ins most of his childhood. He cut weight (1 lb) once this year in JH to get into the same weight class as a tough kid he knows he'll have to face to win PJW. It is just not worth it. Folkstyle wrestlers compete to often to cut large amounts of weight. I didnt mind cutting weight after my folkstyle career was over. You only compete a few times a year and have months to plan out your weight cut and lots of time to recover afterwards.
Cutting weight the wrong way sucked the life out of me for so long that it's a miracle I stayed with the sport for 15 years. All of what you all experienced above I experienced when cutting weight in MS and HS and it was not fun, not healthy, and not conducive to doing well on the mat. At the time coaches just didn't know any better and most of what we wrestlers did to cut weight was passed down from upperclassmen to underclassmen each year. It wasn't until I got to PSU that someone with a clue about nutrition was available to show us how to do things correctly. What a difference that made.
One method not mentioned above that was popular on my HS team was eating a nice big dinner and then going outside and throwing it up. While it didn't help with the weight cut directly, it satisfied the body for a bit and made the hunger go away. I never could make myself do this but had lots of teammates that did it almost every night during the season when cutting weight. Talk about dysfunction.
One method not mentioned above that was popular on my HS team was eating a nice big dinner and then going outside and throwing it up. While it didn't help with the weight cut directly, it satisfied the body for a bit and made the hunger go away. I never could make myself do this but had lots of teammates that did it almost every night during the season when cutting weight. Talk about dysfunction.
After college 1985, I designed HVAC systems for schools. I know of three schools where the wrestlers would work out in the boiler rooms of the school. The issue was in two of them, they would run on top of the boilers. The asbestos insulation was all but worn out from the foot traffic. Glad that stuff is gone, because I am sure that some still use these rooms to sweat weight.
I didn’t like leaving anything to chance. As an underclassman, I saw what some of the older guys were doing in the last hours to minutes to seconds before getting on the scale, and seeing how brutal it was emotionally to still miss by 1/8-lb.
So, in the years I had to cut, I tried to do 90% of it by limiting food intake during the week and liquids that last day/night before competition.
I was twice notified that I should not be alive. Once by a guy our coach had come in to give us caliper-based body fat measures (mine read something like 1.6%, which he declared impossible and kept trying for more readings without anything much above 3%). The second time, my Home Economics class had an “activity” where we recorded what we ate throughout a day and fed it into a computer for some sort of analysis. Again, I was supposed to be dead. That one triggered a letter home from the school. My mom was so pissed (and helpless) because of the implication of neglect/bad parenting, but she knew there was no negotiating with me when it came to wrestling.
So, in the years I had to cut, I tried to do 90% of it by limiting food intake during the week and liquids that last day/night before competition.
I was twice notified that I should not be alive. Once by a guy our coach had come in to give us caliper-based body fat measures (mine read something like 1.6%, which he declared impossible and kept trying for more readings without anything much above 3%). The second time, my Home Economics class had an “activity” where we recorded what we ate throughout a day and fed it into a computer for some sort of analysis. Again, I was supposed to be dead. That one triggered a letter home from the school. My mom was so pissed (and helpless) because of the implication of neglect/bad parenting, but she knew there was no negotiating with me when it came to wrestling.
Remember watching states in the 80’s - 90’s watching the dist 11 whirly birds come out when they couldnt hit a cement mixer or head lock and had to go into late 2nd and 3rd periods lol
I heard a story about a kid at a rival school, a few ounces over at weigh-in, he allegedly whacked off to make weight. Later on I will add a few stories, I am pre 97.
Mom walks in bedroom. "Son, you'll go blind." "Ah Mom, I'm just making weight. Sometimes you just have to sacrifice for the team."
The Christmas feast of a chunk of turkey with no skin and 8 pieces of corn with no butter. Then suit up in the plastics for a run, sleep in the plastics wrapped in an army blanket in a sleeping bag. Wake up, unstick your tongue from the roof of your mouth. Have an ice cube for breakfast. Spit until weigh ins and still have to do the sneaky lean for the scale to drop enough to get a .035 feeler gauge in there. Then go out and lose the 3rd place match at the NorLeCo tourney because you’re dead. Eat for a day and do it again
Jk, but it sounds like Coach Smith got his coaching career started at your high school
Yeah but that match ended in forfeit when his opponent refused to shake hands on the mat.
In grade school and high school (they had a very developed Parochial Gradeschool League where I grew up - 20-some teams - high school was the City League) the weigh-ins were several hours prior to the match (match usually took place in early evening - most often 6:30 or 7, weigh-ins at 1 or 2 pm, if I remember correctly, it was a long time ago at this point!). The number one way of losing weight was dehydration starting a couple days prior to weigh-ins. You can lose several lbs of water weight in this manner. After weigh-ins, we would always eat and drink significantly such that we would literally put on several lbs prior to the match - everybody on the team wrestled at a weight that was several lbs below their actual walking weight and shedding the water weight the days prior to weigh-ins and rehydrating & eating after weigh-ins was standard practice across the lineup. Don't know if it's still true, but this was possible because we only wrestled once a week. Even at free tournaments we went to in late spring and early summer, you only weighed in once, well before tournament actually started and we'd eat and drink extensively right after weigh-ins so you weren't wrestling on a completely full stomach.
Ah boiler rooms. We went from working out in them down to the gym for running. It seemed the bb players were in the air conditioning. Seemed like a 50 degree drop. We would run laps around the bb players and taunt each other. Some fights broke out. Coach seemed to enjoy that.
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