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Weight cutting stories

ev_flores0331

Well-Known Member
Mar 7, 2016
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I was lucky bc there were only one or two other guys that were halfway decent at my weight every year, so my idea of cutting weight was not having dinner Friday night and only having pop tarts and a Pepsi for breakfast, lol

I had friends that would do the whole “sit in a sauna w garbage bags” bit, but I recently saw a wrestling documentary where this kid ate ice chips! Jesus H Christ, that’s hardcore!

I guess I’m just looking for stories of abject misery to make us laugh! 😂
 
I was lucky bc there were only one or two other guys that were halfway decent at my weight every year, so my idea of cutting weight was not having dinner Friday night and only having pop tarts and a Pepsi for breakfast, lol

I had friends that would do the whole “sit in a sauna w garbage bags” bit, but I recently saw a wrestling documentary where this kid ate ice chips! Jesus H Christ, that’s hardcore!

I guess I’m just looking for stories of abject misery to make us laugh! 😂
I recall an article about Frank Molinaro, when he was at PSU, and he was eating ice chips as a "snack" during a watch party for the Super Bowl (?). That would be brutal

1977-80 at Northampton, a few of the kids dipped during the day of an evening dual, to lose a pound. Carrying around a Coke can all day. And no lunch. But they did head out for a smoke break right after school. 😂
 
We would go to a lumber dry kiln with rubber suits on and take stationary bikes with us to cut weight. Can't remember the temps but it was every bit as hot as a sauna. I could drop from 150 to 145/146 with one good workout.

Before almost every single match I would have to run miles after school was out in the hallways to make weight that evening. That was always good for 1-2 pounds.

Weight cutting really made me hate the sport later in high school.
 
In the 80's and 90's Redbank Valley High School was well know for kids coming from football season and cut 15-30lbs for wrestling season.
 
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Didn't Larry Owings cut a lot of weight to wrestle in the 142 lb. 1970 NCAA Championships to get to Dan Gable?
 
its funny unless your doing it my senior in 1968 weighed 125 tried to drop to 95 back then you had to weigh in your weight at the beginning of the yr only got to 98 bummer but then 103 was still tuff for me after practice the day before a match coach would tell me to go home eat a half piece of toast no butter and a cup of plain tea till weigh in the next day one time after christmas I had to lose 6 lbs to wrestle 112 for that match man life was hell my senior yr! But it was all for the team I was better than any of the guys up to 120 guess I should have just did what was right for me??also was sick a lot from weight loss I was ranked like 5 th in the state my senior yr by the end of the season I had nothing left lost at sections and back in those days only first place went!!
 
yea I use to go to the sauna at the YMCA and wear the suit hell bigger kids lost weight a lot easier than the lightweights our 184 could lose 10 to 15 lbs in one practice!
 
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I didn't wrestle but wrestling was very big at my high school. Before some big matches it wasn't uncommon for a student or two not to attend class all day and ride the bike instead.
 
yea I use to go to the sauna at the YMCA and wear the suit hell bigger kids lost weight a lot easier than the lightweights our 184 could lose 10 to 15 lbs in one practice!
I was averaging 7lbs but then eat like a horse.
 
I would put on my silver plastic sweat suit and go in my parents attic( about 140 degrees) and jump rope. Then the day of weigh-ins would chew this special gum that was extremely sour, made for spitting, would fill a couple of soda cans with spit. Would also drink my water/milk out of a shot glass. We cut way too much weight in the late 70's
 
Lots of stories shared in February here.

One I hadn’t added was the kid who had to don a garbage bag & sweats, get assigned to one of the heater seats on the bus, and do sit-ups the entire way to the opponent’s gym. Breaks only for spitting.
 
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Its great we can all laugh about the idiotic stuff we did to lose weight in our youth. It makes for some great stories, no way the basketball players can compete with them. That being said, looking back on those stories, all I can say, "that was friggin stupid".

When I tell people about those stories, the typical response is "You were nuts". I like to view it as "I would do whatever had to be done to get the job done". We need more people with those qualities.
 
I’ve got more weight cut stories than I can count. Off the top of my head I can think of a few though:

A kid I knew from the next town over would routinely cut from 145 down to 112 each year once football was over. Where he lost that weight on his body, I’ll never know. All I know is that after reaching states 2 or 3x and placing once, he couldn’t compete for Edinboro the next season because his internal organs were a wreck.

My stepdad has regaled me many stories of his weight cut from 120-130 down to 103 or 112. Granted, he competed back in the heyday of sauna suits and bad weight cutting advice.

Back in my collegiate career, I’d routinely drop from my usual 240-245 down to my weight class of 235lbs (it’s a weight class in the NCWA, but not NCAA. Still wish the NCAA would adopt it though) right before competitions unless I was designated as the heavy for the tournament. Thankfully, I’d been wised up on correct weight management by then so I avoided crash cutting.

One last one that still makes me chuckle a little bit: I had a teammate from Redbank Valley who was known for crash cutting. We were all checking our weights after practice and I hear him say, “Good news Coach, I’m only 2lbs over for tomorrow!” My coach looks back at him and says, “So, you’re really 6 over?” My teammate drops his head and mutters, “Yes coach”
 
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I hated wrestling by my junior year because of cutting weight—rubber suits, whirlpools, saunas, spitting, Exlax…. I can’t add anything that has not already been stated. It was terrible. It wasn’t wrestling. Wrestling is a great sport and unfortunately the asinine way we cut weight in the 70s and 80s was not healthy nor good for the public perception of wrestling.

It is better today. I would not have allowed my sons to wrestle if they were allowed or expected to do the things my teammates and I did for the team. As a coach at the varsity level in the 1990s and early 2000s, I saw the transition and eduction for better weight management. I would say in my area about 95% of athletes, coaches, and parents do it the right way. Unfortunately there are still some schools that will not follow the weight certification process and have wrestlers revert back to the unhealthy ways of weight management. I see the kids at these schools hating wrestling like I did by their junior year.

I really wish parents of elementary aged wrestlers would realize that cutting weight is not good for the longterm development of their children.
 
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When my son was in HS there was this midweight kid who would balloon up into 170/180’s in the summer then without much work at all would show up to preseason workouts a lean& mean 140 ish. Every year.

Found out years later how… Adderall.
 
My dad never let me cut weight, if I was over, go to the next weight class…. One of my friends would eat a peeled apple, cored out, with a little peanut butter inside for lunch. He would wear trash bags under his clothes all day in school. From November to March he was miserable. He struggled to make 112. No one really thought much about it other than his dad was the biggest, fattest guy around town, like 450+ lbs. big.
 
My biggest short-term cut was my sophomore year in high school. I weighed in on a Monday morning at 154 1/2 and Thursday afternoon I made my weight of 136 for the dual that evening. 18 1/2 pounds in less than 80 hours; stupid stuff. And I didn't even wrestle! I think my coach realized there was no way I was going to wrestle effectively after such a cut. That was the only time I ever skipped school, and that was with my parent's permission. I spent most of the day running in order to make weight that afternoon. Those were (weren't) the days.
 
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you want some pressure here you go,my dad would bet on my matches when I won he was happy as hell when I lost well you dont wanna know!!Good thing I won most of the time!
 
I’ve got more weight cut stories than I can count. Off the top of my head I can think of a few though:

A kid I knew from the next town over would routinely cut from 145 down to 112 each year once football was over. Where he lost that weight on his body, I’ll never know. All I know is that after reaching states 2 or 3x and placing once, he couldn’t compete for Edinboro the next season because his internal organs were a wreck.

My stepdad has regaled me many stories of his weight cut from 120-130 down to 103 or 112. Granted, he competed back in the heyday of sauna suits and bad weight cutting advice.

Back in my collegiate career, I’d routinely drop from my usual 240-245 down to my weight class of 235lbs (it’s a weight class in the NCWA, but not NCAA. Still wish the NCAA would adopt it though) right before competitions unless I was designated as the heavy for the tournament. Thankfully, I’d been wised up on correct weight management by then so I avoided crash cutting.

One last one that still makes me chuckle a little bit: I had a teammate from Redbank Valley who was known for crash cutting. We were all checking our weights after practice and I hear him say, “Good news Coach, I’m only 2lbs over for tomorrow!” My coach looks back at him and says, “So, you’re really 6 over?” My teammate drops his head and mutters, “Yes coach”
Is your picture a selfie during a weight cut activity?
 
In the 80's and 90's Redbank Valley High School was well know for kids coming from football season and cut 15-30lbs for wrestling season.
My senior year I played football at 185-190 and sucked down to 167 for the beginning of the season and 155 by the end of the season. It wasn't that bad.
 
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So I wrestled for Ohio University in the mid 90’s right before the rules regarding weight cutting changed. I was an idiot and cut about 18 lbs every week. I would go crazy every weekend and balloon up to 145 and then have to make 126 by Friday. Incredibly stupid. My worst weight cutting story goes like this. We were actually going to the PSU open and we would weigh in Friday for the Saturday tournament. Friday morning everyone is in cutting weight. I’m not sure how much I was over at that point but probably around 6-7 lbs and had 3 hours to get it off. I had in plastics, sweats, hoodies, beanie, etc and we placed bikes in the shower room with all of them as hot as it could go. After a couple miserable hours I guess I fainted and fell off the bike because the next thing I know is a teammate over me shaking me asking if I’m ok. They help me get back to the locker room and I laid there for probably 15 min to continue my sweat. I finally start getting undressed to get on the scale and my whole body cramped like never before. My hands cramped and my feet cramped. It was horrible. I had also lost a card game the previous week to my assistant coach and for that I got my head shaved so I was looking like a chemo patient with my head shaved and face and body completely sunk down. I got on the scale and I was over by less than a half pound. My coaches told me to get my shit back on and get on the bike. The training staff however said no way were they letting me cut another ounce. Thankfully the training staff won the argument. Coaches of course were pissed and just entered me at the next weight up. My 1 and only time of never making weight. I was never smart about watching my weight and always ballooned up and then cut my ass off. Stupid stupid stuff but that’s how it was done at that time. We didn’t have weight certification, descent plans, and hydration tests. I’m really happy they do now and that the sport is much safer than it used to be.
 
My reaction to RBY saying he weighed 145 by the time he wrestled ADS at nationals was “that sounds about right”.

When I wrestled in my lower college division decades ago, we would often weigh in Friday night for a Saturday match. I wrestled 134 and would typically be 145 at match time. Most of it water weight.
 
Saturday at states I weighed 106. Two days later, my brother called and asked if I wanted to wrestle in an open tournament with some of his Lehigh friends - Tom Muir was one of them. He suggested I go at 115. I weighed 133. Still made 115 by Friday.

I wrestled 123 at college all four years. Had to suck weight the first 3 years and was miserable as usual. I quit the team (got married and needed money) during my Jr year. Watching the 123 pounder get hammered in Dec of my Senior year, I couldn't stand it. Before x-mas break I told my coach I was going to wrestle again, and thought I could make weight by the middle of January. I weighed about 135 and hadn't practiced since quitting the year before. I went home and immediately caught the Hong Kong flu, 1968's version of Covid. I was in bed for 2 weeks and got better just in time to return to college. Went to the field house and weighed in. I was 2 pounds under! The last time I was 2 pounds under weight was 9th grade. I walked over to the coach's office and told him, "Guess what, coach? I've made weight!" He said, "That's great, because you're wrestling tonight." Hadn't been on the mat for a year. And I had an afternoon job. He had one of the non-starters who had a car wait for my job to end, then pick me up and drive me to Bucknell. And we weren't sure if Bucknell was in Lewistown or Lewisburg. We got to a point on Rt 15 where a sign stated Lewistown that way, Lewisburg this way. We flipped a coin and guessed right. (I won 6-0 in a 9 minute bout. Threw in legs and rode with about 8 minutes of riding time. Didn't even try to turn him. That would have taken effort.)
 
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