BTG 119 - How I Fix Weight Cutting

[Music] hello and welcome to Breaking the guard this is the last episode of the year as the new year approaches I hope everyone has had a great year I know I have had a great year and it's only going to be getting better I think into 2025 um few things have come up that I wanted to talk about first I've been seeing quite a few people talking about weight cuts and I think from and these are supposedly MMA journalists and uh they were talking about Sean Strickland being 223 pounds uh out of you know in this training camp saying that that shows he's not prepared that he's not taking training seriously and I'm scratching my head CU I'm like how are you saying that in this day and age right like it's normal now for pro fighters to cut 30 40 pounds especially at the higher weight classes khabib was cutting 305 40 PBS you know reportedly I I didn't witness it myself but uh this is what's always been reported that he would come in and fight day between 180 and 190 and he was fighting at 155 right so that's a much bigger cut considering he's starting at a lower weight class right uh Strickland's fighting 185 so at 223 he's what like 40 38 PBS again it's a big cut but that's what they do these days right I know people 185 that F that 15 155 so that's and out of all the people that accused of not taking training seriously Sean is not the guy like I just trained with him the other day I see him every time I go to the gym he's there right the guy is training every day multiple times today uh he's in great shape and I it's weird the pictures they put to try to like fat shame a fighter and like he's he's shredded in both pictures it's just one of them he's in the weight cut so obviously without all the water weight all your skin gets really tight so your muscles are going to pop on the other one you know he's got water weight on him so he looks like a normal guy you know uh who's very in very good shape you can see his abs and everything but they're not popping out because he still got water I I think and it's funny cuz one of the these MMA journalists trying to defend themselves like oh you don't think I'm not an expert because I've been studying this sport for nine years it's like buddy like I've been in this for 30 right I know kids that that watch this sport as long as you have so that's not really a credential you know it's uh especially nowadays where journalists are basically just people on Twitter watching other people and Reporting what other people have reported on right I I think uh it's pretty pathetic and what's coming across as journalism right to me growing up again 80s and 90s a journalist is somebody that actually went out in the field saw things firstand interviewed the people he was talking about and did research on that topic and then was able to give an informed opinion whereas now it's like you surf the Internet you don't vet your sources you make an uninformed opinion on something you have no idea what you're a fan of it but you're not really an expert in it right so of course that's not everybody that's a that's just a the negative view or at least the negative perception that I have of some of the people who are claiming to be journalists right uh so just a PSA lots of Fighters are cutting 30 40 pounds right and all because like they were giving Jamal Hill a lot of crap also cuz he's 243 like oh you know he's at to Friday 205 it's like yeah he's going to make that really easy right at 243 that 40 and not even 40 he's another 38 PB cut that's a easy cut right uh because again the bigger you are the easier it is to cut weight the smaller you are obviously the small the the key factor of losing weight weight for fighters in the cut is water weight now the more muscle mass that you have the easier it is to shed water weight because the muscle store a lot of water and that's where most of that water cut is going to be coming from not all of it uh but a good amount of it so the ideal body type would be somebody who's very shredded you know very low body fat good amount of muscle mass on them so he doesn't have to diet which is what a lot of people think has to happen like oh you know he's got to lose like 7 lounds of fat and like three weeks that's really hard because you're going to lose this amount of you have to be in massive caloric deficit that's old school right that's what people in my day were doing like they were fat off Camp and then they were trying to get back in shape during the training camp and then they were doing the water cut afterwards like the fighters nowadays are in shape year round now maybe they'll lose a pound or two of fat but it's not like they have to lose 10 pounds of fat right like if they did they're sloppy right now I think some people are saying Jamal Hills in that case which maybe he looks a little loose compared to like Strickland or someone else who was cutting like strictly water and in that case it it could be even easier however the problem with doing the the diet Cuts I would say is that your training is going to be suboptimal cuz you are going to have to be at a caloric deficit which means now now you're not getting enough energy your body is going to suffer in training so uh you can do it it's not smart though because you're going to be more likely to get injured you're going to have bad training sessions because you're not going to be you know com performing at the top level and uh that means that your Technique your execution your timing are all going to be off so that's not an ideal scenario you should be in shape and be pretty much within a a couple pounds of the weight that you intend to cut on when you start your camp that way you are in Prime position and that you you don't have to worry about you know starving yourself eight weeks out you know from a fight that you should be able to eat fully so um there's that but again like I was talking about water cut mostly water they the top fighters now have access to a lot of dietitians Fitness Experts and whatnot so they're really able to dial in and that's how they're getting much more out of their water cut it's a it's beyond my pay grade being honest here the like I said for me 10 to 20 lb weight Cuts were a standard you know 20 years ago and those were pretty straight forward you didn't really need uh too much background in doing it you water load you control your sodium levels uh you lowered your food intake in the last week and you just cut out the day before uh all water most of your food and just really DED in and sweating it out whether you did it in the sauna in a hot tub right uh those were the two preferable methods because ideally you're not trying to run it out because you're just exhausting those muscles uh if we're able this to get the body to push it out through heat it's going to be a bit more efficient but there is a danger you have to watch out with you're doing heat that you don't overheat yourself and uh potentially cook yourself alive right there's people that do pass out and uh that's why when you're doing these type of cuts you should always have somebody watching over you making sure because we've had people pass out in a tub and had to yank them out drop bites on them right um I think on one occasion we did we had to do that and again somebody who didn't prepare well so um these are things that you have to be ready for this is not safe I don't like it I think it's dangerous I not only is it bad for your your kidneys or whatnot because you're just really stressing them out uh by squeezing all the water out of your body you're also putting yourself at a higher risk of concussion because apparently if I understood the the science correctly you're not just taking out water out of your muscles which is the greatest volume of it from my understanding but you're also taking it from all your different organs and one of the key ones that we're worried about is our brain and again I could be wrong about this but my understanding of this is that the water from your brain is the first to come out and the last to get in now why is that important your brain is protected by essential a fluid barrier around it and it creates a like a think like a water bed right so there's just water all around the brain andc casing it and it's kind of to keep the brain in place from not touching the sides of your skull when you get hit that water acts as a cushion so that it doesn't touch the skull the brain has to move you know from the shock wave but ideally it's not going to move enough to make impact When there's less water in there guess what happens there's less cushion now the brain is moving more freely which is not a good thing because now it can slam into the side of the head and the moment it does that's a concussion right not good so there is an increased risk of a concussion and consequently TBI when you're cutting weight and now that Fighters are cutting even more weight than they ever did before we're just creating bigger risk factors so not a fan of weight cutting I wish there was a better system to handle it I think personally if you're a fighter just with all the stuff they have online it seems like you could just make a system where you weigh the fighter every day every morning they get up or you just put a set time they have to weigh in every day be until their fight starts that's going to give you a really good idea of where your true weight is right you a a guy if I said oh we're going to do a weight check you know two weeks out four weeks out six weeks out I could cut the day before that weight check and then make it and then you know get back to my normal weight it's not I don't think it's great but you can do that people are going to try to gain whatever rule set you have as much as possible if I have a fight that's eight weeks away and I weigh in every single day you're not going to be able to cheat that in the sense no if you are you're going to probably lose if you had to cut weight every single day for for 6 to8 weeks it's just not optimal at that point you're just going to fight at what your weight is right and I feel like if we had two fighters say hey okay we we'll abide by this I weigh myself every day it's very easy you just wake up and you walk into your scale get your weight that's it it's not it's not a big ask right if you if you gave me the choice cut 40 lbs or weigh yourself every day I'm going to raise my hand I'll weigh myself every day that's a lot easier right um and I think any fighter in the world would agree with me on that right it's a lot easier to weigh yourself every day than to try to cut 40 PBS all right uh so if you made that agreement and you did some type of verification where maybe you have a a special scale or like a you know webcam or something to that effect um where the fighters would would submit their weights and then both Fighters would know oh okay my my opponent's here I'm here right and give some type of leeway as far as like uh you have to be within 5 lbs to the weight division or whatnot something small but not enough where it's like okay now I have to you know cut weight to for this thing right like I feel it's more about like a a gentleman's agreement like we're if I know my opponent has weighed in between 190 and 195 for8 weeks straight and on fight day he's 195 and then I'm 90 I'm not going to flip out and go oh I got freaking cheated you know he's 5 lbs heavier than me I'm like okay like I could have been at the higher end of the weight Spectrum if I really wanted to and it's not like I got Hood wied right like it's in the range so I I feel as long as you make an acceptable range by both Fighters whatever that is that's fine normally like when we're weight cutting we are concerned about even a pound because we know that that if he had to cut and still was a pound over that means he was cutting from much higher right like generally uh so he might have been cutting 35 lbs 40 lbs and maybe my guy wasn't cutting that much so like I know he's still got a huge advantage and you know he didn't complete it but if we weren't never cutting to begin with and I know my opponent's weight the entire time it's very easy to make adjustments uh and even if he was 190 the whole time on fight day he was like or on the the weigh in day was 195 or whatever it's like okay whatever like I knew that was the range and I should have been fine with that from the beginning like I might be on the low end he's going to be in the high end and uh I should be fine with that Arrangement and I feel like if we did that that would solve the weight Pro Cut problem in my opinion because now it's just about optimizing your body mass right if I know my opponent has to be in this weight range which is very limited like I said like a 5 pound uh range and that I'm going to be in that range as well uh then I just gotta make sure that I'm am as strong fit and muscular as possible which doesn't mean I'm okay you know cutting water out and you know doing water loading and like no I'm going to be eating very clean uh I'm going to be you know very well hydrated that means I'm getting better quality practices I'm not having any ill health effects and in fact I'm going to be doing the opposite I'm going to be making myself as healthy as possible right because I want to be as fit as I possibly can be so lower my body fat percentage as much as I can so that I can be a strong but not too low where you know I you know you start losing some cushioning in your joints and lubrication when your fat levels drop too much uh so like I think most guys are probably somewhere 8% to 12% uh that's usually optimal for most people now some people do lower uh but I think in that range you're probably doing pretty good right and not by skin caliper test but I mean doing like a dexa scan which is which is the most accurate method of testing your body fat that's going to really let you know this calipers are wildly variable they they're only accurate to measuring change of body fat and that's so much where your actual body fat is um aexa scan is a dual x-ray technology it's going to see everything inside of you it knows your fat distribution across your body it's the most accurate thing that we have at the moment so if I was a fighter that's what I would be doing so I know where I can optimize be as fit as possible and to me that's what makes the most sense like I tell people all the time like if I was going to fight somebody right I wouldn't say hey I a street fight I'm not GNA say hey you know what before we have our street fight why don't we wait a week so that we can cut weight and cut like 30 pounds the day before the fight and then we'll fight the day after that who the hell would agree to that that's stupid no I'm going to fight you as you are right now so like it's silly to add this extra hurdle because it's a huge distraction right the the weight cut in itself is a a a big part of the camp as far as strategizing on how to make the weight and getting everything dialed in just right and you have to bring in extra people to help you manage the weight cut it's just a lot of nonsense in my opinion that we don't we really shouldn't have to put up with it's just that you know people are Petty and they're they're going to try to cheat wherever they can or maybe cheat's not the right word but they're going to try to gain the system wherever they can right so there's no honor among Thieves here that's why I feel like my little system here just weigh yourself in every day and have it submitted every day once you sign the fight contract that's going to put a lot of uh people at ease personally you know when I was fighting weight cutting was obviously another part that was enjoyable so I would love to have been spared that and just said okay this is the range that you that you're going to fight at also knowing where my opponent is at would also be a big relief because then I would know like okay he's either very off of weight so I know right now this fight's in Jeopardy and maybe there could be a clause like the fighter is out of the weight range for X days in a row or something like that there's a penalty or you know the fight's going to be cancelled suddenly to that b basically a breach of contract right so we can have protections put in there as well and again I'm not going this is obviously very speculative I'm sure nobody's going to actually implement this but you could put some more thought into like how to safeguard this to make sure that the fighters are within their weight range the entire time right maybe it's not eight weeks out but it's going to be like four weeks out they have to be on wait for the next week that way if it's a six or eight fight uh eight weeks out the fighter might have been off Camp so okay in those first couple weeks they're going to have to diet down and get themselves down into the right weight range so the last four weeks they're now dialed in right and they're just basically optimizing and staying in that range which is what normally I mean like I've been pretty much the same weight range for 10 months now right once you're at your ideal weight range it's easy to maintain so um anyhow That was supposed to be a little small story but and up taking a lot more time that that's my opinion so long story short weight Cuts nowadays are typically somewhere in the 20 to 40 pound range territory from many other weight classes not just heavyweight from you know cruiserweight light heavyweight middle weight lightweight so please if you're a journalist or whatnot wise up a little bit right like all because somebody's 40 lbs over does not mean they're not in shape it might just mean they're exactly where they wanted to be anyhow hopefully uh you know some of you guys agree with my assessment of the weight cutting situation currently I think this could be applicable in a lot of areas at least in the professional uh round cuz I always hate seeing way cutting I just don't like it and I think if we had a better system in place uh it would work I know some people always like to mention 1fc because they do hydration uh checks but my understanding is that system is very gameable as well lots of Fighters have cracked that code so they're able to you know cheat that system also so that doesn't really work I think the the easiest way like I said is just weigh them every day right have some type of camera setup system at the the Fighter's house so you can see they're not like touching the wall they get their weight off or whatnot uh scale has been verified you know there there's going to be some technological uh assessment that has to be done right whether they need to make a scale that can be verified that is accurate so that whenever they're stepping the scale uh everyone knows okay the scale is validated ated right it's not just like I bought a Walmart scale and I tampered it so I could step on it but uh there's going to be a technology issue involved there but assuming you overcome that hurdle which I think you definitely could then it's just a matter of having people weigh in every day and uh I think that would solve a lot more problems I think it would make better fights it would make healthier Fighters uh and it'll take away one thing out of the game that I think shouldn't be in there right uh so you guys can let me know what you what you think if it's realistic unrealistic stupid smart uh and uh that's all I have for you wish you guys a Happy New Year and uh I'll see you next week