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In the latest news which has been doing rounds, India’s wrestler, Vinesh Phogat was disqualified after failing to make the weight ahead of her gold medal match at the ongoing Paris Olympics. The Indian grappler was declared disqualified early on Wednesday, August 7 after she overweighed for her women’s 50kg final by over 100 grams.
Seeing this it is understood that weight is directly proportional when it comes to wrestling. In their journey to make the weight that they are set to fight under, the athletes begin their weight cut a couple of weeks before the event. According to Dr Munesh Kumar, who has previously worked with Olympic bound wrestlers at Delhi’s Chhatrasal Stadium, believes that all of it is a game of weight, particularly in the lower weight class.
How athletes manage weight in wrestling?
“For most wrestlers it’s safer to bring down the weight gradually through a combination of diet and training. Instead of eating carbohydrates like roti, you switch to salads. At the same time, you do your regular workouts. Normally in a hard training session, wrestlers tend to lose about 1.5 and 2kg. But then is you carefully monitor your nutrition and fluid intake, you will regain about 1800 gm from where you can lose about 200-300gm each day,” Dr Munesh said.
Apart from the food intake, fluid intake is also monitored, especially as the competition nears. Although the body of the wrestlers adapt to the conditions after getting rid of almost all possible excess weight; it all comes to remove excess water. For this, dehydration is one of the options, sweating also remains one option where athletes don heavy jackets and train in an effort to sweat out a few drops. Water intake almost comes to a halt as wrestler push themselves to edge of dehydration.
After these conditions and over exhaustion, even sleep becomes impossible. In order to manage the weight, delicate balance of just enough fluid can help the body to move. Moreover, one needs to withhold nutrition and fluid intake beyond a certain limit so that the body easily goes in seige mode.
