After the scale, drink first and eat second. Start with a big drink that contains sodium straight away, keep sipping every 15-20 minutes, and over the whole window aim to drink 125-150% of the fluid you lost. Add easily digested carbohydrate, and keep fiber and fat low until you have competed. How far you take…

What water cutting actually is When the scale drops fast in fight week, the weight is coming from one of four places. Water cutting is the riskiest of the four, because it drains what keeps you cool, keeps your blood moving and protects your brain. Water makes up around 60% of the human body, and…

The short version: There are two answers, and conflating them is how athletes get hurt. Gradual weight loss is capped by most governing bodies at 1.5% of body mass per week — that is the number regulators consider safe. Acute weight loss through dehydration has a much lower ceiling: performance measurably declines at around 2%…

The short version: Professional fighters cut large amounts of weight because they have a day to recover, a team running the protocol and a doctor nearby. Amateurs usually have none of those things, and the research shows that the recovery window — not discipline, not toughness — is what determines how much weight an athlete…

Quick answer: In BJJ you usually have a same-day weigh-in and you compete within a couple of hours, sometimes minutes. That single fact should change everything about how you approach the weight. There is no recovery window to rescue you, so the cut has to be small enough that you step off the scale ready…

Quick answer: The safest way to make weight is to stop treating it as a fight-week problem. Be within a few percent of your class two months out, lose the rest gradually through how you eat rather than through dehydration, and arrive at the weigh-in needing to shed almost nothing. Cuts that rely on removing…