Combat sports are characterized by being competitions where athletes are engaged in a weight category. And to get to it, there is a ceremony, almost an extreme ritual, which The weight cut is calledconsisting of losing kilos for weeks and removing several more on the last day through extreme sweating. And, of course, the case of Ilyia Topuria is no exception.
The Matador faces the most important fight of his career for the creation of a legacy, to continue enlarging his legend, because his triumph against Alexander Volkanovski was the great blow to the table to change the future of mixed martial arts in our country. Be that as it may, Topuria will have the opportunity this Saturday to become a world lightweight champion, which would mean conquering a second category within the largest league in the world.
Although competing in the light weight, it will mean having to weigh on the scale 155 pounds (70.3 kilos), that is, 10 pounds less than when world champion was proclaimed against Volkanovski in the pen weight (145 pounds, 65.8 kilos), having having increased muscle It implies that it will continue to have many kilos to be able to make the lawsuit official during the official weighing. Therefore, before the fight you have to adjust to the maximum, to the point that a strict diet is not enough.
Thus they dehydrate in the weighing
To do this, after gradually lost several kilos, this Thursday will have to dehydrate to lose many more and reach 70.3 that marks the category limit when there is a world title at stake. “It’s like drying a grape, weighing it, and re -moisturizing it”explains to ABC MMA the nutritionist David Rojas, who works with other athletes such as Aleksandre Topuria, Joel Álvarez or Dani Bárez, all of them fighters of the UFC.
«The first phase of dehydration is the caloric reduction. The athlete starts from a weight and has a few weeks for the event. With a physical condition and a concrete fat percentage, the athlete reduces his caloric contribution as anyone who wants to lose weight would do: eat a little less per day and the organism is burning fat. That is not enough, because much of the weight is in the glycogen, which is the carbohydrate that we consume and is stored in the liver and muscles. That glycogen drags its own weight 3 times in water and mineral salts as sodium. Our muscles are like water carafes», Explains the coach.
That glycogen is the one that topuria must reduce to the maximum. In total, it is estimated that between the caloric reduction and a rapid and extreme dehydration process, the fighter can lose between 6 and 7 kilos of blow. Normally, the fighters arrive at the week of the event with about 4 or 5 kilos above their maximum required weight, although they can be some more, even double, depending on the category and particularity of each.
How do fighters lose weight?
Regarding the way of staying, as Rojas explains, such as a dry grape, the mechanism is the loss of water, which can be performed by urine or sweating. And that is what the fighters do as Topuria on the day before weighing.
«The dehydration process begins by removing carbohydrates so that the body stops storing that glycogen and starts burning the one inside. Once this is removed, there is still a lot of water in the body and that has to be removed by a sweating process, ”explains the Valencian nutritionist.
Thus, fighters, including Topuria, usually Finally with plastics or saunas costumes and train with them. By temperature, the body begins to sweat. Therefore, they must make different ‘assaults’, with periods sweating a specific time within it, before leaving and covering towels and blankets to continue sweating even with the high temperature.
Another way is to enter A bathtub with water above 40ºC To sweat. It must be passed with water with 36-38ºC until going up to 40-42, and staying in the bathtub for a few minutes. It is controlling and releasing sweat, until the temperature is overwhelming for the athlete, exit and cover with a towel or blanket to continue sweating.
These operations, especially those of the sauna and that of the bathtub, must be repeated until the necessary weight to be reduced but only for a few hours is covered: the risk of possible cardiac arrest due to extreme dehydration is high. «You cannot be dehydrated many hours. Knowing that it is not a positive, good, healthy, experts in weight trimming we minimize the time that the athlete is dehydrated», Concludes David Rojas.
After passing this extreme weight loss process, Topuria will rise to the scale of the UFC facilities in Las Vegas and will thus confirm his fight for the world title of the lightweight of the UFC against Charles Oliveira.
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