Recently, I have seen a lot of competitors, even smart and experienced competitors, make their lives unnecessarily harder and throw kilos away on the platform by cutting weight for a meet poorly. There are lots of smart ways to cut weight, and I'm going to lay out my preferred method, layer by layer, here.
This is a proven method which I've used dozens of times, both on myself, and athletes that I've coached. That said, deliberately dehydrating yourself for sport is neither particularly smart nor safe, and you should consider seeking medical advice before doing so. I will not address the more aggressive weight cutting strategies employed for 24-hour weigh ins here, as I think they're disproportionately more dangerous than those discussed here.
Just want to be told how to do it? Pick up a water-cut template here.
Layer 0 - How much can I cut?
The most important part of a water cut / weight manipulation is the very last part - recomposition after the weigh in. Being dehydrated is stressful, bad for your health, and bad for your performance. We're going to work backwards by planning how much weight to lose, which is determined by how much we can gain back.
An average person can regain about 2% of their body weight in lost water in 2 hours, and most people can lift at around 1% dehydration without affecting their performance. That means that for a 2-hour weigh-in, most competitors should not look to cut more than 3% of their body weight.
With that in mind, we can say that most competitors should not begin their water cut at more than about 3% over the top of their weight class. For a 93 kg man, this means weighing something like 95.8 kg, and for a 57 kg woman, something like 58.7 kg. One can cut more weight, but it becomes increasingly dangerous and detrimental to your performance. If you're intending to compete in a class, and you're currently more than 3% over the top of the class, consider dieting down slowly over weeks or months, and then water cutting the last few percent. Ideally, you'd be reaching 103% of your weight class about four weeks out from your meet, so you can eat at maintenance (for recovery) for your final few weeks of training.
Finally, this process takes about a week, but you will need to decide to commit 2 weeks before meet day. Start weighing yourself before bed and first thing in the morning. Calculate how much weight you drop over night - you're going to need that for Layer 4 - Hyperthermia.
Layer 1 - Water
The most obvious layer is the water. The idea here is to drink way more water than you're accustomed to, to "convince" your body it's normal to pee constantly, and then cut it off. It takes a while to return to baseline excretion levels, and in that time you drop extra fluid mass.
A common mistake here is to taper your water off, but this does exactly the opposite of what you're trying to achieve. By tapering water intake, your body is adjusting to lower intakes and compensating with lower excretion levels. If you taper for too long, you'll actually retain extra water, making you even heavier.
So, how much do you drink? Your peak water intake should be something like 120 mL / kg.body weight. This isn't that precise, so feel free to round it to an easy number. For me, as a 95 kg human, this comes out at around about 11.5 L (3 gallons-ish, for my American friends.)
We're not going to jump straight to peak water, though. If competition day is Day-0, then 1 and 2 days out we're going to drink 100% of peak water; 3 and 4 days out we're going to drink 80% of peak water; and 5 and 6 days out we're going to drink 60% of peak water. On the last day (1 day out), cut all fluid intake 16 hours before weigh in. On other days, drink however you like, just be aware that if you consume all your water in the evening, you're going to be up all night peeing.
Layer 2 - Sodium
Just like with water, the idea of salt loading is to "convince" your body that excreting a metric tonne of salt every day is normal. Sodium pulls water into your cells, and conversely, when you excrete a lot of it, it pulls more more water out of your body to maintain osmolarity.
My standard sodium protocol is 1 and 2 days out - minimum possible sodium, aim for under 1000 mg. For days 3 to 6, high sodium. I tend to say "5000 mg", but honestly, I don't try track it, and just throw salt on every bit of food I eat. I've also seen people mix up saline "shots" by mixing a teaspoon of salt into a small amount of water, which works just fine as well.
Layer 3 - Carbs
This is the first optional layer. If it's your first water load, or only have < 1.5% of your body weight to lose, probably skip everything from here down.
Glycogen stored in your muscles stores water. If we can deplete your glycogen stores, you pee out all the extra water, and lose weight (hint - this is also why you lose a lot of weight when you first move to a ketogenic diet.) Flip side - carbs also aid recovery, so if we're eating for performance, we want to keep our carb intake high.
I've found the best compromise to be eating normally until 3 days out, and then, 2 days out, switch to low-carb mode, aiming for < 10% of your normal carbohydrate intake, but maintaining calories. You also want to drop total food mass in this time (i.e. eat calorically dense foods, high in fat and protein), but this tends to be a natural consequence of dropping carbs so low.
Note that here I am referring to total carbs, not net carbs.
Layer 4 - Hyperthermia
I'm going to preface this by saying that you probably shouldn't be planning on using hyperthermia to make weight for a 2-hour weigh in. This should only be necessary if you're dropping more than 3% of your body weight, and usually not until > 4%. If you're doing this, you're definitely going to see a hit on your performance, and you need to be okay with that.
The other time you might need to sweat out some weight is if (for one reason or another) the rest of your cut has gone poorly. If your evening weight the night before you lift (morning weigh-in) is more than your average overnight drop over your competition weight, it is worth considering 1 to 2 rounds of hyperthermia before bed, or waking up early to recheck your weight.
So, if you're still planning to use hyperthermia to lose weight, my preferred method is to use a hot bath full of epsom salts, and cycle 20 minutes in the bath with 10 minutes out, fully drying yourself and reweighing yourself after every period out of the bath. Your weight loss won't be linear, as you do this, so you do need to reweigh yourself frequently.
If you are doing this, do it with supervision. Have someone sitting with you the entire time.
And.... that's it. No saunas, no running in fat suits, no cardio of any description.
Rehydration
Okay, so you weigh in, what's next? This is very important, and doing it poorly will mean you spend the entire day moderately dehydrated and under performing. I recommend consuming a bit of salt just before weighing-in to expedite the rehydration process immediately after weigh-ins. Make sure to have your electrolyte solutions (Pedialyte, Hydralyte, Trioral, etc) already mixed and ready to drink right. After coming off the scales, you need to regain as many of your lost fluids, electrolytes, and any lost glycogen as fast as possible. In order, you should consume an electrolyte/sugar concoction, some fast carbs (a few tablespoons of honey or maple syrup), and a moderate GI, low fibre carb (I like rice; wholemeal bread, potatoes or sweet potatoes, muesli etc are all good, but make sure to stick to foods you eat regularly). I see a lot of people making the mistake of downing extremely fatty foods, or foods high in protein after weigh in. Although I understand the temptation, those foods tend to slow digestion, which in our depleted state isn't what we want.
Throughout the day, keeping up the fluid and electrolyte intake is important. You're going to be more prone to cramping than usual, so keeping an electrolyte mix on hand is going to be essential.
Finally, if you start to feel bloated when you're rehydrating, stop. The last thing you want is to push it and end up not being able to brace properly.
Conclusion
That's what I've found to be the most efficacious, least damaging way of water cutting. There are plenty of other ways to get down to weight too, so if this isn't what you've seen before don't be too surprised. I hope that helps, but if you're still struggling feel free to leave a comment below or flick me an email.
We also now offer a range of water cut templates, to help make it as easy as possible for you. Check out our range here.