Matheus Lutes' 2019 Spyder Invitational Championship Weight Cut
From Left to Right is chronological order of Weeks 1-4 of the weight cut. See below for Week 5.5 final before the water cut.
Weight cuts are a funny thing. For most same-day weigh-in sports, the best policy is as little of a cut as possible, as any extreme fluctuations in hydration/water can affect your power and put you at potential health risk. 24-hour weigh-ins present an interesting proposition though, as there are a lot of methods to literally tilt the scales in your favor.
Jiu Jitsu usually doesn’t have 24-hour prior weigh-ins, which makes significant weight cutting a bad idea. However, Matheus Lutes, competing in the 2019 Spyder Invitational in Korea, had that “luxury” (if you want to call it that) of 24 hour prior weigh-ins. Because of this, we were able to mix a pretty aggressive diet and training schedule with a water-cut at the end of the camp in order to make weight easily and safely, putting him in the best competitive shape possible.
The Method
Different athletes have different preferences for food, but the best way to give your body a shot at preserving as much lean mass as possible while having the energy to train meaningfully is to keep your protein high and carbohydrate intake high enough to fuel your training and recovery, without being excessive or keeping your weight up artificially.
But what is usually cut first when most people want to cut weight? That’s right, carbohydrates. And they usually don’t wean off either…they cut them completely.
If you’re a professional athlete, this is a mistake. You simply train too much to be depleting yourself prematurely (or entirely) of carbohydrates. This is also a mistake if you’re not a professional, but train frequently for competition. The reason being, if you cut all carbohydrates, you literally have no where to drop further. You’d have to move to cutting fat or protein, and both are not ideal scenarios. Cut too much protein, and you start to interfere with the maintenance of muscle. Cut too much fat and you risk your health and hormone function. As a note, I’d recommend never having a male competitive athlete go below ~60g of fat per day (for basic health and hormone function), and that number is quite a bit higher for women.
Thus, keeping a balanced macronutrient profile that progressively cuts carbohydrates, fat and eventually smaller amounts of protein, was the name of the game.
Execution
I first had to figure out Matheus’ base metabolic rate. One I was able to do that, I calculated his current macronutrient needs as a baseline in order to maintain his current weight. You have to know where you’re starting to know where you’re going.
From there, based on experience and what I’ve noticed over the years with the energy demands of jiu jitsu + strength and conditioning, I made him a calendar of daily macros (i.e.: the exact number of macronutrients he should be eating each day) for approximately 5 weeks, with him moving to a new set of numbers each week. Each week, those numbers shaved off bit by bit. He responded very well, preparing and weighing his own food and following the dietary guidelines I gave him (more on that below).
He started at 195lbs. The photos you see on the header image are his weekly weigh-in photos that we took at my gym. The goal was to have him at 175lbs or less by the time he left for Korea on November 18th. We hit that number pretty easily a few days before, and actually had to maintain the weight there for a few days, as not to lose too much. The photo here is Matheus at 175lbs a few days before his flight out.
From that 175lbs weight, he’d begin his water cut the day he arrived in Korea. His water-cut method was mostly his own, mixed with a recipe I gave him for rehydration once the weigh-ins happened and he made weight.
Rehydration
Matheus just before weigh-ins, easily on weight.
This is arguably one of the most important parts of the weight cut, as doing so improperly can result in bad gastrointestinal distress that can interrupt the “re-feed” to bring your weight back up.
In a 24 hour prior weigh-in scenario, you have exactly 24 hours to replenish or rehydrate as much as you’re able. One mistake you see is that people start pounding electrolytes and food as fast as they’re able, resulting in a queasy, gross feeling that may even cause them to vomit, or feel extreme gastro and physical distress.
To combat this, I gave him a schedule of exactly what to drink and eat within the first 3 hours, and then recommendations for later in the day.
A Word on Food Quality and Micronutrients
It is imperative that you keep up your micronutrient balance while focusing on macronutrients, as the “micros” are the drivers of health in your body. Without minding proper Vitamin C, D, electrolyte and mineral balance in the body during such a cut, you’re asking for trouble in the form of illness, susceptibility to skin infection, or impaired performance.
I am a big fan of Stan Efferding and his “Vertical Diet” method, as it very succinctly and simply outlines easily digestible foods to help you gain/lose weight, while maximizing health in the process. Mixed with my own experience over the years, I am a fan of his outlook on low-inflammatory foods and how to use them in a diet that maximizes muscle and strength gains, while shedding body fat or in this case, cutting weight. By his own admission, he learned much of his weight cut strategies from George Lockhart, who I am also a big fan of, and whose views I share and subscribe to on much of my weight cutting protocol for athletes of all weight class sports.
I hope this brief primer was informative and gave you a good idea of how we went about a really solid weight cut with Matheus. This is going to be multiple parts, and the next will be on his training program leading up to the event.
About the Author: Mark DiSalvo, CSCS
Mark is the founder and owner of DiSalvo Performance Training. He brings over a decade of experience training clients and athletes of all backgrounds and is the strength and conditioning coach to grapplers of all levels and disciplines: from youth to professional and Olympic-level. He is currently a purple belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu himself, with 10 years of experience in the sport. You can read more about him here.
A graduate of Northeastern University, he’s an NSCA Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) and Sports Performance Expert with a specialty in combat sports. He’s also a Steve Maxwell Certified Kettlebell Instructor (Levels 1 & 2).