Cutting Weight In BJJ: Right Or Wrong?

Here is the first question , anonymous , of course .

I was just wondering if you knew anybody that it happened to and what happened with their jiu-jitsu and their fitness life , how they got back into it . So any advice you could provide or any perspective you could provide from somebody you know

who's gone through the same thing , I'd really appreciate it . In any case , as always , I appreciate the Bulletproof for Jiu-Jitsu program . It's been a positive influence on my life and I wanted to continue to be so .

And while I can't be , uh , lifting things and being a hancher , I'm still gonna , I'm still gonna be making myself as mobile as possible until I can get back to it . Anyway , thanks , fellas , peace , my guy fuck a ben hanwell man I'm sorry to hear that , bro .

I won't go into it super deeply , but I do know someone specifically who has a pacemaker , who I used to train with Nick Barker , who runs Grappling Industries , australia now instead of Ben Hodgkinson .

Oh yeah , he still trains , he still rolls , probably not super hard rolls , I think , because he had it , he put it , had it put in like eight years ago or nine years ago . Now he might be a little laissez faire from time to time . He might just be like , yeah , just roll , you know , like classic jujitsu guy , but he , he trains like he .

I think the fear when , when uh Ben first mentioned this , was I'm done , jujitsu is over . Now , like fuck , I'm fucked right , because the doctor's like don't lift weights , don't do this , don't do that , like it's , there's a lot of fear because , like I mean , I have questions . Did you go to the other side ? Did you see the light ?

like yeah bro , that's crazy experience to literally yeah , go , go , go , go go and come back . But what I'd say is take heart , it's not the end . It's not the end .

You can do jujitsu with a pacemaker or a regulator of sorts , depending I don't know the exact nature of yours and you can come back and you will eventually be doing weights and doing some other things too . So I don't think it's the end of the henchness .

So in the meantime , obviously do what the doctor and the surgeons say , but based off what I know from nick and how he lives his life , you'll be able to be a healthy , fit , strong man soon enough . Yeah , for context , for other , for listeners , ben ben's been a long time bullet proffer , yes , big contributor on our community group like ask great questions .

He's fucking man's got a voice for radio and he's got a voice for movie intro he's come in , he's hit us on the q a a few times . He's always asked good quality stuff . Um , yeah , I've known a couple of people . I know one guy , big dadd , who used to train here oh Not a well , I don't know but he had open heart surgery .

Wow , my original coach , dan , who graded me to Brown belt he had a pacemaker put in oh , wow , yeah , I think that coincided with him closing the gym and um and I'm not sure how it affected him , cause I sort of lost touch with him at that point but um , yeah , at a point you're probably going to be able to just go back to whatever , because the reality

is is like like here's an example I have . I got a friend who used to train with us who came to our gym when he'd broken his back . He broke his back at a trampoline park . Oh , jesus , broke his spine Right . Oh my God , it was in a full body cast , like yep and , and was in a full body cast for like three months . It was really bad .

He came to our gym maybe six months after that and was like hey , man , I'm a mess , but I want to do something . The doctor told me I would never be able to lift anything heavier than a case of beer again , wow . And you're like wow , that's fucked . And you're like I can see how that makes sense . Like you broke your back , it's kind of whatever .

And you're like I can see how that makes sense . Like you broke your back . It's kind of whatever . They've screwed the shit back together . But yeah , you can never go too hard . Motherfucker was deadlifting 160 kilos for reps after three years training with us right and full capacity surfing . Whatever he wants to do , he can do it .

Like probably has forgotten about that injury , right , and that's kind of the thing is that they give you those recommendations which must be conservative and are based on the average person , yeah , but there's always more bandwidth .

There is , and it and it becomes apparent once you get past this acute time of the injury where it's like no , you can actually get back into shit . And I don't know , maybe , maybe , yeah , maybe there is a limitation that you can't go fucking balls to the wall at the comp prep class for adcc .

Sure , but you can still do jiu-jitsu man you can and I actually think this is the first step in terms of you becoming a cyborg . I think it's perfect . I think you have an unfair advantage . You've got something in you that limits your ability for your heart rate to go high .

I think you'll be able to go hard and be recovered quicker because you've got something in you that limits your ability for your heart rate to go high . I think you'll be able to go hard and be recovered quicker because you've got mechanical enhancement . So I would actually look at it like actually , what happens next ?

Like maybe this is going to become a trend in jujitsu that elite athletes are getting in . I want what he's got . Yeah , he's got the heart regulator so he never gets tired . His heart rate never goes over 80 beats per minute . Imagine , no , look . Shout out to Mr Ben Hanawal .

We wish you well , mate , and I know that you are on the comeback , so you'll be good , mate . I have great faith that you'll be back to where you want to be . There is a silver lining in every injury . There's a silver lining in every injury . This is true . I had this conversation with a member of the gym this morning .

It's always fucking sucks because of all the things you can't do , but that only serves to narrow your focus on the things that you can do . Can do , and that's a chance to get really fucking good at those things . Something else , yeah , big love , man . You know what I love when someone shares a secret with me and that secret is helpful .

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, white belt . Uh , enjoy the podcast . Just wanted to ask you , um , just done a couple of competitions and where I live we have two main organizations , the uh . The one does weigh in either the day before or in the morning . The other competition does weigh-ins in the um just before your fight . Uh , I was .

I'd love to hear some tips on what you recommend doing different between these two kind of competitions and how you find it it that's one thanks jake legend .

What I have found is for most people they either kind of bang in the middle or they're close to an upper category or a lower category , whatever it might be .

And so in that way , if you like the competition format where you have to weigh in on the day , which is an IBJJF approach , you want to sit as close to the natural weight , like you want your natural weight as close to the upper end of your weight category as it can be , yeah , whereas that day before comp , whatever that , whatever that format is , that is

one where maybe you know you might consider there could be some athletic advantages in getting your weight down , maybe in a way that's like , maybe not super sustainable , but whether you're in a sauna or you're , you're doing water loading or whatever you're doing to cut that weight and then feed up the night before and then come in monstrous the next day because if

you don't , some other motherfucker will come in looking like glace and t-bow bro . Good , because I've had that before where I didn't cut for a judo comp and I a big , a big guy , did . I like a 105 guy cut to 90 , oh , wow , and yeah , and oh my god , oh jesus , huge motherfuckers . Right , and it was just . That wasn't a federated comp .

They just said , oh we , it was for convenience , they did the way in the day before . Typically they do on the day , right , but , mate , that was big trouble . So that's my advice that if you like a particular style of comp that you would want to come in somewhere near the top of your weight category , it is an advantage . That's what I say .

Yeah , I think that's fair . I um , I got a slightly different take on it , jake , which is going off my personal experience , whereby I had a coach back when I used to compete a lot , which was like white to purple belt and he would always be talking about the weight thing and oh , where's your weight at ?

And oh , you want to drop down , and always kind of like that was part of competing was like where's your weight going to be and how are we leveraging this ? And I just found for me it was an extra stress at that in those early days that I just didn't need and I would .

I remember showing up to a lot of comps being like half starved because I was right on the edge and you're nervous and it's comp day , and like you don't need , like you know , going in like part , like with only a little bit of food and a little bit of water , is like it's shit , right , because bad prep , yeah , and it's like on top of all the other shit

you're worried about . And you know , to be honest , it never , it never made that , I don't think , at the , at the divisions , at the standard jits I was doing , it never made that much of a difference , sure .

And so if you , as a four-stripe white belt , I'm like probably doesn't matter , man , like I would just go with what feels comfortable , and to that point , I would choose the division that you naturally sit at so that you can comfortably eat and drink and be hydrated and well-rested coming into the comp , and then if you've got to go against some cunt , that's a

bit bigger . So what you True , you know . That said , though you might also be like no , no , no , I want to fucking take every advantage I can get . And you know those people are out there and if you do come from a culture like we know , with wrestling or judo and stuff , where like cutting is a part of the competition , that's something worth considering .

I remember my coach back then doing shit like like we did an episode today where we're talking about coaches getting injured , right Sure , and we're saying how what the coach does influences what the students do Definitely yeah . And I remember going to the Asian championships and we weighed in . I think I was a blue belt , he was a brown belt .

We weighed in sometime the morning of it's not before your first fight , but it's a couple of hours before or it could be a couple , it could be six , you know , depending on where your match is that day .

But him having to go and like run laps with a fucking plastic bag on or whatever around the outside of the Budokan in Tokyo to like , sweat out some weight . And I'm like you're dehydrating yourself before your first match and and you're like I just got to win this first match and I can't remember he might have , but it's just so fucking stupid .

It makes no logical sense in that way . I mean , look for Taekwondo , weight cutting was definitely a part of it , but what they did with black belts is you had to weigh in in the morning and then the black belts weren't on until the end of the day , so you kind of had the whole day to Hydrate . Yeah , get ready .

But if you're a white belt , you weighed in and then you competed . But at international competition weigh in was day before . So everybody was at the sauna If there was one sauna in that little German town or in the hotel , every motherfucker was there and it was romanticized Like , oh , how much weight can I cut ?

And then eat and drink and then come in the next day behemoth . That was a big part of the culture for Taekwondo , actually for at least international competition . So it was quite interesting to me to , yeah , like similar to what you're saying , joe , just come in feeling good , fed , happy , and then just fucking put all your energy on the line . I .

I definitely feel that until you've done a fair bit of competing and look , you may be very experienced even as a four-stripe white belt that , um , feeling good and being full of energy will have a more positive impact on your jiu-jitsu than just uh , you know having a slight weight advantage yes yeah , but being a fucking ball of nerves , yeah , that's it , because

that that happens to you regardless . yeah , so better to just like limit the amount of fucking anxious energy to just the fact that you're about to compete . There was a guy I knew just a disaster story on weight cutting um who was fucking with these uh di diuretics and he would just swore by him .

You know , he got these uh diuretic pills , he got them off his brother and he , he just like it was like the pretty strong shit . He's like , trust me , man , speed pills or some shit , oh no , you just like up kilos , except the like , I think , for whatever because of his diet . It kind of didn't work .

Like he'd used it a fair bit , he was kind of relying on it , but the day it was before the pan packs , he just he'd taken a pill the night before and I said I didn't hit .

So he took another one that morning and then like , and then just before warm-up he was like running to the bathroom and had a disaster before he could get to the toilet and so he only brought one gi Shat himself . He couldn't even compete because he shat the gi the worst . Oh God , poor sucker .

So , man , like there can be a lot of disasters when you're playing with your weight and , yeah , ultimately you want to focus on the skill you know .

today . Big love to Ben . I fucking wish you all the best on that , bro . We're always here for you , here for you . Thank you for the questions . If you want to leave us a question for a future episode , go to the website bulletproofforbjjcom . No-transcript .