Wrestling

Wrestling has been around as a sport for thousands of years. Early sculpted artifacts and paintings from France, Egypt, and ancient Babylon show wrestlers involved in holds that are essentially the same as those used today. In the early Olympic Games in Greece, the wrestling competition was the premier event.⁶² The basic strategy in all this time has not changed: Wrestlers attempt to force the shoulders of the opponent onto the mat to win the match. If neither wrestler is able to score such a fall, the winner is determined by officials, who use a point system involving the provision of points for near falls, holding an opponent close to his back, and controlling the opponent.

In 1997, news coverage of the tragic deaths of three collegiate wrestlers initiated a needed discussion about the techniques used by wrestlers to "make weight".Jeff Reese, a University of Michigan junior, died of kidney and heart failure while working out in a rubber suit in a 92 degree Fahrenheit (33 degree Celsius) room so he could qualify for a lower weight class. Billy Saylor (19 years old and three-time Florida State champion) of Campbell University and Joseph LaRosa (22 years old) of the University of Wisconsin also died while trying to lose a large amount of weight to qualify for a lower weight class. The outrage resulting from these deaths has finally led to serious examination of the rules that encourage the manipulation of normal weight and the techniques used (supplements, dehydration, fasting) to achieve a weight well below the athlete's natural weight to permit qualification in a lower weight class. An important outcome of this discussion should be an improvement in the information wrestling coaches have about weight loss, sports nutrition, training diets, dehydration, and body composition. In surveys of wrestling coaches that evaluate knowledge in these areas, a high proportion of the coaches have a less-than-adequate knowledge level to provide appropriate guidance to young athletes.⁶³ The American College of Sports Medicine's position on weight loss in wrestlers states:⁶⁴

Despite a growing body of evidence admonishing the behavior, weight cutting (rapid weight reduction) remains prevalent among wrestlers. Weight cutting has significant adverse consequences that may affect competitive performance, physical health, and normal growth and development. To enhance the education experience and reduce the health risks for the participants, the ACSM recommends measures to educate coaches and wrestlers toward sound nutrition and weight control behaviors, to curtail "weight cutting", and to enact rules that limit weight loss.

The general goal of this weight-loss strategy (cutting) is to qualify for a weight class during a weigh-in on the night before a match and to gain as much weight as possible between the weigh-in and the match the next day. A survey assessing weight-loss practices of college wrestlers determined that 40 percent were following the new NCAA rules and curbing their risky weight-loss practices.⁶⁵ Although this is a positive outcome, the majority of wrestlers have maintained risky weight-loss behaviors. Sadly, there is evidence that wrestling at a weight below the predicted minimum wrestling weight appears to be associated with greater wrestling success.⁶⁶ But there is also evidence that successful weight gain during this short period is important for success. In one study evaluating the relative weight gains of wrestlers, the heavier wrestler was successful 57 percent of the time.⁶⁷

There is concern on many levels about the weight-loss techniques commonly practiced by wrestlers. Some evidence suggests that undernutrition may lead to altered growth hormone production in wrestlers that, if present over several seasons, could lead to permanent growth impairment.⁶⁸ Another study determined that dietary restriction reduced protein nutrition and muscular performance.⁶⁹ These data are confirmed by findings indicating that weight loss by energy restriction significantly reduced anaerobic performance of wrestlers. Those on a high-carbohydrate refeeding diet tended to recover their performance, while those with lower intakes of carbohydrate did not.⁷⁰ Besides the obvious physiological changes that occur from rapid weight loss, there is good evidence that rapid weight loss in collegiate wrestlers causes an impairment of short-term memory, a fact that could affect scholastic achievement in these student athletes.⁷¹

Keeping this in mind, wrestlers must consider the following nutritionally relevant factors for their sport.

"Making weight" is a hazard to both performance and health. Ample evidence suggests that the weight cycling associated with making weight (i.e., weight loss to make weight followed by weight recovery for performance) is dangerous and can lead to glycogen depletion, a lower muscle mass, a lower resting energy expenditure, and an increase in body fat.⁷² Should this occur with frequency, it is likely that the reduction in resting energy expenditure could make it more difficult for the athlete to achieve the desired weight through dietary restriction, leading the wrestler to take more draconian (and more dangerous) measures to achieve the desired weight outcome. Wrestlers and coaches should follow a reasonable model for achieving desired weight, such as that offered by the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association, to avoid health and performance difficulties.⁷³ This program develops reasonable goals for weight and provides nutrition education information to help wrestlers achieve desired weight reasonably and to understand the implications of improper weight-loss methods. In these weight-achievement guidelines, a cap is placed on the maximum amount of weight change that can occur during the course of a season, and a monitoring system has been added to ensure that sudden and dramatic weight change does not occur at any point in the season.

The anaerobic nature of wrestling implies a high need for carbohydrate. Although there is an aerobic component to Olympic wrestling (matches may continue for 5 minutes without a break), high school wrestling is primarily an anaerobic sport (three 2-minute periods). The demand for carbohydrate in this type of activity is extremely high, and there is evidence that wrestlers perform better on high carbohydrate intakes. It is also of great concern that wrestlers commonly resort to dehydration as a means of achieving desired weight. Nothing could be more dangerous or more performance reducing than competing in a dehydrated state. Wrestlers should resist inducing dehydration because of the clear dangers (including organ failure, heatstroke, and death) associated with this strategy and should understand that well-hydrated athletes perform better than dehydrated ones.

Wrestlers and coaches should become better educated on the potential hazards of improper nutrition. Trying to achieve an arbitrarily low weight in growing athletes is disease inducing rather than health enhancing (the ultimate goal of sport). It is not acceptable to place a young athlete in harm's way to achieve a falsely low weight goal, especially since the achieved weight has nothing to do with the weight at which the wrestler actually competes. Everyone involved in the sport should endorse the development of widely accepted weight-to-height norms that can be applied reasonably to wrestlers. Further, weight should be taken immediately before the competition rather than at a time that permits drastic and dangerous shifts in eating behaviors. Until the rules change, wrestlers and coaches should all be made aware of the hazards associated with the current "making weight" procedures.

Athletes in sports involving maximal power and speed should focus on the provision of an adequate total energy intake, primarily from carbohydrates, so that sufficient glycogen can be synthesized and stored for muscular work. Since phosphocreatine and glycogen are the primary fuels for high-intensity activities, protein intake should also be sufficient (about 1.5 to 2.0 grams per kilogram of body weight) to ensure that creatine can be synthesized. There is increasing evidence that creatine supplementation can significantly improve performance in short-duration, high-intensity activity.⁷⁴ However, research design issues of many of these studies fail to clarify how athletes might perform with an adequate caloric consumption and if this might encourage a greater internal synthesis of creatine. Many athletes across a wide-ranging spectrum of sports have unsatisfactory nutrition habits that should be corrected before embarking on a strategy of supplementation.⁷⁵ Fluid intake is also important because it helps maintain blood volume, a critically important factor in athletic performance, and inadequate fluid intake limits glycogen storage and also makes it difficult to maintain body temperature. Coaches tend to overvalue proteins, are excessive in recommending low-fat diets, and often use food myths rather than facts in making dietary recommendations to athletes.⁷⁶ Athletes should always adapt their carbohydrate and fluid needs to their sports, but in the case of high-intensity, short-duration activities, the needs are almost always high.⁷⁷