Keifer from Dangerously Hardcore shares a basic template for dropping weight for meet day.
Now this is for people who need to make a lot of weight. Of curse the best thing to do for your body / performance is to stay within a reasonable range all year round. I imagine that running to the toilette 5 times a night in the week before your meet will be detrimental to your recovery.
But if you allowed yourself to go over board with your weight, that is the punishment you have to go through.
In this example the meet is one week away on a Saturday.
Saturday: a week before , stop eating carbs (less than 30g a day)
Sunday: a HIIT session
Monday: an extra 3-4 liters of water
Tuesday: add 2 more liters to that
Wednesday: add another 2 liters on top of that
Thursday: maintain the above
Friday:
- get all your water in by 5pm, have a training session, stop all fluid intake
- at 7pm have a fatty meal, ingest dry, high glycemic carbs (crackers)
- he says carbs act as a diuretic in that situation
Saturday: should you still be above target weight, use more extreme measues, like steam showers, spinning, get that old sweat suit out
After Weigh In:
- carb up,drink milk, which is really good to replenish vitamins and minerals
- also: carbs, carbs, carbs, proteins
lol @ High GI carbs.
I haven’t seen this anywhere but I thought about it the other day; stopping creatine supplementation before the meet (if you are a responder). Obviously it takes time for your stores of creatine to become depleted but am I wrong in thinking that the main purpose of creatine is to get a few extra reps, which in turn increases your 1RM…or does it affect your strength levels directly, I can never remember. Any way I just thought that might be something to think about if you are struggling to make weight.
Not sure if I am understanding you correctly.
Why would you want to stop creatine intake before a meet?
I don’t know how long the body takes to return to its natural levels.
I’m pretty sure it’s weeks, just like if you started using it takes weeks to reach full saturation.
My point was if taking creatine has a direct effect on strength through the ability to be able to get extra reps or volume in training but not directly in the sense you just take some and get stronger then there might not be any added bonus of being on creatine during a meet. If you stopped taking creatine before the meet you could lose some of the water which was drawn into your muscles, therefore making weight more easily. If the first part of what I said was true then you could essentially keep strength up while weighing less than your competitors. If it is false then it could still be used as per this article “to make a lot of weight”.
I’m just speaking out loud and wanted to bounce ideas off people! Chances are someone’s experimented with this before.
Thanks for clarifying.
Would love to hear from somebody who has tried it.