How Much Weight Should MMA Fighters Gain Outside of Fight Camps?
Are there benefits to weight gain outside of fight camps? Maybe…
The better question might be, what does it cost you?
Far too many MMA fighters have developed a bad habit that could potentially shorten their career and cause health problems down the road. No, I’m not talking about drugs or alcohol or even promiscuous women. The bad habit I want to address is fighters who allow their weight to balloon up well over their recommended fight camp weight when they are not in fight camp.
In the past two years of working in this specific sport, I have heard horror stories about 20lb, 25lb, and even 30lbs weight cuts DURING FIGHT WEEK. This is irresponsible, unsafe, and should be addressed. These kinds of last minute, drastic weight cuts are almost always due to fighters becoming too heavy and undisciplined during their “recovery period”. Often they stop training, have a poor diet, and an even worse lifestyle. Lacking consistent sleep, coupled with a poor diet will create chaos inside your body, causing hormonal and energy imbalances. Then when you have only have 8 weeks or even 6 weeks notice for your next fight, you will spend half of your fight camp just trying to get your energy and hormone levels back in balance. As fight week approaches and the athlete is not on a structured weight cut schedule they have to resort to drastic water cuts that leave the fighter depleted and severely dehydrated.
Fighters should come into a training camp DAY 1, feeling rested, recovered and confident. They should be focussed, paying attention to every little detail of training. Over an 8 week fight camp, the training intensity should gradually build as the weeks progress, coming to a climax at about week 5 or 6, depending on how much weight needs to be cut. Fighters should never cut more than 10-12% of their body weight during fight week. This is why developing and implementing a proper fight camp weight cut schedule is step 1 of creating healthy and safe principles for the sport of MMA. Protecting the athletes health and wellbeing should always be the a priority.
So why do fighters allow themselves to ballon up in weight in between fight camps? Some people believe that by gaining weight you are letting the body rest and recover. “Im resetting my hormones and glycogen storage” might be a common misnomer. Others may believe that walking around at a heavier weight causes the muscles to become stronger by having to produce more force due to the increased workload. But mostly it is habit. It’s routine, and it is an undisciplined mindset that is the allowing for excess weight gain in between fight camps.
The main problem with this strategy is that unless a fighter is eating an extremely clean diet, most if not all, of the weight gain in between fight camps is due to inflammation, bloating, and water retention that occurs almost exclusively in the gut. Lean muscle simply doesn’t develop quickly enough for it to be anything else.
It doesn’t stop there. I’ve been learning recently that the inflammation is not local to the gut. Even though thats where most of the weight and bloating is carried and stored, these inflammation markers are sent throughout the entire body, wreaking havoc wherever they go. They cause damage to things like the immune system, muscle development, and your gut biome. They cause constraints on your energy systems and metabolism, and they even disrupt hormone levels.
In the weeks after a fight, the fighter’s body is not just recovering from the damage and stress from the fight. They are also recovering from a 6-10 week fight camp and from a stressful water cut. Restoring energy levels, rebuilding muscle loss, and repairing any cell damage will be a high priority for your body for weeks after your fight. Fighters who don’t manage their diet are simply causing more damage to their body and adding more inflammation to their system. Im not saying you shouldn’t gain any weight in between fights. That is normal and you should gain a little weight in between fights, but that should only be done by eating higher amounts of clean fats to restore hormone balance, high amounts of clean protein to rebuild muscle loss, and a healthy amount of organic carbs to fuel performance during recovering training. Planting yourself on the couch for 2 weeks is not the way a professional athlete recovers. Thats how weekend warriors and amateurs do it. If you want to be a professional, you need to have a plan.
So if you are a fighter that allows your weight to blow up in between fights then you need to really consider how you manage your lifestyle and diet during your recovery process. While you may think that you are recovering or celebrating or having some time off. In reality there are no days off. There should only be steady progress toward your goal.
Now you can adapt your training schedule outside of fight camp. You can focus on zone 2 training to recover the legs and lungs. You can do a yoga retreat or learn how to surf or cross train in another sport, but for fucks sake don’t take days off and don’t let yourself balloon up in between fights. Nutrition is not an “on and off switch” and if you treat it like that, there will come a time when you need to perform and your “on switch” wont work how you need it to and your opponent may be the one with their hand raised under the bright lights.
Excess weight gain is preventable and maintaining a healthy weight outside of fight camps will give you access to more of the benefits that you are training so hard to gain. Dialing in your nutrition will boost hormones, decrease inflammation, and increase workload capacity. Don’t let the lack of knowledge or discipline be the reason you fall off the path towards your goals.
Scott Soldan
EatWater Nutrition
