Fashion

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Weight cutting is as much of a UFC and MMA fixture as tattoos and because it is such a common practice within the sport, it is best as a fan to know what it entails.

Weight cutting can be divided roughly into four different stages- Dieting, Equilibrium, Sweating and Rebounding.

Dieting is what happens in the weeks and months prior to a fight. This is when the boxer burns off extra body fat or muscle that could make them heavier than they would like. Then comes equilibrium changing. In this stage, the fighter will cut their intake of carbohydrates and sodium while then drinking a large amount of water a week before the fight in order to ensure their body isn’t retaining more water than it needs to.

Sweating happens in the last few hours before weighing in. This is when the fighter will exercise wearing a plastic bag or use another method in order to rid the body of as much water as possible. Rebounding is the last phase and this takes place 24 hours before the fight. This is when the fighter actively replenishes his stores of sodium, water and carbohydrates

While both Anderson Silva and St. Pierre are rather large for their weight classes, when people refer to Silva’s weight, they speak as if he is a natural 205 pounds that incredibly eliminates more water from his body than is possible.

However, the truth is that once they step into the ring, the differences in their weight classes versus their fighting weights are relatively the same as people simply do not understand what the difference in their walking weights mean.Supposedly, St. Pierre walks somewhere in the weight range of 190 to 195 pounds whereas Silva walks around 230 pounds.While that weight difference is significant, it doesn’t mean as much as you might think.

When Silva is not actively training for a fight, he allows himself to pack on a few pounds. On the other hand, St. Pierre does not.This means that before a fight, Silva must diet and lose the extra fat before he starts his equilibrium changing phase while St. Pierre has hardly any diet phase at all in his process. This means that his equilibrium changing could be a little bit shorter since he most likely doesn’t retain as much salt.The true weight to take into account when comparing the size of fighters is the weight they are right before their equilibrium changing process and not dieting.

Next, you divide that weight by their weight class and that will give you a standardized number that is more helpful in comparing how big someone is compared to the other fighters in the UFC.Once you look at it from this perspective, you will then realize that Silva isn’t the large middleweight giant he has been perceived as.