Weight Cutting Strategies & Carb Periodization w/ Danny Lennon (SSOF Ep 68)

James de Lacey2:26

Yeah, nice. Yeah, we had Jordan Sullivan on the podcast a while ago now, so after you listen to this one and Eric Helms, then you can listen to Jordan Sullivan one after this. But now that's awesome.

Yeah, you've obviously got a wide range there. How do you see nutrition and combat sports evolving? Because obviously combat sports has been a Wild West. I kind of compare it to the old CrossFit days where kind of anything went back in those CrossFit days, and kind of combat sports has kind of gone through that similar phase. How do you think it's now progressed as I guess nutritional practices, and I guess are more fighters now starting to take a more common sense approach to the way they're doing things? Is it getting better or is there still a lot of maybe misinformation or misguided practice still going on?

Danny Lennon2:50

Yeah, it's interesting. There's a yes and a no part to that question. Because if we go back 5, 10 years ago, you could definitely say there was less information out there, but there was also less ability to answer those questions. So the amount of research that was done on combat sports nutrition was a lot less. Thankfully, that's been a growing area of research and there's some independent labs around the world now doing some really good work aiming specifically at combat sport athletes, looking at some of their weight making practices as well as their general nutrition, their management of body composition.

So we're starting to get some more direct scientific evidence which was lacking for a long period of time. So that's starting to come through. We have some practitioners, for example I would probably put Jordan at the top of that pile, that are working with high-level athletes in combat sports, but are doing it with the underpinnings of understanding physiology, understanding science, doing things that are both effective as well as safe and maximizing the athlete's performance.

However, we're still in this weird position where there are many questions that we don't have really direct answers to from research. And so we're trying to piece together some of the evidence that is there. We're then relying on what is being reported from other nutritionists and dietitians, things that have worked, things that haven't.

And so right now there's almost this split where thankfully there is really good information out there, but I would still say it's in the minority. And if you look at, depending on what athlete you go to, you might see them using other outdated methods that we just know are going to cause detrimental harm, ones that are based on just people guessing or they knew a person that used to make weight in this particular way and everyone in their gym has continued to use that. And that's a strong part of a lot of combat sports is kind of cultural passing down from different athletes or from different coaches.

And even at the highest levels you see people are still doing things that I would say are counterproductive to their performance, is making things more difficult than it needs to be, and certainly are in some cases extremely dangerous. So there is better information available, but at the same time, and just because of the nature of the internet, there's also really bad information available.

And so I think for the random athlete now to go on the internet and start looking for information on how to cut weight for combat sports, there's a high probability that they'll end up coming across a lot of things that are incorrect, slightly misleading, or in some cases actually just dangerous. But hopefully that tide is turning, and I think a lot of that will be from practitioners like Jordan who has guys that are in the news and saying, 'Hey, look, this is the way I'm making weight and there's a better way to do it, guys.' So yeah, it's an interesting time, so it's a kind of a yes or no type answer I guess.

James de Lacey5:34

Yeah, it reminds me, one of our previous guests, Andrew Asher, he was posting on Facebook I think the other week. I think a boxer reached out to him or the parents, the coaches wanted him to sleep in a sleeping bag in a sauna overnight, the night before a fight, to try to lose I think it was something ridiculous, it was like 30, it was something stupid amount of weight.

And then Andrew told him he had to go to the hospital ASAP and he was having like kidney failure and things like that already. It's like, unbelievable, could you imagine telling someone to sleep in a sauna? Like, it's insane.

Danny Lennon6:22

Yeah, people wouldn't believe some of the stuff that gets recommended. And that's the problem of it's people that originally started out trying to help guys with their diet. Now with this weight cutting stuff, gets into things that are completely outside of diet, right? It's looking at heat exposure, water loss in saunas, and these things have real important implications that you need to understand from physiology. You need medical supervision.

And then now you're just getting random people telling them to do crazy stuff like this that literally is life-threatening, right? If he had followed through that, that is life-threatening stuff. And unfortunately that is happening. And yeah, there's probably many examples of wild stuff that I'm sure everyone listening has heard, someone did this or did a different thing or got into trouble. And yeah, it's a bit crazy.

James de Lacey6:47

Yeah, for sure. And I think that's a good scene to set for good weight cutting, I guess, eight principles, whatever you want to call it. So do you want to dive into more? This is more of a kind of a general overview. We'll kind of dive down to some of the things there.

But maybe just your weight cutting principles, and I guess we can cover the 24-hour weigh-in. I think people competing MMA probably, or even some jiu-jitsu competitions might fall into that category. Then maybe we can go into shorter weigh-in time frames as well. But maybe let's just start with the 24-hour weigh-in and just some general weight cutting principles that someone can follow who's, I don't know, can't afford to have a coach or is doing this on their own.

Danny Lennon7:39

Yeah, so the way I tend to try and get athletes to think about this, and in an ideal world where let's say they don't have a fight in the next couple of weeks but they're thinking about long-term, 'How do I want to approach weight cuts in general?', is to think about this as a year-round thing that moves through different phases.

So even when you don't have a competition coming up or you don't have a fight coming up soon, there are still things you're going to be doing with your nutrition and your body composition management that's going to keep you in a weight range that is appropriate for whatever weight class you're going to make. So you don't want to get too far away from it that's going to require to do some crazy diet during your training camp that means then you're going to be undereating all the time for the number of weeks leading up to the fight to a significant degree, or that you have to use an excessively large weight cut in the final week that undermines your performance.

So there's some details to that which maybe we can get into, but it's knowing, okay, first of all, am I...

Competing in the right weight class for me. There's some questions we can ask to work out what that is. If so, what is the furthest I would want to get away from that weight when I'm outside of camp? And then how much weight is it appropriate for me to cut in, let's say, the final week or so when I'm using some of these more rapid weight loss strategies, whether that's dehydration or otherwise. So getting an idea of that and then making sure they are following those principles year round.

So the first part is, okay, am I following appropriate diet to fuel my training and recovery even when I don't have a competition coming up? Means eating a lot of carbohydrate, eating enough to maintain my body weight, making sure I'm not doing anything too wild. Then when I do have a fight or competition booked up and I know what weight I need to be a week out from that, how do I gradually diet down so I'm still losing weight and losing body fat as I get towards that weigh-in point, but that I'm not having to use such a large calorie deficit that I can't train or can't recover properly?

And then from there we can start talking about the acute weight cut itself. So that the first point of view is making sure that the numbers that they are doing is appropriate for their weight class that they're going for and also the sport they're doing and the setup between their weigh-in and competition. And the primary consideration there is how many hours they have between them. As you outlined, going to be very different strategy if it's a 24-hour weigh-in versus a 2-hour weigh-in. So those would be the first things that I would get them to nail down.

And then the second, as we'll probably talk about in a bit more detail in a moment, is on the actual final, let's say, seven days or so when we are doing what most people think of is the weight process, this rapid weight loss strategies. Approaching that in a way of how do I maximally get off weight using the strategies that are going to have minimal impact on my performance and health, and therefore minimize the amount I have to rely on the more risky strategies.

So for example, going into a sauna, using a hot bath, might be necessary for a number of athletes if they're doing a certain size weight cut. But what we don't want to do is to rely on that strategy to lose all of the 8% of their body weight they need to use in that final week. Rather, we want to try and get down as close as we can and then use that for the shortest time we need to in order to make weight. And so I think that would be the general thought process to bear in mind before we speak of any specific details.

James de Lacey10:59

Nice. So what are some of those questions that people can ask themselves if they're in the right weight class? Because I've actually had that question before. Obviously that's not my area, so don't answer those ones. But for people who are, if they get this right, then the rest of the weight cut should be much easier. Obviously people find it difficult because they're trying to cut so much damn weight to get to lower weight classes that maybe they're not suited for. So what kind of things are people asking themselves there?

Danny Lennon11:21

So the first one would be, for the weight class I currently compete in, how restrictive do I need to be say most of the time in order to make that weight class? So in other words, if an athlete is finding that in order just to make that weight class, they're almost constantly dieting. So even when they're during their training camp, or even when they don't have a competition come up, they have to be really mindful of their diet all the time and keep their calories lower than they might need.

Maybe they're constantly hungry just in order to keep their body weight down. That might be a good indicator that for them, they could actually perform way better by going up a weight class.

And I think there's this presumption a lot of times in combat sports athletes have of my best weight class is always going to be the lowest one I can get into. And in many cases that's just not the case. And we've seen multiple examples of athletes that move up a weight class and suddenly they perform way better.

Their training camp goes a lot better. They have more calories and carbohydrates they can eat during training camp, so their performances are better. The recovery ends up being better. They have less likelihood of getting sick or injured during training camp, which again impacts their performance in the long term. And so there's benefits to going up a weight class.

So the first would be, do I need to constantly be on a very restrictive diet basically year round just to give myself a chance of being in this weight class? Second, if that's the case, then do I also need to cut huge amounts of weight in the final week that is making it very difficult for me to currently make? Depending on the sport, I tend to give people rough cutoff points of how much is too much for that final week. And let's say we have a 24-hour plus weigh-in, so something we would see in pro MMA or boxing or so on.

For those athletes, I would tend to say 8% of their body weight in that final week should be seen as an upper limit. Now, of course, there will be some examples of athletes you might see at elite levels that might do more than that. There'll be athletes that also do a bit less. There's probably not everyone has the aim for 8%. People might do better if it's only 5% they're cutting.

But I would keep 8% as that upper limit that if you are routinely going in and where your final weight cut is like 10% or more, and you're also doing these restricted practices, that might be an indication you could be a good candidate for trialing what the next weight class up would feel like to you. That would be worth giving a shot.

And then the third one would be, in order to make this weight class, do I need to keep my body fat levels really, really low again year round? And if that's the case that the athlete is really lean and is doing these really large weight cuts on top of it and maintaining restrictive diet, those three things together indicates that, yeah, you might be a good candidate for trialing going up a weight class and there might be a lot of benefit there.

If it's an athlete that has more excess body fat and doing large weight cuts, in that situation maybe the first point would be, okay, can we trial gradually bringing down their body fat levels and therefore they don't have to rely on such a large weight cut in the end? And that might be a better strategy for them.

So for me, there are kind of three big questions the athlete can ask. And the more of those they respond yes to, the more chances they could trial going up a weight class. So how lean do they need to maintain year round? How low does their calorie intake have to be year round? And then how large is their weight cut in that final week, and/or how aggressive does their diet have to be during training camp?

And the more of those things that are towards that, yeah, more aggressive, larger, more restrictive, a number of those answers that start stacking up would give them more indication that you could actually have a real benefit of going up a weight class. And they might find they perform way better. And a lot of their worries about fighting bigger athletes might actually go out the window because they're able to move much better, perform much better, feel physically stronger. And so don't always presume that lower weight class is better.

James de Lacey15:05

Nice. And for someone, for what weight, I guess what percentage of body weight over the weight class do you usually like to have someone sit? Does that depend on the individual? Because obviously you mentioned, okay, 8% at the final week is kind of the upper limit of that rapid weight loss. Do you have them sit somewhere above 8% then, or a certain threshold outside of camp? Or what is too far outside of that 8% as well?

Danny Lennon15:34

Yeah, so there's different numbers we can come up with. But I think generally the way I try to get the athlete to think of it is, they tend to have an average fight camp period. And I'm using that term fight camp just to mean, okay, when I know of a competition or a fight coming up, typically how many weeks is that when I start this dialing in my diet to actively try and lose weight? So I'm not maintaining weight anymore. I'm checking my body weight and I gradually want to bring it down.

In an ideal world, you might want the athlete losing about, say, half a percent of their body weight per week, maybe up as far as 1% of their body weight a week depending. But of course, the more weight they are losing per week through a diet, and in this sense I mean during that fight camp period they're going through a calorie deficit and they're gradually bringing their body fat levels down, the more aggressive or the faster they're doing that means they have to eat less calories.

So if we want to go a very mild pace, ideally that's keeping more calories in the diet. That's about half a percent of their body weight per week, maybe up as far as 1%. So now let's say if that rough timeline for this particular athlete is about 8 weeks, they start that process of 8 weeks out from their kind of that final week, they start that process. We know that could be somewhere between another four to 7, 8% of their body weight. So I would say maybe think of...

It as like four 5% on on top of that upper limit and then use that as their upper point where they keep. Because then at that point they can have okay, they get called, we've got a fight in eight, nine weeks time, I'm going to start gradually dieting down now. It doesn't have to be too aggressive, but I'm going to lose half a percent of my body weight each week that will knock off maybe four or five% by the time I get a week out and then I'll do the final six, seven, maybe 8% in that final week. So that might be an idea.

And again, that's on the presumption that this is a relatively experienced athlete that can do a relatively large weight cut like 8% in the final week. For someone else that's newer to the sport or knows they don't respond well to large weight cuts like that, they might be only cutting 4% or 3% in that final week. And if so then you'd adjust those numbers, but I would try and think of it as okay, through a diet over a number of weeks to lose body fat, I'm going to aim for somewhere between half a percent to 1% of my body weight that I'm going to diet down over however many weeks of the fight camp. And then work back from there of okay, this is roughly my maximal body weight if that makes sense.

James de Lacey18:01

Yeah, nice. And let's also, let's dive into that seven day, that last, that rapid weight loss week. I mean, I think we've all seen people, they start jumping in the sauna suit and stuff two, three, four weeks out as they as they do that weight cut and it doesn't make too much sense. So do you want to maybe just dive into maybe some other strategy?

So for example, someone's taken these eight weeks, they've managed to diet down and lose some of that percentage, they've got five, 8%, whatever to lose in that last week. What are some principles, modifications, things that you like to do during that week to help facilitate that?

Is it, I think a lot of people just think in that time they just think okay, I'm just going to jump on a sauna or a hot bath and that's all they need to do, but there's obviously more nutritional strategies around that as well.

Danny Lennon18:51

Sure. So I think one of the useful things is to think of what we're trying to achieve in in these different phases. So so far we've said there's these two phases of that making weight process. The first is this gradual dieting down during that fight camp period, so we tend to refer to that as the chronic weight loss period because it takes course over many weeks or even many months of gradually bringing down body fat mass, maybe even some losses of lean body mass.

But what we're changing in those weeks is actual body tissue. We're changing how much fat mass that that person has. We're losing body weight during that chronic phase.

During this acute weight loss phase or that final week where we're doing these rapid weight loss strategies, we're actually not really aiming to lose body tissue. We're not aiming to lose fat mass during that final week. Rather, we're able to lose body mass or weight on the scale very rapidly from changes in primarily three things that we look at. One is the amount of water that is stored in the body. The second is the amount of carbohydrate that is stored in the body, specifically in the muscle and the liver. And then third is the residue that's left in our intestine, in the gastrointestinal tract.

And so there are strategies we can use to accomplish each of these. So first let's do the gut residue because this is probably where I think a lot of athletes who haven't came across this are leaving the most potential benefit on the table. So we know that a certain amount of mass stays in our intestines for a number of days. So this is still undigested food, it's fiber, it takes a lot of time to pass through the intestines and some of it hangs around. So of course that residue that is in the gut has some weight to it.

So if there's a way we can have more of that move out, we can actually reduce weight on the scale. And the beauty of doing that is it has no detriment to performance. If you lose residue from the gut, you have no deficits in performance. And we can see that for people who have a pretty good habitual intake of fiber, meaning that their average is pretty good overall, that most of the time they have a pretty high fiber intake, which is what we tend to encourage.

If we put them on a low fiber intake for about 3 days before their weigh in, you can see a drop of anywhere between half a percent to 1% of their body weight.

Now that might not seem a lot, but suddenly that's at 1% of their body weight. They now don't have to cut in a sauna or from dehydration and there's no performance downside. So I think that would be the first thing of, three days typically is the max I would say. If you go any further then you have issues with the athlete going to the bathroom and so on. So two to three days before their weigh-in, going on a low residue diet.

James de Lacey21:31

Do you may give some examples of low fiber, first high fiber foods that people can substitute?

Danny Lennon21:31

Sure. So if it's just that they're going for a low residue diet, which may be the case for let's say a Jiu-Jitsu athlete who doesn't want to cut carbohydrates but does want to switch to low residue for those final few days to lose that 1% body weight, that would mean taking typical things they see as whole grain foods and swapping it to more refined versions.

So from brown bread to white bread, from whole grain rice to white rice and so on. There's other things like typically healthy foods like legumes or vegetables that are going to be high in fiber, or fiber-containing fruits, we're going to take those out and rely on foods that have very little fiber.

So we might end up for a couple of days in that final weigh-in week having diets that aren't necessarily the picture of health for a number of reasons, but still allow the athlete to eat enough calories, to eat enough protein, and then depending on if their carb intake is going to be high or low, we can make modifications there. So for an athlete that is just using a low residue diet, we can still keep lots of carbohydrates in, like I said, by using white rice or white bread and so on.

For an athlete who's also doing carbohydrate restriction, we'll get to in a moment, we have to be even more restricted with our food options. But it might mean that we use things like lean cuts of meat, yogurt, cheeses, oils, things like that where we're keeping low in carbohydrate but also there's not much fiber there. So there's a number of, kind of easy to look up, these food tables. It actually comes from clinical dietetics, this type of diet in preparation for different procedures.

And so it's basically just taking out high fiber foods and then making sure the foods you are picking are typically low in fiber and doing that for, like I said, two to three days, we'll see this drop off in weight through that loss of gut residue. So that's our kind of one of our first strategies. I think nearly every athlete that is doing a weight cut should probably go for that because, like I said, there's no performance downside.

The other two components we said was number one, carbohydrate. This will depend on again the time between weighing and competition, but as we're talking right now about the example of a 24-hour plus weigh-in, that gives us lots of time to restore carbohydrates if we do lose them from the body. Now we store carbohydrate as glycogen in our muscle and our liver. So if we can deplete those glycogen stores, we will lose the amount of weight that is stored as carbohydrate from the muscle and liver, will weigh lighter on the scale, and then also each gram of that carbohydrate has some water attached to it.

So we'll also theoretically lose some of that water. How much is kind of still debated in physiology, but theoretically we will still lose more water that way as well. So the simplest way to do this is to restrict carbohydrates for that final week. And so ideally that athlete should have been on a high carbohydrate diet all through that training camp. And this is one of the other, I suppose, mistakes that a lot of athletes make is they cut their carbs two or three months out before they're competing.

And now when you get to the final week, you won't get any benefit from being on a low carb diet in terms of that extra weight loss. If you've gone on a high carb diet and you've got full stores of glycogen in your muscle and liver, and now in that final week we put the athlete on a very low carbohydrate intake just for that final week, we can allow them to lose that glycogen that is stored in the muscle. And that loses more body mass.

And then the final component is where a lot of the strategies end up getting focused, is the loss of body water. And we can do this through a number of different means. Most commonly, athletes will do water restriction, which means like the day before weigh-in they just won't drink or very little water they'll consume. Some athletes combine that with the strategy known as water loading, which I think most have some experience of, where maybe two or three days before that restriction day you have a very high water intake.

And we do have only one study published thus far on water loading that was done on Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu athletes by Reed Reel and his colleagues back in like 2017 that shows that there is a potential benefit to the water...

Loading phase beforehand, so that would be higher water intake than normal for let's say three days. And then for one day you have a really low water intake, so then you end up losing that mass. You can also then obviously sweat out water, which would be what we called an active form of induced sweating. And then you have your passive forms of induced sweating, which is the use of a sauna or a hot bath typically. There are some nuances between each of those strategies of sweating that we can maybe get into, but athletes then use those as a way just to lose water.

So again, those strategies are going to be losing water, carbohydrate, and gut residue. To lose gut residue and carbohydrate, there are two dietary manipulations. The water one, there's lots of different strategies we'll probably end up talking about. And then from a diet perspective, a couple of other smaller things that we don't have as strong evidence but might be worth doing would be things like lower sodium intake for a couple of days before weigh-in.

So about maybe the final two days, just being careful that you're not having lots of salt added to your meals, not having heavily salted processed foods in those couple of days might mean that you can lose some more water because sodium retains water. So going on a low sodium diet for those final two days might have some benefit. And then some people tend to prefer doing things like removing creatine from their diet or from their supplement intake for the last couple of weeks before weigh-in.

Theoretically that could have some benefit, although I don't think the magnitude is going to be so big that I would typically tell someone you need to do this. Unless it's a really large weight cut and they want to try and maximize everything, I don't really know how much of a benefit it'll have. But there are some other things people talk about. But in general, it's going to be your low residue diet, carbohydrates, and maybe sodium that are the primary dietary manipulations. And then the rest is going to be changing water.

James de Lacey27:50

Before getting back to the podcast, I want to let you know there's a link down in the description for the Sweet Science of Fighting Underground Community. You can get all the help you need for your Combat Sports training. You get every single Sweet Science of Fighting training program, online course, and you get access to a range of coaches within the private Discord community. So go check that out and back to the podcast.

Why would someone choose an active versus a passive way of, I guess, dehydration? Is there an advantage, disadvantage of each?

Danny Lennon28:16

Yeah, so this is interesting. The advantage to an active form is that when you use more these passive forms where there's this heat exposure, like say getting in a sauna, you can see negative changes in blood plasma volume that you don't necessarily see from sweating from some light exercise as an example. And so theoretically that would be a disadvantage for the passive one.

So this might be where you'd see, and typically this might be where this would bear fruit, would be let's say a situation like in jiu-jitsu where literally you can weigh in and pretty soon after that you might be competing. So in a case where someone is still trying to cut weight there, and we can debate whether they probably should, but let's say they have a bit more time and they do have to lose some, they could do their normal routine of warming up.

They're getting some sweat on, they're losing some of that final weight through that normal warmup through exercise. And then they go and weigh in, and then they don't have that negative of the exposure from the sauna that was impacting plasma volume.

However, in reality then, for some of the bigger weight cuts where we're actually using saunas and hot baths, why they tend to be preferable to using exercise to sweat it out is because the amount of weight that these athletes are trying to lose, particularly in a state where they're already really dehydrated and tired because of that process, now getting them to try and exercise and try and sweat that off through running or on a bike or whatever, that has a recovery element that you need to take into consideration.

Are you now going to make the athlete muscularly fatigued by the time tomorrow comes around because they've had to, in a dehydrated state, do a bunch of exercise to sweat? So it's probably not worth it.

So that's why in those cases I think even that negative of the heat exposure on blood plasma volume, we can kind of offset that in much of these cases because the athlete is just able to lie down and relax as opposed to getting a dehydrated athlete to now try and exercise and therefore maybe fatigue them. So there are the two situations where you might use one or the other.

James de Lacey30:36

Nice. And I think I saw a paper recently as well regarding hot baths, Epsom salts versus no salt, and I think they came to the conclusion that using Epsom salt serves no extra benefit. Do you maybe dive into the idea around using hot baths and maybe the differences between using a sauna versus a hot bath for cutting weight? Is there any difference? I guess there's more of a logistical issue there mainly because not everywhere has a sauna, but maybe just some of the details around that.

Danny Lennon31:00

Sure. So we'll take two of those issues. First on the hot baths, credit to actually a group in Ireland. John Connor and Brendan Egan were some of the researchers that have actually been the only ones to look at specifically the use of these Epsom salts in the hot bath methods. And like you say, for actual losses of water and being able to cut more weight, they don't really do anything as such.

And there may be a potential for certain athletes to find it more tolerable in their use, but again there's some subjectivity there. But in the actual magnitudes of water loss, you're correct that there's no real necessity to use them, no benefit from a physiological view of losing water.

On the bigger issue of sauna use versus hot bath use, both are trying to achieve the same thing in that we're trying to get the athlete to start sweating at an appropriate rate that they're going to be able to lose the water that they need to. There are some important considerations as to what we might use. And I think in an ideal world, I would tend to prefer athletes use a hot bath for a couple of reasons.

And a lot of athletes do have their own preferences, but some of the reasons I'm going to mention are reasons why they also tend to go for the hot bath if they do choose that.

So one is how it actually feels to them. So one of the advantages you have with using a hot bath versus a sauna is that even while they're in the bath, they can still have their face not exposed to that same level of heat. So the heat is going on where they're submerging most of their body, but at least their face is still there. They can even have maybe a cold cloth on their face, so it helps it feel easier to do at that moment or feel more tolerable.

They don't have this constant heat everywhere, so it may be easier to keep them cool at that level. But other athletes for whatever reason might prefer to use a sauna. And so if that's the case, I'm not going to say to them you cannot use it. But I think there's a preference for that reason that it might be logistically, or there is that advantage of being able to have cold exposure on your face.

I think the other thing then that is maybe underappreciated of what we're trying to do with these strategies is, again, remember it's we want to get the athlete sweating, but it's at just enough of a sweat rate that they're going to be able to continue that process of losing water. It's not about getting them exposed to the max amount of heat as possible because the hotter, or the greater the heat that they are exposed to, has this higher risk of all these negatives that come with high heat exposure.

So we know things like heat illness that occurs. So we're getting these changes in plasma volume that I've already mentioned, but we can also have this cascade of really negative impacts when you expose people, particularly that are already dehydrated, to very high levels of heat. And so we want to offset that. And there's also no real additional advantage to having it really, really hot in that the athlete thinks that, okay, this will allow me to get there faster. But actually, really, all the process requires is that they're continuing just to sweat and that's going on and they're continuing to do that.

So for example, we see with the hot baths, if you can set that to, maybe it's going to be in Celsius, so apologies to maybe some of the people aren't using that, but somewhere around from, if you go to those John Connor studies that we mentioned, where we're using something like 37, 38 degrees Celsius, maybe even going up as far as like 41, 42, and you can monitor that temperature of the bath, there's no need to really go beyond that. You can maintain an appropriate sweat rate from having the bath of that temperature.

And so what that allows then is that you get the athlete to continue sweating, you get the benefit you're looking for, but you also now don't need to have this really excessively hot bath that's running a higher risk of some of those negatives of heat exposure. So they'd be the primary things I keep in mind of, okay, when we're setting

Beyond just the logistics of what the athlete has available, we ask, okay, what is their preference going to be? Second, there might be a benefit to baths because we can have the face unexposed. We can put cold towel on their face, etc. And then with the temperature of the bath, we don't have to have it as hot as possible. We just need it at a point where they're going to continue sweating.

So like I said, in around that, there's probably no need to go beyond that kind of 40 degrees Celsius kind of figure.

James de Lacey35:35

Nice. And obviously with shorter weigh-in times, a lot of this goes out the window. But I guess maybe usually you might have, say, a 2-hour weigh-in or mat-side weigh-in, but some of them have extended a little further and you have almost this intermediate one. So even when I was competing here in Austin, we would have maybe super fights at like 7:00 p.m., but we'd be able to weigh in in the morning, 9:00, 10:00 a.m. So you've got 8, 9 hours there.

How much does that change in terms of the weight cut strategy with that? Because technically you could still do a lot of these rapid weight loss tactics because you've still got, or do you still have ample time to be able to refuel, rehydrate, etc. in that say 8, 9-hour window versus the 24-hour window?

Danny Lennon36:00

So I think the frame is this spectrum that we can go between, and I refer to it as this lag time that we have between weigh-in and competition. And there's kind of four general groups I tend to break it down into. So we have like the immediate ones, which is like Jiu-Jitsu comp where you weigh in and then literally 5 minutes later you could be on the mat. Then we have these shorter-term ones, which might be like 1 to 4 hours maybe between your weigh-in and competition.

We have this intermediate one, which is what you might mention there, of let's say 6 to 12 hours, this kind of same day but like a big distance. And then the long lag times, which is your 24-hour-plus.

And so that goes along a spectrum of you can use them or not, you can use them to varying degrees, and it just comes down to how much body mass you're going to be able to lose and then to what extent you can push each of those.

And so with the shorter ones, what you would typically do is maybe avoid complete depletion of carbohydrate as an example, because if you have to compete within a couple hours, you're probably not going to be able to really fully restore that. So you're probably not going to go for complete glycogen depletion like you do in the 24 hours.

With water, the same type of thing. You need to know I can only rehydrate at a certain rate. This is going to depend on a multitude of factors. There's some weird stuff going on because we're dehydrated. There's different ways we can increase the rehydration rate.

But as a rough guide for most people, if they think of between 1 liter to 1 and a half liters of fluid that they can rehydrate per hour as a rough guide, then you can use that as a kind of proxy of how much water can I dehydrate myself by.

So with something like, if you weigh in first thing in the morning and you're not competing till that night, you can probably dehydrate for that weigh-in because you've got those multiple hours to gradually get that water back in. So you're drinking a liter and a half of fluid per hour as an average. You're getting that in over multiple hours. So you can use some degree of water restriction.

Now where it would come in is how much you're probably going to do. And so whereas if you have 24 hours plus, you might say, okay, typically for those types of competitions in that final week, I'm cutting 8%, and that means I'm going to get like 3% off in the hot bath. You might say if it's the same day one where you have like 8-hour turnarounds, like okay, I can't do that, but maybe I can do instead of that 8%, I'm going to get away with like 5%, 6% maybe, depending on how they respond.

And therefore I'm going to rely on those other strategies that I know I can use. And then I can still use some sweating if I need to, but probably a lot less than if I had a longer period of time. So we can have some rough time frames to work with, and it's mainly how many hours do I have, what does that kind of rehydration rate look like, and kind of work backwards from there.

James de Lacey39:08

Nice. As well, with the, maybe we can dive a little bit into the really short weigh-ins too. I know when I was competing, weightlifting actually had Eric, Eric Helms actually did my, I don't know what we call it, maybe we'll call it a water cut, water wake-up for that. And that was really good.

I was a subject in one of his research papers where he tortured me with pea protein for four weeks, three times a day on 60% maintenance calories for two weeks, two-week blocks. And then having to drink, oh, I think it was flavored. Well, he said it was flavored, but it didn't taste flavored. Pea is disgusting on its own.

Danny Lennon39:35

Having that was horrible. There's nothing that can make that good.

James de Lacey39:35

No, nothing. Nothing. So if anyone likes pea protein, you, I don't understand.

But just maybe the strategy surrounding those 2-hour weigh-ins, I really liked the way Eric went about it. It was almost like a gradual reduction in water over there, a gradual reduction in salt and then some of the calories and stuff like that. That worked well. But I guess, what kind of strategies do you like to employ in some of those shorter time frames that can still allow performance or good performance out on the other side?

Danny Lennon40:26

So there's a few caveats and differences of what might dictate this. So typically, that rough final amount to cut figure that we've quoted for these different sports, for those immediate ones I've tended to give this figure of 0 to 2%. And the reason for that is that there are some cases and some athletes that respond best to not having an acute weight cut at all in that final week.

So we can gradually diet them down so that within that final week we're getting them just on point where they can weigh in. They don't have to restrict their carbohydrates, water, and so on, and they perform at their best then. And much of this is obviously going to depend on where an athlete naturally lies in relation to the weight class.

So you could have an athlete that when they're feeling good and they're training well, their body weight sits perfectly on the upper end of that weight class, which is great. Where you get this more difficulty is where the athlete, their natural point is between these two weight classes. So now, like, okay, what do we do? Do we just let them compete against much bigger people? Do we try and do a weight cut? So it becomes more tricky.

So there are people that might need to do this like 1, maybe 2% of a weight cut in that final period of time.

So if it's going to be a real immediate one, the trouble that you have with something like Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu compared to weightlifting in your example, or the same with powerlifting thing, is that with weightlifting and powerlifting we can get away a bit more I think with some slight dehydration, as well as actually not complete glycogen replenishment. One is because of the demands of those sports.

So I think it's still a benefit for weightlifting and powerlifting to have glycogen versus not glycogen, but you might not need complete full stores to perform really well when you're doing what, nine reps in a powerlifting meet, and you're doing six reps in a weightlifting meet with like multiple minutes between each one. Whereas for some Jiu-Jitsu competitions, feasibly you can weigh in, now you're onto your first match, and you can be banging through them, perceivably, hopefully if you're doing well, across a tournament where you're in a really glycolytic demanding sport.

So you are burning through some carbohydrate doing that high-level activity, and so your performance is directly related to that. So there may be less scope for the degree of restriction of carbohydrate there. And the same with water, that if you're going in already dehydrated into a Jiu-Jitsu competition in that first round match, you're going to be sweating a lot. You're going to be getting even further dehydrated. You might have some time then between your next match, but you're fighting this losing battle.

With something like weightlifting or powerlifting, even if we weigh in and we're a bit dehydrated, we've got kind of maybe an hour before our first lift. Even after we do our openers, there's now an extra maybe 5, 10, 15 minutes even, depending on how the competition is being run, before we get to our final lift of, let's say, the first lift. And so we can be continually topping up on water, and there's not the same direct detriment to dehydration there.

So it may mean that you can do more for an immediate weigh-in in one of the strength sports compared to something like Jiu-Jitsu. But I would tend to put like something between 0 and 2%.

With that 2% straight away, we can use things like the low-residue diet. Again, do that and you have no detriment to performance. I would say sodium restriction and then some slight decrease in water intake is probably going to be a good idea. So that way you're getting...

Slightly dehydrated, but you're not so dehydrated that it's massively going to impact you when you go out on the mat. And so that's where it might take some trial and error for different competitions and working out where is going to be at what point it's useful. And this is where the risk to reward of weight cut comes in, right?

If you have a white belt that's doing their first competition, just don't bother. There's no benefit to doing it. If you have someone that is again one of these natural people that sits in between weight classes and if they don't cut weight they're going to be massively outsized, and they're at a really high belt level and there's very little in difference between skill sets between them and their competitors, and every little advantage counts, and they're really going for being on the podium or meddling at an important tournament to them, then for them that weight cut might be necessary.

And so then we're going to have to do it in, okay, what is the way we can do this and mitigate most of those problems? So it'd be like using slight dehydration, slight decreases in carbohydrate intake but maybe not complete depletion of glycogen altogether, and then using something like the low residue diet for sure, and then something in around that kind of 2% if it's going to be one of these immediate type weigh-ins.

James de Lacey45:01

Do you have a hard cut off time for this? I've got they'll dictate the questions I ask you next.

Danny Lennon45:01

No, I'm good. I'm good to go.

James de Lacey45:01

Oh sweet, all right, let's farm. I want to come before going into the reweigh strategy, the after weigh strategies and things like that. Going back to almost the slow gradual decrease, maybe the eight week stuff, I know you've talked a bit about carbohydrate periodization. Is there, should that be something that someone looks to do in those eight weeks? Is there a benefit to cycling, I don't know, carbohydrates through that period versus just having a set, maybe breakdown of macros each day and just kind of following that?

Danny Lennon45:56

So there's a few differences theoretically and pragmatically. In my view, I think the way in, if anyone is kind of on the fence of which way to go, generally the better way to go is just go on a high carbohydrate intake and that's going to give all the benefits they need for recovery, training, and so on. And as long as their overall calorie intake is allowing them to still decrease body weight throughout that training camp, if that indeed is their goal, then getting as much carbohydrate in as possible is probably a good idea.

This concept of carbohydrate periodization, very briefly for people, is this idea of going between higher, moderate, and lower intakes of carbohydrate. And this is done with the idea of there are certain potential physiological changes that occur when an athlete does either a training session or a recovery window with low levels of carbohydrate intake and/or low levels of glycogen in the muscle. Most of this research is aimed at endurance athletes and has specifically been done in that area, so again we're looking at a different type of sport.

But for example, if you have an athlete do training sessions, there's concept of what's called train low, which is where they train with low carbohydrate intake either beforehand, during, and after, or during and before. And then there's recover low, which is after a training session not immediately taking in carbohydrate during that recovery period.

And related to that is a concept called sleep low, which is after they do a training session in the evening, they might have some protein but not consume carbohydrate, and then overnight they're going to continue not having carbohydrates. So they have these low levels of glycogen as their body recovers from that training session. And there are certain changes that happen at the level of the mitochondria in their muscle which relates to their fat oxidation.

And there's potential changes that we could get that are potentially beneficial, certainly in endurance support, like their ability to oxidize fat at a higher percentage of their VO2 max as an example, or the biogenesis of mitochondria.

So these cellular potential advantages is what's been looked at and why this strategy has been aimed at. The research in this area has shown a kind of mix of results that we see some that indicate there might be a benefit, other says that there's no direct benefit, that it does pretty much the same and there's no superiority. And again, like I said, most of this has been in endurance athletes.

So this has been the idea that people have looked at, and it's something that certainly I have used with some athletes for a couple of reasons. One is that it allows some flexibility in their food choices. So the easiest way to work this with a combat sport athlete is simply to think of, okay, the training sessions that are my priority training sessions and are the most difficult and hard charging ones, I want to be going into those sessions with full stores of glycogen.

On the sessions that are kind of in between, again, I want to have some carbohydrate around, I want to maybe consume carbohydrates after, but it's not as a higher priority. And then for certain training sessions that are purely for recovery, I know I don't need to have full glycogen stores to go and do this.

So as an example, let's say an athlete has their main sparring session of the week is on a Friday evening, and that morning they also do a session that's some bag work that is relatively important but it's more of a skill-based session. So after that session we're going to make sure that they get in lots of carbohydrate because they have their priority session at night. So we want to go into that sparring session with full stores of carbohydrate. And then during that sparring session we're going to be having them consume carbohydrate throughout the session because we want to really perform well.

And then let's say they have another training session to do the following morning, but it's easy going. They're still going to consume some carbohydrates after that sparring. Now the next day they have a session in the afternoon, let's say it's some, it's a kickboxing session, but maybe it's not super intense. And then on the following day they're going to do just a short recovery run or recovery on the bike.

So after that kickboxing session, now rather than need to have lots of carbohydrates to recover from that, the next day they only have a light recovery on the bike, so they don't really need to do anything and they don't have any really high performance sessions until the following week. And so in that situation, the athlete could feasibly do their kickboxing session, have some protein after, and not really worry about having too much carbohydrate for the rest of the day. And they're therefore doing this recover low type strategy with this idea of maybe it's going to enhance some of these benefits that we've talked about.

However, by and large, I think that I'm not convinced that if you took an athlete that competes in combat sports and just had them all through the week, every day is high in carbohydrates, as long as they're still consuming adequate protein and their calorie intake is appropriate, if their carbohydrates are staying high every day, to me I don't think they're missing out on anything.

And I would hesitate to say to them you need to periodize these carbohydrates. And more so I would do that for strategies where an athlete shows that they would like to do that, maybe for food preferences or allows them to have some days where they have more fat in their diet so they can enjoy some flexibility there, or they just want to try something because even a placebo effect might be useful to them.

So that's the idea of carbohydrate periodization, but it's not something I would say is necessary for an athlete to do. And certainly the priority more so would be make sure you're eating enough carbohydrate overall, because I think there's more athletes that are under-consuming carbohydrate than over-consuming carbohydrate.

James de Lacey51:54

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And I think carbohydrate periodization was, I mean in the physique sports world it was carb cycling at one point, wasn't it? But the only issue I have with that is I pretty much eat similar every day, higher carbohydrate. And if you have to start carb cycling or carbohydrate periodization, then one day you're eating this, and the next day you have to change everything you're eating, the next day have to change everything you're eating again. And it just becomes a routine buster at that point.

Danny Lennon52:51

Sure. And especially because there is, like you said, this other concept of this carb cycling that has been used in maybe kind of fitness and bodybuilding circles that is very distinct from this area of research in endurance sport. Where there was this notion going around, if you cycle your carbohydrates, that's going to lead you to lose more body fat or accelerate fat loss. And it's just not true.

It doesn't matter what that level of carbohydrate is for your fat loss. So once your calorie intake and your protein intake are on point, whether the athlete's diet is higher or lower in carbohydrate is not going to necessarily change their amount of body fat they lose. But it is going to massively impact their performance.

Always go with the higher carbohydrate. So for athletes that care about their performance, I would say get your protein intake right, your calorie intake right, and then for you try and get those carbs as high as is practical based on food choices and still being able to eat relatively normal meals, but have a very high carbohydrate intake. And yeah, that's going to give you like 99% of any benefit.

James de Lacey53:43

And then regarding meal timing as well, that's obviously I guess now it's kind of less prevalent since debunking the anabolic window and all that kind of stuff. But how important, or do you prescribe anything regarding meal timing when you're looking at nutritional practices? Or is it more, hey, you're going to eat three, five, whatever preference you have meals a day to get this food in, and when you have it isn't so important? Or are you looking at how's your training times, at these windows you should eat at these times?

Danny Lennon54:13

I think meal timing and nutrient timing is one of those areas where it does matter for athletes, but where much of the conversation before, where there's a lot of these myths, was people saying it really mattered for fat loss or weight loss or for the general person, which is just not the case. There is some aspects of nutrient timing and meal timing that were taken too far even in sports nutrition, like you say the anabolic window, where oh, as soon as you finish a training session you need to have this specific number of grams of protein and carbohydrate within, like as soon as you finish that session, which we know is not the case.

We know that window is much longer. However, we don't want to go so far in the other direction which people might now jump to and say, oh well look, meal timing doesn't matter at all. That's not the case, certainly for athletes, and depending on the level of athlete and how high they're performing, it matters more and more and more.

So if we take a practical example, if you think of a high-level MMA athlete where they're training probably at least twice a day on a number of days across the week, then meal timing is really going to matter for them. Because not only now are we considering what they're going to consume before and after this first training session, but now we need to have them ready with a turnaround of maybe six, seven hours, because they're going to be training again that evening.

And so what they consume after that first training session, what they consume and how close to that session they consume it is going to matter for things like glycogen restoration before that second training session and the same with the recovery. Yeah, we don't need to make sure as soon as you finish your last roll of your jiu-jitsu session you're sprinting over to get your protein shake, but we also don't want to say, oh, it doesn't matter, and I'll take three or four hours and then I'll eat a meal.

If you really want to maximize your recovery and doing everything you can, we still want to pretty much time that within a close end to the end of that session. Might be, let's say 30 to 60 minutes as a useful heuristic to people. Within this timeframe, can I get some protein in, whether that's from a meal or supplement doesn't matter, but can I consume that within that period of time?

And if I have a training session later in the day or even tomorrow that is going to be really difficult, can I get some fast-acting carbohydrates in as well? And then also other nutritional factors around timing that would matter would be the degree of sweating that the athlete is doing, particularly if they're in a hot climate as well, and getting in things like electrolytes, so sodium, potassium, et cetera, that they would have lost during that sweat. And so that would become an important recovery consideration.

So I think in general, for most people, no. For weight loss, no real difference of timing of meals or when in the day you have them. But for athletes looking at recovery from training sessions, and particularly if they are doing sessions, two sessions in a day, or let's say they're doing an evening session and they're going to do another training session tomorrow morning, then yeah, the timing does matter.

And I would say get some protein and carbohydrate after those sessions, and then also you would think about it in the course of a day of having that protein split across at least three meals, but for athletes it often ends up being more. But they'd be a few of the considerations I think are like the lowest level to consider.

James de Lacey57:45

Perfect. I'm going to tie this question into the after weigh-in process as well, regarding sodium, electrolytes as well. Is there, obviously with so many different drinks on the market, obviously you've got, you know, like your typical Gatorade, things maybe there like 200 milligrams of sodium, Liquid IV has like 500, there's some products I think they have maybe a thousand milligrams of sodium, but I guess how does someone know how much sodium they should maybe take after a session?

For example, you just spent an hour rolling, you've sweat a lot, how do they know how much you should typically take in? And then we can tie that into maybe after weigh-in as well. What kind of foods should someone look to eat after a weigh-in? We can bring this back to the 24-hour, maybe even the 7-8 hour window, and then maybe look at the shorter windows after that.

Danny Lennon58:12

So this is really difficult, and unless someone has like specific testing where they can see, okay, what not only was their exact amount of water loss, which is actually people can do that relatively straightforward by measuring their body weight before and after a training session, and then also taking into account if they've gone to the bathroom during the training session or what water they've consumed, they can get an idea of that difference of their before and after weight. And the difference between those then will be how much fluid they've lost.

So if they, let's say they didn't go to the bathroom and they've, before their training session they were 86 kilos and afterwards they were 84 kilos, and during training they also drank a liter of fluid, from 86 to 84 is 2 kilos, and they've also drank another kilo, so that's three. So that means they're losing maybe up to three liters of fluid across that training session as a rough guide.

But what we don't know is to measure exactly if this athlete is what we call a salty sweater or not. So we know that different people have a different amount of sodium that they lose in their sweat per unit of water. So meaning for, we could have two people that lose the same amount of water over a course of a period of time through their sweat, so they sweat the same amount, but the amount of sodium lost through that sweat can be vastly different.

There's some signs people can look out for. So if an athlete notices that they're one of the people that after training and they've sweat a lot and they have a t-shirt, particularly say it's a dark t-shirt, and as that dries they actually see white marks across it, that can be indicated that's a lot of sodium. So you can get this idea that they lose quite a bit of sodium.

Some of it you can also kind of taste, although probably most athletes aren't going to want to do that after training. So there's these little indicators like that that they're seeking out the sodium, and then of course in laboratory settings there's ways to measure that, but most people aren't going to have access to it.

So it's difficult to know. So I think the way that the most simplistic level is, is again, if you do this weigh before and after a typical training session, you get an idea of, okay, roughly how much fluid I'm losing, then you can rehydrate with an electrolyte solution or an oral rehydration solution, or one of those typical supplements where you might throw a tablet of something in or a scoop of something in. And for the average person doing that is likely to be enough. If they find then that they are still having issues, they might be someone who might respond to having more.

But in general, it's going to be difficult to get an exact measure of that. The other thing then to consider is again, what level of athlete are we talking about? If we're talking about an elite-level athlete training multiple times a day, doing really high-intense exercise, hot climate, sweating a lot, performance is really going to matter on fine margins, then we need to really take into account, okay, are we getting enough electrolytes back in? What is the ratio of these and so on? Are we doing that rehydration appropriately?

If it's someone who still enjoys training but is someone who maybe does jiu-jitsu three times a week and is in general eating relatively healthy but is not trying to have like the most elite-level diet possible, it's probably likely that they're getting plenty of sodium within their diet anyway. If they're training three times a week, they have like a couple of days between training sessions, and so they don't have this major urgency then to have everything replenished immediately.

And so there's certain people then that in that case might not need to say, okay, am I getting my electrolyte supplementation in after training? Unless they're starting to get lightheaded or dizzy or things like that, there might not be a necessary case to worry about.

So that's the way I think the simplistic way in for people is, if they do know they sweat a lot, is to number one, make sure...

Getting enough fluid with it, and if they're sweating a lot, make sure maybe to throw in one of these ORS supplements. And then from there, if they did think they might be a salty sweater for some of these rough flags that we mentioned, they might take more or less than that and then depending on symptoms, etc.

James de Lacey1:02:50

Nice. And then regarding after weigh-in, how does that, I guess, what are you looking at someone to eat after 24-hour weighing? Or maybe let's say that same-day weighing, because I'm assuming it'd be relatively similar, obviously with some caveats because of the longer period. But are there typical foods that you like someone to eat, or is it just more down to, you know, this is what you typically, and you like, have this and you know it digests well, but obviously with caveat because we need to replenish glycogen, salt, all that kind of stuff?

Danny Lennon1:03:21

Yeah, and you exactly said the two correct things, James, that it's a mix of both of those. So one, it's that there are specific things that we're aiming for, and it's going to be what fits in with what the athlete habitually uses. So in other words, we know particularly for 24-hour weigh-in we've depleted this athlete of water, carbohydrate, and they've also sweated, so electrolytes. So we want to replenish those three things. They are our priority.

So we're going to set it up in a way that we're going to consume meals that not only contain those things, but allow them to be replenished at the fastest rate possible, which I'll get into. But we're going to do it with the big caveat of we're not going to get an athlete to start consuming a supplement or a certain type of meal that they don't usually eat, because they could react very negatively to that. And this is the worst time possible for that. We don't want an athlete feeling bad or having GI distress or anything between this weigh-in and competition.

So it has to be meals that they are used to consuming. They typically know that after, maybe it's their usual after training meals or just throughout the week, they typically have these certain types of meals and snacks. That's what they're going to be consuming. So whatever we decide to have them take in food or supplement, they should be essentially training themselves to eat that throughout the training camp as well, so they're used to these foods, they know they digest them really well, they feel good with them, etc.

With that in mind, then what we're going to focus on: we're going to have high-carbohydrate foods, we're going to have the appropriate amount of water or fluid coming in as well, and then that's going to also include those electrolytes that we want to replenish, and primarily sodium. So they're the things we're focusing on.

And then the things we're going to try and limit, in order to maximally rehydrate properly and to get glycogen back in, is that we immediately after weigh-in, we don't want to have a high intake of dietary fat and of fiber. Because both of those slow down what's called our gastric emptying, or the transit time for nutrients through the gut, and so that will just slow that process of getting those things into our bloodstream and replenishing.

So at least for that first meal after a weigh-in, typically, ideally, we would want that to be a liquid meal. It's going to be easier to digest, particularly because they're in a dehydrated state. So liquid meal that also has the advantage of getting in plenty of fluid, and then we're going to, with that, contain some electrolytes and carbohydrates. So that's typically be the form of a powder or sports drink that they're going to consume. They're going to get that into them relatively quickly.

And then from there, we have essentially a timeline of fluid intake for the next number of hours. And so we know we can replenish their fluid at about a rate of a liter an hour, roughly, but they can do that probably from consuming about up to a liter and a half of fluid per hour. So that's going to be the approximate rate we're going to get them continually sipping over the course of an hour, rather than immediately after weigh-in, get a 4-liter bucket of water and try and chuck it down.

So we're going to have this rate of, yeah, about between 1 to 1.5 liters of fluid every hour as a rough rate of rehydration. And then for carbohydrates, we might have something, again, of a rough guide of 60, 70, 80 grams per hour. Might start out a bit more aggressive at the first few hours and then from there slow it down. But that's a kind of a rough average if people are looking at for specific numbers.

If not, if we want a just a more average foolproof guide, we're getting in a liquid meal first that contains carbohydrate and electrolytes, and so that's a hydration drink. And then from there, getting in enough fluid, continuing to consume easy-to-digest, high-carbohydrate foods and meals from then on. So for depending on the athlete, that might be things like rice or rice cakes or different gels, etc., just things that they've been used to consuming, things that we know they respond well to.

And then we're going to continue at that rough pace over the course of the rest of the rehydration period, with the caveat of probably going to cut off that fluid intake a couple hours before their kind of bedtime, so they're not just keep waking up during the night and having a disturbed sleep before competition. So that's the makeup of those meals.

And then as we get past that first couple hours, now they can start including more kind of protein as well. And then into the next morning, can have more normal meals, even if they have fiber and dietary fat. It's going to be less of a concern at that point. But that initial period we're focusing on fluid, carbohydrate, electrolytes.

James de Lacey1:08:27

Nice. And even for the maybe the intermediate weigh-in, that 8 to 12 hours, how does, or even for the 24-hour weigh, I guess, but how does someone know when they've, say, rehydrated or replenished proper? So there might be a lot of people listening, okay, they're coming, they're having their fluids, they're having their carbohydrates, and every one and a half hours need to have this, this, this. But at what point do they know, okay, I'm, you know, fully, fully stocked up, basically, and I can now go back to maybe the normal schedule of eating?

Danny Lennon1:08:27

Yeah, so some athletes will aim to try and get back up to that kind of pre-weigh-in weight that they were. And so you can see that in some cases this works out, in other cases maybe not. But less important than that, I think, is the actual process of doing it. So we could have an ideal number of carbohydrates that say that we want the athlete to consume, but in reality those intakes can be very difficult for them to consume.

So let's say if we have a target of 12 grams of carbohydrate for every kilogram of their body weight, for a lot of athletes to do that over that 24-hour period is extremely challenging. A lot of carbs, it's a lot. And it in many cases is not actually possible just logistically from trying to get those meals in without the athlete feeling completely bloated or full.

And remember, our goal here is for the athlete to get in and perform well. The goal isn't who can restore their glycogens the best or to the textbook numbers. So we're going to do our best, but we're going to fit it in with, like I said, we're going to have this rehydration rate that we know, okay, on average per hour, this is how much fluid we want you to stay consuming.

That should be something with the caveat of not doing that just before bed, but in the rest of the hours, that's something they can stay doing because it's just making sure that they're getting enough fluid in across the day.

Again, they'll probably cut that off maybe a few hours before they're actually competing, so that they're not having to keep going to the bathroom. But that's something they can sustain. With the carbohydrate intake, they can do similar of, roughly, here's what my target carbohydrate intake over this 24-hour period is. This roughly is going to be this much per hour. But of course they're not going to eat every single hour, half hour, or so on. So it might be, on average, this is the number they're looking at.

And if they're just doing things that are getting them close to that, but within a number of meals and the size of meal that is still comfortable to them, that is the best balance between them. So this is where the numbers have to balance out with the pragmatism of, okay, here's a rough target, what we're going to have in mind. Here's some high-carbohydrate meals and foods, and maybe every few hours you're going to have a high-carbohydrate meal or so on, ones that aren't going to make you feel too bloated. And then they're just doing their best with that.

And then they're not going to, let's say, eat maybe three or four hours before they compete. That might be the best for them. But again, in the real world, these things don't often stack up. There's great examples of anecdotes I've heard of elite-level athletes where they won't eat food on the day they compete. They'll do it after they weigh in, they get up the next day, and they don't eat, and that's okay. It's like, if they're winning, you can't tell them not to.

So there's a pragmatism there. So for me, that would be the main thing, that when you are going to eat at an amount and a frequency that is suitable to the athlete, just make sure it's high in carbohydrates that you can digest and do that to the best of your

Ability, and then don't worry if you got in 730 grams or 825 grams of carbohydrate in that period. Those things are less important.

James de Lacey1:11:56

Yeah, I spent the bulk of my career working in professional rugby and I know what you mean. Players will have all sorts of different things they won't eat because they want to feel light on the field. Some will smash a whole lot of food, some will not eat certain foods. It's a whole... I mean, I've had players that will just throw up before every game. That changes the carbohydrate intake there because most of it's gone.

Danny Lennon1:12:22

I've talked to nutritionists that have Elite fighters who are literally world champions who say, "I will not eat on the day I'm fighting because I feel too nervous," or "it makes me feel off," or "I like how sharp I feel." Like these things that are outside of sports nutrition. And I think anyone that has actually worked in sport, what they know is that the wrong thing to do is go in and say to these people, "No, you're doing it wrong. Listen to me, this is how you train for sport, here's how you eat."

There's things that you have to work with the athlete and they're Elite level and they have their certain ways and their certain mentality towards stuff. And yeah, you have to work within that culture and what is right for them, and this is just another example of that.

James de Lacey1:13:17

Yeah, for sure. One more question for you: the short weigh-in, 1 to 4 hours. Maybe we could probably discount the Mets side weigh-in, there's not much you can do that. But some things, obviously you're only losing maybe no body weight or even up to 2% from your recommendations there. Is there something that you recommend people maybe have during that short period before they start their first fight or tournament or match or whatever it is?

Danny Lennon1:13:17

Yeah, so this would be similar guidelines as before, but you're probably not going to have like big full meals. So let's say they have an hour or two hours before they compete. Again, we're going to aim for getting carbohydrates in, but we're going to be picking things they're used to consuming and that digest quickly. So it's going to be typically more refined sources of carbohydrate, so low in fiber, low in fat, and then snacks that for that athlete make them not feel too bloated, heavy, subjectively to them, what makes them feel kind of lighter when they consume them.

So some of these examples might be, some favorites of athletes would be like salted rice cakes, for example. They literally feel like to them they can just smash through them. And the benefit of them is that if they've had a few and they unexpectedly get called to the mat earlier than they presumed, it's no big deal. Right? Whereas if they've just had a huge bowl of pasta and now they get called unexpectedly early, now it might be a different thing.

So it should be these kind of snack foods that they can continue to trickle in over that period of time that as the day adds up they're getting in plenty of carbohydrates, but at any one time they can kind of stop without it being just a huge heavy meal all in one go. So that would be the main consideration.

I would change, think more about liquid meals and think about snack-based foods, whether that's rice cakes, bananas, dried fruit, etc., that they're used to consuming, like lollies and things like that. And for them, if they are used to doing them and they feel good with them, that is their preference, that could be used really well too.

James de Lacey1:15:04

Nice. No, perfect. This is a great chat, Dan. I really enjoyed this and I'm sure the audience got a lot out of it too. But if people want to find you, I know you host a podcast as well. Where can they see what you're doing?

Danny Lennon1:15:04

Yeah, so probably the best place is sigmanutrition.com. All my information is there. If they want to find me on social media, I'm on Instagram and Twitter. If they just put in my name, they should find it. And then if they're specifically interested in stuff related to combat sports nutrition and making weight, they should find some articles and podcasts on the website.

But they can also find information about the new book at sigmanutrition.com/book. So if they go there, that will be specifically with information about that, and there's a notification list for people that want to get information about the pre-order for that there as well. And yeah, any of those places is probably the best to find my stuff.

James de Lacey1:15:55

Nice, I'll link those in the description as well. And if you're on the email list or not, make sure you join down the bottom and I'll email that book out once it goes live to the list for you. So if anyone's interested, jump in on that. But thanks for coming on, Dan. Appreciate it.

Danny Lennon1:16:18

James, thanks so much. And thanks for the great questions, really enjoyed this chat.