Competition Weight Management

Not only is Gymnag ideal for anyone who wants to be fitter, slimmer, bigger or healthier, it is also ideal for anyone who participates in any sport that uses weight classes for competition such as boxing or martial arts, or indeed any sport where weight can be an issue such as running a marathon.

There has always been a fine balancing act for athletes between losing weight and maintaining performance, not only for the event itself but also to meet the demands of training for the event.

First and foremost, it is essential to maintain a weight that is close to your competition weight. Ideally you want to try to stay within 5% of your competition weight.

When it's time to get ready for the event, e.g. a boxing match, you are then already close to the required weight. If you leave yourself too much weight to lose you risk effecting your performance by losing too much too quickly and leaving yourself fatigued and lowering the quality of your training. Also, if the sport has a mandatory weight such as boxing, then it's tempting to try and make weight through water loss. This can leave you at risk of depriving the body of valuable fluids necessary for normal bodily functions and the hours after the weigh in may not be enough to restore equilibrium within the body.

Rapid weight loss is risky and in combat sports especially so. Competing when dehydrated and weight drained can harm your health as well as your performance.

You need to stay on top of your weight on a regular basis, particularly in the weeks leading up to a competition.

The best way to keep your weight down is to train consistently and keep your diet healthy. You can ease off between events but need to stay fit and maintain a predominantly healthy lifestyle.

When getting ready for the event you can then step up the training and tighten up the diet a little and the rest of the weight will come off. Give yourself enough time for this however, so that weight can be lost without affecting performance. Crash weight loss will deprive the body of essential nutrients at time when they are especailly needed and can cause muscle loss.

The Gymnag tools are an ideal way to keep on top of your weight in the same way that a good coach would monitor an athlete's weight coming up to competition.

Between competitions keep an eye on your weight by updating the daily progress charts and using the progress reports to review your progress over time.

When a race or fight is coming up then set your target weight and date you need to achieve that weight by. Gymnag will then tell you how much exercise/calorie reduction you have to make to achieve the weight by the specified date.

However leave yourself a few days before the event so you are not losing weight the day before the competition. This way you can lose the weight gradually so that you are in peak shape for the day of the event and can perform at your best.

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