The Shintaro Higashi Show - How to Pick the Right Weight Class

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

Not many activities in life require you to be at a certain weight to participate. So it's no wonder many grappling art practitioners are confused about which weight class to choose and how to get to that weight class when competing. In this episode, Shintaro and Peter discuss various factors involved in choosing the right weight class and how to control your weight to be in that weight class. Please support us on Patreon if you can: https://www.patreon.com/shintaro_higashi_show. Any amount helps!

Welcome back to the Shintaro Higashi show with Peter Yu. Today we're going to talk a little about finding the right weight class. But before we move on, you see these headphones? They're not like super high-end. They're wired. They're like 20 bucks. Whatever you gave to Patreon goes to making this show better for you. Therefore, and you see we're very cost-conscious.

I'm not splurging on like super high-end stuff. I'm not bougie like Peter. The best of the best i had it before so you know this has existed before so thank you guys for supporting us on patreon and uh today's topic comes from a patreon member correct that's right yeah one of our supporters on patreon uh tyler asked this question so here you go he says when i started bjj i was 5 9 and 204 pounds i was strong af from powerlifting but i was also fat from complete lack of cardio and proper dieting i am 178 pounds this moment i don't know if it is worth cutting to

under 160 or just trying to stay where I'm at. I know Shintaro did a video about cutting 20 pounds in a week, which was very popular. Very popular. That's what started this whole thing. Right. But how do you find what weight class you should compete at? There's a couple of different factors involved with finding the right weight class class First of all, if you're sort of a novice I don't think you should even consider it

You should just fight in the division that you're the most comfortable No weight cutting at all You know, in the beginning, I think you want to just sort of get your feet wet And then experience competing without the stress of having to make weight Because competing, period, is stressful It's scary, there's a lot of things to make weight because competing period is stressful. It's scary. There's a lot of things to overcome. How do you deal with that kind of adversity of, you know, pressure from your coaches and teammates, people being there, someone trying to take your head off, right? So do you really

want to add another layer of like, oh, you know, I got to make weight. Oh, I didn't do it properly. You know, it's kind of a huge hassle. So that's first and foremost. And then sort of the second piece of the puzzle is are you eating healthy? Are you at an optimal competing weight period right now? So how much body fat are you carrying is a real thing. Right, right, right. I could cut 20 pounds in two days right now, but it'll be all water weight. Right. Right now, I'm 220 pounds and I'm fat.

You are? What? Yeah, I'm holding on to holiday weight, right? So I could make 198, 90 kilos in two days. With water weight. Yeah, 24 hours or two days. You know what? That's exaggerating.

Two to three days, I could 100% make it. But I'm like fully hydrated, glycogen stores are plump, all those things. But I'm carrying a lot of body fat. So I could cut that, fight, and then perform terribly. Or I could lose 20 pounds of body fat over the course of the next three, four months. And be 198 I'm never shredded but like lean

you're shredded I'm very lean at like 178 you look like a different person then 181 that's cool you know like you're lean when Asian girls are coming up to you and they're like oh my god you're so lean that's when they know like you're lean when uh i hate to say this but like asian girls are coming

up to you and they're like oh my god you're so lean that's when they know you're lean usually they prefer lean guys right yeah i only get attention from males 220 and above damn you're so big right 210 right some people are like oh you're not you know i get a little bit of tension and then yeah you know it titrates down and then eventually i'm attracting people who like lean people look like a k-pop star then and 170 yeah and i have these asian just curls in my hair which is very rare for asians very rare right yeah so i have a distinct look yeah i don't want to be too lean though because if i'm wearing a t-shirt and i'm too light i just look skinny i don't want to look skinny i want to look lean right and i have this weird thing with size too because my father like oh big and strong big and strong

i see kukushikan university was historically a heavyweight heavyweight yeah school the university right they were known for recruiting big guys because they didn't have weight classes back in the day right the strategy was the strategy was to recruit the big and the strongest and then even the team divisions the team tournaments were on no weight classes so you want to stack your team seven man team with the biggest and strongest guys ever so my dad always had this like eat eat big and strong big and strong i you know i stopped going upwards in height you know i was like five nine and like 12 years old and then that was it never never grew an inch after that so it's like i had i grew sideways i have like a weird

complex with uh i wait but i'm digressing uh a little bit here. So, okay. So just to sum up your first point, when you first start off as a beginner, don't worry about your weight class too much. Maybe consider dieting so that you are as healthy as possible. Well, 100% consider dieting, yes. Because you have to be eating healthy. And if you're carrying a lot of body fat

and you're overeating, you're not an optimal an optimal athlete right you want to be an optimal athlete that's that's the key if you're competing in the open division that's a different story because weight is good right right not that many of those nowadays yeah yeah so the advantages of cutting weight to a lower weight classes yeah so that So let's move on to the competition. Like, oh, okay. So you've got some experience. You're now, you really want to excel at competition. So now, yeah.

Why do people cut? Yeah. Let's say you're in the middle between two weight classes. Okay. Judo, there's 178. The weight class below is 160, 160 pounds. Yeah. So let's just say you're 170

pounds you're 10 pounds away from going down a weight or eight pounds away from going into the next weight class obviously you don't want to go up because people are bigger right if you go up eight pounds you're fighting 178 you have people like me who are walking around at 220 cutting down to 178 so if you're naturally 170 pounds going against someone who's naturally 220 pounds, there's going to be a size discrepancy. And there's going to be a strength discrepancy.

So that's why people don't usually go up in weight class. You could fight 178 or get down to 160 and lose 10 pounds. That's kind of the idea. If you're fighting someone who's 150 pounds naturally and you're cutting down from 170,

you're going to have a little bit of an advantage. You're probably going to have a little bit more reach. Mm-hmm. Just statistically speaking. Yeah. So that's kind of the way to go. But the benefits has to outweigh sort of the downsides because they are effects of cutting weight.

I'm not as strong at 198 as I am at 220. I'm not as strong at 178 as I am at 198. Yeah. And also, if you cut too aggressively, your conditioning just goes away. Yes. It's terrible. Yes. So there's losing weight and then there's cutting weight.

Cutting weight usually kind of connotates that you're cutting water weight at the last minute. So you want to diet down within range. Right, as lean as possible. Lean as possible, not carrying body fat, good optimal athlete, maybe within 10 pounds of range. And then the night before, you cut out your sodium, you cut out your water, maybe sit in the sauna, and then you lose the last 5 to 10 pounds of water weight overnight.

And then you rehydrate that back. Rehydrate after you weigh in. Don't rehydrate before you weigh in. It's not going to work. Right, right. I mean, i've heard a lot of stories even olympians like uh they they a lot of times when they don't perform at a big tournament they say oh i didn't cut weight properly i was too tired yada yada yada and some of the korean athletes even said that it's it's harder to go upper weight class because

you have to eat so much and you can't just put on fat you have to put on muscles yeah right that's the thing i fought 220 and i'm kind of fat at 220 so it's one of those things it's like i'm not an optimal athlete you know if you could i see trade off all the body fat that i had with muscle weight if i lost 20 pounds of fat and gained 20 pounds of muscle yeah i would be a different human being you know what i mean it looks so different i would look ridiculous and you know what that 20 pounds extra of muscle mass is gonna help me perform better at 220 now can you imagine with that body if i cut 20 pounds of water weight and made 198 gosh that's the makings of a champion right there right you'll run through people quite literally i don't want to do it and i can't do it or there's many different reasons why i wouldn't do that

first of all i think i've already hit a genetic barrier on how much more muscle i can gain i'm also 37 years old so this is like you know in another multiverse with a lot of vitamin s maybe yeah maybe so those are the ideas right so so okay that's those are yeah you have to see you have to weigh the benefit and the cost and then but kind of going on to more uh your personal side like well how did you end up in your weight class up to 20 that's a that's a very good question i know personally i'm optimized for a much lower division because of my height i'm five foot nine people will actually meet me and say oh I thought you were much taller. I'm not that tall. So I'm 5'9".

I'm short and sort of like wide. 178 probably would have been the ideal division. And I hate to say this, but Travis was at that weight class, and it was a very competitive division. Yeah, the 73 kilo and 81 kilo. Yes. 161 and 178 are the most competitive, yeah. Yes, very competitive, right?

And then 198, there was probably five or six equally leveled competitors at that division. So it was a very stacked division. Colton Brown was at that division. Jake Larson during the time. Aaron Cohen. All these guys were very, very tough. And getting out of the country was a little bit tricky. 220 was sort of open.

So in order for me to win nationals at 220, it was a lot easier of a task. And if I could climb the rankings at 220, it was a lot easier for me to gain the right to compete internationally. But when I went internationally, it was a challenge because I'm fighting Lukasz Kropalek, who's a two-time Olympic. I think he's a gold medalist, and he's like six five this guy made me feel like a child out there in terms of size and strength you know so it's like i gotta compete against those guys so it's very difficult so it wasn't you know just solely ducking certain people or finding the right weight class to go international but also the timing i was coming off of wrestling season and i was wrestling 184 throughout the whole season so i spent in 2007 you know five months making 184 consistently 184 184 184 and then off season season ends in

february or march i ate a lot and i gained a lot of weight i started lifting and then nationals is in april late april so during that time period i had already blown up to like 220 and my dad was like you want to cut down to 178 i was like no you want to cut down to 198 i'm like you know what i'm gonna go 220 and i won nationals that year 2007 I'm going to go 220. And I won nationals that year, 2007. So now I have some points. Yeah, now I have the right to go international.

Now I start going to these tournaments, start accumulating points at 220. And I'm like, you know what? I'm going to try to make a run for it at 220 as opposed to starting over at 198, starting over at 178. And I don't really like cutting weight too. And I always not do it properly. You know, could I go down naturally to 178? I can. But, you know, I like eating.

And, you know, I don't... You've done that too. I've seen you do it. 178, remember? Yeah. When we all did it together. You dieted down and everything. Yeah.

You were very strict. Turkey slices. We would go to a restaurant and he would pull out his turkey slices. Yeah, that was my game, right? I would bring turkey slices in a Ziploc bag. And I would drink seltzer water with a splash of Diet Coke. So it looked like I was kind of drinking a beer or something cool. There was a little bit of flavor.

I would squirt some lemon in there. It was kind of a miserable existence. And I got down pretty close. I would get down to like 185. So i'm within range to cut the water weight yeah you know and then if you remember i went to nationals and then you guys all had uh went to get next tacos and then i you know broke and had some tacos and boy did i rebound heavy yeah had a lot of chips a lot of sodium in that thing that was the worst decision, you know,

but I completely broke. We probably shouldn't have gone because I, me, Christian, we were pretty close. So we kind of had it. But you made it though.

You still made it. Yeah. I had my sauna suit and stuff like that. And there's little tips and tricks, you know, sitting in a sauna a certain way so you don't get,

right. Right. You don't have to like physically exert, but you know, sitting in a sauna a certain way so you don't get right right you don't have to like physically exert but you know sitting in a sauna sitting in a jacuzzi it's draining it's draining and there's lots of little tips and tricks that you can use you know like yeah i'll give you a couple couple of good ones like uh there's people that i know they take albolene which is a makeup remover and put it on their skin before they jump into a bath. And what that makeup remover does, supposedly, is open up their pores. So you sweat more. And then you go bath, out, bath, out, and people lose a lot of water weight that way. But it makes you dizzy, and it's not recommended, especially if you're dehydrated.

So please don't take this as medical advice or advice to do any of this stuff this stuff is really really dumb yeah consult with your health care professional yeah before you do it yeah and if you're listening and you're like oh man i definitely want to compete at a high level and i'm sort of in between weight classes i'm going to decide to you know cut down on a weight class uh you have to also look at the division too yeah just like how you did like cost benefit analysis you have to see yes yes and then you have to also take into consideration when the weigh-ins are right some events day before i don't know what it is now on the international judo circuit but a lot of it is day of and the day of is very difficult because you're cutting weight cutting weight you're going to sleep

dehydrated you're not getting good sleep you step on the scale at six in the morning and then you know you're out there too yeah it's tough ask you know what i mean yeah if you can cut 20 pounds of water weight you know be at the optimal weight and then weigh in the day before and you know people would i guess it's cheating like uh iv iv iv mma players yeah right yeah you're not allowed to do it but if you did that and then the next morning you wake up and lean shredded 30 pounds heavier than your actual division that's a huge advantage yeah think about it if you're walking around 200 pounds okay and you're shredded to the bone you cut 25 30, 30 pounds of water weight. You step on the scale 165. Oh, gosh.

The day before. And then you get on your IV and you're fully hydrated, fully rested because you get to sleep overnight. And you're walking out there 200 pounds against someone that didn't cut weight. That's like walking around like 155 pounds. And they're kind of skinny fat. Those are two different athletes. Those are two different athletes. Those are two different species. Yeah.

It's not a fair match. It's just not fair at all. But people do that kind of stuff to gain that edge. Right. But that goes secondary beyond skill acquisition and being good at the sport and being able to properly compete. That's like secondary. Right. So for,

I guess we kind of cover the beginners, complete beginners, and then serious competitors. But how about the people in the middle hobbyist? What should we do? Hobbyist? I think they shouldn't cut weight, but they should go to their optimal fighting weight.

And you know what your optimal weight is based on looking in the mirror. And some people have more data than others and say, hey, this is my body fat percentage. If I lost this much percentage of body fat, I would be at this division. Things like that. And I like using 170 sort of as an example because that's sort of middle of the range. The biggest two divisions are 73 kilos and 81 kilos for a reason. Right. Because that's the average male size.

Right? Mm-hmm. So, yeah, that's the... Okay, so are you lean? Are you lean? Yeah. That's the biggest question. Are you an optimal athlete?

Are you eating clean? What it means to be lean is different from person to person too based on genetics as you know right it that's very true yeah and also judo style kind of matters too you know or even fighting style if you're talking about uh you know different grappling sports or even fighting sports if you're a let's just say for instance right if you're a drop senagi person if you're a drop senagi drop sumi kochi makakomi kind of a person that likes fighting taller people it wouldn't make sense to kill yourself to get down to a lower weight class because your fighting style is optimized to fight

taller bigger people if you love locking up upper body like over the back like bringing them in and going chest to chest and that's your judo style, right? Right. That's a different type of – Yeah. That's another you want to cut because you want to be people – fighting people who are shorter and smaller than you. Right.

You know what I mean? If I fought like that, if I like upper body, like locked up, like over the back kind of thing, and if I fought 220 plus, I would get creamed. So if I'm fighting 220 plus i have to sort of stay in like the outside sleeve moving around carrying kind of a judo right because i have to consider my opponent's reach in their range right right so if you're talking about a striking sport like boxing which reach really matters yeah if i could punch you and you can't

punch me and the length of my arms really matter in terms of like gauging distance and jabbing the person then you really want to be in the lowest weight class you could possibly be in right right because reach matters more right judo yeah it matters you can it matters but like the different styles could have different implications yeah yes yes right so those are some things to consider. But as you can tell by our conversation, all this stuff is secondary. You have to skill acquisitions first. You want to be a good judo player. You want to be able to compete.

That's another skill in itself. Under pressure. How do you deal with it? Do you like it? Right. All those things have to be refined first before you could even take on this thing right right and then you know we have a guy at the dojo greg now he's like hey should i cut down to 160 and you know i had a this sort of conversation with him and this is perfect because he listens

to his podcast too now you can kind of ask me the question and we could talk a little bit more right right but like someone like him I suggest like make that weight before. A couple weeks before to do a mock weigh-in like I did on the video. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? So it's like, oh, I have to make 160, you know, on, I don't know, April 2nd for the Pedro Judo Challenge. Let me make it like mid-March and then compete the next day or train the next day to see how I feel. Right?

So we have a Saturday morning Nw was a practice that's a good one try to shoot for making weight before that class and then you could make the weight drink some gatorade and then go out there and practice to see how you feel because some people just can't do it you know some people get the high they've never been dehydrated before like really dehydrated and try to compete and they feel their heart beating in the middle of their throats. Right, right. And they get anxiety and they get really hot and they can't cool off. You know, it's a terrible, terrible thing.

Oh, yeah. You don't want to be that. Yeah. People always say like, oh, quit being such a baby. But it's like, hey, if you've never felt the stimulus before, of course, it's going to be scary because these are all physical sensations that you've never had right right so it's not as simple as like should i cut down to 160 yeah you should always cut down to 160 no it's case by case basis there's a lot of different factors that go into it right yeah i think i think we covered a lot um you know, if you guys have more questions,

shoot us some, you know, send us our way and send them our way. And, you know, as always, thanks for listening. Yep. Anything else we missed? No, the best way to reach us and ask us questions is through our Discord, right, being on Patreon. And you can always reach Peter. You can't always reach me because I'm silent. but i will every now and then try to pop in and peter's like come on man get on this thing and

i'll go yeah well i we have a good conversation there you know it's not just about judo you know we have animal channel to share animal pictures things like that of nature. But of course, if you have more personal questions about weight cutting, we can definitely help you out. So thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next episode. Yep. Thank you very much.