Are you looking to shed those extra pounds before a big fight?
In order to perform at your best, it’s important you train yourself to be a lean, mean, fighting machine well before your fight starts.
When you weigh less, you’re more agile and can win your fight more easily. This article will teach you hot to cut weight for a fight.
1. Try Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting is a new weight loss trend that really works.
Intermittent fasting is a diet where you eat for 8 hours a day and fast for the remaining 16 hours.
Only eating 8 hours out of every day gives your body time to relax and digest. When you don’t constantly have food in your system your body will feel more at east. Your brain will also be less cloudy.
It’s a good idea to do intermittent fasting during the hours you most like to eat now. For instance, if you’re a morning person who is up very early, start your 8 hours of eating early in the day.
Even if you’re a night owl, it’s still not a good idea to eat food late at night. The reason being that you’re very sedentary late at night and less likely to burn those calories off.
12-8pm could be a good time to set your schedule if you typically sleep in.
Intermittent fasting requires you to be more mindful of when you’re eating and when. You’ll be sure to get your meals in during your eating time, instead of mindlessly eating a lot of food throughout the day.
2. Do Fasted Cardio
Intermittent fasting is a great time to try fasted cardio first thing in the morning.
Find a cardio that you love doing so it won’t feel like a chore for you. If you hate running on the treadmill, don’t force yourself to hop on one and run for 30 minutes.
Instead, gear your workout to your taste whether that’s dance or kickboxing. Anything that gets your heart rate elevated can count for fasted cardio.
Try a group fitness class to add a fun social element to your cardio.
3. Cut Out Alcohol
You’ll be amazed at how many calories you shave off by eliminating alcohol.
Beer is very heavy in calories and will slow you down for your fight. Try eliminating alcohol at least two hours before your fight so your body can operate at peak efficiency.
Another reason that eliminating alcohol can help you lose weight is that when you drink, you tend to overeat immediately afterward. You have less control over your impulses, and oftentimes your impulses lead you straight to the Mcdonalds drive-thru.
4. Strength Train with Body Weight
Just because you don’t want to bulk up doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do resistance training.
Try strength training exercises with just your body weight in order to stay lean.
Pushups, pull-ups, squats, and lunges are fantastic ways to keep your body strong without adding extra muscle. Being able to lift your own body weight easily is important in fighting. If you can’t lift yourself, how are you supposed to win in a fight against another person?
Make a list of muscle groups you want to work on and do bodyweight exercises that target those groups.
5. Eat Your Veggies
When aiming to lose weight and stay lean, it’s imperative you eat your fruits and vegetables.
These foods will keep you full for longer and help with your digestive tract. They have plenty of vitamins that are good for your entire body.
Choose fruits and vegetables that are high in fiber like apples and spinach. Try to avoid high sugar fruits like bananas and grapes.
These can spike your blood sugar levels and cause you to crash after.
6. Get Plenty of Rest
It can be hard to even imagine resting when you have a big fight coming up.
Your instinct will be to train and train and train. This will backfire in the long run, however.
Overtraining will cause your body to start shutting down on you. You’ll be sore all the time and unable to progress. To prevent overtraining, be sure to take rest days.
Take at least one rest day a week where you don’t do anything more strenuous than walking around the block. During this time, your muscles will start repairing themselves and you’ll return to training even stronger.
7. Hit the Hay
In addition to taking rest days, you also need restorative sleep to be in tip-top shape.
Getting enough sleep is essential for your brain and body function. When you don’t sleep enough, your body panics and start retaining weight.
None of your organs work as well as they should when you don’t sleep. Aim for at least 8 hours of quality sleep each and every night before the big fight.
Now You Know How to Cut Weight for the Fight
You’ve now been told how to cut weight for the fight and the ball is in your court.
In order to perform your best, you need to keep your body healthy. Be sure to fuel yourself properly and get plenty of exercise.
Remember to not go overboard when it comes to restricting calories or training. Eating too few calories will make your body go into starvation mode while overtraining will make your muscles plateau.
Treat your body right and it will reward you with a win.
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