How do boxers drop 20 pounds of water weight and not feel like ****?

Yeah, but Junior is thought to be one of the more mentally tough, emotionally mature and spiritually impervious fighters of his generation, so that is an unfair standard/example for typical fighters out there who are just like regular people except they take and give punches to the face and body and other parts of the head and torso for a living.

 

Lewis should have not had too much trouble at all taking months to lose the just over 10 lbs-& at his size only about 4% of his body weight.
It would make no sense whatsoever for him, or any HW, to weight drain.

Although he did not seem to have the motivation to train really hard for a rematch.

 

Going Keto during the last week also helps you loose a lot of water weight. Glycogen binds water, so once your Glycogen store is empty you loose some extra water weight withou dehydrating yourself. It should be between 2 and 10 pounds of water weight in one week, 4 to 6 is realistic for the average person, so a bigger boxer with more lean muscle mass and size can probably loose even more than that.

 

They dont.

 

I've often wondered about the effects of weight loss. Out of curiosity, how long would it have taken you personally to fully recover to being a 100% after dramatic dehydrating. More than 48hrs?

 

This thread is a blast from the past! 8 years now! Even then I was referring to experiences from before that!

I remember that after massive cuts it would take about a day or two to recover. There was one time I cut about 20 lbs and got my ass whooped, so I decided to go up a weight class and started kicking ass. I ended up sticking to a weight class I was usually 3 lbs within striking distance at anytime and felt great! I was more energetic and stronger than my opponents even though they were "bigger" than me.

 

The commentator in the Ruiz Dimktrenko fight said that Andy rehydrated down from 340lbs to 262lbs. That's more than any puny lightweight. Just goes to show how much hard work he put in the Joshua rematch, if you put it in perspective. 20 Big mac meals down to 10 a day.

 

Apologies for the late tag!. Lol.

Thanks for your insight and info, Mate, Appreciated.

 

Now I'm remembering more.

With regards to the 48 hours comment, it was something I learned in a sport biology class in college and it made sense when I competed. Cutting water weight is terrible, but not as bad as starving oneself, so I was able to restructure my whole weight cutting plan. So I went from not eating to not drinking water. After weigh ins I focused on drinking Gatorade and water before eating.

However, yes I would get sick and injured more often from weight cuts. I would get weird skin rashes, stomach aches, weird twitches. I learned how it affected the immune system, so I decided to stop cutting weight and focused more on being healthy. Eating healthy, sleeping well, stretching more. That's something I still keep up with. Right now I'm probably still one of the fittest guys from my team. A lot of guys let themselves go after college.

 

Wrestling and contact sports dropping weight has to be viewed differently. Getting your brain rattled with massive water loss and gain is very dangerous. The vast majority of fighters drop weight over time. What they gain from the day weigh in to the fight night is usually around 10 lbs. Sure there are some boxers that can get as high as 20 lbs but those are exception and not the norm.

 

I see it as a double edge sword. If you cut within your limits you can get an advantage, if you cut too much it will hurt your abilities. I also think at this point, most guys are cutting a similar amount of weight and weighing about the same on fight night. They usually don't differ too much in the ring.