MMA fighter lost 26kg in two months – we spoke with his nutritionist

As of June 10 fight for the AMC Fight Nights title, On June 9, Marif Piraev was to show 70.7 kg on the scale. Two months before this date, Marif weighed 96 kg. 7 weeks before the fight, nutritionist Alexander Ladygin came to Piraev’s team and saw 93 kg on the scales. As a result, Piraev still stayed in weight, but had a very pale fight and was taken off by corners after the second round. We spoke with a nutritionist to find out how it really was.

– The image “Wildweight runner. I drove 26 kg. What was the number on the scale when you started?

– At the first training session in Krasnodar, two months before the fight, he showed 96 kg. When I arrived at the camp, a month and three weeks before the tournament, the figure was 93.2 kg. And we had to not only burn fat and then drive water, but also burn muscle mass in activity, which led to quite serious consequences.

– Let’s explain: In an ideal world, a weight race is when an athlete first loses fat as slowly as possible for 8-12 weeks due to dieting, and last week he kicks fat out. body water, then restore it after weighing.

– Yes, it’s true. But we also had to lose a lot of muscle. We even limited protein intake to melt muscle mass, otherwise it was impossible to show the result on the scale.

– Many people believe that in Russia the majority gain weight rurally, without doing research, without calculating the calorie content, without knowing how much fat, muscle and water are in the body. Were you wrong?

– Many misbehaves, yes, but Marif and I used to do bioimpedance (body composition analysis. – ) regularly, at 2-3 week intervals. He’s a pretty lean guy: tests showed us 10-12% fat already at 87kg. At 80 kg, the fat percentage was even lower and we had to burn muscle mass at work. We understood what we would have to do, expressed all the risks to the team.

– What is the body fat percentage of the fighters when they stand on the scale?

– Oh, well, it’s very small in general: 4-5%. From a medical point of view, it’s not very good. Some studies indicate that a loss of 3-5% of body weight in the last days of a weight race is safe, but for large losses the data is conflicting and poorly understood.

– You arrived at the camp 7 weeks before the fight. How many calories per day did you suggest to consume Marifa in the initial stage?

– Daily caloric content and its calculation are also conditional indicators. You can get an average figure, yes, but cases are different. Many athletes listen to certain advisers who “did the same thing and everything worked out”. Someone takes the salt out too early, someone starves completely, someone cuts out the carbs. We just adjusted to Marif’s body along the way, for example, in the 4-5 day period, we watched whether the weight was losing or not, and then corrected it.

Did you also cook food?

No, I didn’t cook. There was a chef who did. We spoke with him several times a day, I roughly composed a diet, and the chefs cooked by weighing the products and counting the calorie content. It is clear that due to the weather we lost weight, in fact, in extreme conditions, but I constantly gave Marif the opportunity to rest, I found something on the go. He could postpone certain meals and say nothing to her, then give her the opportunity to eat so that there would be pleasant incentives. We walked a lot so that the calories were spent in an imperceptible way. Look: from 18 to 33 thousand steps, from May 20 to 20 thousand, from 25 to 21 thousand …

– Ideally, at about 80 kg, it was necessary to stop and take a two-week break in the diet. Let him gain 2.5-3 kg, but he would rest, eat carbohydrates and recover psychologically. And so there was very little time. And then somewhere we tried to take rest days, just to restart psychologically.

Marif told me her favorite dessert was eclairs. Could they be eaten on the day of rest?

– Yes, yes, we have included some desserts or barbecue in the daily diet on rest days. I remember there was a Milkway bar. We might even eat a Bounty protein bar during weight race week, which is supposed to be sweet and high in calories, but tasty enough.

“And if it’s not a day off, what was the food like?”

– Let’s find it, it’s written in my notebook… Look, May 30th. Morning: milk, oatmeal, strawberries, almonds, honey. Then egg white, cucumber, tomatoes. After the morning workout, we kept some time with carbohydrate intake. For an ordinary person, it may not be necessary, but for us every detail plays a role, so we took a break after training. Then there was protein and fiber. Before evening training – turkey, tomato, cucumber and pasta with sauce. An hour later – honey, nuts, grapefruit. We drank pu-erh and went to practice. After training – protein, fiber and I went to bed. Closer to last week, however, we had to take other measures, somewhere we had about 1200 kcal per day, somewhere we refused to eat after an evening workout.

– I understand that if a person loses muscle by losing weight, he becomes weaker or less resistant.

– In theory, yes, 100%, but Marif felt good in training throughout the preparation. Here, we rather understood that due to the overall weight loss, we had to deal with more combat-like issues.

– Until the last days, a person loses fat and muscle, but a few days before weighing people expel water from the body in order to replenish its reserves later. How do you know how much water you can get out?

– It is better to calculate closer to the week of the fight, but in general you should focus on the figure of 5% of the weight class. It is straight without health risks and very comfortable. Plus – performance may already drop, may affect thermoregulation, blood composition. In our case, we figured out that it’s closer to 8-10%.

– The water is expelled either with sweat, then you have to do light exercises or go to the sauna. Or in another way, by first increasing the amount of water you drink, then reducing it (4-5 days before the fight, athletes drink 6-8 liters of water a day, then reduce the amount to one liter, the body loses water with urine through inertia and loses weight. — “”). As I understand it, these methods are usually combined.

– Yes, a few days before the weigh-in, we started drinking 8 liters a day, and so for three days, that is, the water arrives in large quantities. Then you make a sharp collapse of water, the body does not have time to adapt and continues to intensively eliminate it. We had planned to do just one workout specifically for direct weight loss on “day X” before the weigh-in, but during that day we realized that we didn’t even need to workout, the weight goes away and so on while draining the water. We went to the sauna and everything.

– Fighter Timur Valiev seemed to be absolutely correct in noting that it makes no sense to drive water on a treadmill or do shadow boxing when there is a sauna. There you just have to lie down and run, you always load the already exhausted muscles.

— Yes, that is absolutely correct. And you tense your muscles, and you tire yourself physically and mentally. Thanks to several visits to the sauna or wraps, you can effectively eliminate weight with sweat. We did just that, but, of course, it became clear that the body, in principle, was exhausted during those and a half months.

– You said that sleep was disturbed and there were problems with the gastrointestinal tract.

– Yes, we didn’t sleep for two nights: before the weigh-in and after the weigh-in. Apparently the body sounded the alarm. We tried to sleep, it didn’t work. Marif had slept 5-6 hours the night before the fight and was not in very good shape anymore. Although we performed all the restore manipulations, we did everything correctly. We have experience, we have worked with many fighters, including UFC fighters, but there has been a very big loss in weight.

Would give melatonin.

– Yes really?! In fact, we covered a lot of things in this training and made a lot of smart decisions. It is clear that we know melatonin. It’s just that the body had its own plans for it.

– There is no doping control in Russia, and at least furosemide can be used. Assistance ?

– No, I am very negative about diuretics. And we didn’t even think about that in our race. There is no question about the weight race week, everything went very smoothly.

– It’s usually easy to figure out how the body went through a weight run by how much it managed to recover in the 36 hours between the weigh-in and the fight.

– Well, here the body was very bad at restoring what was spent.

– Did you manage to gain 77 kg?

– Less (UFC fighters, with successful combat weight runs, can weigh about 78-80 kg, showing 70 kg at the weigh-in – “Macht TV”), although I fully understand that a fighter can recover 10-12% of the category limit, when all is well.

– The optimal weight class for Marif with her data?

– I think it’s 77 kg, it seems to me that with the loss of such weight, as Kamil said, you can recover and fight normally only if you are Khabib Nurmagomedov.

– I would disagree with Kamil here, it seems to me that Khabib just has more time. Conventionally, Marif weighs 93 kg two months before the weigh-in, and Khabib weighs 84-85 kg.

– I think so. Its racer weight is simply more comfortable in terms of timing. Additionally, it was the second shot put for Marif in three months.

– Let’s explain. There is nothing to complain about your work, because losing 23 pounds in 7 weeks and going to battle (and not to the hospital) is a good result. But it is almost impossible to lose 23 kilograms in 7 weeks and fight well with Nariman Abbasov.

“Essentially, yes. It is clear that the morning of the fight, we believed that Marif would succeed, no one doubted him. But in general, everyone saw what would happen if we did two heavyweight races in a three-month period.