Weight cutting for BJJ tournaments

The claim under test

The claim is that you should prepare for a grappling tournament the way a fighter prepares for a fight: sit comfortably above the division through preparation, then take the last few kilos off in the final days and put them back after the scale.

It does not survive contact with the rulebook. Every element of that plan depends on a recovery window, and the IBJJF format does not contain one. The position stand that most of the fight-week literature ultimately traces to says so itself in its opening framing — the type of combat sport, the length of the camp, and the time between weigh-in and competition are named as the factors that determine which strategies apply. Grappling is the case where that third factor goes to approximately zero.

What follows is not a smaller version of the MMA protocol. It is a different problem with a different answer, and the answer for most people reading this is that the acute phase is simply deleted from the plan.

What the IBJJF rulebook actually says

Checked against the current published rulebook — 2024JUN_IBJJF_Rules_EN.pdf, marked Version 6.1, 2024, linked from ibjjf.com/rules — and against the federation's own weigh-in page, both retrieved 24 August 2026.

The procedure page is four sentences long and every one of them matters:

Before his/her first fight, the athlete will check his/her weight with the Gi. There is only one opportunity to check the weight. If the competitor does not make his/her weight, they will be immediately disqualified. You can not change divisions, if you do not make your designated division. No changes will be accepted in the tournament day, no refund.

The rulebook backs each of those with an article. Art. 8.3.1: "Each athlete shall only mount the official scale of the event to have his/her weight taken once." Art. 8.3.3: "The athlete cannot step on the scale with shoes or any item besides his/her regular uniform and equipment permitted for use during matches." Art. 8.1.11 puts the uniform inspection before the weigh-in, and art. 8.1.13 closes the loop: "After weighing in, athletes may not change their gis for their first match, under penalty of disqualification."

The staffing article makes the timing unambiguous. Art. 2.7 describes the Ring Coordinator as the official who summons athletes to the warm-up area, checks their IDs, ushers them to the uniform inspector, weighs them before first match, and directs them to the match area. The weigh-in is a station on the way to the mat, not an event the night before.

One detail worth knowing if you enter the open class: art. 4.4.1 exempts athletes alone in the ultra heavyweight and absolute divisions from the weigh-in requirement, needing only uniform inspection. There is no upper limit there to check against.

The gi is on the scale, and nobody publishes what yours weighs

The most-searched question about grappling weigh-ins has a plain answer: yes. The IBJJF's own championship guidance states it directly — "The weights on the chart are for the highest allowed weight for that division, with the uniform on." At a no-gi event the same logic applies to the no-gi uniform.

This is why the divisional numbers in gi and no-gi competition are not the same, and it is why a competitor who plans against the gi limit while training in shorts has mis-specified their own target by whatever their kit weighs.

Here is where the folklore starts, and it is worth naming precisely. Search for how much a gi weighs and you will be told 1.5 to 2 kg, or given a fabric density band in grams per square metre. Those figures come from retailers, not from the federation. The rulebook regulates the gi's fabric type — cotton or cotton-like, with pearl weave mandatory for juvenile, adult and master divisions — and it regulates dimensions in centimetres: collar thickness 1.3 cm, collar width 5 cm, sleeve slack 7 cm, belt width 4 to 5 cm. It sets no mass limit and no GSM limit at all. A search of the full rulebook text returns no instance of a gi weight specification.

The practical consequence is unusually clean for this subject. The one number you genuinely need is one you can measure yourself, for free, in about thirty seconds: put your competition gi and belt on a kitchen scale, weigh them dry, and subtract that from your divisional limit. That is your body-weight target. Anyone quoting you a generic gi weight is quoting a shop.

Weigh them dry, and weigh the actual gi you intend to compete in. Art. 8.1.6 bars gis that are wet, and art. 8.1.13 bars changing gis between the weigh-in and the first match — so the garment on the scale is the garment you fight in, and any water it has picked up is weight you brought with you.

There is nothing to rehydrate into

This is the sentence the whole article exists to deliver, so it is worth doing the arithmetic rather than asserting it.

An acute water cut is coherent in MMA because it is half of a two-part operation. You remove fluid before the scale and you put it back afterwards, and the published outcomes describe both halves. In a 2025 prospective study of 31 professional MMA athletes on a structured protocol, the cohort reduced a mean of 7.25 kg (10.6% of body mass) in the seven days before the weigh-in and regained a mean of 7.5 kg (11.2%) within 30 hours post-weigh-in. The regain is not a footnote to that study. It is the mechanism that makes the loss survivable at all, and it took thirty hours.

Now put the same operation inside an IBJJF bracket. The rulebook's General Competition Guidelines art. 1.4 sets the minimum rest between matches up to the semifinals as equal to the regulation match duration for the respective division, doubled for finals. Adult black belt matches are ten minutes; most masters divisions are five. So the structural guarantee between your weigh-in, your first match and your second is measured in single digits of minutes.

Against that, take the ISSN position stand's own recovery protocol seriously for a moment. It specifies oral rehydration solutions at 1 to 1.5 litres per hour combined with sodium in the 50–90 mmol/dL range taking precedence immediately post-weigh-in, fast-acting carbohydrate at up to 60 g/h following it, and a target of regaining at least 10% of body mass to mitigate performance decline. Those are hourly rates. Replacing two litres at the top of the recommended intake rate is more than an hour of continuous drinking — and intake is not the same thing as restoration, because absorption, distribution and plasma-volume recovery all take their own time on top.

There is no version of that protocol that fits between a scale and a mat. And there is no published figure at all for what acute loss is appropriate when the recovery window is minutes, because that is not a question the literature has answered. The absence is information. It is not a gap for a coach to fill with an estimate.

If you want the full picture of what the recovery half actually involves and why it is the harder half, that is covered in how to rehydrate after a weigh-in — and reading it makes the grappling case obvious, because none of it is available to you.

What judo does instead

Judo faced the identical problem and legislated a different answer, which makes it the most useful comparison available.

Under the IJF Sport and Organisation Rules — version 21 January 2026, which replaces the 22 April 2025 version — the official weigh-in for IJF events is scheduled one day before the competition at 16:00 local time, lasting between 30 and 60 minutes. Athletes weigh in wearing only underclothing: underpants and optionally a vest top for men, underpants and a bra or vest top for women, with all watches, glasses, socks, jewellery and piercings removed. As at IBJJF, each athlete may stand on the scales only once during the official weigh-in period, though an unofficial weigh-in on the same scales opens 40 minutes before and closes 10 minutes before, with no limit on checks.

So judo gives back the recovery window that BJJ removes. And then it caps it. Section 6.3 establishes a random weigh-in, opening one hour before the start of competition each day, for which four athletes per category are drawn by software (plus categories excepted). The rule is one sentence: "The weight of the athlete cannot be more than 5% higher than the official maximum weight limit of the category." The SOR prints the resulting ceilings in a table — a −73 kg man may not exceed 76.7 kg on the competition-day scale; a −57 kg woman may not exceed 59.9 kg. Anyone failing the random weigh-in is not allowed to take part.

Read the two rules together and the design intent is obvious. The day-before scale allows recovery; the 5% ceiling limits how much recovery is worth engineering for. Cadet divisions get the same 5% band with a further 0.2 kg allowed for underwear. Veterans are treated differently again: appendix A1.10 puts their weigh-in the day before with no random weigh-in at all.

Failing to make the category is handled as bluntly as in BJJ. Under 6.2.5.2, the exact weight is recorded and signed by a weigh-in official, an IJF Sport Commission member and the athlete or their delegation, and the athlete is excluded from the competition.

What wrestling does instead

Wrestling is the sport that has been arguing about this the longest, and it attacks the problem from two directions at once: when you weigh, and what you are allowed to do beforehand.

United World Wrestling. The current International Wrestling Rules, marked January 2026, put the weigh-in on the morning of the day the weight category is contested. Article 11 sets the format: the weigh-in and medical control together last 30 minutes; on the second morning of the category, only wrestlers still active in the repechages and finals return, for a weigh-in lasting 15 minutes. The only permitted uniform is the correct singlet, and "No weight tolerance will be allowed for the singlet." Unlike IBJJF and IJF, wrestlers may "get on the scale as many times as they wish" throughout the weigh-in period. A 2 kg tolerance exists for World Cup, UWW Ranking Series and international tournaments — but not for championships, and the rules state that no further tolerance is allowed at the second weigh-in. Failing or missing either weigh-in eliminates the athlete and ranks them last.

USA Wrestling. The 2026 edition of the Rule Book & Guide to Wrestling, timestamped 19 August 2026, mirrors the UWW two-day format for Senior, U17, U20 and U23 events, and then does something no other federation here does. Rule 4.9 reads:

Any means of drastic weight reduction is strictly prohibited. The practice of dehydration by use of rubber, plastic, or rubberized nylon suits, hot rooms, hot showers, hot boxes, saunas, steam rooms, heating devices, diuretics, emetics, laxatives, excessive food or fluid restriction, and self-induced vomiting is a violation of USA Wrestling rules.

The penalty is disqualification from the competition, and athletes may not leave the weigh-in area or start any activity as a means of weight reduction. Note what that list contains: sauna, hot water immersion and food and fluid restriction are all methods the ISSN position stand describes as usable in MMA fight week with appropriate supervision. USA Wrestling has not judged them differently on physiology. It has judged them differently on context — a youth and amateur tournament format with no supervision attached.

For younger divisions the timing tightens further. Rule 4.10 puts 16U and Junior National Championship weigh-ins no more than four hours before initial competition, with a 2 lb allowance on the second day. Rule 4.13 puts Junior Division Regional weigh-ins between two and three hours before competition. Rule 4.5 allows no singlet tolerance at any age level.

The NCAA. The collegiate Weight Management Program packet for 2025-26, circulated 13 August 2025, states its founding goals plainly — goals established in 1998, which is the tell. Among them: "Establish weigh-ins as close to the start of the match as possible, and use a random draw for weight class order" and "Eliminate the tools used to accomplish rapid dehydration." The programme sets a minimum wrestling weight from a hydration-gated body-composition test: urine specific gravity must be 1.020 or lower by refractometer before assessment can proceed, with a mandatory 24-hour wait before retest; the lowest allowable weight is calculated at 5% body fat; and a second ceiling limits the descent to 1.5% of body weight per week, with the higher of the two figures becoming the athlete's floor.

Why 1998? Because between 7 November and 9 December 1997, three previously healthy collegiate wrestlers died during rapid weight loss to qualify for competition, in North Carolina, Wisconsin and Michigan. The CDC's report records that in the hours preceding the official weigh-in, all three restricted food and fluid intake and attempted to maximise sweat losses by wearing vapour-impermeable suits under cotton warm-up suits while exercising vigorously in hot environments. Every rule in the paragraph above is downstream of that report.

What the measurements show about grapplers

The rules describe intent. The survey data describes behaviour, and it lines up.

The largest recent cross-sport comparison — Barley and Harms, Translational Sports Medicine, 2025, 256 competitors across boxing, BJJ, muay thai/kickboxing, wrestling, MMA, judo, taekwondo and karate — found that magnitudes of weight loss were greater in muay thai/kickboxing and MMA than in the other sports examined. The between-sport differences are reported in kilograms: MMA athletes' typical pre-competition loss exceeded BJJ by 0.92 kg and judo by 1.29 kg; within the final 24 hours, MMA exceeded BJJ by 0.62 kg. Regain after the weigh-in diverged further, with muay thai/kickboxing exceeding BJJ by 0.85 kg and judo by 1.67 kg.

The authors state the reason without hedging: "Unlike Judo and BJJ, MMA and MT/KB typically host weigh-ins the day before the bout, allowing ∼24 h recovery, as opposed to the same-day weigh-ins in the former, which may enable larger weight cuts."

Two honest caveats on that sentence. First, it describes judo as a same-day-weigh-in sport, which is true of a great deal of domestic and club competition but is not what the IJF SOR schedules for its own World Judo Tour events. Both descriptions are accurate about different levels of the same sport, and if you compete in judo the one that governs you is whatever your organiser publishes. Second, this is survey data — self-reported magnitudes, not measured ones.

For BJJ specifically, the cleanest published numbers come from a survey of 115 UK competitors: 59% reported performing acute or rapid weight loss before competition, with a mean body-mass loss of 1.9 ± 3.8 kg (2.3 ± 4.6%). Thirty-four percent began three to seven days out and 16% began within the final two days. The methods reported skewed toward achieving a calorie deficit through exercise and diet rather than hypohydration — and, tellingly, with little advice from formally qualified personnel. Note the standard deviations: they are larger than the means, which tells you the distribution is wide and that an "average" here describes almost nobody.

Judo has a measured picture too. A study of 17 elite male judo athletes under the current IJF format found a rapid-weight-loss prevalence of 100%, with urine osmolality above 700 mOsmol/kg and specific gravity above 1.020 at weigh-in — dehydrated by any standard threshold — and no statistically significant association between hydration status and matches won. That last finding is worth holding carefully rather than celebrating: 17 athletes is a small sample, and an absence of a detected association in a small sample is not evidence that dehydration is free.

The same study contains one number that complicates the neat story this article is telling. Asked whether they would compete in a different weight category if the competition were held on the same day as the weigh-in, only 17.6% said they would. Take that at face value: it is a self-report from 17 people, and it cuts against the assumption that removing the recovery window automatically moves athletes up a division. The structural argument in this article is about what the rules make coherent. It is not a prediction about what everybody does.

A worked scenario

Framed as a scenario, on published rules, with the numbers labelled.

Suppose your event's weight chart puts your division at 80.0 kg with the uniform on. You weigh your competition gi and belt dry on a kitchen scale and get 1.6 kg. Your body-weight target on the day is therefore 78.4 kg, and you have been sitting at 82.5 kg through preparation. The gap is 4.1 kg, or about 5% of your body mass.

In MMA that gap has a familiar shape. It sits close to the ISSN stand's 4.4% figure for total body-mass loss at 24 hours before weigh-in, and the recovery is the part that makes it work: thirty hours on the far side of the scale, during which the Frontiers cohort put back 7.5 kg. You would arrive at the cage rehydrated, or at least substantially so.

In your bracket, the same 4.1 kg has no second half. You step off the scale, the gi inspector checks you for skin conditions, and a Ring Coordinator walks you to a mat. Best case, you have some minutes. Between your first and second matches the rulebook guarantees you the length of one match — five to ten minutes depending on your division. At the ISSN protocol's own recommended intake rate, that window buys you somewhere near 100 to 250 ml of oral rehydration solution, assuming you can drink it and hold it while warming up.

So the honest reframing of the scenario is not "how do I take off 4.1 kg by Saturday morning." It is: 4.1 kg over a twelve-week preparation is roughly 340 g a week, which is inside the NCAA's 1.5%-per-week descent ceiling by a wide margin for an athlete this size, and it requires nothing on tournament morning except breakfast and a gi that is dry.

That is not a compromise. It is the only version of the plan the format actually supports.

Multi-day events and five matches in an afternoon

Large tournaments add two complications, and both push in the same direction.

The first is bracket depth. A well-attended adult division can run five or six rounds, all on the same day, with the rulebook's minimum rest between them and nothing more. That is a substantially different physiological demand from one fight, and it is imposed on whatever state you arrived in. Nothing about a dehydrated start improves across six matches.

The second is scheduling. IBJJF championships run across several days, with divisions allocated to particular days and athletes advised on the federation's own guidance to be prepared to compete "at any time of the day", to arrive at least two hours before their scheduled fight time, and to be ready an hour early in case the event runs ahead. A plan whose final step is time-critical is a plan exposed to a schedule you do not control.

There is a third detail specific to bracket sports that is easy to miss: your division is fixed long before you arrive. IBJJF events publish an Athlete Correction Deadline and a Professor Correction Period, both closing days to weeks before the event, after which the registration stands. The commitment to a number happens at registration, not on the scale — which is precisely why the descent has to be planned from the registration deadline backwards.

UWW's format is the multi-day case handled explicitly. Each weight category is organised over two days, with the medical control and first weigh-in on the first morning and a second, 15-minute weigh-in the following morning for those still competing — and no additional tolerance at the second. An athlete who reaches a UWW final has made scratch weight twice, on consecutive mornings, with a full day of competition in between. Any plan that only survives one morning is not a plan for that format.

The longitudinal descent is the whole strategy

If the acute phase is deleted, what is left is the part of the literature that was always doing the real work.

The ISSN position stand's most consequential line is not about fight week at all: it puts habitual off-camp weight at 12% to 15% above the division requirement, and sets macronutrient floors during the descent of 3.0–4.0 g/kg carbohydrate, 1.2–2.0 g/kg protein and 0.5–1.0 g/kg/day fat. Those floors are per kilogram of body mass, so the absolute grams shrink as the athlete does while training load usually does not — which is why a descent gets harder to fuel as it progresses rather than easier.

The wrestling programmes give the descent an explicit rate. The NCAA's second ceiling limits weight loss to 1.5% of body weight per week from certification onward, and the programme issues wrestlers a weight-loss descent plan with a date from which each lower weight becomes available. That is a governing body putting a published number on how fast a competitor is permitted to arrive at a division — in a sport with a same-morning weigh-in.

For a grappler the practical translation is short. Pick the division at registration, not at the deadline. Weigh daily in the same conditions so the trend means something. Subtract the measured mass of your gi. And let the descent land on the number a week early, so that tournament morning contains no decisions at all.

That last part is what building a plan backwards from a fixed date is for, and it is what the Fighter Cut app does — classify the rate of loss from today to the weigh-in and show the trend early enough to act on. The principle stands whether or not you use it. Broader camp structure, and how the descent fits alongside training load, sits in fight camp nutrition, week by week.

Missing weight at a bracket event

Missing weight in a professional fight is a negotiation. Missing weight at a grappling tournament is an ending, and the difference is worth understanding before you gamble on a number.

In MMA, a fighter over the limit typically has options: a percentage of purse forfeited to the opponent, a catchweight bout if both sides agree, a commission-sanctioned second attempt within a set window. The machinery exists because the fight is a contract between two named parties and there is a body sanctioning it. That machinery is described in missing weight in MMA, and none of it applies here.

In a bracket, there is no opponent to renegotiate with — there are three, or seven, or fifteen, and the bracket is already drawn. IBJJF's answer is immediate disqualification, no division change, no refund, with art. 2.3.2 adding that in a three-athlete bracket an athlete over the limit is eliminated and forfeits any right to the other semi-final. IJF records the exact weight, has it counter-signed, and excludes the athlete. UWW eliminates the wrestler and ranks them last, and their opponent advances by forfeit.

There is one narrow structural exception worth knowing about, because it shows what a federation does when it wants to leave room: USA Wrestling rule 4.14 allows athletes at UWW-qualifying events two consecutive attempts — the initial one when called to the scale, and an immediate challenge on a second tournament-provided scale nearby. That is a tolerance for scale error, not for body mass. IBJJF grants no equivalent.

The asymmetry of the bet is therefore total. Cutting close to the limit at a bracket event risks the entire competition — the travel, the registration, the preparation — against a marginal advantage in a division you chose weeks ago. There is no version of that trade where the downside is recoverable.

Youth divisions, masters divisions, and the athletes nobody measured

This is where the honest limits of everything above sit, and they are wider than the confident tone of most weight-cutting content admits.

Youth. IBJJF runs weight-classed brackets from Mighty Mite I, which is athletes turning four in the competition year, upward through Pee Wee, Junior, Teen and Juvenile divisions. A full-text search of the current rulebook returns no instance of the words dehydration, hydration, sauna, diuretic, weight management, minimum weight, body fat or nutrition. That is a statement about what the document contains, not an accusation: the IBJJF's weigh-in format removes much of the incentive that the wrestling programmes were built to counteract. But it does mean that in gi jiu-jitsu, nothing in the rules stands between a nine-year-old and whatever an adult decides to do about the scale.

Wrestling made the opposite choice, and it made it the hard way. USA Wrestling's prohibition on drastic weight reduction applies at every age level, and the NCAA's minimum-weight machinery — 5% body fat, hydration gate at 1.020, 1.5% per week — exists because voluntary restraint had already failed with fatal results in 1997. The combat-sport weight literature is dominated by adult competitors, and figures derived from that population are not conservative when applied downward to a growing athlete; they are unsupported. For a junior competitor, the useful guidance is not a smaller percentage. It is entering the division their body is already in.

Masters. Masters brackets are the fastest-growing part of adult jiu-jitsu and the least-studied. The IBJJF's masters divisions run from age 30 (Master 1) to 61 and over (Master 7), under identical weigh-in rules to the adult division and with shorter matches — which, via art. 1.4, means a shorter guaranteed rest between them. Judo goes the other way for its veterans: weigh-in the day before, and no random weigh-in at all.

We located no study measuring acute weight loss and its consequences in masters grapplers specifically. Age-related differences in thirst sensitivity, total body water and thermoregulation are established in the general physiological literature, but no one has quantified what they mean for a 52-year-old purple belt with a five-minute window between matches. Anyone who tells you otherwise should be asked for the paper.

Women. Under-represented in the same literature, and the differences that matter here — body composition, total body water as a fraction of mass, cycle effects on fluid balance — are not adjustable with a coefficient. The UK BJJ survey's 115 respondents and the judo study's 17 elite males are the kind of sample sizes this whole field is working from.

What breaks first

In roughly the order it happens, for a grappler specifically.

The gi becomes the plan. The first failure is not physiological at all; it is arithmetic. A competitor who never weighed their gi is targeting a number that is off by whatever it weighs, and finds out at the one moment the rulebook gives no second attempt.

Then the schedule wins. Because IBJJF advises athletes to be ready to compete at any time of the day, a plan that needs a known start time to work is already broken. The failure looks like an athlete who was going to sweat the last few hundred grams off in the warm-up area and got called forty minutes early.

Then the first match is the recovery window. Nobody plans this, but it is what happens: an athlete who cut into the morning treats round one as the period during which they will come good. It is the round in which they are furthest from good, and in a single-elimination bracket it is also the only round they are guaranteed.

Then the fifth match. For anyone who does get through, the guaranteed rest is the division's match length and nothing else. Whatever fluid deficit was carried onto the mat is still there in the semi-final, several matches of accumulated fatigue later, with the rulebook offering minutes.

The detection signal for all of it is a scale used consistently from the registration deadline onward, and a gi weighed once. Both are unglamorous, both are free, and between them they convert a tournament-morning emergency into a decision made in week three. The same trend-watching logic covers the other place grapplers get into trouble, which is fluid manipulation copied from fight sport — water loading before a weigh-in is worth reading before anyone tries it in a format with no recovery on the far side.

What we could not verify

Stated plainly, because an article this specific about rules owes you its gaps. All rule checks below were made on 24 August 2026.

• How IBJJF handles a second weigh-in within one event. Art. 8.3.1 says an athlete mounts the official scale once "of the event". We could not confirm from the published rulebook how that is applied to an athlete registered in both a weight division and the absolute, or competing in gi and no-gi at the same championship, or whose division runs onto a second day. Ask the organiser.
• There is no single canonical IBJJF weight-division table. The federation publishes a Weight Chart on each event's own page, and its guidance directs athletes to the tournament's important-information section for the official measurement used at that event. We have therefore printed no divisional limits here. Read your event's chart.
• The IBJJF rulebook version. The rules page describes the document as v6.0; the PDF it links — 2024JUN_IBJJF_Rules_EN.pdf — carries "VERSION 6.1 2024" in its page footers. We quote the PDF, and note that a more recent revision may exist that is not linked from that page.
• Non-IBJJF grappling promotions. ADCC, local promotions and school-affiliated circuits set their own procedures, and some do weigh in the day before. Nothing in this article should be assumed to apply to an event that is not run under IBJJF rules.
• The "same-day weigh-in" description of judo. The 2025 cross-sport survey characterises judo as a same-day weigh-in sport. The IJF SOR schedules its own official weigh-in the day before at 16:00. Both are true of different tiers of the sport, and we could not establish what proportion of judo competition worldwide uses which format.
• Gi mass. No federation publishes one. Every figure in circulation is retailer-published. Weigh yours.
• The absence searches. Our statements that the IBJJF rulebook contains no gi-mass limit and no weight-management vocabulary are based on a text search of the published PDF. Text rendered inside the document's illustrations would not be captured by that method.
• No count of severe events in grappling. We located no authoritative tally of hospitalisations or deaths attributable to weight cutting in BJJ or judo. The CDC's 1997 wrestling report is a specific investigation of three cases, not a rate, and it should not be generalised into one.
• Masters-specific evidence. None located. The absence is real and it is the honest answer.
• Nothing here is specific to you — not your division, your body composition, your medical history, or the event you have entered.

Sources

Sourced to

1. IBJJF Weigh Ins — official procedure page — International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation, retrieved 24 August 2026
2. IBJJF Rule Book (2024JUN_IBJJF_Rules_EN.pdf, marked Version 6.1, 2024) — International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation, June 2024 edition, retrieved 24 August 2026
3. IBJJF Help Desk — Championship: weight chart, registration and scheduling — International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation, retrieved 24 August 2026
4. Sport and Organisation Rules of the International Judo Federation (SOR), Version 21 January 2026 — International Judo Federation, 21 January 2026, replacing the 22 April 2025 version
5. International Wrestling Rules: Greco-Roman, Freestyle and Women's Wrestling — United World Wrestling, edition marked January 2026
6. Rule Book & Guide to Wrestling: Freestyle, Greco-Roman & Female Wrestling, 2026 Edition — USA Wrestling, last updated 19 August 2026
7. 2025-26 NCAA Men's Wrestling Weight Management Program Packet — NCAA Men's Wrestling Rules Committee, memorandum dated 13 August 2025
8. International society of sports nutrition position stand: nutrition and weight cut strategies for mixed martial arts and other combat sports — Ricci AA et al., Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 2025;22(1):2467909. DOI 10.1080/15502783.2025.2467909, PMID 40059405
9. Rapid Weight Loss Across Combat Sports and the Relationships Between Methods and Magnitude — Barley OR, Harms CA, Translational Sports Medicine, 26 March 2025;2025:2946317. DOI 10.1155/tsm2/2946317, PMID 40177332
10. Pre-competition body mass loss characteristics of Brazilian jiu-jitsu competitors in the United Kingdom — White T, Kirk C, Nutrition and Health, December 2021;27(4):387–394. DOI 10.1177/0260106020983800, PMID 33402045
11. Examining the effects of pre-competition rapid weight loss on hydration status and competition performance in elite judo athletes — Bialowas D, Laskowski R, Franchini E, Kujach S, Scientific Reports, 7 September 2023;13(1):14756. DOI 10.1038/s41598-023-41872-1, PMID 37679531
12. An alternative structured weight management protocol to rapid weight loss in mixed martial arts: a prospective interventional study — Maurício CA et al., Frontiers in Nutrition, 8 October 2025;12:1581698. DOI 10.3389/fnut.2025.1581698, PMID 41132567
13. Rapid Weight Loss of Up to Five Percent of the Body Mass in Less Than 7 Days Does Not Affect Physical Performance in Official Olympic Combat Athletes With Weight Classes: A Systematic Review With Meta-Analysis — Mauricio CA et al., Frontiers in Physiology, 12 April 2022;13:830229. DOI 10.3389/fphys.2022.830229, PMID 35492609
14. Hyperthermia and dehydration-related deaths associated with intentional rapid weight loss in three collegiate wrestlers — North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Michigan, November–December 1997 — Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, MMWR Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 20 February 1998;47(6):105–108. PMID 9480411

Read next