New Delhi: It’s a fine line a wrestler must walk between maintaining her weight below a targeted ceiling and retaining the energy required for her bout. Clues to how complex this is emerge from remarks by the Indian Olympic contingent’s chief medical officer, Dr Dinshaw Paudiwala, on the events leading to the disqualification of Vinesh Phogat from the Paris Games.

A calculated “weight cut” ahead of the weigh-in, replenishment to prevent dehydration during the day’s three bouts, and then a series of steps, including training in a sweatsuit, going to the sauna and even a desperate last-minute haircut, in the hope of reducing weight again ahead of the next morning’s weigh-in. Although these didn’t work enough in Phogat’s case, how were they intended to?

The first objective is to reduce one’s weight enough to fit into a preferred category, but not too early. A few extra kilos give the wrestler that much energy to train properly, and also helps her recover faster from the training load.

“Sportspersons in weight-category sports generally try and maintain a training weight of 3kg above the ideal weight, and then shed the weight prior to weighing-in,” said Dr (Colonel) Anup Krishnan, a former Army sports medicine specialist. If the 3kg is shed in a planned manner ahead of weigh-in, it is generally safe and has no effect on performance, he said. Krishnan is a consultant in sports and exercise medicine at the DY Patil Sports & High-Performance Centre, Navi Mumbai.

A wrestler seeking to lose weight would want to get rid of as much as fat and fluid as possible, but her physical training would also reduce her muscle mass, which she cannot afford as it would affect performance. “The weight loss is mainly fluid, fat and muscle in that order and athletes try to sparingly lose muscle mass to avoid performance losses. Muscle mass loss can be prevented by concurrent strength training,” Krishnan said, stressing on the need for scientific weight management techniques supervised by sports sciences specialists.

The preferred excess of 3kg during the training period corresponds with the difference between Phogat’s previous and current weight categories of 53kg and 50kg respectively. But after making the cut in Tuesday’s weigh-in, she regained almost as much — 2.7 kg — thanks to replenishments given to her over the course of three bouts.

“Athletes try and replenish fluids and food after weigh-in and before the competition but there is a limit to the amount that can be safely consumed,” Krishnan said. “Trying to shed extra kilos in a short period of time is possible with several drastic weight-loss methods but is not desirable for athletic performance.”

Any exercise regimen increases sweating leading to loss of fluids, electrolyte loss and thereby weight. Time spent in the sauna too induces sweating, although that weight loss is temporary. Aerobic activity too contributes to weight loss.

“Weight reduction is also achieved by starvation and reducing the amount of clothes during weigh-in. Haircut and clothing can make a difference in cases where the weight difference is a few hundred grams. Adverse effects of weight loss are dehydration, electrolyte imbalance, reduced muscle mass, delayed recovery and diminished physical performance,” Krishnan said.

As we know now, the late haircut was not enough in Phogat’s case and an entire night of working out and starvation ended up dehydrating her.

She was also competing in a category that is below her natural weight. “There is a weight bracket which should be kept in mind based upon the age, anthropometric characteristics [body measurements and their proportions] of the athlete, diet and training programme. As the athlete’s age increases, maintaining a lower weight category becomes increasingly difficult,” Krishnan said.

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