For True Lightweights ...

[[old] Physicist]

Dehydrating for a weigh-in 2 hours in advance of the event does not have 'no consequence on performance' - try it. There have been studies done on the effects using lwt rowers and the drop in performance from severe dehydration is very significant.<br /><br />Any lwt however has a balancing act to perform between the cost of dehydration, against the benefits of retaining some extra body mass (is extra muscle, extra fat to stay healthy while training.)<br /><br />At the moment if a lwt gets the balancing act wrong, he will generally underperform either because he lost too much body mass and is consequently weaker than he should be, or he lost too little body mass and therefore had to dehydrate too much. <br /><br />If the weigh-in was after the race, it would have two immediate effects. One - it would shift the realistic actual body mass at which a lwt could row. This would not be dissimilar to lowering the weight limit - it might slightly alter who the best lightweights are. But two - it would worsen the consequences of getting the balancing act wrong. No matter how much a lwt screws up his weight loss in the last few days, it is generally true to say that if he is physically able to dehydrate down to weight, then within 2 hours he can have rehydrated to a point where doing 2k won't kill him. He might perform absolutely terribly, but he'll survive. But if the race were before (or too close to) the weigh-in, this safety margin would be removed. And the health of the athletes would therefore be put at risk.<br /><br />I repeat, it is not acceptable to claim that this is the athlete's responsibility or 'stupidity'. The existence of a lwt category means that people will inevitably dehydrate to make weight. And at the top end of the sport, this is always going to be a very fine art, which will therefore certainly go wrong some of the time.

[[old] PaulS]

Physicist,<br /><br />Maybe you have hit the nail on the head, the problem is having a lwt category at all. Since there exist hwts close to the borderline that are too chicken to race with their own. <br /><br />After all, the minimum coxswain weight was established to protect those team members from unhealthy practices and all they have to do is sit there and yell. (Yes, I know there is more to it than that, but I gotcha, didn't I?) <br /><br />What about the rest of the "doping" that goes on, and sometimes kills athletes, are they "victims" of the system or just their own choices?<br /><br />Cheating is cheating, even if they haven't caught you yet.<br /><br />Don't cheat! Otherwise someone may get the impression that you are setting the standard for reasonable, non chemically enhanced goals; Worse yet, you may think so too.

[[old] GeorgeD]

<!--QuoteBegin-PaulS+Feb 3 2005, 02:44 AM--><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><div class='genmed'><b>QUOTE(PaulS @ Feb 3 2005, 02:44 AM)</b></div></td></tr><tr><td class='quote'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Anyway George, a strippling such as yourself would probably not be at much of an advantage by sweating down to lwt.   <br /> </td></tr></table><br /><br />Well I was thinking of what I could afford to lose and the idea of a full lobotomy came to mind but then the fact I took up this mindless sport probably indicates there is not much there to remove - how the h*** you get 6' lightweights is beyond me

[[old] FrancoisA]

<!--QuoteBegin-Physicist+Feb 2 2005, 05:29 PM--><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><div class='genmed'><b>QUOTE(Physicist @ Feb 2 2005, 05:29 PM)</b></div></td></tr><tr><td class='quote'><!--QuoteEBegin-->I repeat, it is not acceptable to claim that this is the athlete's responsibility or 'stupidity'.  The existence of a lwt category means that people will inevitably dehydrate to make weight.  And at the top end of the sport, this is always going to be a very fine art, which will therefore certainly go wrong some of the time. <br /> </td></tr></table><br />I get your point.<br />How about taking a small blood sample at the same time as the weigh-in 2 hours before the event? Based on the athlete's dehydration level, his weight would then be "normalized" (if dehydration is too severe, the athlete might even be prevented from racing). Wouldn't that defeat dehydration before a weigh-in and therefore, protect the athletes and make the race fair?

[[old] ebolton]

<!--QuoteBegin--><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><div class='genmed'><b>QUOTE</b></div></td></tr><tr><td class='quote'><!--QuoteEBegin--> - how the h*** you get 6' lightweights is beyond me </td></tr></table><br /><br />I am a 6' lightweight! No dehydration required to be 5' under the limit. It's genetics! My mom was from farm family of tall thin people and my dad has always preferred to eat 2 meals a day max. I inherited the best of both.<br /><br />Noticable improvements since I've been rowing more, but I still look a little scary without a shirt.<br /><br />Ed<br /><br /><br />

[[old] Kudos]

its quite easy to be 6' and a lightweight. You have to be a world class athlete. Ha, don't get down on yourselves, these people are special for reason, their genetics mostly and their work ethic. Come on now, what would make you think that a bunch of people would not be willing to sacrifice a whole bunch of junk food and work out harder than they ever thought possible in order to be a world class rower. Geesh, what has the world come to? Not everyone is mediocre, there are some diamonds out there in the rough.

[[old] GeorgeD]

Kudos I agree completely, I guess I am interested in how many of these world class athletes (yourself included of course ) stay below or very near to the limit year round, or are they lightweight for a day <br /><br />George<br /><br />ps while not entirely content, at this stage I think I will have to remain a mediocre middle age heavy weight for a while yet, but it is still fun pretending.

[[old] Anders Brabaek]

It is not your height but your weight (of course most of all your fat free weight) that is decisive for your potential VO2max (to be more exact for every kilo, with-in reason, your potential VO2max will grow 0.72-0.76). Hence it is weight, not height that should be decisive for which class you should be rowing in.<br /><br />In other words, if dehydrating is an advantage, lighter rowers can “just” lift weights and they too will gain the advantage. One who has clearly applied this in practice is Rasmus Quist. He looks more like a bodybuilder than anything else and despite that he is anything but tall, he consistently rows a SB at 6:10. He is also the WR holder for junior light weights.<br /><br />The upper limit for how much weight you can loose dehydrating and actually perform reasonably is about 2 kilos. So if you are more than 77 kilos in the morning on the race day, you should expect your performance to degrade.<br /><br />I am surely one of the most overweight lightweights that is around (that is because I do not row on water so I am not forced to down to 68-72 kilos in the summertime – remember that rowers such as Eskild weigh in at 72 during the on water season. Mads Rasmussen (6:08) and Rasmus Q actually weigh in at 70. In other words, several rowers choose to take their weight to the limit even though they could be 75 naturally.<br />My body much prefer being around 82-84 (fat percentage 7-9) but when the season starts I am about 80. One week before the race I make I try to make it to 78 and on the race day I am “only” 76.5. <br />-Anders

[[old] Kudos]

Thanks for the compliment george, but I am far from what I or you would call world class I may pull a pretty good number but it wouldn't put me in the top ten at crash-b's. How do I stay close to that weight. I don't obsess over it, but I am consistently training in a very competitive environment, I was on a college crew team with no lightweights so i always had to prove my worth, and I trained at some of the very elite clubs during the summer and now full time. I am a VERY picky eater and I do weight train a lot, but I wuould say that I am the minority amoung most lightweights, I train and eat very different than most. I don't weigh myself everyday and I usually just stay between 163-167. Most of the lightweights that I train with are the same height as me, but I do have a very body builder type look. Most of them don't believe I weigh as little as I do. I get cracks all the time for my pecs and arms. jealous skinny bastards. Anyway the point is, that once you get down within range, and you keep the intensity and workload high and your diet in a reasonalbe range it is easy. But getting down in the tough part if you have never been taht low before. The lightweight have a naturally very high metabolism and trust me the training is more than intense. I don't know how some people stay so high in weight given some of the workouts, haha. I don't know many lightweights that are different from me in the way that they keep their weight somewhere in the same range and then about 2-3 weeks away, cut calories by about 200-300 calories. They plan on being about 1-2 pds away from target weight and then go on a nice sweat run in full gear for about 15-20 mins before. Its like a nice little warm-up, not very dehydrating but enough to pull those 1-2 pds off that you planned on. You'd be surprised when you are part of a team, how much easier it makes it when everyone else is going through the same pain. Well, I guees after all this babbling you can see that unless you know you don't know I guess you are right, it is hard to understand how we do it, cause I am certainly finding it hard to explain it