calculating your ideal offseason weight for powerlifting
with bonus spreadsheet
Water cuts can be dangerous and I do not recommend them without medical supervision. Even with medical supervision, the vast majority of lifters should not cut weight.
When I plan to cut water for a competition, I generally start monitoring my bodyweight before prep starts. I’ve done this so many times by now that I have an easy time finding a reasonable offseason weight.
how to gather your data
First, you must have a calibrated scale. Bathroom scales are almost always inaccurate and imprecise. Fortunately, you can get a really cheap calibrated scale from Amazon that will last forever.
Second, you have to eat and drink consistently for 7-10 days before you can get a baseline weight. I’m not saying you have to be following a bodybuilding diet, but you do need to be taking in very close to the same amount of water, sodium, and macronutrients for a week or two if you plan to cut weight. That’s because changes in water retention from day to day can make a pretty big difference in the next step. If you don’t have the discipline to eat the exact same things and drink the exact same amount for a week and a half in the offseason, you have no business cutting a single pound. I feel pretty strongly about that.
If you need help tracking your intake, I think Greg Nuckol’s MacroFactor app is a good place to start.
Take your baseline weight first thing in the morning on the same day that you will be weighing in.
how to calculate your ideal weight
Once you have your baseline weight, the rest is pretty simple. Your ideal offseason weight is based on your current bodyfat percentage. I disagree with rules of thumb based on absolute poundages or percentages of total bodyweight (a 5% drop is often considered the top end for 2 hour weigh-ins, and 10% for 24 hours). For example, consider two 100-kilo lifters: one carries about 20% bodyfat and the other carries about 10%. The second athlete will have 10 kilos more muscle than the first. Since muscle is about 70% water, that means the second athlete will have 7 more kilos of water he can cut before weigh-ins.
Now, that’s an enormous oversimplification – please don’t take those numbers at face value. You can’t actually cut anywhere near 70% of your total muscle mass. The example only serves to illustrate that a difference in body composition makes a significant difference in the amount of water weight that an athlete can drop, and therefore must be considered when planning a cut.
When estimating your bodyfat percentage, be very conservative. It’s extremely unlikely that you’re 10% bodyfat. I’m 10% bodyfat, and I look like this:
Bodyfat measurement tools are notoriously unreliable. I promise that you are fatter than what your DEXA scan says. Use these rough guidelines instead:
Jacked AF: 10% bodyfat
Skinny: 15%
Normal: 20%
You’re fat: 30%
Judge this based on your fattest bodypart. If you’ve got shredded abs but no hint of separation between the glutes and hamstrings, you’re probably around 15% bodyfat, not 10%.
Here are the rough percentages I use for cutting water with men prepping for a 24-hour weigh-in. You can use these guidelines to calculate your ideal offseason bodyweight:
Moderate cut: 4-5% lean body mass
Hard cut: 7-8%
Extreme cut: 10%
Women should take 2-3% off those numbers.
If you don’t want to do the math, I’ve created a simple spreadsheet to help you do these calculations and find your ideal offseason weight. It’s available for use here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LuEOyl2V1IYW9kmL6od8tcEq1oztZTwo7fy0-dbudTs/edit?usp=sharingshould you cut weight?
I think a moderate cut (4-5% of lean body mass for men and 2-3% of lean body mass for women) is pretty acceptable in any situation.
I strongly recommend against ever cutting more than that. Here are the scenarios where I would consider cutting more than 5% of lean body mass:
You’re competing for money
The guidelines for weight classes are different (this in common in strongman and bodybuilding, not powerlifting)
You want to qualify for a bigger event
You want to break a world record
It’s your body and your choice, but in my opinion, the mental and physical costs of cutting that much weight exceed the benefits in all other situations.