Investigation of weight loss profiles in the seniors freestyle wrestlers participated in Turkey championship

The aim of this study was to investigate the male wrestlers joined the championship in Turkey's senior age categories according to weight category of the weight loss profile. The research group of the study is composed of 153 wrestlers who are participated in the seniors free style Turkey wrestling Championships. The average age of the volunteer wrestlers participating in the study is 23.38 ± 4.26 years. Before starting the research, necessary permissions and ethics committee approval were obtained. In the research, "Athlete Weight Loss Methodology and Effects Scale" developed by Yarar, Eroğlu, Üzüm and Polat (2016) was used. SPSS (version 20) package program was used in the statistical analysis of the obtained data. Percentage, frequency and average values of the data were determined. The normality tests of the data were carried out with the Kolmogorov Smirnov test. Kruskall Wallis test, which is one of the nonparametric tests, was used in comparisons between groups. Tamhane's T2 test was used to determine the group that created the difference. Spearman correlation test was used to examine the relationships between variables. Significance level was accepted as p˂0.05. Average height of wrestlers participating in the research is 175.5 ± 7.03 cm and the average age of sports is 10.45 ± 3.31 years. 47.1% of the wrestlers are light weight, 28.8% are middle weight and 24.2% are heavy weight athletes. According to the wrestlers participating in the research, 73.9% of their knowledge about weight loss is sufficient. But knowledge of 15.7% is not enough. The majority of the wrestlers (80.4%) participating in the research think that their body weight is within the appropriate limits. The vast majority of the wrestlers stated that they did not prefer to use pills such as laxatives, diets and diuretics. In the diet sub-dimension, reduction of fat consumption (heavy weight 54.1%; medium weight 37.2%; light weight 35.6%) is the most preferred answer for weight loss methods. According to the findings obtained in the study, a significant difference was found in the comparison of the sub-dimensions, between the "I decrease the carbohydrate consumption" responses in the diet sub-dimension (p <005). The group that makes the difference is the heavy weight wrestlers. There are differences between both light weight and medium weight wrestlers and heavy weight wrestlers (p <005). There was no significant difference between the other answers (p> 0.05). As a result, wrestlers generally focus on weight reduction strategy, such as fat reduction, fluid loss, food and carbohydrate consumption reduction. However, these issues are very important in terms of adequate and balanced nutrition. With the idea of physiological and psychological factors that impact athlete's performance is affected by such factors, for reaching the peak performance, it can be beneficial to organizing seminars by experts about weight control and weight losing methods for performance athletes and coaches, making these seminars compulsory for coaches who educate competent athletes, especially in individual sports.