Investigation of the effect of short-term body weight loss on elite wrestlers on anaerobic performance and reaction time in tournament conditions

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of short-term body weight loss on elite wrestlers on anaerobic performance and reaction time in tournament conditions. Ten experinced elite wrestler previously lost weight for competitions were participated as volunteer in this study. Athletes are involved in a period with weight loss as experimental application and a period without weight loss as control application in a randomized crossover design with one week interval. All measurements were performed as baseline values before weight loss, 3 measurements on the 1st day of the competition and 2 measurements on the second day of the competition. Athletes were ensured to lose 5% of their body weight within 48 hours in 72 hours; 1 kg tolerance was given over 5% of body weight. In this process, body composition measurement, Wingate anaerobic performance test (WAnT), vertical jump (VJ) and visual and auditory reaction tests were applied to the participants. Two way ANOVA with repeated measures were used for statistical analysis. According to statistical analysis, due to short-term body weight loss in body composition; total body fluid (TBW), muscle mass (MM) and fat free mass (FFM) were significantly reduced (p <0.05) was determined. In contrast, there was no statistically significant difference in body fat percentage and fat mass (p> 0.05). Moreover there was no significant difference in the effects of weight loss on performance in visual and auditory reaction time, vertical jump (VJ) performance, maximum anaerobic power (MAP) and maximum anaerobic capacity (MAC). However, there was a significant (p <0.05) increase in fatigue index. In conclusion, this study showed that 5% loss of body weight within 48 hours caused significant changes in body composition and negatively affected fatigue index Key words: Wrestlers, rapid weight loss, anaerobic power, anaerobic capacity