Link Between Wrestlers’ Strength, Weight Loss Studied : Health: Athletes who shed pounds to compete in a lower weight class do not become proportionately stronger, researchers find.

WASHINGTON —  Despite what many high school wrestlers think, losing weight doesn’t make you stronger, a study indicates.

The researchers checked whether weight loss would affect the muscle-to-fat ratio enough to make a wrestler proportionately stronger for his weight.

It didn’t happen, said the study in Pediatric Exercise Science, the journal of the North American Society of Pediatric Exercise Medicine.

Wrestlers who lost weight showed no change--or a change for the worse--in strength over the course of the season, said researcher Joan M. Eckerson of Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti.

Previous studies that looked at weight loss shortly before a match also found no benefit or a loss in strength, the report said. This study investigated whether a benefit might show up if the weight stayed down over a longer period.

The report indicates that wrestlers who force themselves to lose weight, thinking they can win by wrestling in a lower weight class against presumably weaker opponents, may be deluding themselves, according to Eckerson, an assistant professor in the department of Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance.

Eckerson conceded that she did not check the win-loss records of the athletes that she and her colleagues studied. But the strength data indicate victories won’t become more common because of their weight loss, she said.

The study looked at 35 varsity-level high school wrestlers with an average age of 16, who had their weights checked every week to determine the weight class in which they would compete. All were weighed before the first match of the season and after the season ended--before district competition. Twenty-six were an average of almost five pounds lighter at the end.

The researchers also tested the wrestlers’ arm and leg strength before and after the season. They statistically adjusted their findings for weight, to determine whether athletes’ strength was higher in proportion to their new, lighter weights.

There was no change in 10 and a decrease in two of the strength measures, Eckerson said.

It’s possible that dieting robbed the athletes’ bodies of fuel they needed for strength, Eckerson said. It’s also possible that intense training, another way to burn calories, led to overtraining, which saps strength, she said. Her study did not look for causes.

Loss of water can also reduce weight quickly, and can reduce strength. Although the study did not examine the athletes for dehydration, they were asked and said they were not skimping on fluids.

“If they are losing weight but the strength per weight is the same, some of the loss is muscle and a lot is water,” said another researcher, Edward J. Zambraski, chairman of the exercise science department at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. “The results are really not surprising.”

Another expert, however, suspects that the athletes might have cut back strength training during the season, which also could make them lose strength.

“Maybe they are not training as hard,” said research scientist Craig A. Horswill of Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

Horswill also said he believes that a wrestler who doesn’t force down his weight may find himself at a disadvantage against an adversary who does, just because the adversary has a larger frame.

“Everybody does it,” Horswill said. “If you are the guy who doesn’t, you are left to compete against someone who is bigger.”

Also, the study measured strength only in the lab, so it’s possible that thinner wrestlers got some benefit that wouldn’t show up in a lab test, Horswill said.