Weighing the Pros and Cons
For some athletes the new weight classes will have minimal impact, but for others the decision to either go up a class or down a class will have major implications to their training, especially when it comes to nutrition.
Take Mattie Rogers for example. She has been vocal about her journey from 69kg to 71 kg, eventually entering the 76 kg Olympic category. She stated, “gaining weight is very difficult for my body, so I am embracing this challenge.” She also reported a body fat percentage of 10-12% and that dropping to 64kg is not an option for her. Mattie is faced with making some major adjustments to her nutrition. In contrast, athletes such as Alyssa Ritchey previously lifting at 48 kg and having to make sizeable cuts to get there, will now be moving into the 49kg category with ease.
For some athletes, body weight manipulations come easy. They gain weight just looking at food and drop weight just as easily.
In theory, losing and gaining weight is an energy equation. When we have a surplus of calories our bodies will store it, and when we are in a deficit, our bodies will burn it. But, the equation gets more complicated when we factor in things like metabolism, digestion, hormones, genetics, and environmental factors.
Along with this, anytime we make a change to our nutrition, there is a large behavioral component that is often ignored. When we make changes to our diet, our routine, habits, performance, and even emotions will be impacted.
Nutrition is all about consistency, so if you are choosing to make changes that you can’t see yourself consistently doing, you may be wasting your time. Can you consistently eat more food and continue to do so for weeks and months on end? How about less food? Can you battle hunger and continue to perform at your best?
Which weight class is best for you? The answer will vary for each athlete. Use these questions to guide you through the decision.
Questions to ask yourself and/or your athletes:
1. How do I feel when I train under or over fueled?
Can you still perform well with less food? Would more food leave you feeling overstuffed? How does this impact your training sessions?
2. How does hunger/fullness affect my performance and mood?
“Hangry” anyone? Hunger affects each person differently. If hunger greatly impacts your mood, energy and performance, a cut may be more difficult than anticipated and the same goes for being overstuffed. Does feeling full leave you sluggish and unmotivated?
3. “How would cutting/gaining weight affect me mentally, especially during competition?”
More often than not, those who have to cut a significant amount of weight, for instance, total less in competition than what they do in training. Though there are some physiological effects to cutting weight, much of the difference is mental. Knowing you haven’t eaten plays a big role in your energy levels, strength, and recovery.
4. Will a change to my nutrition effect how I recover?
Depending on your current calorie and macro goals there may be room to trim down and still recover between training sessions. If you are already running lean on food consumption, decreasing more may impact your ability to recover and perform well the next day. This can increase your risk for injury and compromise intensity.
5. How easily do I gain or lose weight?
What does your body naturally do? Gain, lose, maintain? Any time we fight our natural equilibrium, it is work. Is it impossible? No, just work. With proper guidance we can achieve a lot, but the less we fight your internal cues the easier it is to achieve.
6. What is my current body fat %?
Can I afford to lose body fat? Body fat % is affected by many factors, but if you are on the high or low end, pushing further in that direction may compromise performance and health.
Choosing to go up or down a weight class is a highly individualized decision. You are the expert of your own body and the more you are working with your body, not against it, the better the results will be.
P&G Nutrition Team
Anna
Christina
Jourdan
The history of weight class changes is pretty profound. I have never personally had to struggle through a weight class change as a coach or an athlete but there are many coaches out there who have been through multiple weight class changes. More often than not, the reason weight classes change is to reset the records from a previously dirty sport. That is absolutely the case this time and if I have heard correctly that was the case also back in 1998. For those of you who are interested below are the list of different weight classes and what years they were changed. It’s interesting to see the dynamic and some of the trends that previous committees have landed on. It’s ’s important to look at these classes to provide context for our current ones. Also, if you want a really good history as well as insight into the current classes you should check out Greg Everett podcast with Ursula Papandera. 
Before I give my thoughts on the classes, I thought I would at least give you some thoughts from some of the other more prominent more experienced coaches in the sport just to provide some context for my own thoughts. I polled some athletes and coaches hoping to get a multitude of different opinions. It turns out most of them think the same things. Here’s what they had to say:
Bobby Sirkis said: “I don’t think much changed on the female side, I feel it just made it easier to make weight for most people. Obviously the 90kg class being cut to 87 is a bummer for them.
Cara Heads Slaughter:
All in all, I like the additional categories. It creates more opportunities for people to make an international team. And more opportunity is always the best thing.
As a spectator, this is going to be a really fun couple of years as we see the best in our sport compete in the same classes. As a coach, it’s a tough conundrum for me. While I love the competition and I love what the increased competition will due to performance, I struggle watching really talented athletes have to both fight to get in a weight class they aren’t fit for right now as well as fight with athletes who are already established around that bodyweight. A lot of the best talent in the sport in this country likely will get left out of the Olympics as they just don’t have enough time to transition to a new class. Now, watching them try and what that will do to motivate their training and their nutrition will be awesome to watch. Ultimately, spectators, coaches, and athletes at some point need to step out of the assessment phase of the new classes and step into the performance space. Cara is dead on. Time to lift heavier weights. The end.
For the first weeks of the month I got to be a part of one of those moments for USA Weightlifting. To be fair, this is just one puzzle piece that has been a part of the transition from USA’s relative nonexistence in the weightlifting world to its current rise to the podium. For the first time in a long time we put athletes on the podium at the world championships in Anaheim and Sarah took home gold! Two weeks ago our Junior Weightlifting Team continued that success. These young athletes made history winning 18 total medals in the winningest Junior World Championships in history. With the help of gold medalist CJ Cummings, the men’s team took fourth overall.
There were a multitude of big moments during the competition that stand out in my mind as reasons to celebrate. USA truly competed for the first time in a long time on an international stage. When I say “competed“ I mean they didn’t resign themselves to bronze or shrug their shoulders at a new satisfactory total. The aim was always the podium and was always the top. When I say “competed“ I mean Team USA walked into every competition with the intention of winning not just totaling. They competed for the top spot every single session in every single weight class. I saw this in Jourdan taking an attempt at the winning snatch. I saw this in 
Harrison fighting back from a relatively poor performance in snatch to take the winning clean and jerk gold medal. I saw this in Jules stepping up to the plate and smoking her final snatch for a gold medal. I could go on and on about lifts and gutsy calls and big moments where our Junior weightlifters decided they were not just going to be resigned to average. They weren’t happy with just being there. They wanted to win. This kind of mental shift is a transition our sport needs if they’re going to be perennially competitive on the international stage.