Ilia Topuria is one of the biggest stars in the UFC today and this Saturday she faces Max Holloway in Abu Dhabi with one goal set in stone: to retain her featherweight title.
The Hispanic-Georgian sacrifices his life day by day for perfect preparation in order to get into the octagona path to the fight that in this field of mixed martial arts is a physical and mental challenge.
UFC fighters are used to losing weight quickly and brutally in the days before the fight, which is known as ‘cutting weight’.
This means following an ultra-strict diet through which they lose around 10 kilos – or more – in just a few days.
All this to be within the limits at the pre-fight weigh-in, in the case of Topuria, the featherweight category.
The ‘Matador’ has spoken on many occasions about the exhaustive training he carries out daily, but he always emphasizes that it is not just about physical work at all.
On a visit to ‘El Hormiguero’, he explained it like this to Pablo Motos:
«I train around 4 or 5 hours a day but it doesn’t stop there. After that I do other types of training to stay smart inside the octagon. I train mentally and spiritually. I work 24 hours a day. “Sometimes I wake up at night and I’m thinking about something related,” he said.
A routine that helps you stay in his usual weight of about 80 kilos and that varies in the weeks prior to the fight on duty due to the need to drastically reduce its volume by about 14 or 15 kilos, up to around 66:
«Now I weigh around 80 kilos and I have to stay at 66. First we train strength and then we make the transition to power. When there is a fight you have to lose a lot of weight… the first 5 hold on but the following are like living in hell», admitted the fighter.
Salt-free and water-based
In addition to physical exercise that accelerates weight loss, the diet must be equally strict for the big moment of stepping into the octagon.
For this reason, Topuria’s team of nutritionists measures the exact amount of salt that they add it to their daily meals and in the days immediately before the fight he only drinks water:
Ilia Topuria explains that six days before the fight she drinks four liters of water and adds two until the day before the weigh-in before the fight when she stops drinking water completely.
In addition to not drinking even a drop of water, accompany the drought with sauna sessionswhich further accelerates dehydration.
The half liter of wine trick
But the thing does not stop there and is that the night before the fight, the night from Friday to Saturday, the depression, the hunger, the dehydration are so strong that Topuria uses a curious trick to be able to fall asleep:
«At 9 on Thursday we have the weigh-in and it is difficult to sleep a lot. That’s why I drink half a liter of wine because In these conditions it helps you sleep and it also helps you dehydrate. The next day you wake up with a kilo less, so I kill two birds with one stone,” he admits.
#strict #diet #Ilia #Topuria #face #UFC #fight
