The Fastest Way to Ruin a Training Camp: How Fighters Sabotage Their Own Performance.
Most fighters start a training camp in the same way. They set a date. They receive a specific weight limit they must meet. Then they step on the scale and look at the number in despair.
So they do what everyone does. They start cutting calories… early.
After that, they drop the calories even more. Once they implemented this, their energy drops. And, they assume this is a normal part of camp. It isn’t.
Calories get reduced drastically. Carbs get cut completely because some fighter on YouTube told them to.
So the fighters assume they’ll be able to sweat it out later. But this mentality doesn’t save a fight camp. It ruins it.
A case study: how to ruin a training camp
Before coming to me, one of my clients was training hard, but he felt flat. His sleep was off. He would wake up wide awake. His cardio wasn’t where it should have been despite training twice a day.
And he still had to cut weight.
He was eating around 2200 calories per day while training twice daily and was planning to cut even more.
His goal was his walking weight of 69 kilograms. So he only had to do a 2 kg water cut to make 67.
It sounded disciplined
The issue wasn’t his training.
It was his approach to nutrition and weight management.
How does this approach cost you?
And this approach comes with consequences for your performance:
- Relying on caffeine just to get through sessions
- Constant low-level fatigue
- Small injuries that never fully heal
- Brain fog during training
- Mood swings and irritability
- Poor sleep despite being exhausted
- Cardio that never seems to improve
The turning point that saved the training camp
The first 2 things I looked at were simple:
- How much time did he actually have until fight week
- What weight made sense to reach before any water cut
From there, we added a structured approach.
I made a plan, and he was surprised by how much he could eat. Carbs were timed around training instead of eliminated.
After just one week, his weight started dropping while his energy improved.
After that, we did weekly check-ins.
Once he hit the target weight, calories were brought back toward maintenance.
Because of this, he went into fight week with a full tank.
This is where we applied the fight week strategies, and he had the smoothest weight cut of his career.
The reality of a “bad fight camp.”
Most training camps aren’t ruined on fight night.
They’re ruined weeks earlier by underfueling and copying advice without context.
If you’re a fighter and this sounds familiar, the problem probably isn’t your conditioning; it’s how you’re fueling it.
If you’re fighting in Thailand and preparing for a weight cut, I work with fighters during camp to manage nutrition so performance stays high. You can reach me directly via Instagram or Substack. Spots are limited during active camps.
