Sonnen: The hardest physical experience of my life

In a compelling article for Men’s Health, Chael Sonnen details the single most difficult, physical experience of his entire life. It’s not fighting Anderson Silva, it’s cutting weight to fight Dan Miller at UFC 98 in 2009. And Sonnen says it is ten times harder than anything else he has done, after a lifetime of wrestling and decades of MMA.

The culture of extreme weight cutting in MMA has killed two fighters, injured countless others, and is without purpose. Both fighters subject their body to potentially fatal levels of dehydration, only to rehydrate as much as possible, and fight far heavier than the division they are in. And as Sonnen details, the cut can be harder than fighting. This can leave the fighters depleted and less exciting.

Sonnen’s story begins when UFC president Dana White called and offered a fight with Dan Miller in three weeks. Sonnen fights for money and said yes in the 30 second call. He put the phone down and stepped onto a scale. It read 222.2. That meant Sonnen had to lose 36.2 pounds in three weeks.

Sonnen has never missed weight, which meant he knew the pain that was to follow. The worst of it would be final few days, when dieting ends and severe dehydration begins. A gallon of water weighs 8.3 pounds. A 185-pound man only has about 1.5 gallons of blood, total, with most of the water in the body contained within cells. Sonnen ultimately had to suck down two gallons of water.

Caution: do not ever attempt what I am about to describe.

Over the years I’ve become familiar with how my body responds when losing weight. Eating healthy food, in the correct portions, I lose three pounds per week on average. Since I was three weeks out, that would amount to a grand weight-loss total of nine pounds. Clearly, I needed to do something else if I wanted to lose another 27.

I kicked off my weight-cut by making a tremendous mistake. I began my short training camp with a two-day fast. Despite two workouts a day consisting of grappling, sparring, and weight training, plus an extra run at night, I ate nothing. Two gallons of water was the only item on my menu.

After two days, I was down four pounds, but it wasn’t long before my body began cannibalizing itself by sacrificing valuable muscle tissue. Muscle is not only important in a fight, it’s also metabolically active, fat-burning tissue. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn. With the amount of weight I had to lose in such a short period of time, my body had no choice but to also use muscle tissue for energy.

Another harmful, but not widely known side effect of crash diets is the negative impact they can have on one’s sleep. Sleeping when you’re hungry is very difficult.

By the third day of training camp, I was pushing myself to the extreme. Overtraining, lack of sleep, and extreme calorie deprivation increased my risk of illness and injury, which meant I was risking my ability to even show up for the fight. My nights were spent staring at the ceiling with my stomach growling as I visualized my upcoming match over and over in my mind, only taking a break to obsess over the buffet of food I would devour it was over. These thoughts consumed me.

I arrived in Las Vegas on a Tuesday, three days before weigh-ins. When you fight for the UFC, the first thing you do during fight week is check in with UFC staff and step on their official scale. When I did it, the scale read 202 pounds—and I felt like I was dying. I still had seventeen pounds to go.

The only thing I had going in my favor was excellent hydration. I had zero energy, but at least the cells in my body were full of water. That meant there was a lot of potential weight I could dump. But dehydration is risky business. You can live for weeks without food, but only days without water. Exposure to heat and exercise significantly increases the risk of something going wrong. Unfortunately, I would need to utilize both over the next few days as I intentionally drove myself into a state of severe dehydration in a final attempt to rapidly lose the remaining weight.

I used two strategies to eliminate the water: running while wearing a plastic sweat suit that increases your sweat rate, and sitting in a hot sauna. Somehow, I had to suck two gallons of water out of my body in three days.

After years of practice, I knew that I could lose one pound of water every ten minutes with either technique. But there is a limit to the length of time one can spend overheated, running in plastic, or sitting in a sauna. These were the most dangerous moments of the entire weight-cut, so I had to carefully gauge the length of my weight-cutting sessions and split them up over the final three days to avoid the misfortune of heat stroke and/or an untimely death. And because proper rehydration in between each weight cut session would add more water weight to my body, I had no other choice but to endure the suffering.

Poor sleep continued to be an issue throughout this entire ordeal. … while I rarely sleep at all on the night before weigh-ins, I would have preferred a wink or two this time around, if only to forget for a moment how I felt during those final, awful treadmill runs in the plastic suit or during those suffocating sauna sits.

By the time I gauged that I had achieved my target weight on the day of the weigh-in, I needed help to move. Unfortunately for me, it was a very long walk from the hotel’s spa to my own room. Along the way, through the crowded walkways of the MGM, I stopped to take no less than twenty pictures with fans hanging around the lobby hoping to see one of their favorite fighters. Somehow I mustered a smile.

When I finally completed my excruciating shuffle back to my room and stepped on the scale, I was crushed to learn I was still 1.8 pounds over my target weight. I wanted to burst into tears. I failed to account for my increasing level of dehydration and how that would slow my sweat rate. My math of one pound per ten minutes was all wrong. Back downstairs through the mob of fans and into the sauna I went.

What happened between those final sauna sweat sessions and my arrival at the venue for weigh-ins is a blur to me now. But somehow, by the grace of some miracle, I made it.

At the arena, behind the curtain before the official weigh-in, I laid down on the concrete and prayed for the clock to hit 4:00 pm (the official start time of the weigh-in). I wondered if I’d even be able to stand back up on my own without my body seizing up.

When I stepped onto the scale I couldn’t bring myself to look down to see if my math was correct, if I had actually made weight. It felt like an eternity as I stood there, my eyes sunken into my skull in front of thousands of screaming fans as the commissioner carefully checked the balance of the scale. Finally, I heard those magical words –186 pounds! Success. My cornerman handed me a bottle of water, I took the most refreshing gulp of my life, faced off with my opponent, and walked off the stage like a gangster.

Although my hand was raised after the final bell rang, my performance did indeed suffer. I made it, but I knew I could never go through this same sordid journey again.

To learn some healthy tips read the article.

Sonnen will explore diet in great depth in his forthcoming book, The Four-Pack Revolution, which is due out around Christmastime.