Hydration Testing is Not the Solution to Weight Cutting with Dr. Oliver Barley

Dr. Oliver has joined us again on the podcast to discuss his latest paper titled Reviewing the current methods of assessing hydration in athletes.

In this chat we discuss all of the current methods there are to assess hydration and discuss whether or not they should be used with combat athletes who are making weight.

This is extremely interesting given that ONE championship makes all of their fighters pass, a hydration test that assesses that concentration of the athlete's urine to officially make weight.

Oliver and I discuss if this is truly a good idea and an accurate measure of hydration and what the flaws are in this system.

At the back end of this chat, we also dive into some more philosophical questions behind the entire weight-making process including why we both believe it is an issue, how you would go about solving that problem, and the organizational changes that would be needed to facilitate that.