How far are athletes willing to go to get better? Most athletes have to end up cutting or gaining weight for sports, and it can work. Gaining weight has advantages for sports like for wrestling with all of the different weight classes. Sophomore Ben Van Hoek is a football player, who gives insight on gaining and cutting weight.

“It kind of depends on the sport and what position you play,” Van Hoek said. “In Wrestling, they’ve got a bunch of weight classes, and you have to make weight to be a weight class. Sometimes you’re over, and sometimes you’re under. Sometimes you want to change weight classes. For football, depending on your position, like for linemen, you have to be big enough to be strong. By gaining weight, you can do both of those things.” 

While gaining weight is very beneficial, cutting weight can also have its fair amount of benefits. However, none of the hard work matters if you don’t have the most beneficial diet.

“I eat a lot of yogurt and rice, and protein like chicken and beef. Vegetables are good for cutting as well, and so is bread,” said Van Hoek. “My favorite thing to do on the weekend is meal preparation for the upcoming week. Every morning I eat a breakfast burrito that has 1400 calories in it. It’s got cheese, bacon, turkey bacon,” Van Hoek said.

And so with all that cutting and gaining weight does indeed have its advantages as long as you eat the right food.

“It can help because the more weight you have behind the ball, like the more weight you have going forward the harder you can throw,” Van Hoek said.