Standing on hands...lose weight?
- Thread starter crawfy54
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Has something to do with the blood rushing to your head (that weird feeling you get in your head), and then as your standing back up again the blood flowing back down into your body negates the weight of the blood. I don't know how accurate that is, but that's how it was explained to me in wrestling when I was in HS.
I don't know...thinking about this from a force balance perspective....i suppose i could imagine standing upside down would increase the amount of the blood flowing upwards in your body for a short while and thus that volume of blood would be opposing the force of gravity and "cause you to weigh less".
However what your coach is saying...the extra blood flowing back out of your head negating the weight of your blood...doesnt make sense....extra blood flowing down would not be opposing the force of gravity...
Hopefully that made sense to someone hehe
I don't know...thinking about this from a force balance perspective....i suppose i could imagine standing upside down would increase the amount of the blood flowing upwards in your body for a short while and thus that volume of blood would be opposing the force of gravity and "cause you to weigh less".
However what your coach is saying...the extra blood flowing back out of your head negating the weight of your blood...doesnt make sense....extra blood flowing down would not be opposing the force of gravity...
Hopefully that made sense to someone hehe
Who are you, who are so wise in the ways of science?
With all that blood in your head and your dehydration you couldn't read the scale right ... the ref and you coach just played along to try to mess with you. :biggrin:
Just to clarify - I never had to do it. I weighed anywhere between 235-255 all throughout HS, and that was back when the heavyweight class ranged from 190-275. Back in HS I never even been close to having to cut weight to wrestle that evening (one reason why it's great being a heavyweight). I just observed other teammates pulling stuff like that (sitting in a spa the night before, running in 3+ layers of sweats, sitting on the toilet for a half an hour, standing on their head, etc.) and that was the explanation I was given.
Umm what? How does that change what you weigh? The best bet is to pee pee pee and pee, do anything you can to get as much waste out of your body as possible.
I did this a couple times in high school when I was just over, and it seemed to work (wrestled between 130 and 145). The key was always to get on the scale right away. I've also see guys weigh in holding their hands in the air right as they step on the scale.
I'm not completely sure why it works, though. I could see your coach being somewhat right about the blood flowing downward. Your weight is based on the acceleration that gravity places on the mass of your body. When you stand on your head, there is a higher concentration of mass toward your head than normal. When you go right side up, that blood takes a little bit of time to flow downward because of gravity.
Although the blood flowing downward would not be nearly as fast, look at it this way. Imagine you are standing on a big scale with a bucket of water and a really tall tower. If you hold the water in the bucket, you weight Wtotal. The water weighs Wwater. Now, if while on the scale, you dump the water out of the bucket while up high and into another bucket on the ground. Before and after the pour, the weight the scale reads is Wtotal because the water is included in the system. However, while the water is in the air, the weight will be Wwater less than Wtotal because gravity is causing movement of the water, and there is no reactionary upward force.
Not that your own blood leaves your system when weighing in. But the extra blood in your head will actually flow downward instead of staying relatively constant like your body normally does.
Does this make sense? Or am I overanalyzing it? I would probably never have believed it if I hadn't done it myself.
I'm not completely sure why it works, though. I could see your coach being somewhat right about the blood flowing downward. Your weight is based on the acceleration that gravity places on the mass of your body. When you stand on your head, there is a higher concentration of mass toward your head than normal. When you go right side up, that blood takes a little bit of time to flow downward because of gravity.
Although the blood flowing downward would not be nearly as fast, look at it this way. Imagine you are standing on a big scale with a bucket of water and a really tall tower. If you hold the water in the bucket, you weight Wtotal. The water weighs Wwater. Now, if while on the scale, you dump the water out of the bucket while up high and into another bucket on the ground. Before and after the pour, the weight the scale reads is Wtotal because the water is included in the system. However, while the water is in the air, the weight will be Wwater less than Wtotal because gravity is causing movement of the water, and there is no reactionary upward force.
Not that your own blood leaves your system when weighing in. But the extra blood in your head will actually flow downward instead of staying relatively constant like your body normally does.
Does this make sense? Or am I overanalyzing it? I would probably never have believed it if I hadn't done it myself.
Oh, but I forgot to mention.
As a former wrestler and current coach, don't depend on shedding 3 lbs the day of and standing on your head to make weight. Good diet (not starving, but small portions of healthy foods), lots of water, and hard workouts will take it off by itself.
Even doing all these things, I used to sweat 3-5 lbs in an average practice. Keep doing it and you will see your "base" weight go down over time. What I don't recommend doing is stupid stuff like 11 lbs in 24 hrs (been there, done that, not fun). I know some college wrestlers probably push that, but it's extremely difficult, not to mention dangerous.
As a former wrestler and current coach, don't depend on shedding 3 lbs the day of and standing on your head to make weight. Good diet (not starving, but small portions of healthy foods), lots of water, and hard workouts will take it off by itself.
Even doing all these things, I used to sweat 3-5 lbs in an average practice. Keep doing it and you will see your "base" weight go down over time. What I don't recommend doing is stupid stuff like 11 lbs in 24 hrs (been there, done that, not fun). I know some college wrestlers probably push that, but it's extremely difficult, not to mention dangerous.
I have heard about this myth and on eof my good friends tried it at a tournament and he actually weighed more when he got back on the scale. i think this is just a complete myth and if it works its just a fluke or maybe it the excess sweat dripping off of you but other than that it really doesn't work
You change change your mass without "giving up" something. Standing on your hands would do nothing. Assume your body to be a control volume. If nothing leaves it, your mass hasn't changed. More likely, it was an inaccuracy of the scale.
Not that I necessarily believe the myth, but weight and mass are not the same thing. A scale measures your weight, not your mass.
I thought this at first too, conservation of mass, but a scale doesnt measure mass, it measures weight. Weight is a measurement of the force of gravity on an object. No mass is leaving the control volume, however mass (blood) is moving within the control volume. And since you were just standing upside down...more mass than usually is moving upwards opposing the force of gravity. Hence it would seem plausible you could weigh slightly less right after standing upside down.
It depends on what type of scale on whether it is measuring weight or mass.
Regardless, your argument that blood moving upward causes less weight is false. It is still contained within the body. If people were running upstairs in a building, would the building weigh less?
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Not necessarily. Aren't the scales used for weigh in usually balance beam scales? These scales measure mass.
