Aaron Chalmers: Getting the weight cut right is so important and why I will be targeting so many fights this year
This is my first fight at lightweight but now I have a nutritionist everything is a million times easier
ALTHOUGH MY fight was only announced recently I’m well ahead of schedule compared to what I normally am.
I’ve been in the gym for the past ten weeks, I’ve been training hard as we didn’t know when the Bellator date was going to come up.
We were told it could be December, January or February so I got myself in camp ready for a date and it’s come in for February 9, in Newcastle.
I’m moving down from welterweight to lightweight and my weight is right down, compared to normal - I’m flying and I’m glad I’ve still got another ten weeks to get even sharper and fitter.
I have a nutritionist for the first time now and I also work with to maintain the weight loss at a healthy level and provide extra energy for sessions.
Having a nutritionist is everything - their profession is nutrition so they know exactly what to put in and what to take out.
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In fight camps I don’t eat meat, I just eat fish so I go pescitarion for my fights now, and my meat prep is all Quorn. So my nutritionist has to make sure the right stuff is going in.
Compared to my last fight the cutting gets easier, my girlfriend does my meals and weighs them every Sunday to make sure I’m ready for the full week, she helps massively.
When I’ve spoken to my coach he’s said he thinks I’ll be quite dangerous at featherweight, I’d be long and rangy.
We’re going to assess how the fights go at lightweight, because obviously it can be dangerous going down too far but we’ll access what my walking around weight is at.
Before I’ve had two or three months out to go off filming, but now we have one or two weeks off after the fight and we’re back in camp.
My walk around weight should be low now, at the end of the year I’ll have a think, I’ve gone from welterweight, to lightweight we could go down to featherweight.
When I left Geordie Shore I was terrible for eating bad food and takeaways, when I first started fighting I was drinking and eating s**t in between.
I’d then go into a fight camp and we would try and cut about 13 or 14 kilos in a matter of five or six weeks which is dangerous.
Whereas now my walkaround weight is not even ten kilos over before I even start camp.
Beforehand the week of the fight was awful, I felt like s*** constantly, but I’ve learnt the hard way and I make weight professionally and every time I do it I feel better.
When I started I had a natural weight and I had to lose that all, you look at someone like Tyson Fury, he was never naturally 28 stone he just ballooned up.
It’s one of those things if a fighter balloons up in weight and you have someone who is naturally that big, the fighter will find it easier to lose the weight.
PLANS FOR NEXT YEAR
I’ve just signed a deal with Bellator and I’m looking to get out as much as I can next year because I was so inactive this year.
In my first year I had three fights this year I’ve only had one. There was a bit of a stumbling block with the BAMMA situation.
I’m looking to get out three times minimum next year - hopefully February, May, September and maybe I could even squeeze one more in there, I can get the money and experience in.
I’ve been told I will be in America in 2019 and so far they have stuck by everything they have said.
I’m now doing a, we’ve only done two and we’re in the top 40 already, I think it will be quite big.
It was nice to get across my full story of how I got into MMA, as in certain interviews you only get a few paragraphs to explain how it happened.
I think some people thought I was just on a TV show and thought, ‘Yeah I want to be a fighter’, but that wasn't the case.
It was something we had looked at but now hopefully people can listen and understand why I took it up.
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