Many of you have seen Jay around the FIT Academy at one time or another, and if you haven’t you have definitely seen his work as he is also my graphic designer.

I have known Jay since we were in middle school and have been training him for years now.  He is a sponge…always trying to learn and improve.

This first video was shot a looong time ago.  As you can see there was no FIT Academy at this point.

The video above shows him at 155-160 pounds if I recall, and Jay is most comfortable around that weight give-or-take.  At that weight he doesn’t have to do anything extreme with his training or nutrition and is still very strong and has great endurance.

The reason for this post is to show you an example of what the human body is capable of when someone is very dedicated to following very specific training and nutrition guidelines.  Do not try this at home without a qualified professional, or in this case team of professionals, monitoring and assisting you.  During this timeframe Jay had Tony helping with his training, Katy Magoon RD monitoring his dietary intake and I worked with him on both aspects as well as the overall planning and timing.

At Thanksgiving of 2010 Jay was 170 pounds and the following day started working toward dropping body fat for NAGA, one of the biggest Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu tournaments in the country.

The following picture was taken the day of his weigh-ins on 1/28/11 and he weighed in at 139 pounds.  This is the culmination of a 31 pound weight loss in 64 days, or 18.24% of his body-weight.

This is Jay on the mats getting ready for a no-gi match:

Many people have a negative perception of weight cutting and rightfully so.  Most people get extremely weak when they cut this much weight because they do it in unhealthy ways. People take diuretics, wear sweat/sauna suits, dehydrate themselves and starve themselves to the point of being physically ill.   Granted, cutting massive amounts of weight is not pleasant for anyone, but there are ways it can be done that limit the negative impact on the body.

This is a perfect example of the right way to cut.  Jay only needed to sweat out 5 pounds the morning of weigh-ins and a few trips between the sauna and hot tub  were all it took.

Jay did extremely well and medaled in his division.  This great accomplishment in turn helped to earn him a promotion to Purple Belt as well.

Now lets fast-forward to April 2011.  Jay is back up to 170 pounds and as you can see from the following video, he is pretty damn strong.  The goal for most people who are serious about lifting is to deadlift 2 times their body weight.  Jay is seen here pulling almost 3 times his body weight just 3 months after that gigantic weight cut.

Jay kept detailed notes of EVERYTHING during this timeframe from what he ate to his training, how he felt etc.  Maybe if we ask politely he would be willing to share some of his notes with us to get a better understanding of the commitment it takes to complete such drastic changes in body composition.

Leave comments below if you have any questions about what it took to accomplish these goals and we will work on answering them as soon as we can.

Tags: Combat Conditioning, fat-loss, Inspiration, intensity, Jiu-Jitsu, Kettlebells, nutrition, Pictures, results, video