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Generic sports nutrition provision does not survive contact with a weight-class sport. The material is written for athletes who compete at whatever they weigh, and then handed to athletes whose entire week is organised around a number on a scale.
This page is for the person deciding whether an organisation needs somebody who works only on that problem.
I work with combat sports programmes on three things: how athletes make weight without dismantling themselves, what enters the camp and how it is documented, and anti-doping education written for fighters rather than for sport in general.
The concrete services and what they cost are on the work page. This page is about whether the engagement is right for you at all.
The problem at organisational level
An individual fighter with a bad weight cut has a bad night. An organisation with 20 athletes and no written protocol has a recurring failure it cannot see, because each incident looks like an individual's mistake.
The pattern is consistent across the programmes I have worked with.
- Nobody owns the scale. The coach assumes the athlete is managing it, the athlete assumes somebody would say something, and the first anyone knows is the morning of the weigh-in.
- Supplements arrive from everywhere. Sponsors, teammates, a relative, a shop abroad. Under strict liability the athlete carries the consequence, but the organisation carries the headline.
- Anti-doping education is a box that gets ticked. Generic material, delivered once, in a language of general sport, to athletes whose actual risks are diuretics, rapid weight loss and a supplement shelf nobody vetted.
- The knowledge leaves when a person leaves. Nothing is written down, so the next coach starts from zero.
None of those are solved by giving athletes more information. They are solved by somebody writing the protocol down and the organisation adopting it.
Why combat sports need this separately
Three things make weight-class sport different from the population most sports nutrition guidance is written for.
The weigh-in format changes every number. A day-before weigh-in and a same-day weigh-in are different sports nutritionally, and the rules differ by federation and by event. Advice that does not start from the format is guesswork.
The highest-risk practices are the normal ones. Deliberate dehydration, heat exposure and food restriction are the standard method here, far from edge cases, which means the safety work has to happen inside the practice rather than by prohibiting it.
The anti-doping risks are specific. Diuretics, masking agents, intravenous rehydration, prescribed medications that turn out to be prohibited. A fighter's exposure looks nothing like a footballer's, and generic education does not name any of it.
What working with an organisation looks like
I do written work, remotely, with defined scope. Where a programme wants seminars, athletes and support personnel are taught separately, because they need different things and ask different questions in front of each other.
The output is documents the organisation keeps: a written protocol for what enters the camp and how it is logged, verdicts on the products currently in use, replacements for anything that fails, and a review of how weight is being managed across the squad.
Ongoing arrangements exist where a programme wants a standing route for questions: you send products and contracts, you get written verdicts back.
Everything is scoped and quoted individually, because a national programme with 60 athletes and a gym with eight are not the same job.
What I do not do
This section matters more than the one above it, and most people offering this will not write it.
- I do not replace your doctor. Medical decisions, blood work interpretation and clearance to compete are theirs. I work alongside medical staff, not instead of them.
- I do not certify anything. No accreditation is conferred by working with me, and nothing I provide constitutes compliance certification under the World Anti-Doping Code.
- I do not replace your mandatory anti-doping obligations. Whatever your national anti-doping organisation and international federation require of you, they still require. My work sits on top of that as sport-specific education, not in place of it.
- I do not guarantee outcomes. No honest person in this field can promise that an athlete will make weight safely or that a test will come back clean. What I can do is remove the avoidable causes of both failures.
- I do not take every job. If the timeline is unsafe, or the request is outside what I do, I will say so rather than take the fee.
Who this is for
- National programmes and federations in boxing, wrestling, judo, MMA and other weight-class sports.
- Gyms with a professional roster where several athletes cut weight and nobody currently owns the protocol.
- Coaching staff who want the reasoning written down so it survives a change of personnel.
- Organisations that have had an incident, and would prefer the next one not to happen.
If you are a coach rather than an administrator, the coaches page sets out free what a staff can put in place without me, and the reasoning behind each of it. Start there. If it is enough, you do not need to hire anybody.
Where the experience comes from
I wrestled freestyle for 18 years at national and international level, and I have worked with amateur boxers since 2017, including champions and medallists at world championships.
In professional boxing I have worked in world title camps with Oleksandr Usyk, Oleksandr Gvozdyk, Denys Berinchyk, Vladyslav Sirenko, Murodjon Ahmadaliev, Israil Madrimov, Sergiy Bogachuk, Sabirzhan Akkalykov and Abylaikhan Zhussupov, with the Kazakhstan national boxing team and with Kazakhstan judo athletes, and I currently work on the WTA tour.
The written material on this site comes out of that work. If you want to see the standard before making an enquiry, the blog is the whole method in public, and the Squad Handbook is the coaching-staff version in one document.
Two things make a first conversation useful: how many athletes, and what has already gone wrong. The second one is the more important, and it is the one people leave out.
Starting a conversation
Write with the number of athletes, the sports involved, the competition calendar you are working to, and what prompted you to look. I will tell you whether I can do the job, by when, and what it would cost.
If the answer is that you do not need me, I will tell you that too. It happens more often than you would expect, and a programme that puts a written protocol in place without hiring anybody has still solved the problem.
Oleksandr Foka is a sports nutritionist with over a decade in professional sport. He wrestled freestyle from the age of 4 until he was 22, competing as a medallist and champion at Ukrainian and international level, and has worked with amateur boxers since 2017, including champions and medallists at world championships. He has worked in world title camps in boxing with Oleksandr Usyk, Oleksandr Gvozdyk, Denys Berinchyk, Vladyslav Sirenko, Murodjon Ahmadaliev, Israil Madrimov, Sergiy Bogachuk, Sabirzhan Akkalykov and Abylaikhan Zhussupov, and with the Kazakhstan national boxing team and Kazakhstan judo athletes. He currently works on the WTA tour.
Oleksandr Foka — sports nutritionist. Enquiries: fokaoleksandr@gmail.com
Educational and professional services information, not medical advice. Nothing on this page constitutes accreditation or compliance certification under the World Anti-Doping Code, and no service described here replaces an organisation's mandatory anti-doping obligations.