ARE SUMO WRESTLERS HEALTHY PROFESSIONAL

It’s just a copious amount of food, with as much nutrition as possible in it. There is no established set of ingredients. To fuel a body that size, doing the workout that his body can do, is no small feat. The average sumo wrestler is around 6’1” and 325 pounds. A sumo wrestler can lose ten to 15 pounds of sweat alone in one morning’s workout. This grueling training hungers big athletes and makes them thirsty, too. “This helps with our defence and offensive training,” Yama says. With butsukari, one wrestler takes on the role of a football “sled” and gets pushed repeatedly by another wrestler.

‍ After that, they do calisthenics, stretching, and other warm ups, before sparring sessions (sometimes 50 matches against one person) and then hitting practice. We do it 500 times in a row.” Yama is anything but normal. “Most normal people are wiped out trying to do it a few times. They hold it there and then slowly bring it back down. Each time they lift a leg up in the air to shoulder height in slow motion. “We start with one hour straight of leg lifts called shiko,” Yama says. and is so grueling and intense that it can only be endured on an empty stomach.” The training is several hours long. ‍ “Some wrestlers only eat two meals a day,” says John Traill, president of the Australian Sumo Federation. Regardless, they have dreams they want fulfilled, their heads crowned with top knots, their mawashi (belt) wrapped around their bodies, their stomachs growling. Young men who aspire for sumo greatness need to wake up early. A wrestler is expected to stay with the heya from the time he joins - usually around the age of 15 - until the end of his career. A heya is a training centre, or stable, where aspiring sumo wrestlers train and live. As early as 5 a.m., wrestlers wake up for chores, duties, training, and more. It’s serious business to eat often upwards of 10,000 calories a day to be at the peak of sumo performance.

ARE SUMO WRESTLERS HEALTHY PROFESSIONAL

Yama is sumo and, like all professional sumo wrestlers, takes his diet very seriously. “After hours of exhausting training, it’s important to digest as much nutrition as possible.” ‍ Yama wakes to sumo, eats for sumo, works at sumo, and sleeps and dreams of sumo. It is also called “sumo stew.” “Chanko-nabe is very healthy, fresh, and helpful for recovery,” Yama says. He just consumed thousands of calories with a bowl of chanko-nabe, the quintessential dish of sumo wrestlers for generations. He’s taking a nap after a banquet, of sorts. Weighing more than 600 pounds, he’s been a world champion multiple times during his more-than 30-year sumo wrestling career. Yama is the heaviest Japanese sumo wrestling champion ever. Twenty-five minutes ago, Yama went to take a nap. In the ensuing mêlée, Takemikazuchi took Takeminakata’s arm and crushed it, defeating him soundly and claiming the Japanese islands for himself. On the other side, the god of water, wind, and hunting - Takeminakata. On one side of the ring was the god of thunder and conquest - Takemikazuchi. When Takemikazuchi was sent to subjugate terrestrial deities on Japanese islands 2,500 years ago - and to decide who truly controlled them - it had to be settled with a sumo wrestling match.

Are sumo wrestlers healthy