Sumo may seem comical to you and me, but it is actually a very serious business. There is an awful lot more to sumo wrestling than most outsiders ever realise. Here are a few of the amazing things I learnt about sumo — I hope they will encourage you to go to go and see a tournament for yourself!
Compared with most sports in the world today, sumo originated a heck of a long time ago. About 1, years, in fact. From the very beginning it was entwined with Shinto ritual, when it was performed at shrines to ensure a bountiful harvest and to honour the spirits — known as kami.
Each of the ring-entering ceremonies is a Shinto purification ritual, and every newly promoted yokozuna the highest rank in sumo performs his first ring-entering ceremony at the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo. The canopy that hangs over the ring is modelled after the roof of a Shinto shrine, indicating that the ring itself is a holy place. This leads to quite a lot of faffing about while each wrestler tries to psyche the other out, pretending to put his hand down and then getting back up again. Once they finally do begin, it is very rare for sumo bouts to last longer than a few seconds — although occasionally they can last up to four minutes.
This means that the action is very fast-paced and exciting. A match ends when one of the wrestlers is either thrown out of the ring, or if any part of his body apart from the soles of his feet touches the ground. The following video of a sumo match plus superb commentary, it has to be said is a great example of just how long it takes for a bout to begin:. Interestingly, the match can also end if one of the wrestlers loses his mawashi , or loincloth — in which case the de-loinclothed wrestler is disqualified.
More interestingly still, this rule was only adopted after Japan began to take on European read: prudish attitudes toward nudity.
This outcome is very rare in sumo, but a wardrobe malfunction did occur during a match in May , when the unfortunate wrestler Asanokiri exposed himself and was disqualified immediately. I once met a retired sumo wrestler who ran a chanko nabe restaurant in Hakuba. Now I understand why. It would be easy to assume from their famously substantial girth that wrestlers live a life of excess outside their training schedule.
An average stable will contain around 15 wrestlers, and is arranged according to a strict hierarchy. Life is hardest for the lower ranked wrestlers, who are expected to get up earliest and to cook, clean, serve food, and generally wait on the higher ranked wrestlers. They even have to bathe last after training, and get last pick at dinner time — after their more senior peers have gobbled all the choice morsels!
If this sounds hard, it gets even harder. It is a fact of sumo life that the younger, inexperienced wrestlers endure systematic hazing and physical punishment in order to toughen them up.
This is part and parcel of sumo culture and something that young wrestlers know to expect. However, sometimes it can go too far, resulting in injury — and in some very rare cases , even death. Want to learn even more about life in a sumo beya? We can arrange for you to visit one — with exclusive access to a morning training session. A high proportion of subcutaneous fat has far fewer health risks than visceral, and helps explain why some individuals can remain fairly metabolically healthy despite a high BMI.
Keep in mind, however, that when a sumo wrestler stops training they often see a dramatic shift in metabolic function as their physical activity decreases, even though their weight may stay exactly the same.
As physical activity decreases, subcutaneous fat is gradually converted to dangerous visceral fat. Conditions like diabetes and heart disease soon follow. This demonstrates that their behaviors, not their weight number, had the most significant impact on their health. For those struggling with weight loss, this should come as a relief - generally speaking, you have far greater control over your habits than you do with changing your weight number.
Glenn Gaesser, a professor of exercise science at Arizona State University, has gone so far as to suggest that obesity is not a cause of metabolic disease at all, but is simply another symptom of poor health behaviors. Whether or not you should attempt to lose weight depends on more than just the number on the scale. Is excess body fat and, more specifically, visceral fat negatively affecting your health? The scale alone may not reveal that, but your bloodwork probably will.
If that's the case, know that diet and exercise changes will impact those numbers and the type of body fat you carry, even if you don't lose significant amounts of weight.
The role of 'sumo stew' in shaping a sumo wrestler. ScienceDaily, 19 March A diet to make you fat or fit? Retrieved November 12, from www. In the study, a clear reduction was seen in the activity of mitochondrial genes While white fat stores calories, brown fat burns energy and could help us lose weight.
Now, scientists have found a way of making the They have demonstrated that MKK6 controls the conversion of fat stores, known as white fat, into A new article describes how proteins called SUMO and ubiquitin and molecular machines called proteasomes play a crucial role in DNA recombination ScienceDaily shares links with sites in the TrendMD network and earns revenue from third-party advertisers, where indicated. Print Email Share. Boy or Girl?
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