Sometimes you gotta become a bear if you want to wrestle bears!
Any sumo fans out there? Who is your favorite Yokozuna if so? I'm taking a gamble since it's so rare in my experience to find sumo fans outside of Japan. For others, I want to create some sumo fans!
I was never a huge sumo fan but my father was. He'd always be watching sumo and bringing me to live tournaments. I couldn't understand the level of respect he had for sumo wrestlers. I just thought they were such fat people who ate way too much. His favorite Yokozuna now is Asashōryū (the bad boy of sumo).
But my whole mind changed about sumo one night in a VIP lounge at a nightclub when a sumo wrestler (just a local one, not even high-ranking) walked in together with a bunch of girls clinging to him while sitting close to me. So I challenged him to a friendly arm-wrestling match as I like to do whenever I find a guy much bigger than me to test my limits.
Then I gripped his hand, and I'm a trained and competitive arm wrestler. I know about the mechanics and leverage of arm wrestling and I've managed to beat men taller and stronger than me not based on strength but through skill. But with this little lowly sumo wrestler who was 6 inches taller than me and probably not at all trained in serious arm wrestling, I took his hand and he nearly snapped my arm off! I was in severe pain for almost a week after; he rotated my arm in unnatural ways so quickly, and it was a type of strength I never experienced before.
So I think lots of people think sumo wrestlers are just fatsos. But they're actually like soldiers living in their barracks (stables) and having to train so hard 5+ hours a day. Even the fattest ones are not exempt from this rigorous training.
My favorite Yokozuna is Chiyonofuji. Well, he was a relatively short and light sumo wrestler only 6 feet tall and ~260lbs. He's still so much taller and heavier than me, but I like seeing smaller guys beat the bigger ones: David and Goliath sort of thing.
Any sumo fans out there? Who is your favorite Yokozuna if so? I'm taking a gamble since it's so rare in my experience to find sumo fans outside of Japan. For others, I want to create some sumo fans!
I was never a huge sumo fan but my father was. He'd always be watching sumo and bringing me to live tournaments. I couldn't understand the level of respect he had for sumo wrestlers. I just thought they were such fat people who ate way too much. His favorite Yokozuna now is Asashōryū (the bad boy of sumo).
But my whole mind changed about sumo one night in a VIP lounge at a nightclub when a sumo wrestler (just a local one, not even high-ranking) walked in together with a bunch of girls clinging to him while sitting close to me. So I challenged him to a friendly arm-wrestling match as I like to do whenever I find a guy much bigger than me to test my limits.
Then I gripped his hand, and I'm a trained and competitive arm wrestler. I know about the mechanics and leverage of arm wrestling and I've managed to beat men taller and stronger than me not based on strength but through skill. But with this little lowly sumo wrestler who was 6 inches taller than me and probably not at all trained in serious arm wrestling, I took his hand and he nearly snapped my arm off! I was in severe pain for almost a week after; he rotated my arm in unnatural ways so quickly, and it was a type of strength I never experienced before.
So I think lots of people think sumo wrestlers are just fatsos. But they're actually like soldiers living in their barracks (stables) and having to train so hard 5+ hours a day. Even the fattest ones are not exempt from this rigorous training.
My favorite Yokozuna is Chiyonofuji. Well, he was a relatively short and light sumo wrestler only 6 feet tall and ~260lbs. He's still so much taller and heavier than me, but I like seeing smaller guys beat the bigger ones: David and Goliath sort of thing.
Updates
+1 y
One unorthodox thought I developed from this experience trying to help my overweight friends with weight loss is that I don't think body fat has much to do with fitness anymore. It is possible for someone with like 30% body fat to be so fast, so ridiculously strong, with great stamina through training. If they can't lose weight so quickly, they can still get stronger and faster much more quickly.
Updates
+1 y
As an embarrassing admission, I looked negatively at people with so much body fat before. I thought all were so opposite of athletic and unable to even jog for 10 seconds without running out of breath. Sumo changed my mind about this and taught me it is possible for people with so much body fat to still be supreme athletes. So now my fitness advice is weird, but I want to encourage people to get strong and fast first. If they want to lose weight second, that will be much easier after.
