Now I know what you’re saying, Supplements for sumo wrestlers!? Aren’t sumo wrestlers just 400lb fat Japanese men that slam in to each other and push one another out of a circle. The answer is NO! First in professional sumo, even though they are large and carry as much fat as they can, most are still only 12% bodyfat. Now 12% body fat on a 400lb man equals 50 lbs of fat. Second, amatuer sumo has weight classes as low as 185 pounds and under.
Let give you a brief history on sumo. Martial arts similar to sumo have been performed around the world for many centuries. Some that remain today are ssireum in South Korea, Pancrease, boke in Mongolia, and yagli gures in Turkey. In Japan, figurines of sumo wrestlers have been unearthed dating back to between the third and seventh centuries, and the sport is mentioned in the myths and legends of the Kojiki and Nihonshoki (Japanese history books written in the eighth century). When it was time to plant the rice, sumo bouts were performed as a way to pray for a bountiful crop or to predict whether that year’s harvest would be good. In the Nara period (710-794) and Heian period (794-1192), sumo became an event conducted at the imperial court, and bouts were performed in front of the emperor.
During the age of the samurai, physical strength was an important skill for warriors, and samurai families began to employ sumo wrestlers. It has been written that the warlord Oda Nobunaga was such a devotee of the sport that he gathered wrestlers together to hold tournaments every year.